Write a 750 word fragment as if taken from the middle of a bigger story or novel. Historical Fiction.
by JD FitzRoy
‘It is my pleasure.’
‘Indeed, indeed. I must admit, I was surprised to find you so engaged. Especially for someone so… young,’ Charles said.
Ada followed Charles up whispering stairs, into his study. Curtains drawn, the dark furnishings and thick drapes consumed the light. Hushed the world. A cast-iron griddle gently burned coal, while gas lamps flickered with tense anticipation. All around, little spheres of candlelight warmed the space.
‘I find your machine fascinating,’ Ada said.
‘I wonder, Miss Lovelace, do you really understand its potential.’ He paused for a moment, studying Ada intently.
A collection of blueprints dashed over one table, quill and ink pot to one side ready to make changes at a moment’s notice. On another bench, a jumbled collection of cogs, brass wheels and discs retaining teeth or pits nuzzled among warn hand tools of every description.
Interested in his studies, she veered passed a wall of shelves stuffed with leather-bound tomes. Engineering, and material properties, books in Latin, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, one of her favourites.
She joined him at the bench.
He stopped behind the working mechanism he’d displayed at last nights gala. Meticulously constructed from brass, it took up the entire bench and probably weighed more than many items in his study combined. A series of cogs sat in vertical columns in a row where, on one side, numbers could be set to be calculated along each column for summary at the other.
‘There’s poetry in this mechanical marvel,’ Ada said.
His eyes flared, head tilted a touch, ‘I have heard a great deal about you, Miss Lovelace.’
‘Oh, what have you heard, Mr. Babbage?’
‘Some call you the Princess of Parallelograms. That you have a great mind for mathematics.’
Attempting to retain her aloof calm, Ada said, ‘I see potential in this logic.’
‘It’s our perceived madness that can bring about the change the world demands, I think.’ She turned from the mention of madness, felt her throat become suddenly dry. Babbage continued, ‘It can calculate what an entire army of men can achieve using addition broken into increasingly smaller pieces.’
‘Well, let’s see it working!’
Gaslight flickered in the dark wells of his eyes. Charles set a series of dials on the left, making sure Ada could see every movement. Clink, clink, clink, click, each cylinder clipped into position. The first column, like each subsequent one, retained a set of numbers etched into their rims from zero to nine. She noted the love, and care, the accuracy within the tooling of those precise components. Like an intricate timepiece. The number set, he reached for the handle, a great showman, a magician about to set about his greatest trick. He turned the crank. Each cycle set in motion the subsequent column, until, eventually, there was motion throughout the entire landscape of the mechanism. It became an oscillating mechanical sea, not horizontal but writhing on the vertical plane. No sound of sloshing water, but an orchestra of artificial wonder. Metal clipping, gears brushing against each other over a thin film of oil. Each clink of the sequence was not random, she knew, it adhered to a rigorous mathematical beauty. The music of the spheres, she thought, unable to restrain a growing smile.
Shining and glorious, each wheel, each intricately crafted tooth, each column moved with such precision that she felt like she was witnessing the purest definition of man’s mastery to understand the cosmos. Distilling a vast chaos into refined simplicity through mechanical motion. Speaking not in words but in the language of numbers. The purest language of the heavens themselves.
His gaze remaining fixed on Ada, Charles brought his act to a close. After several turns of the handle, a final clink-clunk and all dials, cogs and cylinders came to a thunderous stop. The study returned to its hushed, but profound silence.
Proud passion palpable, Charles took a step back, eyebrow cocked. He indicated she check the sum.
‘The method of finite differences. You could revolutionise navigation and astronomy. You will need a programmer. For the calculations. For the language of the engine, so to speak,’ Ada said.
With this device, if accurate, she could imagine new accurate calculations of the motion of the heavenly bodies, of the progress of clippers around the globe… and she could imagine a new kind of programming skill in providing subsequent machines with their own voice.
She stepped forward. Leant in. Her corset pinched at her chest but she ignored the sudden stab. Within a pool of flickering candlelight, her breath caught in her throat. There it was, clear as day… an accurate calculation.
© JD FitzRoy 2020
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