The armory on the outskirts of Paris smelled of sulfur and wet coal.
It used to be a place where muskets were bored and bayonets sharpened. Now, it was the womb of a new monster.
I stood on the catwalk, wiping soot from my forehead with a silk handkerchief. The heat was oppressive.
Below me, in the center of the factory floor, sat the machine.
It was ugly. A towering mass of cast iron, brass pipes, and hissing valves. It groaned like a dying dragon.
"Open the valve!" I shouted over the noise.
A worker, stripped to the waist and blackened with grease, pulled a heavy lever.
Steam screamed.
The great piston hissed and slammed down. Clang.
It rose. Hiss.
It slammed down again. Clang.
A massive flywheel began to turn. Slowly at first, then gaining speed. A leather belt connected the wheel to a row of power looms.
The looms jerked to life. Shuttles flew back and forth faster than any human hand could follow.
Fabric began to spool. Yard after yard of plain white cotton.
"It works," Napoleon whispered.
He was standing next to me, his arms crossed. He wasn't looking at the cloth. He was looking at the piston.
"It moves without horses," he said, his eyes wide. "It moves without wind. It moves without water."
"It moves with heat," I said. "Thermal energy converted to kinetic work."
Napoleon turned to me. "Can we put it on a wagon?"
I blinked. "A wagon?"
"If it can turn a wheel, it can pull a load," Napoleon said, his mind racing. "Imagine a cannon that pulls itself. No horses to feed. No horses to die."
I smiled grimly. He was a genius. He had just invented the tank in his head, two centuries early.
"Focus, General," I said. "First, we weave cheap cloth. We undercut the British textiles. We bankrupt Manchester."
"Boring," Napoleon grunted. But he kept staring at the machine. "It breathes like a living thing."
"It's the Iron Horse," I said. "And it's going to save the economy."
CRASH.
The sound of shattering glass cut through the rhythmic thumping of the engine.
A brick landed on the catwalk, skidding to a halt at my feet.
"Shut it down!" the foreman screamed.
Outside the factory gates, a roar went up. It wasn't the steam engine. It was human.
"Kill the devil!" a voice shrieked. "Smash the iron beast!"
I walked to the broken window and looked out.
The courtyard was filled with men. Rough men in woolen caps. Weavers. Spinners. Dyers.
They were holding clubs. They were holding torches.
And they were holding their shoes. Heavy wooden sabots.
"The Guilds," I muttered.
The Master Weaver stood at the front. He was a giant of a man with arms like tree trunks. He raised his wooden shoe and hurled it at the gate.
Clack.
"Sabotage," I whispered. "So it begins."
Napoleon drew his sword. The steel hissed against the scabbard.
"I will clear them out," he said calmly. "A whiff of grapeshot?"
"No," I said, putting a hand on his arm. "These aren't royalists, Napoleon. They're taxpayers."
"They are rioters."
"They are terrified. They think this machine eats their children."
I turned away from the window. My heart gave a painful flutter. The stress. Always the stress.
"Put the sword away. I'm going down there."
"You'll be killed," Napoleon warned. "They are in a frenzy."
"I've faced Kings and Emperors," I said, buttoning my coat. "I can handle a trade union."
I walked out of the factory gates alone.
The roar of the crowd died down instantly. Confusion rippled through the mob. They expected soldiers. They expected bayonets.
They got a tired man in a gray suit.
"Who threw the brick?" I asked. My voice wasn't loud, but it carried.
The Master Weaver stepped forward. He spat on the ground near my boots.
"I did," he growled. "Citizen Miller. Or should I call you 'King of the Machines'?"
"Alex is fine," I said. "Why are you trying to break my window, Jacques? Glass is expensive."
"That thing inside," Jacques pointed a trembling finger at the smoking factory. "It does the work of ten men. It never sleeps. It never eats. It will steal the bread from our tables."
"It does the work of fifty men," I corrected.
The crowd murmured angrily. Someone raised a club.
"And it will make you rich," I added.
The club lowered.
"Rich?" Jacques scoffed. "You mean it will make you rich. We will starve."
"Jacques," I said. "How many shirts can you weave in a day?"
"Two. If the thread is good."
"This machine weaves a hundred. It makes cloth so cheap that even a beggar can afford a new shirt every month. The demand will be infinite."
"And who weaves it?" Jacques shouted. "The machine! Not us!"
"The machine needs coal," I said. "It needs maintenance. It needs operators. It needs oil. It needs men to pack the crates and drive the wagons."
I stepped closer. I was within striking distance of his club.
"But more importantly," I said, raising my voice so the back rows could hear. "Who owns the machine?"
"The State!" Jacques yelled. "And the State is you!"
"The State is the People," I lied. Well, half-lied. "I am not offering you a wage, Jacques. Wages are for servants."
I reached into my pocket. I pulled out a stack of paper certificates.
"I am offering you Equity."
Silence. They had never heard the word.
"What is... Ek-wi-tee?" a young weaver asked.
"Ownership," I said. "This factory is a public company. Every worker who signs a contract gets one share of stock."
I held up a certificate.
"If the machine breaks, this paper is worthless. You starve."
I paused.
"But if the machine runs... if we sell a million shirts to Russia... the profits are divided. This paper becomes gold."
I handed the certificate to Jacques.
He looked at it. He looked at his wooden shoe.
"We own the devil?" he whispered.
"You own the Iron Horse," I said. "You don't work for it. It works for you."
It was a gamble. Capitalism weaponized against Luddites.
Jacques looked at the crowd. He saw the greed in their eyes. The fear was fading, replaced by the universal desire to get something for nothing.
"One share?" Jacques asked suspiciously.
"Vesting over four years," I added. "To ensure loyalty."
He didn't know what vesting meant. He just nodded.
"Done," Jacques grunted. He put his shoe back on his foot.
"Get back to work," I ordered. "The boiler needs coal."
"That was manipulation," Robespierre said.
He emerged from the shadows of the alleyway as the crowd dispersed. He was writing in a notebook.
"It was incentives," I said, leaning against the brick wall. My knees felt weak. The adrenaline was fading, leaving my heart to skip beats like a broken clock.
"You bribed them with their own labor," Robespierre noted. "Clever. But dangerous. If the stock price falls, they will hang you."
"Then we better make sure it goes up."
Robespierre walked over to the broken brick lying on the cobblestones. He picked it up with a handkerchief.
"You missed something, Citizen Auditor," he said.
"What?"
"The brick. It wasn't just a projectile."
He unwrapped a piece of paper that had been tied around the brick.
It wasn't a protest note.
It was a technical drawing.
I took it. My hands shook.
It was a schematic of the steam valve I had designed. But it had red ink markings on it.
"These calculations," I whispered. "They show how to bypass the safety release."
"If they had hit the valve instead of the window," Robespierre said calmly, "the boiler would have exploded. It would have leveled the factory."
I stared at the drawing.
The math was advanced. Too advanced for a weaver. This required knowledge of thermodynamics. Knowledge that shouldn't exist in France yet.
"Who drew this?" I asked.
Robespierre pointed to the bottom corner.
There was a symbol stamped in red wax.
An hourglass.
"The Watchmaker," Robespierre read. "A new faction?"
"No," I said, feeling a cold chill that had nothing to do with the weather.
"A rival."
I crushed the paper in my hand.
I wasn't the only one interfering with the timeline. Someone else was here. Someone who knew the tech.
And they didn't want the Iron Horse to run.
"Find them, Maximilien," I ordered. "Audit the city. Find out who knows calculus and hates steam."
"I will purge the equation," Robespierre promised. His eyes gleamed behind his spectacles.
I looked back at the factory. The steam engine was thumping again. Clang. Hiss. Clang.
It sounded like a heartbeat.
But now, I knew there was a bomb ticking somewhere in the city.
"The timeline is fighting back," I whispered.
I pressed a hand to my chest.
"And so am I."