A L L E R • A N F A N G
I S T • S C H W E R
I S T • S C H W E R
Glade 16, 122 Age of Steel
Anton knew this day would come. It was inevitable, no matter how much he denied it. He had tried so hard to avoid it, he had called in every favor and checked every avenue of escape, but it was all for naught. Settling in to the first day of class for the Glade term, a pit of dread opened in his stomach as he willed himself to muddle his aura and see his surroundings. He was finally being forced to take an engineering course. Graduating from the Institute, in the fields that he worked in, with the work he had done, without taking at least one course in the practical science was unheard of. Despite everything, in this he would not be a pioneer.
The discipline of engineering was, at is heart, the art and practice of turning the theoretical into the real. A scientist wrote beautiful and obscure equations, sitting aloft in an ivory tower of pure reason unfettered by the failings of the physical world. An engineer took those arcane scribblings and translated them into something that could actually be built, the middleman between an idea and a thing all so often being a blueprint. Anton's problem was that he quite liked his ivory tower, and didn't particularly like having to translate his intricate equations into something actionable. That, after all, had always been what the others had done. He saw the sublime truths of the world, wrote them as mathematics, and let more seasoned academics take it from there to solve the problems.
It was a division of labor that had worked well without issue for months now, the student ducking responsibility by pleading ignorance and having his ideas chalked up to juvenile strikes of insight. Unfortunately, time was beginning to run out. His academic patron had decided that the young man had the mark of something more, and insisted that Anton finally make the leap from theory to practice. It was also required if he wanted to make a name for himself during his mandatory term in the Hall of Inventors after graduation. Letting senior partners do the work of taking an idea into something real was well and good in the early rungs of academia, but at its peaks his rivals would take advantage of a weakness like that to claim credit for themselves.
While in truth he didn't particularly care if someone else enjoyed all the glory for his ideas, the notion of not having the ability to stop someone from taking it was enough to gall him into pursuit of his studies. He had purchased the texts and tools assigned to the course, brushed up on the basics, and actually attended the class. And he was already bored to death. Once more, he sat in a mixed course, the class room filled with both civilian academics as well as military cadets of the aptly named Engineering Corps. Almost all of his classes had had that split, but for the first time the soldiers were the preponderance of the body, and the instructor himself wore a uniform.
"Let me be clear," the Major said, holding a piece of chalk in his hands with such severity that it seemed like it was the Grand Marshal's baton, "this is a military course, designed to teach the fundamental precepts of military engineering. The fact that there are civilian students here does not mean that we will abandoning military rigor and decorum. You may think me severe now, but I promise you, you will thank me for this supplementary instruction when you are in the Hall or the Windworks and working to fulfill the dictates of generals and, should you prove sufficiently competent, marshals."
A pin could drop in the room and be heard, so sudden and absolute was the silence. For the cadets, this was second nature, the assembled men and women adopting blank faces and calm bearing without thought. For the academics, the cause of their silence was less obedience and more shock, none of them having dealt with anything like this before unless they had military families where the rigors of the Corps was brought into the home. Evidently uncaring of where the silence came from so long as it existed, the instructor continued. "Sappers. Pioneers. Engineers. Many are the names of our profession, we who are masters of creation and destruction. Our domain is not cannon and shot, it is roads, bridges, aqueducts, and walls. Everything you will learn to raise up, you will learn to cross, undermine, or reduce."
"You are the true controllers of the battlespace - victory is won or lost by the actions you undertake, long before the first shot is fired. Wars are decided by men, but men are supplied by infrastructure. I will not permit any of you to make the amateur mistake of thinking that only the civilian engineers build and only the military destroy - you must both learn these arts. Surging across the Talacara when the pidges have every crossing under guard requires you to be able to build a bridge in a day, and should the retreat be sounded every man must needs be on hand to tear down those that already exist."
Tales of martial glory and grim defense of the Fatherland were not what Anton had ever truly bothered chasing after, if anything his chosen career was designed to avoid both, but this was at least more interesting than any lecture he had ever had before. That level of excitement was not to last however, as the officer continued. "Construction and destruction are, in the main, shockingly similar. We must define that which exists, or that which we desire to exist, and from there define the forces at hand that therefore must follow for the construct to remain standing. We may then determine the tolerances of this equilibrium. To construct, it is typically, but not always, desirable to make the tolerances as broad as possible so that a single action does not destroy it. To destroy, one must deduce the force required to overcome these tolerances."
Such long winded lectures were, unfortunately, much more in line with what Anton had come to expect. Especially from military professors. With the Defense Corps mobilized against Kalzasi, the only instructors left were those that had been posted full time at Eastpoint or elsewhere in the city, taking every field officer away from the Institute. "Now," the Major continued, without skipping a beat, "consider a pontoon bridge. What is the simplest, safest way to destroy one?"
A uniformed hand immediately flew into the air. "Sir, the dumping of heavy objects up stream. The current will slam them against the pontoon, and when sufficient force is applied, drive them out of position and ruin the bridge."
"Correct, Cadet," he replied, taking up his chalk and begin to sketch upon the blackboard. "Consider a pontoon bridge of mass denoted with an upper case M, sitting in a river whose current impacts with a constant force F. From there we can derive the minimal standards of the pontoon to survive the river flow itself. After this, we add objects of mass sigma m when deriving the force of the river flow..."
The transition from introductory notes to out and out lecture was so sudden that many of the students had not yet opened their notebooks, the class scrambling to keep up with their professor as his chalk flew across the blackboard. Most of this was at least simple from Anton's perspective, introductory level physics that he had left long ago, but that only made the entire affair more annoying for him. It didn't help matters that for the sake of those students who hadn't advanced as far in physics as he, the equations used were simplified to the point that they could be done quickly and by hand - which was a very practical step for doing math in the field, but rankled him to no end because they were ever so slightly wrong.
Even as Anton rediscovered the roots of the eternal rivalry between physicists and engineers, the instructor carried on. Much to the relief of most of the class, the officer did not intend or expect for the students to be able to solve the question on the first instance, and worked the problem out almost as soon as he was done defining it for them. Immediately moving on to yet another example, the far wall of the lecture hall was soon filled with all manner of practical examples of the practice, rendered down into their base numerical forms. Despite the crudeness of the equations, their melodies awkward and stifled, Anton was forced to admit that there was a beauty in the process of translation.
He swore to never actually like it though. As far as he was concerned, this was a labor, not something to be enjoyed, but the more he settled in to the coursework the more this was him trying to maintain a decision he had already made rather than any emotional reaction. This, too, was further proof of Anton having chosen a side in the war eternal - but that was a matter for another day.