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The following morning, Ernest woke to sunlight spilling through the tall windows of his bedroom.

For a few moments, he stayed still and stared at the ceiling. There were no royal meetings waiting for him, no military officers demanding demonstrations, and no urgent telegraph schedules that required him to run across half the city before breakfast. There was only morning, quiet and ordinary in a way that had become rare since the Royal Telegraph Project began.

Lately, his days had become impossible to predict. One morning involved batteries, copper wire, and insulation tests. The next involved military engineers asking how quickly messages could travel from one field station to another. The day after that somehow involved treasury officials asking whether lightning could be classified as military infrastructure for budget purposes.

He still had not decided how to answer that one.