A Date?

Ernest Teucher had designed a pneumatic steel converter entirely from thermodynamic principles.

He had engineered an integrated basin steelworks capable of producing more structural metal in a single month than entire provincial kingdoms had consumed over a decade. He had persuaded the Crown to codify national standard rail clearances before Belfast possessed a single operational mainline. He had driven hundreds of kilometers of heavy transit corridor through virgin timber forests, deep river gorges, and stubborn highland passes. He had stood calmly upon the vibrating footplate of Belfast No. 1 as fifteen tons of moving machinery thundered across freshly spiked track at speeds previously deemed physically impossible.

Yet none of those monumental industrial triumphs had prepared him for the acute structural dilemma currently dominating his attention.

Ernest stood before the full-length gilded dressing mirror in his bedchamber at Oriel Estate.