After smiling when he described being with her as his heaven, Alice Guthrie rolled her eyes, threw her head back and chuckled at his puerile joke about whacking it. This was the dork who'd impregnated her. The cheeseball who she'd decided to marry. The lovable, handsome, sweet, compassionate...still very smug suave man who had smooth talked his way into her heart. And now she was falling in love with him all over again as he said three simple words that made her feel reassured. And so she nuzzled the crook of his neck with her head and whispered-
"I've never been more attracted to you, or turned on in my entire life than I am right now," Alice whispered as his cock could feel the heat in her core through both of their pants. Their car was at the apex of the 1500 foot height of the pleasure car, and they could see the whole fair and much of the western side of the city stretched out before them. "And if you hadn't already put babies in me...of course, you just
had to overdo it and give me two...but if I wasn't, I would beg for you to give me some right here and right now."
She decided to pretend that was what was happening for the sake of a hot fantasy, then clawed at both their waists to pull down their clothes and mounted him with a raw, animal passion that surprised her, performing a delicate yet powerful dance between her tongue and his in his mouth as she pinned him down and they rutted with abandon. What had caused all this, she realized, was his immense capacity to surprise her. He was the mystery that she'd never solve, but she didn't want to, for he kept delighting her with his support, his warmth, his genuine hope for the future...it was all so sexy to her, as much if not more than his physique and the cock that had given her so much, and would be the key to her womb for all her life.
They only had time for one mating session before they both arrived at the peak of pleasure together at the end of the ride, then narrowly avoided detection by dressing hastily. Then the energy afforded Alice by his ejaculate made her eager to show him around all the booths at the
World of Progress part of the exposition, which itself was a spectacle, humming as it was with new
lightjars that converted whale oil into tiny bolts of lightning, for a cleaner, brighter light that lasted longer than conventional oil lamps. And, best of all, World of Progress would remain permanently on Inventors Green as a "themed amusement park" opening for general admission in Spring 1894.
Various bands from
all around the world playing
new types of
music on
bizarre new instruments.
The ability to hear those instruments and much more played back
in your home was then demonstrated for the astonished crowd on the new
Autocorder, which would be available for
just N500 in all major clockwork and steamparts retail shops by Foundation Day 1894 (the beginning of a new year for Caledoria in the exact nadir of winter, and the most popular holiday and shopping time across the Empire). Songs could be played at will from prerecorded, interchangeable
Vox cartridges purchasable in shops for N30, recorded on blank Voxes by users with the built in microphone, or received on the Autocorder at random from ten advertisement, donation, or tax-supported "spectra stations" broadcast by a network of
electrospectra transmitters, all of which would gradually roll out until spring. The very first of these was unveiled from under a giant tarp to the astonished crowd and blasted music all over the fair with the help of a team of retransmission gliders.
This same technology would enable people to talk to each other using dedicated public transmitters built for such. This revolution was demonstrated on a
comparatively less sleek looking box and handset developed by a small company called Ferning & Essen, but it was no less impressive when demonstrated with two different people talking to each other in scratchy but still clear copies of their words across the green.
Meanwhile, a
storybox summoned different single ghostly, lifelike images that moved like real people, animals, and objects. To demonstrate, an entire steam train was conjured before them as if out of the fog, seeming if one did not look too closely as if it could be climbed onto, and then roared and charged ahead on invisible tracks, giving even Alice a fright. Soon, the mad inventors behind this promised, this would change live theatrical productions forever!
That was all well and good for Alice, but the machine she got most excited about was the new and improved
Scripter A2 mechanical scroll copier, since she'd made good use of her old scroll copier for years and now it had burned up with her apartment, so she needed a replacement for her work. Rather than using an enchanted quill artifact at each copier to write messages at one end and then have another quill rewrite the message at the other end on a different machine, it used metal keys to type out clear, easily readable print messages between users, which would be free on the new and improved Public Scroll Network. They also advertised the ability to subscribe to newspapers, magazines, and serialized novels and have them typed out and bound before your very eyes; albeit the results were less elegant than hand printed or hand written versions that were delivered to the home or sold in shops and newsstands, the machine was noisy and room sized, and it was nearly a thousand notes. This was half the price she'd paid for her old one while being much more capable, however, and the surprise that made Alice nearly explode with delight was that the first machines were available to buy and install
that day. She had mentioned to Jareth before that her birthday was coming up on July 13th (her parents never knew whether it was the 13th or actually the 12th, since they'd been exhausted and she'd been born sometime in the dark at home and registered a year late), and so Alice wondered if she should ask Jareth for this as a gift.
The only exhibit she actively despised was the introduction of new fresher tasting and more powerful lines of
organic philters by Future Fountains in hand-blown bottles with no preservatives, and priced out of mass consumption. These were clearly catered to the upper class folks who were frightened by the mer flu pandemic's transformative effects and wanted a quick yet refined way to defend themselves against the poor should social unrest reach their doorsteps. Alice nearly screamed. She knew the reality of what was in these mutagenic draughts as the idiotic lords and ladies flocked to buy them, and was determined to take down this evil company once and for all, which she was sure was operated by Elizabeth, or at least employed her in her bid to mind control the imbibers of this seductive liquid power. And yet all evidence of such had been obliterated by the sterilization of the Red Zone in South Bend, and so her suspicions were not worth making a scene over.
Then, the moment of truth.
John took the stage at Jareth Industries' exhibit area, called JarethLand, which was comparable in size to the entire World of Progress, and was hidden under the largest tent the world had ever seen. Why this was soon became apparent when the tent folded itself away, as John proudly announced that the reason why the WRR Directorate had closed the TransCapital Ocean Line of the World Rim Railway (so called because it was the connector between two of the great capitals of the world) was that it was now a testing ground for the newer, faster, longer, sleeker, amphibious
Illustrious Lady prototype, and they needed to temporarily close the line in order to perform these tests safely. Alice knew that was a lie meant to buoy Jareth Industries' stock prices, assuage the anger of Olsea's government, and cover Prince Adamaris for his impulsive, emotionally driven decision.
But the crowd soon forgot all about that when they saw the equally shiny, but more boxy
Powerful Gentleman prototype land-only train that would begin limited test travel on a new track between Radiant and the beach destination of Cardenath parallel to the existing line that July, shown alongside the amphibious model. The crowd got to ride both trains at the fair, as well as new
autocars,
autocycles, the
Richards Mark IV turboprop aeroplane (developed in collaboration with RichLabs under a contract with the Imperial Army, he announced as he brought Octavia up onto the stage to great fanfare) and
single and
multi-seater air screws (which were admittedly not as "sexy" as the others, but were lighter, faster and less cumbersome and noisy than the old, balloon-supported models; the latter model was also shown picking up a chained up and clearly unhappy dragon, to the crowd's astonishment). And last but certainly not least was the
Detective Guthrie, an "aeroboat" meant to compete with passenger airships that was rideable for a short hop between the manmade Convention Lake and Radiant Harbor, would start taking reservations for maiden voyage tickets today (which sold out in minutes), and was promised to provide luxurious sleeping quarters, dining areas, an amphitheater, a swimming pool, a zoo and botanical garden, and much more for an initial round trip flight taking 24 hours each way between Radiant and Porbandiu on the western coast of Surabamba for the busy holiday travel season, with a single stopover in Madieca, the capital of Midvadir. 25 more boats and 100 more short and long haul routes were planned by 1905. All of these stupendous vehicles were piloted by dramatically more humanoid, intelligent, and lifelike
Xen 4 model automatons, available for 50,000 notes.
And speaking of sexy, as soon as Jareth and Alice stepped out of one of the cars demonstrated in JarethLand, it was all Alice could do to not be washed away by the tides of adoring fans thanking him for all this amazing technology that would change their lives. And it was all John could do not to scowl. But Octavia rubbed his shoulder, and he soon remembered the
piece de resistance of Jareth Industries' announcements as the crew signaled that they were ready to surface.
Thus did the
World's Hearth, the first "hybrid whaler" based on the same technology as burgeoning
all-surface cargo airships and so could operate on land, sea, and air just like those ships (just a hundred times smaller than those), recapture everyone's attention once again by flying up from under the water, and then landing on four gigantic legs. When asked by confused reporters what in the Emperor's name a hybrid whaler was, John exclaimed, "I have found the future of energy deep within the arctic ice of Raeybek and Lesser Caledoria and exclusively patented by Jareth Industries!" He then held out a block of ice, which aroused more puzzlement, until he donned protective gear and dropped it into a bucket of lower heated water and also heated an identical bucket of hotter burning whale oil,
proving that the ice would produce more steam with less energy, and then using it to power a lightjar faster and brighter than the whale oil could. "I call it kinetic ice! All the machines you see before you are powered by a patented mixture of this brand new raw material, whale oil, and other trade secret ingredients called 'Dioxegenated State-Changeable Oil'..."
"Nerd reminder," Octavia whispered in her lover's ear.
"Or just 'diosco' for short. The steam it generates will be cleaner, make machines run faster and cooler, use less whale oil and heavy coolant than in the past, can power the
World's Hearth for nearly
a month on a single drum without refueling, will be available in all homes in Radiant and elsewhere on Caledoria by winter, and will soon be retrofitted into our existing whalers as they perform less hunting. Speaking of whales...bring Pudgy up, crew!"
The crowd instantly fell in love with
Pudgy as they got to see his tank lifted up by the
World's Hearth's crane for all the world to see. "I love him too! Unfortunately, Pudgy's mother was eaten by a kraken some five years ago, so we avenged her death, got some delicious and finely dry aged
kraken steaks out of that foul beast, which the Xens are handing out for you at no charge, and raised him ever since in our first ever whale farm. You see, when whales are babies, they get incredibly chubby as their tiny bodies are less capable of processing fat from mother's milk and eventually fish, colossal shrimp, and other meat. I mean, look at Pudgy! He's so huggable. But here's the thing. After a while the blubber they build up for the winter makes them too bulbous to swim in the spring. So what's a growing whale to do?"
Soon, sneezing powder saturated the water, and when it settled to the bottom, Pudgy sneezed, causing the assembled throng to laugh as he dramatically slimmed down and a floating island of blubber rose to the surface.
"Clean that all up, would you, men? And one woman." She then waved. "And by the way, we're projected to have 20% of our crewmates be women by 1900, due to the nature of these hybrid ships requiring more people- and Xens- to operate, as well as people to operate those Xens, and well, you get the idea." This was cheered on by many of the women in attendance; not so much the men, although a few of them clapped to support the fairer sex's move into this increasingly cleaner and hopefully safer line of work.
As a net scooped up the blubber and Pudgy swam happily, John said, "That enables him to keep up with the rest of the pod; we just hadn't seen it before because we so rarely see baby whales away from their pod. So anyway, once he ejects the blubber, we feed him some more, he'll get fat again, he'll sneeze out blubber when we induce him to, and on and on we go. They normally
only shed their blubber in the spring, but our scientists have calculated that whales can be induced to sneeze once a week, dispersing up to 1000 tons of blubber a year before they finish maturing at 15 years old. This is as much as a full pod of ten adult whales stores and burns up in their bodies combined in the same period, with no need to kill the whale to get at the hardened blubber hidden behind layers of skin and muscle and..."
"You're doing it again, love," Octavia whispered, unable to resist a giggle.
"Anyway, with the discovery of kinetic ice, the development of whale farms and diosco, and a machine called the lipovacuum that we plan to have done by the end of the decade that will painlessly extract blubber from adult whales, eventually eliminating the need for any hunting besides for food production, Jareth Industries is leading the way in addressing the environmental and humanitarian concerns of those who have spoken loud and clear about whale hunting, saving orphaned baby whales and giving them long and full lives, increasing jobs and technological advancement, and more besides in a way that other whale oil providers cannot match.
Thank you everyone, and enjoy the rest of RAISE!"
John then bounded off the stage in excitement while holding Octavia's hand to the universal cheers of the crowd. Alice was quite simply blown away by his and Jareth's ingenuity, and knew they'd all have to discuss these fantastic contraptions she'd just seen and ridden soon.
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