Chapter 4

I slept heavily, soundly.

I awoke to the familiar agony. It felt as if someone had rinsed my sinuses with bleach and straight alcohol. My eyes watered and I lay gasping. My joints were on fire yet what was happening behind my eyes totally superceded any complaints which they mah have had. When the pain receded enough to allow me the use of my senses I found myself in bed, in the ranch house. The furniture and hangings matched what I remembered. I staggered out of bed, stripped and made for the shower. There was only cold water--one tap. I shrugged and got clean consuming at least a quart of good clean water in the process. The mirror showed me a face that I hadn't seen since I was 18 or so. I returned to the bedroom and opened the closet. The clothing had changed. The denims were gone. The running shoes were gone. I saw nothing but wool, cotton, linen, waxed cotton and leather. There was one good wool suit and three sack suits such as were worn in the West between the Mexican war and the Civil war, and later, in some places until the Great War.

I dressed and found the kitchen. Before me was a deep well sink, an ice box and a coal stove. I did spot canned goods on the shelf of the butler's pantry featuring meat and vegetables. The garage held a covered coach and a wagon with a sprung bench seat, each rigged for two horses or mules. There were saddles and tack on a bar seemingly built for the task. The smell of horses pervaded the room. I slowly turned and walked towards the additions I'd had put in. The museum/library was still there. The bookshelves had been partially filled and boasted three sets of encyclopedia and an atlas. I spotted my guitar and banjo on a rack. A roll-top desk sat near a window. I rolled back the tambour and looked for any paperwork that may aid me in making sense of all this. I found a bank book noting a balance of some twenty-seven million dollars. The last transaction date was in the fall of 1950. I sat back and blinked. Where the hell had twenty million dollars come from?

I found my mind flashing from subject to subject, seemingly at random yet immediately perceiving the core concepts without effort. I knew that in some fashion my mind had been tampered with.

The lamp next to the desk smelled of coal oil. A folded newspaper was stored in one of the pigeon holes. The color and texture of the paper led me to believe that it was fairly current as newsprint (as I knew it) discolors quickly when exposed to the air. I smoothed it out on the desk and began reading. The language was English and the spellings were as I remembered to be 'modern'. The advertising told the tale. A loaf of bread was three cents. A quart of milk was two cents. The druggist's advertisement featured penicillin, asprin, heroin, cocaine, oil of hemp and morphine. I closed the paper and tucked it away leaving it where I had found it. I scanned the shelves and display cases covering the walls. Everything that I could remember leaving was still there--even that silly damned block of gold. The gun safe was where I had left it. The concealed latch at the top of the doors yielded to my touch. It held single action revolvers, break-open shotguns and bolt action rifles as well as ammunition. I took a rifle cartridge to the garage and found a pair of pliers. I pulled the bullet and poured the powder onto a sheet of paper. I found a match and touched it off. Smokeless powder--no sulfur. I nodded. It was a surviving technology. Upon returning to the library I put on a shoulder holster and armed myself with a medium frame pistol posessing a nice, smooth action. I loaded all the chambers except the one under the hammer. Old lessons, old rules. Don't shoot your nuts off.

The atlas was an eye opener. The indian territories covered the bulk of the continent forming a wide band from the Smokies to the Rockies, from Louisiana to Wyoming. The Dakotas had been excluded from indian lands for some reason. The population figures seemed absurdly small--only 2.2 million people in North America. There had been at least one die-back of considerable proportion. Steam engines had existed before I left the 1800s and traction engines shouldn't have been far behind, yet neither were mentioned in the newspaper. I supposed that air conditioning and central heat were unheard of. No, perhaps coal oil, read diesel fuel, fired recirculating water heating boasting radiators were around. Shit. No, it depended on a forced air plenum to efficiently burn the fuel oil and the subject of electricity was notably lacking in all the materials that I'd come across so far. Concrete, definitely. The Romans had the stuff. Rebar was known of in the antebellum south. Rubber tires, pneumatic tires, vulcanization, continuous reinforced belts? I'd have to research the matter.

For now, I was an empty shell. I was running on bare nerve. I returned to the bedroom, hung my pistol and harness on the bed post, undressed and went back to sleep.

When next I awoke I found a warm body on either side of me. Anna and Lois bracketed me, sleeping close and comfortably. The comfort that they brought made me quietly weep in the dark. I realized that I was mentally on the edge of oblivion. I would need their patience and understanding to recover. I rose, made my toilet then made my way to the kitchen where I started a batch of biscuits and a small batch of sausage gravy. I smiled to think that the preservation methods that I had preached in pre-history were once again applicable now that commercial and residential refrigeration were not available. I shook my head, angry at myself when I realized that I had no idea how early refrigeration worked other than boiling and recovering ammonia. I supposed that I could jury rig a generator out of a rotor and stator, lead-acid batteries and a motor with the same rotor and stator, using carbon brushes as they had when powered hand-tools were invented in the 50's of my youth. Phosphor bronze bushings and brushes (being stressed arms in contact with the electrodes of the rotor) may work better. I would have to be this world's Edison and Tesla. I could easily create an electric telegraph. The incandescent bulb relied on refractory sealants between the socket and the glass envelope, as well as finely drawn wire of a material able to withstand the heat and resist the oxidation involved in transmitting hundreds of watts of power through a deliberately miniscule conductor. Complexly wound coils made of tungsten was the preferred agent. Perhaps nickel would work until the proper minerals were found and refined. twelve volt wet cell batteries could be made in heavily waxed wooden boxes until someone with a background in petrochemistry came up with a better case material. I was certain that I could devise a multiple filament bulb with fusible links, so that one filament would take over the load after the previous one failed.

I recall a demonstration of a vacuum tube being constructed. I had no clue how to make bakelite, the compound which comprised tube bases. Teams of people would have to experiment with the mechanical properties of various refractory cements to match the coefficient of expansion of whatever glass recipe that we would decide upon as our envelope. I remembered how to build a tube-based amplifier as well as the tube for the amplifier. I knew how to hand-make transformers, inductors, resistors and capacitors. I knew the basics of building a heterodyne AM receiver and a bit of how to go about building a transmitter. A simple carbon granule microphone was fairly easy to build. Good lord, I had such a trivial, miniscule amount of information running about in my head compared to that necessary to build an industry such as electrification or radio communication. What I truly did NOT know was termed metrology--the science of measurement. I could provide a 12 Volt standard because that's what a six cell wet cell battery produced. From there I was lost in the dark. I needed to hire engineers with curious minds. I had Ohm's law, Faraday's laws, Maxwell's laws and the gas laws under my hat. From there I could extrapolate. I knew how a steam turbine used to generate electricity worked.

I had to explore the maturity of the steam industry first. The rivers were our heavy highways if we had no rails. Steam boats were a no-brainer.

Back to refrigeration. Einstein's refrigeration system relied on a trapped system of gas pumped through metal tubes that were a compressed medium which when heated by compression would be chilled by seeking thermal equilibrium with the ambient air, then returned to the cooled environment via a thermostatic check valve releasing a measured amount of refrigerant back into larger piping metered by the caloric demand, driven by a reservoir and capillary tube, each pressure (supply and demand) influencing a tympani or diaphragm, thus affecting a spring-loaded valve...

Thermodynamics caused the external coil to radiate heat while the internal coil absorbed heat. The pump and the check valve were the secrets. Great efficiency was gained through embedding the coils in thin metal vanes to aid in the caloric transfer. The original consumer-oriented refrigerators had a large coil mounted atop the boxes. A ducted fan within that coil would again boost its efficiency, even a small fan, or a slow-turning large fan. I mused on this project quite a bit before the ladies found their way to the kitchen. I had coffee ready as well as biscuits, preserves, bacon and eggs. It was truly a handsome feast. I was hugged from two directions for my forethought, then held quite firmly with another goal in mind: interrogation.

"Ishmael, many frightening things have happened while you were gone. It has been only a week but the truck dissappeared and the horses appeared, as well as the carts and wagon. There is nothing electrical left. We remember what life was like before the change, yet no-one else we have met has a clue. Our clothes are as our grandmothers wore and the town is but one tenth the size that it was before. Ishmael, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

I bowed my head and gathered my thoughts while they held my hands in barely suppressed terror. "I have been an agent for great change. Singlehandedly I have stopped a war. Wars promote development and change. Bear with me as this is the first day that I have been in this reality. I believe that there was a large die-off of humans on this continent, probably due to disease and infection since many skills and medications were not invented due to the war not occuring this reality, as well as depredations due to the conflicts with the native americans probably drove down the count of available men to father children.

"What is this 'reality'?"

"That is a very good question. All I have is a hands-on answer. We each live in the here-and-now. When I left the here-and-now of my birth for the ages before Iron or even copper were used for tools, my actions changed the threads of which the world was woven. Since such a long period of time passed between where I was and where I arrived the changes were subtle. Reality changed but slightly. My actions to eliminate the Civil War caused such changes in the fabric of what is, well, reality changed MORE. I am delirious over the fact that we still speak English with a spelling that I expect. We still have firearms. We as a family have more wealth than most small governments. We each remember things that we can invent and patent to not only make our lives easier but to gain us even more wealth, as well as make the lives of countless others easier." I looked at both of them, then noticed their hands. They bore wedding rings. I held up my ring and wiggled it in the air.

"Ladies, is there something that you're not telling me?"

Anna hid her face in her hands. Lois was always the practical one.

"Husband, we are your wives." She slowly smiled as if she were the cat that had gotten the pigeon.

I attempted to look like a child that had had its favorite toy taken away and burned. "After all I have done for you. After the trust that I placed in you." I sighed in a most theatrical manner. "I suppose that there is room enough for me in the stable." I turned as if to leave and was tackled from two directions. I was somehow transported to the bedroom where I was not allowed out of bed for the rest of the day. I was made much of and we came to an understanding.

The next morning I rose, voided, dressed roughly and started running about the fenceline. I was accompanied by four great beasts resembling wolf-hounds. I had no idea where they came from but they paced me as I ran. When done they watched as I ran through my katas, hunkered down with their heads on their front paws. When done I looked about the kitchen for any scraps or off meat. I found two roasts of nearly five pounds each. I gave each animal a half roast then left for my bath. The first damned thing I was going to do was to set up a hot water reservoir for bathing and other household uses. I was not a monk and refused to live as if I were. To hell with mortification of the flesh.

Two coils, a fire chest, a heat transfer chest and a separate plumbing fixture would do it. I would fill the coils and heat transfer chest with antifreeze--ethylene glycol. No pump would be needed with proper placement of the coils--gravity and the density differential between hot and cold fluids would do the work. The water feed from the cold water tap would have to be built into a serpentine ajacent to the heating coils from the fire chest. We'd call this a steam chest. I'd have to incorporate a pressure release in strategic spots to avoid catastrophic explosions due to high-pressure line bursts. I didn't want boiling water blasting out of the hot water taps onto my corpus either.

After breakfast Lois helped me to harness two mules before the cart and the three of us set off for town. I went fully armed and secured a loaded shotgun at our feet. I carried two loaded pistols, a saber and my staff. If I found that people were as a rule belligerent I would mount a sharp blade near the end of my staff as a throat-cutter. One quick pull against a neck and it would be all over. I considered making exploding shotgun rounds but decided to wait to see what pervasive attitudes existed in town.

The library was a mean little building, inspiring little confidence and less patronage. It was by subscription only. My personal library was seven or eight times its size. I shook my head. This would not do. I vowed to make this a priority.

I found myself at the largest blacksmithing establishment in town. I asked about ordering or having made seamless copper tubing and having certain components (ring, collar, receiver) cast that I knew would comprise a water-tight compression fitting. Instead I found that I could order threaded copper and brass pipe in several different diameters, as well as iron and soil pipe. I asked if he knew of galvanizing or the hot-dip process for tinning steel and iron. He had only heard of it. I described the process and found myself unable to proceed pass the hot-dip step as nobody knew what a battery was. I shrugged my shoulders. Yes, they knew of brass. Yes, they knew of bronze. What the hell was german silver? Simple, I replied. Brass or bronze bearing nickel in 5-10 percent by weight. It's a great patch material and pours like brass. Since they didn't have electricity they didn't have pure copper to make really ductile tubing that could bend. We'd have to use threaded fittings for our steam chests just as they did in traction engines. It seemed that steam engines were a bit of a lost art. They had some samples but didn't know how all the fiddly little bits and pieces went together. I knew that I'd have my work cut out for me. Brittle copper wire limited my forays into electrification as well.

I witnessed whore houses, street pimps, pickpockets and smash-and-grab men. It reminded me of tales I'd read of St. Louis in the days of the riverboats. I dared not step within a saloon for fear of being knocked in the head, rolled, robbed and killed. I resolved to make exploding shotgun slugs as soon as I returned to the ranch. A claymore mine beneath each window probaby would not be amiss either. I bought nitric acid, sulphuric acid, stearic acid, hydrogen peroxide and just for kicks, hemp oil, all in demijohn containers packed in boxes filled with straw. Yes, he did have glycerine. Yes, he did have diatomaceous earth. I bought forty pounds of each. I hired five men to dig and roof a dry bunker the next week. I bought the shovels, barrow, wood and gravel to complete it then paid to have it delivered the next day. We laid in food to feed the work crew. My chemistry would have to wait for either refrigeration or the winter, which ever came first. I kept our wolf-hounds very well fed. Eventually I found and bought more of their breed. They ran in a pack and bred. We felt quite a bit safer with them around.

Within the next year a new library was funded and incorporated as a free lending library. Books for children, juveniles and adults were purchased, as well as encyclopedia, reference works in medicine and engineering, atlases and music were purchased. With the aid of a lawyer a non-profit corporation funded by an anonymous source and the members of the board were selected. It was set up on a hill and trees were planted a bit away from it. Within five years it rivalled the state university library, then grew from there.

I bought a gear chest normally used for a lathe. I bought a lot of copper wire with enamel insulation. The rotors and stators should be of plates tack-welded together to eliminate circulating currents. I made do. With phosphor bronze bearings and steel shafts I made motors the size of my head that would double as generators. The rotors and stators were made of lathe-turned brass. How the hell was I going to make a diode so that I could get DC? With DC I could make bleach from salt water, plate tin onto steel or iron, disassociate Oxygen from Hydrogen. If I played my cards right I could create a gas or vacuum pump. With that I could get refrigeration off the ground. I needed a supply of pure ammonia as a refrigerant. I wondered if this reality had found chloramphenicol. I'd have to research it. I recall learning about its manufacture. I may need a 'mesmerist' to bring it to the foreground of my mind.

I settled on a rough diode made from a glass jar the size of a small Mason jar for the envelope of my tube-based diode. The filament heater didn't care if it was running on AC or DC--it worked. With four diodes I made a bridge rectifier. That was my model. We duplicated the living hell out of it. Pocket electrification became all the rage once I got the bugs out of a small-scale steam turbine attached to a generator.

It was 1958. I'd been a very busy boy. I had sat down with my ladies and described day-to-day things that we missed. We began reconstructing how they worked. With a certain amount of detail we could file for patents with proof-of-concept devices and let other people figure out the fiddly little bits called engineering for the commercial offerings.

I had electrical generation tied up. Chloramphenicol was being mass-produced and used as a gram-neutral antibiotic. I had published a paper on the body's insulin-glucose cycle and pointed the way towards a cause and solution for diabetes. Steam engines were being used at mines and on commercial ships with side paddle wheels once again. Despite the inefficiencies we had a DC-to-AC converter fashioned of a motor and generator on a common axle. A step-up transformer gave me electrical welding and spot-welding. We were on our way.

By 1965 we had our walk-in freezer and walk-in refrigerator back. The natural gas and LP gas industries had me confounded. I didn't know enough to even find out what I didn't know. Our house and many businesses were lit by 12-volt bulbs and electrical fans were everywhere, making blacksmithing easier, cooling factories, homes and churches. In colder climates they made home heating much more efficient. They were a big hit in the south where they boosted the efficiency of swamp coolers tremendously. We were selling a pretty strong bleach for home use. It caught on in the hospitals before it caught on for home use. Our local G.P. (General Practitioner--doctor) thought it was marvellous stuff. I had to remind him that it denatured flesh--a bad thing inside a wound. Hydrogen Peroxide bubbled out foreign objects from within a puncture or incision wound, and a simple tincture of iodine or even raw alcohol would keep it clean. We sold it in gallon glass jars. I insisted on packing deep wounds with honey, as it had been done through antiquity. It is hygrorscopic--it steals water from its environment--and acts as a wonderful wound packing.

I had my gas production facilities but they were garage-scale. I had liquid oxygen and made acetylene with calcium carbide. I was trying to isolate neon. There was a laser in there somewhere and I was going to invent it. I had duplicated Nobel's Dynamite. Petrochemistry was growing by leaps and bounds but I had nothing to do with it. It wasn't my bag. I did, however, keep a golden apple in front of everyone with a nice payout for anyone providing me with five hundred pounds of hexamine.

I re-created the Weber Grill and pushed it out on the market. God, did it sell. We created the charcoal briquette industry as well since Kingsford never got the wood scraps from Henry Ford to kick off his product.

We taught men to burn meat on weekends. Lovely.

Anna hip-checked me one afternoon. "Wanna make a baby? I'm fertile."

Damn. She had ME by the nose. We didn't come up for air until the next morning. I think we wore a couple of layers off of my best friend.

Later in the week Lois woke me up with a cream-cheese frosted cinnamon roll and coffee.