Cast in Time Book 4: Earl
Ed & Carol Nelson
Cast in Time
Book 4: Earl
By Ed Nelson
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to my wife, Carol, for her support and help as my first reader and editor.
With special thanks to Ole Rotorhead for his technical insights on how things really work.
Then there are my beta readers: Ole Rotorhead, Lonelydad, Antti Huotari, Brent, Craig, and Don.
And never forget the professional editor: Morgan Waddle.
Quotation
According to "M" theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead, "M" theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing.
Stephen Hawking
Copyright © 2023
E. E. Nelson
All rights reserved
Eastern Shore Publishing
2331 West Del Webb Blvd.
Sun City Center, FL 33673
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-953395-86-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 20239124
Table of Contents
Contents
Cast in Time
Dedication
Quotation
Copyright © 2023
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Backmatter
Chapter 1
As I took stock of my first six years in this time, I decided I had to consolidate my gains. That still made sense. What didn't make sense, after mature thought, was the start of the Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution was the introduction of mass production. But we were lacking the workers to support mass production. More importantly, mass production meant exactly that. A lot of products would be produced. Our population wouldn't be able to absorb all the production.
Scratch that idea.
Filling in the technical gaps still made sense. We were using technology from the eighth century alongside the twentieth century.
Preserved foods were high on my list.
We had ice from the ice caves, but canning would strengthen our food chain. So far, we have been lucky not to have a bad growing season, but one could happen without warning. Canning was a must, both in mason jars and metal cans. That reminded me we had to invent the can opener.
Incubators were next on my list for small animals, such as baby chicks and sickly newborn infants. I called the babies sickly because I knew some babies needed incubators, but not why. I'm sure Baroness Agnes could tell me.
We had small stills in the lab and even larger ones in our pharmaceutical production buildings. What we didn't have were large alcohol production stills. We could make whiskey using wheat, rye, or barley and scotch using rye.
Corn, as I knew it, came from the Americas and wasn't available to us yet. It was the same reason we couldn't make vodka. Potatoes came from Chile. Even so, whiskey could be a huge export for us.
I thought it would be funny to teach the Scots how to make scotch. And I would insist on the correct spelling as whiskey, not whisky.
Not caring for gin, I didn't think about making any. I'm certain that someone would come up with it. They would also start distilling wine to make brandy. That I could take or leave.
Another important product to improve was paper. All we have is crude pulp. We needed smooth white paper for writing. And soft, smooth toilet paper. The stuff we had wasn't much better than the corncobs we used on the farm once all the pages from the Sears catalog were used up.
Then, we needed large transformers to introduce electricity on a useful scale. So we had to come up with a light bulb. Shades of Edison. At least we didn't have to go through the thousands of trials. Hundreds, probably, but still a lot less than his technicians. You didn't think old Tommy did all that work himself.
Improved batteries would be useful in many ways once the electrical age was started. We had large arrays of glass jars filled with acid chemicals. Wires linked them to act as batteries or chemical generators for telegraphic and radio transmissions. But we needed dry cell batteries in more portable form factors.
Flywheels. We had a start on them on our steam engines, but they could stand a lot of improvement.
Next up was the Pelton wheel. It would extract energy from the impulse of moving water, unlike water's dead weight as the traditional overshot water wheel.
The Pelton wheel would be the easiest of the changes to introduce. It was simply a different shape from the waterwheel now in use.
I didn't plan to be anything but an advisor on these projects. Some of our budding engineers were showing promise, so they were going to get a chance to show their stuff.
There was one project I was interested in. Making plastics from oil.
We were still using cow's milk to produce casein. But we didn't have enough cows to meet the potential need. Mirrors alone were taking all the casein production. And there weren't enough cows in the whole of England to meet the needs I foresaw.
We could now ship mirrors by sea to Constantinople. We always knew the route but had to fear pirates. With our new schooners to protect our ships, we no longer feared the sea route.
I had to chuckle. The Barbary pirates would think our ships were on fire when the cannons were first fired. They would see smoke and flames from ours as their ships exploded.
The many battles I had been in had warped my sense of humor. It's a wonder I wasn't a massive case of PTSD. I often thought there was something wrong with me. The carnage sickened me, but I never had nightmares about it.
The worst case of PTSD I had ever encountered was at home.
He was a Marine recruiter.
One of his duties was to attend the funerals of soldiers killed in Vietnam. He had to hand the flag to fifty-one sets of parents. Talk about stress. They hated him, and it radiated from them.
He finally asked to be relieved from that duty and requested a combat posting. He survived only to carry the guilt for many years.
In a way, I lightened my burden, realizing it could have been much worse for me. Others had suffered more. At least I could shoot back.
Getting my thoughts back on track, I mentally reviewed what had to be done to make polypropylene or polyethylene plastics. We had the basic technology in place to manufacture both. We just had to modify the process.
Molasses-like crude oil is heated over a furnace that separates the hydrocarbons into different groups. This is based on the number of atoms they contain and their resulting molecular weight. These are then put into a nearby distillation tube.
The crude is vaporized, and the vapors re-condense at different levels in the tower based on their molecular weight. We found the molecular weight by trial and error.
The longer, typically heavier hydrocarbons sink to the bottom of the tube, while the shorter, lighter ones rise to the top. The result is several distinct groups of chemicals for various uses.
One of these groups is naphtha, the primary feedstock for making plastic. It contains ethane and propane.
To be made into something that can be used to build plastic. Ethane and propane must be broken down from their raw hydrocarbon state into smaller units.
One method is applying high heat and pressure in a zero-oxygen environment. This process, called "steam cracking," breaks down the hydrocarbons into shorter molecules called monomers.
We could achieve the heat and pressure. But our challenge was zero oxygen.
The next step is polymerization. Then, you combine chemically individual monomer ingredients in new arrangements. Producing the long repeating chains known as polymers.
In this case, the most basic and widely used plastics are polyethylene and polypropylene from ethylene and propylene. Polyethylene's makeup allows it to be used to make different plastics. Polypropylene's configuration makes it particularly flexible and resilient.
The easiest method to create an oxygen-free environment requires palladium. Unfortunately, we don't have access to any and probably won't for a long time.
Another method is air circulating in a low-pressure loop at 200C, with two openings: one for introducing steam and another that allows excess gases to exit. Purging this loop with steam brings down the oxygen content of this loop to 0%.
So, all we had to do was separate the propane and ethylene, then place them in a high-temperature and pressure container while running steam through it to deplete the oxygen to zero. Sounds easy. It shouldn't take more than a year and a thousand trial runs. That is if things go well.
Now, I just needed to identify a newly graduated young person with an aptitude for chemical engineering. I knew one book that the engineer could use which had a clear and basic explanation of the processes as I had written it for one of my Ph.D. theses.
I visited a major oil refinery in Houston as part of my research. I must have been in my early thirties when I wrote it, so it was only seventy or so years ago. No wonder I only vaguely remembered the process.
The high school in Owen-nap had a heavy science curriculum. The teachers were barely a chapter ahead of their best students, but they were getting the job done. My first stop was the principal to ask about the best recent graduates. According to him, one young lady was head and shoulders above the rest in theoretical and practical engineering.
I arranged an interview with her and met her at her father's farm. She was mucking out stalls when I arrived. Our conversation revealed that she had been unable to find work outside of the farm.
It seems our educational system was running ahead of our skilled employment opportunities. There were plenty of openings in the traditional trades, such as tanning, blacksmithing, or butchering.
In the modern sciences, there were few openings.
I decided on the spot I would open a pure research center and employ every science graduate who showed any promise at all.
Her interview went great. It didn't take many questions for her to demonstrate a good understanding of chemistry. I had her describe the various experiments she had set up for her school projects and was impressed. They would have stood out in the twenty-first century.
Her father came in from the field to join us.
He was quiet and listened to my questions without trying to give answers for his daughter.
That was until I told Evie that she would have to visit the oil refinery in Arette.
"Is it safe for a young lady to go to foreign places like that?" he asked.
"That is a good point. I hadn't thought of that. Five soldiers will accompany her as her bodyguard. She won't be the only young person on this trip."
I was winging it now.
"There will be at least two other technicians with her. She will be the lead, and they will be her assistants."
"I will have assistants?" Evie asked.
"Yes. There is no way you could do this all alone. You will supervise the collection of the propane and ethylene fractions. This will require the design and set-up of new collection columns.
“The staff should have a good handle on making the columns, but you will oversee the process. More importantly, you must test the product to ensure it is propane or ethylene. I will give you books describing all of this."
I continued, "I can't tell you how long you will be there, but it will be months, if not longer."
Her Dad cleared his throat but said nothing.
Evie took the hint. "What will this pay?"
"I was planning on two thousand a year for you and fifteen hundred each for the assistants."
Her Dad about fell over. This was more than ten times what he could make in a good year.
She couldn't accept the job fast enough.
"Your first task is to identify candidates for your assistants. Interview them and send me your selections to talk to and hopefully approve them.”
She looked at me questioningly.
"Yes, this is your first test. Find good candidates, not friends.
I will be here in Owen-nap for the next several weeks. Try to have the people identified by the end of next week. By the way, I don't care what sex they are. I just want the best.
"While you are doing that, I will select your escorts, send letters to Arette to notify them of this project, and arrange transportation. Any questions?"
She appeared to be tongue-tied. So I told her father they could send a note to the Keep if they had questions.
Chapter 2
As I left the farmer's house, I had to chuckle. I had never seen anyone so gob-smacked, as my English friends used to say. I suppose they are still saying it somewhere, sometimes. That thought brought my laughter to a halt.
Trying to stay true to my plan of stepping back and delegating was proving difficult. I was short on middle management. I needed several people to oversee the various working groups I had established to bring our technology to a level playing field. The problem was that no large working groups required layers of management.
In the here and now, most management levels were one deep. A master and his apprentices. There might be a three-level organization, but I didn't know of it. Yes, the military met the multiple-level requirement. But few, if any, of them would have the technical training to oversee one of my groups.
Wait a minute.
There might be a few officers who fit the bill. We did have an Engineering Corps. Their officers would oversee building structures or, in the past, assembling catapults, laying out camps, etc.
While not educated in the sciences, they would know how to manage large groups with diverse tasks. Taking it one step further, we needed the civilian equivalent of Sergeants. These would be the group leaders reporting to the engineering officers.
Now that I had identified a potential source of project leaders, I had to find out what was available. That was the nice thing about having four stars on my uniform. Things would happen when I issued a request.
My requests were orders put politely.
Counting my plastic project, I had the need for nine project leaders and a tenth to oversee the other nine.
There were only seven engineering officers that could be spared. The captains couldn't be, but they had capable Lieutenants who could be given an early promotion.
I ended up putting distilling and preserved foods under one Captain. We understood distilling and only had to scale it up. Once up and running, making whiskey and other spirits were long-term projects since they had to age.
Flywheels and the Pelton turbine were also understood, so from that point of view, they wouldn't be that difficult. The only rub was that we needed both scaled up and available for use ASAP. I hadn't introduced ASAP as a term yet, but it was coming.
The incubators and batteries projects were assigned together. The incubators would be easy to build for various uses, while improved batteries would be a long-term project.
This new table of organization required five project leaders and a senior officer to oversee the whole shebang. I had seven candidates and needed six people, which was cutting it thin.
I was very lucky.
All seven candidates were qualified and had the right attitudes. So, I decided to use all seven. The extra man would be adjutant to the leader. This gave me a little depth in case someone dropped by the wayside.
These were all career people, so I gave them a written commitment if they returned to the military for any reason. They would be bumped a rank for every five years they served on the projects.
We might lose one or two at the five-year mark, but after that, their lives would be so settled, and their military experience so dated that none would go back. At least, I hoped it worked that way. If nothing else, we could always use another supply officer.
I was a little arbitrary in picking the overseeing officer. I picked the oldest one. He had a calm composure with steel in his backbone. His records substantiated that.
He had been a hell-raiser in his youth but settled down and had a good leadership track record. The General in charge of the military engineers told me he was due for promotion no matter what.
I didn't give anyone but him a promotion, jumping him to full colonel so he had the clout to get the job done. However, they all got a healthy pay raise outside the military pay scale. They were second to the project office and would be paid accordingly.
I had made an expensive error in paying Evie Farmer so much. It locked the pay scale in for Sergeants or specific project team leads, which had to be scaled up across all project teams. At least no Officer would want to go back to active duty and lose that pay rate.
After a week of interviews, I had my project team leadership in place. Other than Evie on the plastic project, there were no other team leaders yet chosen. That became the first assignment for my new leadership team.
Evie had come through and picked her two assistants. I interviewed both and felt she had done a pretty good job. The only reservation I had was the male assistant. He seemed a little arrogant to me. I wondered how he would work under Evie.
I dumped Evie's travel arrangements on Thad, so that was handled. I felt pretty smug at the end of the week as I told the project team leaders they were now on their own.
They had to create an organization and budget to bring the projects to fruition. I would meet monthly with them for the first six months and then evaluate each project's status. I clarified I was paying them well so they would run their projects efficiently.
I wasn’t about to tell them I was paying them so well because I had screwed up.
I did come clean with Eleanor that evening. She told me that while I had been worried about inflation taking hold, I seemed to be trying to make it happen.
Man, some days you can't win.
The next afternoon, I found Cathy reading to Doug. That was a good thing. Even better, she didn't have a book in hand! She had inherited my memory.
What wasn’t so good was what she was reading to him. I don't think he was ready for "A Woman's Reproductive Cycle: How It Works" with diagrams and birth control methods.
I don't think she was ready for it, either! I didn't say anything because the cat was out of the bag. She would have that book available in her head all her life.
I had dictated it for Eleanor and Baroness Agnes. Archbishop Luke printed the book in thousands of copies. The Church hadn't gotten around to forbidding birth control yet, so he had no problem with it.
Women were worn out from childbearing by the time they were forty and seldom lived past fifty. Those that did were the ones that couldn't have children.
The books were being shipped far and wide by the Silk Road.
Eleanor must have left her copy lying around. When I brought it up to her, she set me straight. It was a formal part of Cathy's education. No daughter of hers would suffer a short life by having dozens of children.
Sex education was a formal subject in all the schools now. Parents were all for it.
Talk about things being different here! Even though I had dictated it, I hadn't paid attention as I was talking. A quick reread was interesting. The book spoke of all the manners in which men and women could please each other.
Currently, the book was outselling the Bible in Cornwall, and Archbishop Luke said the instruction book would be a worldwide bestseller. He charged double his normal amount and still couldn't print them fast enough. The greedy old man rubbed his hands together. More power to him. I hope he gets rich, or at least richer.
An enterprising young couple had set up a new business. They were making sheaths from lamb, calve, and goat intestines. These were early condoms. The lambs were the preferred ones as they felt more natural, but there weren't enough lambs being slaughtered to serve the market. This led to different pricing levels.
While the bride being pregnant at marriage was still the preferred norm, the wedding gifts now included sheaths. Lamb, being the most expensive, led to trying to outdo the neighbor next door.
I swore resolutely never to mention flavored condoms. Enough was enough.
Baroness Agne's people still checked every sailor coming into port. Each was given a complimentary goat sheath, the cheapest. The working girls had their own supply, and woe to the sailor who thought he could get by without using one.
The book even talked about tubes being tied and vasectomies, even though we knew no one was ready to try that surgery, neither to receive nor to perform it.
On the surface, birth control appeared to work against our need for population growth. What worked in our favor was that the ones born were healthy births. And their mothers would live longer since they would no longer be baby factories.
Large families were still the desired norm, but they were planned families. It made me laugh to think what the family planning people of my time would have thought of all this.
I received an early report about an important paper project. The team tasked with making toilet paper had their first success. They followed the manual I had dictated. It described the basic steps in toilet paper production but not the details. In spite of this, they had made good progress.
The very first step in the process of making toilet paper is preparing the trees. The manual told them they needed hardwood and softwood but not the proportions.
They set up a designed experiment, which one team member had learned in his statistics class. They were able to significantly reduce the number of experimental runs to find the correct proportions.
Trees had to be debarked to extract the wood pulp. They took the easy way out and obtained fresh planks from the sawmill. With the help of some engineering students, they designed a mechanical woodchipper. It was impressive, even by my standards.
Next, they needed to set up the digestion process. The wood chips were added to a massive pressure cooker and combined with hot water and sodium hydroxide.
The chips stayed in the pressure cooker for about 3 hours, eventually turning into a pulp-like material.
The pulp is cleaned and bleached until no color remains. This removes the lignin, so the finished product doesn’t turn yellow as it ages.
They only partially succeeded in doing this, but who cares if the paper is a little yellow? Softness is what counts.
After the pulp is washed and bleached, it is combined with a large amount of water. Creating paper stock is about 0.5% fiber and 99.5% water. This paper stock is sprayed onto mesh screens, allowing the water to drain and the paper to form.
Once the paper has dried to a moisture level of 5%, it is scraped off the screens and wound onto reels. From there, it's cut into long strips and perforated for easy tearing. Finally, it's cut into rolls and packaged.
They used a rotating wheel with a sharp edge to cut the paper. All their machinery was belt driven by a small steam engine.
After I performed my test, I awarded them all a bonus. I thought about knighting all five team members, but that would have been a bit much.
Later, Eleanor told me they should be made, at minimum, Barons.
All her lady friends agreed.
Chapter 3
The team that came up with the toilet paper approached me and asked if I minded if they went into business. I wasn't thinking when I asked, "What business?"
They must have thought I was dense.
"Making the new toilet paper."
Talk about feeling stupid. "Go for it with my blessings. Are you going to sell shares?"
Everybody in Cornwall knew about selling and buying shares. We even had a small stock market working out of a coffee shop.
"We planned to. We will need a lot of capital to start up."
"When you make your initial offering, I will buy all shares that don't sell.
"I have been doing this long enough to recognize attempts to run the price up at the end."
Didn't think there was a way to run the price up if shares weren't selling, but this should keep them honest.
"Another condition is that you build it downstream from Owen-nap. I would suggest the estuary north of Saltash. The smell will be strong. Not as bad as a tanner or slaughterhouse, but it will spread further."
"We had figured that out. Working with the prototype unit drove us out of the building many times," one team member said.
"I also suggest you keep working on improving the quality of the paper. There are still some undigested wood chips embedded in it. The ladies have complained about that. Splinters can be uncomfortable in certain parts of the body."
The young men looked very uncomfortable. They were embarrassed. I don't think that could last longer being in this business.
They returned several days later, having picked out a site. I and my two ever-present guards rode out with them to take a look. Picking the wrong site would cause ill feelings among their neighbors.
They had done a good job.
There was only one small farm within five miles. When we got there, it looked abandoned. The fields hadn't been worked, and there were no farm animals about. The only sign of life was smoke coming out of an opening in the side of the building.
The smoke smelled like a Blacksmith's shop, burned or molten metal. This was odd.
The only door to the building was closed. My guard, Michael, walked around the building to check it out. There were windows on each side of the door. They had no glass and were covered by wooden shutters, closed tight.
That alone was strange. The day was overly warm.
Michael knocked on the door. It was a firm knock designed to get your attention. Not quite a pounding, but close.
A sound came from inside that we all recognized. The guards, the toilet paper team, and I all moved away from the line of fire.
We ended up four to a side, waiting for something to happen.
Michael was just about to knock on the door again when it burst open, and two guys ran out. The shuttered windows flew open with a man at each window.
All of them had ON-47 rifles. My guards had the same. I and the TP team had drawn and pointed our side arms.
Since we were standing at the side of the three openings, the gunmen had to bring their rifles to bear. Those few seconds were the deciding point of the battle.
We were aiming. They were putting their arms into position. We fired multiple shots, and they fell. They got a few shots off, missing everyone but me. I took a bullet graze to my arm. It burned like crazy but wasn't life-threatening.
One of the team members ran through the front door before any of us could yell stop. As he crossed the threshold, a rifle barked, and he fell.
A guard ran up to an open window as the shot was fired. He leaned in and fired several shots. There was a scream before the thump of a body hitting the floor.
My second guard peered through the other window. Both guards yelled, “all clear.”
The guy who ran into the building was dead. Shot through the heart with a huge hole in his back.
The gunmen were dead, but we collected their weapons and piled them into a corner. It would be embarrassing to be killed by a dead man.
The dead guys had the look like soldiers. We checked, but they had no identifying papers or marks.
The old farmhouse had one large room. There was a blacksmith forge to melt metal, which explained the smell. The other item was a die set to cast our golden crow coin. There was also a bucket of lead coin blanks with the crow stamped.
We had accidentally run into a counterfeiting ring.
The team members were upset about the loss of their friend. Our one female in the group was sobbing like crazy. They had been planning on getting married.
We found a blanket and covered the young man's body.
One of my guards said, “It's a shame about the boy, but at least we broke up this ring of counterfeiters.”
I shook my head. "Who made the dies for the coins? I don't see any tools around here."
"Oh, someone made those dies. How will we find them?" Michael asked.
"I'm hoping they were in one of our military units. If so, we will have their fingerprints on file. We will know who to question if they were all in the same unit."
"Good point. I wondered why we all had to have our prints taken like criminals," one guard said.
I said. "The crook's prints were taken so we could dust a crime scene and see if someone was up to their old tricks."
I continued, "I'm afraid our troops’ pints were taken to aid the graves registration unit."
A guard said, "Well, these are ready for graves, so that works out."
Soldiers' humor never fails to surprise me. I know the gallows humor was a way to relieve stress, but it always struck me as too grim.
Another grim sight was about to happen. To get fingerprints, you needed fingers. One guard pulled his dagger. He kept the fingers separate, putting them in small flour sacks from the kitchen area of the room.
The other guard was writing a description of each of the dead men. Once finished, he bagged it with his thumbs and fingers in the appropriate sack.
Sending all troops assigned to guard duty through our young police force training was paying off. Though now I think each guard should carry a fingerprint kit. It would be less messy.
Quenching the gold to cool, it had raised a cloud of steam with its associated smell. It temporarily covered the smell of evacuated bowels, blood, and piss permeating the room.
Taking the dies and the melted gold, we closed the door and left.
Finally, the burning in my arm was too much, and the guard trained in first aid cared for me to the best of his ability. The wound was clean, but it still burned.
The next morning, I sent a police team out to the farmhouse to recover the bodies and look for more information. I didn't expect them to find anything, but it didn't hurt to check.
My wound was treated by Baroness Agnes herself. She put an aloe-based soothing salve on it and re-wrapped it.
Eleanor gave me hell.
It seems I went out of my way to get shot. What would she do if I wasn't here for her?
Cathy cried because Mummy was upset. Dougie cried because Cathy was crying. I decided not to get shot anymore.
Yeah, right.
The fingerprints took another two days to check. We filed them by type like the FBI in my time, but going through the files manually took a while.
All five bad guys were guards in Baron Zennor's guard. He had been with King Geriant. He had three sons. The eldest died with him, along with Geriant. The second eldest was now the Baron.
He swore to be faithful to me as his Liege. It looks like he may have crossed his fingers. I didn't want to jump to conclusions. There was still a third son who might be up to no good.
I didn't know if the guy had any daughters. If so, it might be one of them running the counterfeiting ring.
Taking a company of two hundred troops and two cannon batteries, I decided to call upon the Baron and ask him a few questions.
If I had to knock on his door, it would be with authority.
We arrived at a thriving Barony. People were busy and seemed cheerful. But arriving in force had many people disappearing rapidly. Several ran to the Keep.
The Baron would be warned.
It would be interesting to see what he would do. As we rode through the prosperous-looking village, I waited for the Keep's gates to close. They didn't. That was a sign in his favor, or he was a realist about resisting.
Before we reached the gate, a horse and rider charged like the devil was on his heels. If he didn't slow down, he would kill the horse quickly.
I detailed a mounted squad to follow him. They took off at a rapid but not horse-killing pace. They would catch him once his horse was blown.
The squad leader fired a rifle shot into the air. The escaping rider would hear it and be encouraged to go faster. Nothing like panic to make you stop thinking.
I had seen men on both sides in several wars panic and stand up in the middle of machine gun fire. It didn't end well for them.
We proceeded to the gate where the young Baron and his wife waited for us.
"Welcome Count Owen-nap to Zennor Keep. I gather this isn't a social visit."
"No, it isn't. Is there someplace we could talk?"
He shook his head. "Follow me. We will go to my office."
Four of my guards followed; even though he seemed pleasant and didn't act as though he was guilty of anything, I was taking no chances.
"My Lord, do you mind if my wife sits with us? It will save me time later trying to relate all."
I had to laugh at that.
"That sounds like my house."
I hoped this kid was innocent. I liked him.
Once in the office and settled down, after refusing refreshments, we got down to business.
"What brings you here with a strong force, My Lord?"
"We stumbled on a counterfeiting operation. The ones running it were killed in a gun battle. Their fingerprints matched soldiers in your Keep's forces."
"May I call the Captain of the Guard?"
"Go ahead."
The Captain was a stout man who looked close to retirement. That said, he was all soldier.
The young Baron said, "Captain Tanner, the Count is about to give us five names. We need to know if they are present and what they are detailed to do."
I handed the captain a list with the five names.
"These men are all unaccounted for. They were on leave and have not returned."
The Baron asked, "What was their job?"
"They all report to your brother, My Lord."
The Baron turned to me. "We need to speak to my brother."
I asked, "Lady Zennor, from the look that you just gave, he is not your favorite person in the world."
"He is a troublemaker and always trying to undercut my husband. He is jealous of him. Thinks he should have the power. If he did, it would be the worst thing possible for the people of this Barony. He is lazy, boorish, selfish, and dirty in his habits."
Wow, tell me what you really think.
"Well, I need to speak to him."
The captain broke in. "He was leaving the Keep when you rode in."
Chapter 4
We went to his brother's room and found the door standing wide open. My guards took up their standard post on each side of the door.
The room was a mess. Things had been thrown everywhere. He was in a hurry, I guess.
Opening a cabinet, the Baron found hundreds of gold coins. Counterfeit gold coins. How his brother expected to pass them, I didn't know. The weight difference between gold and lead could be felt by holding one of each. No need for a scale.
What we didn't find were tools for die-making.
So someone else made the dies. The obvious suspects were either the Keep's Blacksmith or the one working in the village.
I asked the Baron who was the most likely.
He sadly shook his head.
"Thomas the Keep's smith. The guy in the village is barley capable of making horseshoes."
We went to the Keep's forge, and the Baron took charge.
"Thomas, how could you get involved with counterfeiting?"
That was a good move. It made the smith think we knew more than we did.
"I needed the money. I have gambling debts to pay. If I don't pay them, they will break my legs."
"Now you will hang. The broken legs would have been a better choice."
"Your brother assured me we wouldn't get caught. That you knew what we were doing."
"I didn't."
Now I had to wonder.
The Baron signaled his guards, and they took the Blacksmith into their custody.
When we returned to the Keep, my men were bringing the fleeing brother back to the Keep. It seems his horse dropped dead from being driven so hard.
The brother was as the wife described, but she left out flabby. Not a firm fat, a loose jelly roll type of fat. There was nothing redeeming in his features. To say he was sweating like a pig would be putting it mildly. Rubbing his left arm, he looked like a mess.
He no sooner came into the room than he started imploring his brother.
"You have to protect me. They will hang me for what I have done."
It was interesting that he took ownership of the counterfeiting. That opposed what the Blacksmith told us.
The young Baron stared at his brother, shook his head sadly, then turned back and left the room.
I asked the brother, "the difference between lead and gold is easy to tell, even if the lead is gold-covered. How did you think you could get away with this?"
Thomas appeared surprised by my statement.
"It is? I was assured you would need a scale. We were going to use them in London at the gambling dens."
I couldn't think of a worse plan if I tried.
"Who are we?"
"I'm not telling you anything unless you let me go."
"The only choice you have is a quick death or a slow one. Now, who was in this with you?"
"The Keep's smith and five of my guards plus."
He stopped dead in the middle of his sentence. What a headache. It put his brother back on the list of suspects.
"Would you give me the person's name, who you didn't mention to avoid torture?"
I wasn't hardened enough yet to order torture. I hoped I never was. This was a bluff, plain and simple.
You could see him waver.
Finally, he spoke. "I don't owe him anything. Baron Boscastle promised me this would be easy. If I could make enough of the counterfeit coins, he would help me overthrow my brother.”
The Baron was standing just outside of the room and heard it all. Now, he knew the depths of his brother's treachery. I also had another Baron to take care of.
I turned to my chief guard.
"Hang him now with a quick hard drop."
Then, almost as an afterthought, I told him to hang the Blacksmith the same way.
He had given up everything he could, so I was giving him a quick death by breaking his neck. I thought very briefly that I was harder than I thought.
Then I remembered World War II and realized I had always been that hard. War is a terrible thing, and no matter how you feel, if you are to live, you do terrible things.
I had three Germans dressed as American military police executed on the spot. They tried redirecting our traffic at the Battle of the Bulge to break our unit cohesion.
We didn't have time for neat firing squads. It was a bullet to the back of their heads. I will never forget how one of the young soldiers cried for his Mutter. I shot him anyway.
Now, I had to take care of Baron Boscastle. I spread the word to my troops that if anyone tried to leave the village in the direction of Boscastle's Keep, let them go.
I figured if we showed up unannounced, he would welcome us with open arms until he knew what was happening, and since I had no hard evidence, he could deny it all. I wanted him to have a chance to react guiltily.
As we marched the seven miles to Boscastle, we came up with a quick and dirty battle plan. Our field artillery would lag. If the gate to the Keep were closed, I would demand it be opened. If he didn't open them, the cannons would move up and open them for me. His refusing entry would be all the evidence I needed to arrest him.
The poor-looking village was deserted.
Our cannons were behind us, hidden by the tree line. The Keep's gate was closed. I had a guard ride up and demand entrance from the Baron's guard standing on the wall. The only reply he got was a warning shot.
I signaled for the cannon to move up. When the cannons appeared, a white flag started waving from the battlement. But it was too late for a conversation.
One loudmouth Sergeant yelled once more to open the gate. Perhaps I was unfair to the Sergeant, calling him a loudmouth. He was our lead Drill Instructor, and it was a job requirement.
I also was unfair to the Baron and his soldiers. I didn't give them time to open the gate.
"Fire!"
The cannons blew the gate off its hinges. At almost point-blank range, it wasn't as though they could miss.
The Baron's soldiers weren't stupid. Their defense was wide open, and we had them outnumbered. They dropped their rifles and held their arms high.
The Baron was standing in the doorway to the Keep. As soon as I neared, he came on as the outraged person who had been wronged. It didn't help. I had him seized and tied up. He kept protesting his innocence of any wrongdoing.
"Denying your Liege entry and firing at his troops is all the wrongdoing I need. I also know that you were working with that fool brother of Baron Zennor to overthrow him and let him play Baron while you wielded the power."
The Baron continued to gobble. He wasn't even making sense anymore.
A tired-looking woman with eight children at her side came out of the Keep.
"My husband is guilty of all those charges and more. His greed has taxed my father's village into poverty."
So, the Baron hadn't inherited the title. He married into it. It seemed there was no love lost between him and his wife.
"My Lady, are you able to run the Barony?"
"My father trained me. That pig talked a good game until after our marriage. He replaced our few loyal guards with his own. My father didn't live long after that. I think he murdered him.
“I was never allowed to see my father's body. They buried him before I knew he was dead.”
"Do you want the body exhumed to see if he was murdered?"
"No, it wouldn't change anything. Let him rest in peace."
"I'm going to hang this man and leave ten of my guards with you while you bring the Barony under your control. Do you have enough silver in your treasury to work with?"
"More than enough, the greedy bastard never spent anything. He just locked it away. I don't know what he intended to do with it."
As we talked, I watched the children. They ranged in age from about sixteen to three. None of them looked upset with the idea of their father being hanged. Two of them, teenage girls, looked all in favor. I had Thad make a note to have Baroness Agnes visit. I thought there were some mental issues here.
Baroness Boscastle took her children inside so they wouldn't have to view the hanging. The two teenage girls asked if they could stay and watch. Their mother looked at me.
She said, "it would be best if they got closure on this."
I wanted to ask how she let this happen, but she had been kept powerless. I suspect Lady Agnes would find signs of abuse on her and all the children.
My guards took the soon-to-be-dead Baron out to a tree in the village. The two girls accompanied me to the spot. The guards tied a rope around his neck and hoisted him up. No easy death for him. I didn't say a word.
We returned to the Keep, where the young ladies flew to their mother's arms. As she hugged them, I told her I would send advisors to help her plan how to bring the village back to prosperity.
She told me, "I plan to announce there will be no further taxes this year. I will also rebate the excess taxes that he imposed last quarter. That will go a long way towards helping the people get back on their feet. It will also help solidify my rule.”
She would do fine.
I dictated instructions to Thad for what I wanted to be done. Thad would see they were in the proper hands, and my instructions were under way. I also sent a letter to Baron Zennor telling him what transpired and asking him to help Baroness Boscastle as he could.
We spent the night, me in a guest room in the Keep, and my troops camped outside.
At breakfast, the Baroness and her children were waiting for me. They were clean and dressed in their finest.
The tired-looking woman of yesterday looked vibrant today.
"Count Owen-nap, the late Baron swore allegiance to you falsely. I would like to swear to you true and honestly."
I hadn't thought of that. It would tidy things up. I also noticed that it was the late Baron and not her late husband. That made me wonder what had been done with his body. I wasn't so crass as to ask her, at least not in front of her children.
She knelt and swore her allegiance, using all the proper words. I later discovered that the Sergeant I was leaving behind had instructed her on what to say.
After we said our goodbyes and were out the door, I asked Thad if he knew what had happened to the body.
"It was buried in unconsecrated ground."
A fitting end.
Thad continued, "The two girls wanted it fed to the hogs. We convinced them it might poison the hogs, so they relented."
"It wouldn't poison the hogs. They will eat almost anything."
"I know that, but it was all I could think of then."
I had to laugh.
"Well done, Thad. Well done."
It was more than time to reward Thad. I thought a knighthood to start.
Chapter 5
It took a day on horseback to get to Tintagel, where my railcar was waiting, then another half-day to get home to Owen-nap. At least in my railcar, I could dictate textbooks and engineering references.
I have dictated two hundred and fifty books in the last three years. Only a few of them were early romances. The rest were technical. I avoided history books, biographies, and autobiographies. They wouldn't be useful now, and the people they were written about may never exist.
Perhaps things could be learned from history, but they would raise more questions than answers and expose my secret.
It would be a lifetime of work to dictate all the books I had read in my other life. But I had to do it as part of my legacy. There were things in the advanced engineering books that would not come to pass in my lifetime. At least, I didn't think they would. It would be nice to be proven wrong.
I hated events like the one I had just gone through. They were a time sink, stealing precious time from projects and family.
Projects could wait. My family can’t.
They are a moving target as the children grow. I had just missed two weeks of my children's lives. At these young ages, they change so fast I begrudged even one day, much less weeks.
For some reason, I got myself all worked up about the kids growing up without me being there. I was convinced that when I got home, Cathy would be dating!
But she was still the seven-year-old playing princess. Being a dad can be hard.
Eleanor was glad to see me, and the first thing she did was check my wound. It was almost healed.
She had envisioned my arm developing gangrene and falling off. I wasn't the only one who got worked up about nothing.
As usual, there was a stack of paperwork waiting for my approval. I had followed Tom Smith's advice and had Thad review all the paperwork before it crossed my desk. He handled all the routine paperwork. The only documents I saw these days were those on which I had to decide.
There was still a stack. The worst part was that they were all important, and I had to pay attention. Before, when I saw everything, I could fly through a stack of inconsequential papers and feel like I had accomplished something. Now I had to think about every one of them. It was tiring. I was good for about an hour before I had to take a break.
If I had known being a Count would entail all this, I would have stayed a Baron in my little corner of the world. Not that events would have allowed it. I was in a grow-or-die situation.
What would it be like if I took over all of England?
I would have to delegate many of the decisions I was making today. That would involve a huge amount of trust in my assistants. The only one I trusted that much beyond Eleanor was Thad. Hmm.
I yelled, "Thad."
He was only in the next room. I don't know why I yelled.
"You need me, My Lord?"
"Yes, and I'm sorry I yelled. That wasn't polite of me."
He looked surprised, as I always yelled unless he was at my elbow. He was used to it and didn't reply to my attempt at an apology.
"Thad, do you know one or more people who could take over your paper sorting load? I want to promote you."
"I know two young ladies who would do an excellent job."
"Would there be any problem with them working side by side?"
He blushed a little.
"I don't think so. One is married, and the other is dating one of the guards."
I pointed to the stack of papers on my desk. "I need someone to take over some of the decision-making processes."
Thad told me, "I could do some of it. Though some issues require your personal attention."
I relied, "If you could take care of at least a third of this, it would be a great help."
"I can try."
I gave him three rules.
“The first ground rule. You care for anything that can be solved with five thousand silver or less.
"The second rule. On property disputes, you gather all the facts and make the first attempt at settling the issue.
"Third, any military matters you are to discuss with Sir Stephen Waters, and if you both agree on a course of action, take it.
I added, "Baroness Agnes must approve any medical issues.
"Lastly, see Tom Smith on anything relating to production.
"If Tom, Agnes, Stephen, or Archbishop Luke have an issue, it will be immediately brought to my attention.
"Thad, write all this down, and I will sign it. Your pay triples immediately. Now go hire those women and get to work."
"Yes, My Lord!"
"How many times must I tell you my name is James."
"As many as you want, My Lord."
The little snot was laughing as he said it. I thought about throwing something at him, but it was beneath my dignity. So I stuck my tongue out.
If he could handle everything I listed, it would take care of ninety percent of my paperwork. I would be happy if he took thirty percent.
I told Eleanor what I had arranged with Thad.
Her only comment was, "It is about time."
Thad had the women hired and working within two days. He must have worked late into the night because he went completely through my stack of papers while he was training them. Within two weeks, it was all caught up.
Thad came to me with a request of his own after that.
"When it was only me, I kept by your side and did my work wherever we were. Now, it would help if we had a permanent workspace."
"That makes sense, I guess. You better get a building started to house you and your staff. Plan on it expanding over the next year."
"Thank you, James."
I about fell over. That was a first.
"Why the change of heart on my name?"
Thad told me, "In private, I will call you James. When anyone else is present, it still will be My Lord."
"Fair enough."
"There is one other matter, James."
I asked, "What is that?"
"I can't accompany you everywhere to take notes and run an office here."
Now I know how the Roman Empire's bureaucracy grew.
"Do you have anyone in mind?"
"A young man named Andrew Chandler."
"Any relation to John Chandler?"
Thad replied, "I checked, and no."
"It doesn't matter. Let us give him a try."
After two weeks, I kicked myself for not thinking of this sooner. It was working well. There had been a few snags, but they were easy to fix, so I decided we would keep working this way.
The two new assistants were fitting in well. Both work-wise and personality-wise. It seems Thad is a good judge of people.
Eleanor asked what Thad's new work title was and whether I planned on making him a Baron so he could deal with the Barons of Cornwall as an equal.
"Yes, dear, I was just waiting to be certain this would work. I will make him a Baron tomorrow. Regarding his working title, he will be my Chancellor."
I thought I did well for thinking on my feet. I hadn't thought about a title or ennobling Thad at all. I knew the winner and how to stay out of the doghouse when I heard it.
The look she gave me said she knew I hadn't thought of it. I had the grace to stammer and thank her for the excellent suggestion. When in a hole, stop digging.
Eleanor said, "Dear, I love you and know you need help occasionally. You have so much going on you need me."
"There is no doubt that I need you."
She saw the gleam in my eye and took off for the bedroom. I easily caught her, or she caught me. It doesn't matter.
The next day was an open court, so it was the perfect time and place to ennoble Thad. He acted surprised, but I think he was sharp enough to know it was coming. He and Eleanor knew it, but I didn't. What does that say about me?
I had been in over my head and saved myself at the last minute. I still hadn't thought through how to make it happen. Fortunately, I have a wife who is paying attention.
Thad had a huge grin when I made the announcement. At twenty-four, he had just become the most eligible bachelor in Cornwall.
With Eleanors' help, we had set up a small reception to celebrate Thad’s new titles. We had sent invitations to all who would deal with Thad routinely. I thought it would be twenty or thirty people. It was over two hundred when you included all the merchants, Barons, village headmen, and other prominent citizens.
Many daughters were attending with their parents. Thad had better learn to run!
He was now Baron Scrivener. The title didn't have any land, but it did have a healthy purse. "Scrivener" wasn't in use until a later time period, so it was kind of an inside joke. Like most jokes that had to be explained, Thad and Eleanor didn't see the humor.
No matter how they felt about my sense of humor, I now had time to spare. It was a load off me. I could dictate some more and had time for my special projects.
One that I was interested in was the injection molding of plastics. We had the materials now, so it made sense to find a way to use them.
Injection molding is a simple process. You need a screw to mix the plastic resin as it is being melted. The screw is inside a barrel. The barrel needs to be heated. After the plastic is homogenized and heated to flow, it needs to be pushed into a mold. The mold will have chilled water running through it to set the plastic up.
Simple, really. Of course, the devil is in the details. The injection molders I was familiar with were about the size of a bus, with the screw four inches in diameter and ten feet long.
The barrel would have four different heating zones. The material would be injected into the mold using a hydraulic force of fifteen hundred to two thousand pounds.
The mold would have four or more cavities, making four or more parts at a time. It would run on a fifteen-second cycle, manufacturing almost a thousand parts an hour.
Our technology wouldn’t enable us to reach these numbers, and we wouldn’t have a market for that many parts anyway.
What I had in mind was a barrel about three feet long with a two-and-a-half-foot, one-inch diameter screw. And only one heating zone.
A small steam engine would turn the rotor on an electric motor. The copper wires from the motor would wrap around the barrel, providing heat. These types of plastics only require several hundred degrees to melt.
A flywheel hooked up to another engine would turn the screw. The molten plastic would exit the screw into a receiving chamber. When full, the chamber with a ram in its back would be pushed forward by a flywheel action from a third engine and, like squeezing toothpaste from a tube, injected into the single cavity mold. The cycle time would be about a minute.
Rube Goldberg would have been proud.
It only took a month to put everything in. On the first run, I had the material too hot, and it burned the plastic, which adhered to the screw, like charcoal.
It took two days to clean the screw. It was a case of filing and polishing, rinse, and repeat.
Chapter 6
A screw with burned plastic sticking to it is a pain. A barrel with the polymer frozen up is a disaster.
The steam engine turning the electric motor lost pressure due to a faulty valve that, in turn, caused the heater to stop. The resin in the barrel turned solid in minutes. We had to trash screw and barrel and start over.
At least I had two extra screws made up. The barrel had to be built from scratch. We fired the machine up when the new screw and barrel were in place.
On the first cycle, the material in the accumulator chamber was to be pushed into the mold by the ram. The ram wasn't strong enough to push the material into the molds. But it was strong enough to blow the front of the accumulator chamber out.
It was a mess. It took two more weeks to build a new chamber. I had planned to mold parts within a month. We were now at three months and counting.
We finally got molten polypro into the mold. Unfortunately, the flow into the mold was uneven, leaving a "short shot." That is a partially formed part because the mold wasn't filled with the material.
That required the redesign and manufacture of a new mold. In my time, we had computer modeling. Here, we had trial and error. We were big on error.
We finally got the flow rate equal inside the mirror frame mold. The plastic had to be injected to flow around the mirror's frame.
If we tried to force it from one side, only the end point of material flow would compress the air, and the part would never fill out. With that hurdle overcome, we found the cooling channels in the mold were blocked by metal shavings from the drilling. That required disassembling the mold and using compressed air to clean them out.
Well, most of them. Some of the shavings had been completely separated, so they hung in there, causing turbulence in the flow rate and uneven cooling. We had to build another new mold. This time, all the channels were cut clean.
Cold water was used to chill the molds. Large blocks of ice were in the water tank, and the water was recirculated through the mold.
Then came a date, one year later, almost to the day when we finally formed a perfect mirror frame. The technicians working on the project and I spent the afternoon in the tavern commiserating about the misery we had been through.
The machine was on a sixty-second cycle, allowing us to make sixty parts an hour. It would only run four hours at a time before requiring maintenance. So, a run would be two hundred and forty parts with an hour of downtime, an hour startup, and then run for another four hours. That gave us four hundred eighty parts in a ten-hour workday.
Of those four hundred and eighty parts, we would lose about eighty from inclusions like dirt, giving an appearance defect or short shots. So, four hundred parts a day was a realistic number. If we wanted four thousand parts a day, we would need ten machines. Each machine required three people to keep it running.
It's not what I would call true mass production.
After running our prototype machine for five hours, we had another problem.
The mold halves were bolted to a platen, which would be hydraulically operated in the future. It moves back and forth to open and close the mold. The mirror frame is removed when the mold is open.
The hydraulic pressure also keeps the platens from moving while closed, allowing the molten resin to be injected into the mold.
Since we didn't have a handle on hydraulics, the platens were opened and closed by screw action. When the platens were closed, the mold halves came together, and four latches were used to keep the platen from being pushed open due to the injection molding pressure.
One of the latches failed, allowing uneven pressure on the platens. This caused the platens to move one of the four rods back and forth to warp. Now, we couldn’t open or close the molds.
We had to disassemble the entire front half of the machine to replace the platen rod. That took another week. I wondered if we could ever get it to function properly. We kept at it, and lo-and-behold, we finally had a machine that would work consistently, at least four hours at a time.
At last, the big day arrived. We placed the mirror in the new plastic frame. To our chagrin, the mirror was too large for the frame. Someone, I think it may have been me, had measured wrong.