He forces the one to bully the other, and together they do what rivers do naturally: flow.
But this machine flows uphill.
That's the part that worries me.
I met him once.
Not so long ago.
He didn't call himself an inventor.
He called himself "tired of buckets."
He said it with the passion of a man who'd lost his entire childhood to carrying water for mothers, cousins, livestock, and—once, mistakenly—a deity in disguise.
I remember he had a sketchpad filled with wrong answers.
Beautiful ones.
Each scribble brimming with frustration and furious hope.
"What if we boil it?" he muttered once, eyes lit with either genius or sleep deprivation.
And I, being myself, replied:
"You'll get tea. Or lawsuits."
He laughed.
Then he cried.
Then he thanked me for the tea.
They say now he's done it.
Built it.
Tamed fire and water into wheels and chambers and sputtering miracles.
It scoops water from the lower fields and sends it up—to the town, to the orchards, to places the gods once called "not your concern."
And they're growing.
Not just in crops.
Not just in wells.
In roads.
In people.
In ideas.
You can hear it, they say.
The machine.
A steady clunk-clunk-hiss, like a dragon learning manners.
It's the town's new heartbeat.
Punctual.
Loud.
Insistent.
They don't worship it.
Not yet.
But I give it a year.
I stopped a merchant coming from there last week.
"What's it like?" I asked.
He shrugged.
"Wet," he said. "No buckets."
Then he leaned in, real quiet, and said,
"They're planning another."
Another what?
"Another machine."
Of course.
Progress is like bread.
Everyone wants a slice, but if you don't watch the oven, it burns your house down.
Or something like that.
I'm bad with metaphors before noon.
I don't hate the machine.
I don't fear it, either.
It's just...
We used to move water with songs.
Now we move it with pistons.
We used to dance for rain.
Now we boil rivers until they behave.
Maybe that's good.
Maybe it's better.
But part of me misses the buckets.
Even when they leaked.
And if he's still there, that wild-eyed boy with steam-streaked glasses and soot in his soul, I hope he remembers to rest.
Because even machines need cooling.
And even towns need silence, now and then.
---
Justice refuses to go near the place.
He claims it smells like revolution and scalded onions.
He's not wrong.
But we'll pass by soon, I think.
Just to look.
Just to remember.
Or to forget how many wrong answers it takes to make one beautiful, dangerous truth.
The town didn't have a name the last time I passed through.
Now it has three.
The locals can't agree on which sounds more impressive to passing traders.
I suggested "Steamhole" and was politely asked to leave the naming committee.
They settled on New Galdra, even though there's no old Galdra.
That's how you know a place has gotten proud—starts inventing ancestors.
The first thing I noticed was the sound.
The second was the smell.
It was like walking into a kitchen run by bellows and regret.
Hot metal. Wet stone.
Somewhere, a very overworked pipe was whistling for help.
And then I saw the machine.
It was enormous.
Not in the god-kissed, sky-scraping way of ruined towers, but in the practical way—like someone had asked,
"How big does it need to be?"
And the answer had been:
"Yes."
Pipes crisscrossed the plaza like vines made of anger.
A giant wheel churned in slow, determined defiance of gravity.
Steam hissed from half a dozen vents with the sort of rhythm that suggested resentment more than grace.
It was beautiful, in the way a thunderstorm is beautiful—right up until it floods your cellar.
I found him in a shed beside the main boiler, scribbling furiously into a journal already half-scorched at the edges.
"You," he said, eyes wild and red-rimmed. "You came back."
"I do that," I replied. "It's my worst habit."
He was thinner now.
Cheeks sunken.
Hair frayed.
Voice vibrating at a pitch only partially caused by caffeine.
"You see it? It works. Water up the hill. Orchards green. Baths warm. No more buckets!"
He said it like a spell.
"I see it," I said. "I also see that your fountain is on fire."
He paused, turned slowly.
A gout of steam had ignited some decorative ivy.
He blinked. "That's... not part of the design."
I helped him pat it out.
We used a shovel and what I hope was wine.
Then came the mayor.
She was forty, furious, and wearing a dress that might have been armor in disguise.
"We have reports the west pump line is bursting again," she said, without looking at me.
Then she did look at me.
And narrowed her eyes.
"Who's this?"
"Old friend," said the inventor. "Kind of."
"Is he useful?"
I opened my mouth.
"No," she decided. "Probably not."
I nodded.
Fair.
The machine had changed the town.
No doubt about it.
The upper fields were blooming.
Bathhouses ran daily.
People had leisure time, which is always dangerous.
But the lower wells were drying.
And the river downstream was running warm—too warm.
The fish had left.
The frogs had opinions.
And the people in the next valley over?
They were sending letters.
Polite ones.
For now.
That night, I sat with the inventor atop a gear crate that hadn't exploded in weeks.
He looked at the stars and asked, "Did I do the wrong thing?"
I thought about it.
Then said, "No."
He looked hopeful.
"But you might've done it too fast."
His shoulders slumped.
"It was supposed to help everyone."
"It might still," I said. "But not without listening to the people it's hurting."
He sighed.
Pulled a wrench from his coat like it was a flask.
"Back to adjustments, then."
I stood. "Back to buckets, maybe."
He laughed.
Then didn't.
As I left town the next morning, I passed three people arguing at a crossroads.
One wanted to build a second machine.
One wanted to shut this one down.
And one wanted to throw it a festival and call it a god.
I didn't stay for the vote.
Justice, wise as ever, refused to drink from the upper cistern.
He waited until we found a cold stream.
Then kicked water at me until I agreed to rest.
We sat there for a while.
The world is changing.
I can't stop it.
But I can remember how it was.
And sometimes, that's enough.
At least until the pipes burst again.