After the submarine programme had been placed firmly in the Navy's hands, Oskar returned to Potsdam and settled once more into the strange rhythm of his ordinary life.
Ordinary, in his case, remained a relative word.
The ground floor of the eastern palace wing—now regarded as Oskar's private family domain—had been extensively rebuilt. Several former reception rooms had been opened into a broad palace gymnasium filled with iron weights, cable machines, padded benches, climbing ropes, and polished wooden floors reinforced wherever Oskar trained.
Beyond a set of glass doors lay a smaller indoor swimming hall. Warm water reflected against tiled walls, while tall windows overlooked the gardens and the lake where Oskar had once scandalised half the court by swimming openly.
A new three-storey barracks now stood near that shore.
It housed the First Company of the Eternal Guard whenever its men were assigned to palace duty. The company rotated constantly: one detachment guarded Oskar's family and the eastern wing, another rested in the barracks, while the remainder received leave to return to their own homes. The arrangement ensured that the palace was always protected without forcing the same soldiers to remain perpetually on watch.
That afternoon, however, the eastern wing felt less like the guarded home of the future Emperor and more like an unusually prosperous public bath.
Officers, servants, maids, and members of Oskar's household trained in the same hall. Men lifted in sleeveless shirts while women exercised in loose trousers and modest training clothes. Others swam, sat beside the pool, or rested near the windows overlooking the gardens.
The arrangement remained scandalously modern by court standards.
It also produced healthier servants, stronger guards, and considerably fewer complaints about aching backs.
Oskar's family had taken possession of one side of the gym.
Tanya and Louise worked with several of the older children. Anna remained near the pool with Gundelinde and Heddy, watching the infants and ensuring that none attempted to crawl into the water. Karl trained nearby, while his own children competed with Oskar's over brightly painted practice weights that were hollow enough to lift safely.
Durin treated every exercise as a military campaign.
Imperiel attempted to command the others into orderly lines.
Nobody obeyed either of them for long.
At the centre of the gym, Oskar curled two eighty-kilogram dumbbells with slow, almost insulting ease.
Karl watched him complete another repetition before taking a long drink from one of Pump World's increasingly famous protein mixtures. The drink contained nothing mystical—milk, eggs, oats, cocoa, and carefully prepared nutritional extracts—but much of Germany had begun treating it as though Oskar's strength could be purchased by the bottle.
The misunderstanding was extremely profitable.
Karl lowered his cup.
"Were you not supposed to inspect the aviation works?"
Oskar continued curling.
"I have been inspecting them."
"You have not visited Lilienthal in months."
"That is not the same thing."
Karl stared at him.
Oskar finally lowered the weights.
Aircraft, he explained, were not created merely by drawing wings and attaching an engine. Every machine depended upon an industrial chain that barely existed.
The frame required light but reliable metals. The engine demanded precision machining, high-quality fuel, specialised bearings, and alloys capable of surviving heat and vibration. Instruments, propellers, wiring, cameras, weapons, and control cables each required separate workshops and trained men.
Most importantly, future aircraft required aluminium.
Aluminium required bauxite.
And transforming bauxite into useful metal required enormous quantities of electricity.
That was why Oskar's attention had remained divided between Cameroon, the new aluminium works, engine development, and the planned hydroelectric station in Thuringia. A proper aluminium plant consumed power like a city. Without the mines, railways, generators, refineries, and transmission lines behind it, the aircraft itself would remain an expensive wooden toy.
"I have not neglected aviation," Oskar said. "I have been building everything that must exist before aviation can grow."
Karl glanced toward the pool, where one of the toddlers had begun protesting against being removed from the water.
"And you forgot to inspect the actual aeroplane."
Oskar considered that.
"I may have neglected that particular detail."
Karl sighed.
"Shall I send Lilienthal a telegram?"
"No. Let him work. When he has something worth showing me, he will come."
Oskar picked up the weights again.
For the moment, he preferred the noise of his family to another unfinished prototype.
The following morning found him in his palace office.
The room had already filled with reports from the submarine trials, aluminium contracts, electrical projects, and the new media company established under Dr. Julius Neubronner.
That company now possessed a formal name:
Imperial Image Works.
The title had been chosen deliberately. The company manufactured images, but it was also intended to improve the image of the Empire itself.
Its headquarters occupied a newly renovated building in Potsdam, with offices at the front and guarded laboratories and workshops extending behind them. Neubronner remained technical director, while Oskar's industrial group controlled the majority of the company and supplied its money, machinery, chemists, glassmakers, electricians, and precision engineers.
The original pigeon camera had become only one small department.
Imperial Image Works was now developing portable cameras, standardised film, improved lenses, microphones, sound-recording equipment, projectors, and wireless sets compact enough for use outside permanent stations.
Other laboratories experimented with transmitting pictures through electrical signals. Their earliest mechanical image screens produced little more than flickering shadows and crude moving shapes, but Oskar recognised the beginnings of television within them.
There were also improvements in valves, relays, insulated wiring, compact circuits, and methods of synchronising recorded sound with motion pictures.
Entertainment was the public purpose.
Military communications, aerial reconnaissance, propaganda, artillery observation, and secure transmission remained the private one.
That morning, Neubronner sat opposite Oskar's desk with a collection of camera housings and technical photographs spread between them. He reported steadily while Oskar reviewed the company's progress.
The Potsdam workshops were expanding. A small projection theatre had been built for testing film and sound systems. New microphones reproduced speech with far greater clarity, and engineers had reduced the size of several wireless assemblies without sacrificing range.
The work was protected by the company's own security service.
They were known unofficially as Oskar's Black Guard.
Unlike the Eternal Guard, they did not belong to the imperial household or accompany Oskar into battle. They guarded his factories, laboratories, shipyards, warehouses, and restricted industrial projects.
Their appearance was difficult to mistake.
They wore black uniforms, polished black boots, black steel helmets, and white gloves during formal duty. Upon their collars and helmets appeared a winged skull—the emblem of vigilance beyond death and loyalty that did not end with fear.
Most were veterans or members of the Church of the New Dawn. They had been selected not only for discipline, but for a near-religious devotion to Oskar and his work.
Foreign agents found them unpleasant.
Employees found them impossible to bribe.
The Black Guard did not regard industrial espionage as simple theft. To them, stealing Oskar's inventions was an offence against Germany's future and, in some cases, against the will of God itself.
Oskar was finishing his discussion with Neubronner when someone knocked.
"Enter."
The door opened, and Gustav Lilienthal stepped into the office.
The engineer was unable to conceal his excitement. His shoulders leaned forward, his hat remained clutched in both hands, and his eyes carried the sleepless brightness of a man who had watched years of theory finally leave the ground.
He bowed.
"Your Imperial Highness."
Oskar dismissed Neubronner with a final instruction concerning the new wireless laboratory, then turned his attention fully toward Lilienthal.
"You appear pleased with yourself."
"I am, Your Highness."
Lilienthal drew a breath.
"We succeeded."
Oskar became still.
The engineers had completed the first working model of the aircraft Oskar had described to them. It had undergone ground tests, engine trials, short lifting runs, and finally its first true flight.
It had risen cleanly.
It had remained controllable.
And it had returned to earth without breaking either itself or its pilot.
Lilienthal had not trusted the news to a telegram. He had travelled to Potsdam personally to request that Oskar attend the next flight and judge whether the engineers had successfully transformed his drawings into a living machine.
For months, Oskar had concerned himself with everything surrounding the aircraft.
The bauxite.
The aluminium plants.
The hydroelectric stations.
The engines, fuels, instruments, factories, and machine tools.
Now, at last, the aircraft itself was waiting.
"When?" he asked.
"Three days, Your Highness, provided the weather remains suitable."
"Send me the location, wind estimates, safety arrangements, and the complete report from the first flight."
Lilienthal nodded rapidly.
"You will attend?"
Oskar leaned back, a slow smile appearing across his face.
Beneath the sea, Germany's first wolfpacks were beginning to take shape.
Now the sky had answered.
"I will be there," he said. "Let us see whether you have truly given Germany wings."