The engineer arrived at the Great Steam Works shortly after dawn on the first day, carrying beneath one arm a polished brass case stamped:
**MUSIC MANAGER**
Inside it was everything required to open the Workshops to the public.
At least, that was the theory.
The Great Steam Works was a magnificent place. Iron gantries crossed enormous halls. Copper conduits disappeared into walls thick enough to stop artillery. Pistons rose and fell somewhere far below. Pneumatic messages rattled overhead in little brass capsules. Steam curled elegantly from regulators and disappeared into the vaulted roof.
At the centre of it all stood three towers.
The Main Workshop.
The Demonstration Workshop.
And the Playtest Workshop.
The engineer looked at them, then at his case, then at the Administrator behind the reception desk.
“I should like to connect Music Manager to the Workshop.”
“Certainly, sir,” said the Administrator.
He was immaculate. Waistcoat buttoned. Spectacles polished. Ledger open.
“Which Workshop?”
“All of them.”
The Administrator looked towards the three towers.
“Yes.”
“With the same things.”
“Yes.”
“So I publish them once.”
The Administrator gave him the sympathetic smile of a man who had already spotted the problem.
“No, sir.”
The engineer blinked.
“They are the same modifications.”
“I do not doubt it.”
“For the same game.”
“Broadly speaking.”
“So they can share a Workshop.”
The Administrator consulted his ledger.
“The Valve system recognises three Workshops, but never the thrain shall meet.”
The engineer looked again at the three towers.
“But I only need one.”
“You have three.”
“I can see that.”
“Excellent.”
And thus began the battle.
By noon, the engineer had constructed his first bypass.
It was beautiful.
A master distribution line emerged from the Music Manager case, divided through a brass manifold and ran towards all three towers. Pressure was equalised. Publication signals were synchronised. Identical packages travelled towards Main, Demonstration and Playtest simultaneously.
The engineer wiped soot from his forehead and threw the master switch.
The machinery thundered.
Gears engaged.
Needles climbed.
Three green lamps flickered.
The engineer grinned.
The Administrator leaned over the railing above.
Then the first lamp went out.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Silence returned.
The Administrator descended the stairs and examined the apparatus carefully.
“Extraordinary engineering.”
“Thank you.”
“Unfortunately, the Valve system still sees three Workshops.”
The engineer stared at him.
“Then I shall make it stop seeing three Workshops.”
This proved more difficult than anticipated.
The first machine became a second.
The second acquired relays.
The relays acquired a translation assembly.
A shared registry was attempted.
Then mirrored identifiers.
Then linked publication records.
Then a mechanism whose purpose became increasingly difficult to explain without the use of diagrams.
Each time the engineer advanced, the three Workshop towers appeared to move slightly closer together.
Each time the Administrator inspected the result.
Each time came the same gentle conclusion.
“The mechanism is sound.”
The engineer would lean forward hopefully.
“But the Valve system still sees three Workshops.”
By midnight the Great Steam Works resembled the aftermath of a minor industrial revolution.
The engineer had stopped removing his coat because he could no longer remember where he had put it.
A complicated arrangement of chain drives clattered above him. Pressure lines snaked across the floor. A mechanical counter had reached a number sufficiently high that nobody wanted to ask what it represented.
For one glorious minute, everything worked.
Main accepted the package.
Demonstration acknowledged it.
Playtest began to respond.
The engineer seized the railing.
“Come on.”
The final indicator crept towards green.
Then stopped.
A warning bell rang.
The whole contraption shuddered.
The engineer lunged towards the controls.
There was a flash.
A tremendous metallic bang.
And every sound in the Great Steam Works vanished.
Not quietened.
Vanished.
The bells moved without ringing.
The speaking tubes produced nothing.
A phonograph spun silently in the Administrator’s office.
The engineer slowly turned towards him.
The Administrator moved his lips.
Nothing came out.
Four hours later, deep beneath the Works, the engineer lay on his back beneath the acoustic driver.
He had not intended to repair the acoustic driver.
He had not known the acoustic driver existed.
He had begun the day trying to publish modifications.
Now he was holding a wrench between his teeth while reconnecting an assembly whose failure had apparently rendered an entire section of the Steam Works mute.
He tightened the final coupling.
Nothing happened.
He loosened it.
Nothing happened.
He struck the casing.
Nothing happened.
Eventually, after four hours of investigation, dismantling, reassembly and language unsuitable for official Workshop documentation, he reset the audio machinery.
A bell rang somewhere overhead.
The engineer closed his eyes.
It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.
When he returned to the main hall, the Administrator was waiting.
“Sound restored?”
“Yes.”
“Splendid.”
The engineer looked at the three towers.
They remained three towers.
The Administrator followed his gaze.
“The Valve system still sees—”
“I know.”
The engineer went home.
He returned the next morning.
The second day became a war of attrition.
He tried everything.
He attempted to persuade one Workshop that it was another Workshop.
He attempted to persuade all three that they had always been one Workshop.
He constructed a magnificent routing engine designed to intercept publication requests halfway through the system and gently redirect them before anybody noticed.
The system noticed.
He attempted another route.
Then another.
By evening, he had accumulated enough rejected diagrams to wallpaper the Administrator’s office.
The Administrator remained unfailingly polite.
He brought tea.
He admired particularly ingenious mechanisms.
He even held a ladder at one point.
But every experiment eventually reached the same immovable truth.
Main was Main.
Demonstration was Demonstration.
Playtest was Playtest.
And the Valve system knew perfectly well which was which.
Late that night, the engineer finally stopped.
Not paused.
Stopped.
He sat on the floor beneath the three great towers and looked at what two days of effort had produced.
Nothing.
The Workshops were still separate.
The original obstacle remained completely undefeated.
The Administrator appeared beside him carrying two mugs.
He handed one over.
“Difficult day?”
“I am trying to make three Workshops into one.”
“Yes.”
“And the system refuses.”
“Yes.”
“Because they are three Workshops.”
“That is broadly the situation.”
The engineer stared into his tea.
Then he looked up.
“Can I publish the same thing to all three?”
The Administrator considered the question.
“Yes.”
“At the same time?”
Another pause.
“There is no prohibition against that.”
The engineer slowly lowered the mug.
“You have known this throughout?”
“You did not ask.”
The third day began with violence.
Not angry violence.
Engineering violence.
Hammers rang.
Chains rattled.
Flywheels spun.
The engineer did not attempt another bypass.
He did not try to fool the system.
He did not attempt to merge anything.
Instead he built something new.
At its heart was a single publishing chamber.
A Workshop item entered once.
From there, three separate publishing mechanisms took over.
Three registrations.
Three proper destinations.
Three legitimate routes through the Great Steam Works.
One for Main.
One for Demonstration.
One for Playtest.
The engineer called it the Triple Publisher.
The Administrator examined the plans.
“This appears considerably simpler than yesterday’s machine.”
“Do not speak to me about yesterday’s machine.”
“Quite.”
By midday the Triple Publisher was assembled.
By afternoon it had failed seven times.
The Main route accepted its package but the Demonstration route rejected its seal.
The Demonstration route was repaired.
Playtest then refused to acknowledge an identifier.
That was fixed.
Main stopped updating.
Then Demonstration published correctly while Playtest attempted to use something belonging to Main.
The engineer raced from tower to tower, adjusting synchronisers and rebuilding parts of the publication mechanism while steam hissed around the gantries.
The Triple Publisher shook so violently that two bolts escaped.
One struck a bucket.
The bucket fell over.
The Administrator quietly moved the bucket somewhere safer.
The engineer returned to the master controls.
“One more time.”
The Administrator checked his ledger.
“All three Workshops are ready.”
The engineer placed Music Manager into the publishing chamber.
He pulled the lever.
The machine roared.
The Main mechanism engaged.
A package vanished into the first tower.
The first lamp illuminated.
**MAIN**
The second mechanism engaged.
Gears meshed.
A pneumatic acknowledgement shot back across the hall.
The second lamp illuminated.
**DEMONSTRATION**
The Playtest mechanism began to turn.
Then stopped.
The engineer froze.
A needle trembled.
Somewhere inside the machine, something clicked.
The engineer grabbed the side of the casing.
“No.”
The mechanism tried again.
Stopped.
Again.
The engineer reached inside, adjusted the final synchroniser and slammed the panel shut.
“Now.”
The machinery surged.
The third tower answered.
A final lamp burned bright green.
**PLAYTEST**
For several seconds nobody moved.
Three Workshops.
Three publications.
One source.
The engineer stared at the lights.
The Administrator opened his ledger.
He checked Main.
He checked Demonstration.
He checked Playtest.
Then he carefully drew three neat ticks.
“Yes,” he said.
The engineer turned towards him.
“Yes?”
“All entirely permissible.”
The engineer looked at the three glowing lamps.
Then at the Triple Publisher.
Then back at the Administrator.
“You mean the Valve system is happy?”
“Perfectly.”
Steam drifted lazily through the rafters.
Somewhere below, the newly repaired acoustic driver played a cheerful little chime.
The engineer sat down.
Three days earlier he had entered the Great Steam Works intending to make three Workshops into one.
He had failed completely.
Main was still Main.
Demonstration was still Demonstration.
Playtest was still Playtest.
He had not defeated that obstacle.
He had simply built something that made it cease to matter.
The Administrator closed his ledger.
“Will there be anything else today, sir?”
The engineer looked at the machinery.
“No.”
A pause.
“Actually, yes.”
The Administrator raised an eyebrow.
The engineer pointed towards the three green lamps.
“Tell people the Workshop is working.”
The Administrator smiled.
“That, sir, should be considerably easier.”
