Alice in the Land of Steam

Is Chapter 34 different from what you imagined?

"Do you really believe that Mrs. Maggie didn't mean it?"

Alice asked curiously as they walked to the No. 7 public transportation stop. She stood out among the pedestrians in her maid outfit, especially the silver rabbit ear headphones hanging around her neck, which attracted many people's attention. However, the girl was always carefree and didn't care about these little things, so she naturally ignored them all.

She asked Lingge about the interview in the newspaper. Mrs. Maggie's acceptance of the interview by reporter Fei Yali during this sensitive period undoubtedly put Tianxin Church at the center of public attention. In addition, Lingge had previously told her to be careful of Mrs. Maggie, so Alice naturally had reason to doubt her intentions.

Lingge walked in front and led the way, looking straight ahead, and nodded gently: "Yes."

"Aren't you trying to comfort Metien?"

"No."

"Why?" Alice was puzzled. "You said before that Mrs. Maggie was not a good person..."

"When did I say that?" Ling Ge finally turned around and glanced at her: "My original words were, don't get too close to her, and don't believe what she says."

"Isn't this the same thing?"

"That makes sense." Alice, who had no opinion of her own, nodded in agreement and asked, "So, she really just wanted to say a few good words for Tianxin Church, and was taken advantage of by that hateful and unscrupulous reporter?"

The golden maid rolled her eyes and closed her mouth, knowing that she would not get an answer from Lingge, and Metien knew only a little. So, she could either ask Mrs. Maggie directly, or wait for the main plot to progress, and the protagonist's background story would be revealed slowly.

She tilted her head.

How long will this take?

Of course Alice minded, so she shrank her head and acted like a quail.

"No." Ling Ge replied: "Everyone on Songshi Street may speak for Tianxin Church, but she won't."

"No."

One after another, indifferent pedestrians could not wait to squeeze forward and rush towards the narrow door, just like a group of sardines rushing towards the open mouth of a whale. Their footsteps were as hurried as the development trend of the city, and also showed the characteristics of this era. In comparison, the two people who were still waiting in the station seemed somewhat out of place, but no one would even look at them.

This firm attitude made Alice even more curious about the relationship between Tianxin Church and Mrs. Maggie. She wanted to continue asking, but she had already arrived at the No. 7 public transportation stop. There were so many people waiting for the bus today, and it was as crowded and noisy as a vegetable market. Alice's voice was swallowed up by the noise as soon as it came out. Ling Ge naturally didn't hear it.

"There are too many people." He said, "Wait for the next bus."

After the employer and the maid waited for about five minutes at the No. 7 public transportation station, a steam locomotive whimpered out of the thick smoke, gradually slowed down and stopped outside the station. Alice's eyes naturally lit up when she saw this steel beast for the first time, and she was about to squeeze in with the crowd, but was stopped by Lingge.

Seeing the crowd rushing past, Alice became anxious: "Hurry up, are you in a hurry?"

"There's still an hour before class starts, so there's no rush." ​​Ling Ge looked at the carriage that was gradually filled with people and said calmly, "If you don't mind the rough physical contact, the poor air quality, and the dirty garbage, you can get on the train now."

The tone was calm, as if he was just stating a solid fact.

Ling Ge retracted his gaze, and his footsteps on the stone bricks of the sidewalk made a rhythmic echo, suppressing his already low voice: "The people from the Religious Mutual Aid Association want to use Tianxin Church to create a public opinion advantage for their negotiations. Do you think Mrs. Maggie, as an ordinary person, can think of such an inside story?"

People's positions determine their perspectives. How much energy can Mrs. Maggie, who works all day to support herself and her six children, pay attention to these things that have nothing to do with her? Not to mention seeing through the inside story and fanning the flames in the newspapers?

After all, in this city, there is nothing worth paying attention to except yourself.

"By the way," Alice suddenly asked, "If it wasn't to sow discord or to speak well of Tianxin Church, then why did Mrs. Maggie accept that guy's interview?"

Linger glanced at her and said, "The fact that you ask such a question shows that you don't have a particularly clear understanding of the era you live in, Miss Alice." He didn't continue. The maid blinked, not quite understanding.

***
Fifteen minutes later, another steam locomotive arrived at the station. This time, not many people were crowding to get on the train. Lingge and Alice found seats easily. The maid who liked to play pranks even chose a window seat to look at the scene along the street through the glass window. Although the smoke from the steam engine and the dust from the tires rubbing against the ground made the vision blurry, whether it was pedestrians or buildings, they were just hazy shadows in her eyes, but she still watched with relish and was very involved.

Everything in this world is new to her.

However, this silence only lasted for more than ten minutes. When the train left the Santa Cruz area along a specific route and entered the riverside street, she suddenly turned her head and said to Lingge: "This is not what I imagined at all."

Ling Ge was checking today's lesson plan, so he asked casually, "What's the difference?"

Alice took her hand off the window and put it on her skirt. She sat up straight, pretending to be a lady with a serious expression, "I remember you said before that the steam age in this world began as early as the twelfth century, but it is still the steam age in the nineteenth century."

"I've already told you the answer." Ling Ge said without even looking up: "Because of the two hundred years of the Steam Holy War, the development speed of the times stagnated greatly, and it took a long time to recover."

"But there are seven hundred years between the nineteenth and twelfth centuries." Alice counted on her fingers. "The Steam Crusade lasted two hundred years. What did you do for the remaining five hundred years? Even if you couldn't advance the level of technology to the electrical or even information age, at least you should have invented super-giant analytical machines, power furnaces everywhere, pipeline systems throughout the city, steam airships that can carry people, steel knights with gun blades, and bionic machines that imitate biological structures, as mentioned in steampunk novels, right?"

As she spoke, she looked up at the dusty street outside the car window and saw a bustling river: pedestrians, vendors, employees, travelers, cleaners, drunken strong men, newsboys, flower girls, public carriages, private carriages, two-wheeled open carriages, brass street lamps, red dragon sculptures, ruins of old city walls, dirty river water, floating garbage, mist, cold wind, smoke, crows, dogs, black cats, and rats in dark alleys... The scene seen with the naked eye showed that this era seemed to be somewhat different from the steam fantasy world she had imagined.

What did people do in the five hundred years after the two hundred years of the Steam Holy War? Why did the world neither take another path nor stick to the original path, but instead seemed to stay where it was, no longer moving forward or backward?

Her question drew Linger's attention away from the lesson plan. He closed the textbook, thought for a moment, and suddenly said, "In 1166 AD, Watt, president of the Royal Research Society of the Kingdom of Great Brittany, invented the steam engine, announcing that human civilization had officially entered a new era."

"In 1252 AD, the Steam Cult, which controlled the core technology of the steam engine, broke out into civil strife. The December Declaration triggered a fight between the Steam Cult and the Alpha Knights, which split from it. It gradually evolved into a war that affected the entire Sigiriya continent, known as the Steam Holy War."

"On February 1400, 2, the Realist Church, which had only been established for a year, broke through the headquarters of the Steam Church and replaced its ruling position. Since then, the Steam Holy War has evolved into a fight between the Church Union and the Alpha Knights."

"On February 1404, 2, the allied forces conquered the holy city of Depesion, the Alpha Knights were destroyed, and the Western Continent countries also suffered heavy losses. The Allied Orders became the only winner in this war, and the Steam Holy War came to an end."

"On May 1767, 5, Raman Seller invented the steam locomotive with externally suspended carriages. The church jointly obtained a patent and completed the improvement, which almost revolutionized the transportation system of the entire Western Continent. At the same time, it was also the last great invention of the steam age. Since then, human research on steam technology has not made any breakthrough progress."

A hundred years have passed since then.

He originally wanted to use the knowledge he had learned to answer this question, but after carefully recalling the technological history after the invention of the steam engine, Ling'er's voice gradually became lower and lower, and finally turned into a murmur like talking to himself.

He had to admit that Alice's doubts were justified. From the end of the Steam War in 1404 to the invention of the steam locomotive by Ramon Seller in 1767, over a period of more than years, humans had made very few achievements in steam technology. In the last years, there were no decent inventions at all.

This is strange.

What’s even more strange is that as a college student majoring in history, I have never thought about similar questions.

It seems as if there is an invisible hand controlling everything.

His eyes were deep and he was lost in thought.

Sitting next to her, Alice was ignored when she asked the question, but she was not angry because she heard the names of two old friends again: Watt, who invented the steam engine, and Raman Seller, who invented the steam locomotive with externally mounted carriages.

In the history of the earth, Watt was the improver of the steam engine, while Raman-Seller - or more precisely, the Raman-Seller Company, was a manufacturer of steam vehicles.

Two worlds, similar historical images, overlap again.

　Give me some meow
　　
　
(End of this chapter)