Steam dreams

A huge factory floor hissed, puffed and clanked from all of the metallic hands that built rockets. A song traveled in the polluted air, a song of busy steam engines, analog computers and coal burning in the furnace.

All of that was seen from the ground by a small computer enchanted with rockets that lined up ready to be sent to space. He operated a mechanical hand that installed hearts in the machines built to reach the stars. His blimping lights glorified the pointy tips of his tall friends and puffed steam when a rocket came to life. A rocket would reply in kind and sound in a tremendous hiss from the deepest end. It all just made him proud, but not enough as he had dreams.

He imagined a brass made machine ignite its booster, steam and smoke making a beautiful dress around the tall rocket that gracefully and valiantly defied the gravity and lifted up, higher and higher until his blimping eyes couldn’t follow them anymore. Rocket turned to a little spot in the sky, a comet with a golden tale waving goodbye to the world. He wanted to do the same. He dreamt of wings.

– If you want to fly boy, you would need to do it in your spare time. – older CPU told him during their energy transfer from the great furnace that fed them via a rippled cord.

This only fueled an idea in the little CPU’s processor. Soon after a steam alarm piped out the end of the shift, CPU stormed out and went in the storage place. A bucket of anti corrosive paint, a decommissioned extinguisher and a well devised algorithms gave him a solid plan to turn himself into a rocket.

It wasn’t hard to dunk the whole bucket of copper paint over him, lose the bottom part and instal an extinguisher under him, with one hand controlling the valve and the jetstream. Soon, gas started taking him off the ground. A small step for him made his lights burn brighter. His joyful play rallied other CPUs, paused them in a line as they went for work and drew all lights on him, steam hissing around the factory.

A radio that slept on a upper ledge woke up and started playing a vintage song. Beautiful melody moved the machines in a rhythm that salted from above. Night sky was just about full with stars and noise of third shift entering the late hours, rockets taking off in a constant stream.

Some ridiculed the dreams of a young computer, yet he lived his dreams.

Stifle

Art by Commander Vyache

Hey, I would really like to recommend Vyacheslav Kantor to you and his blog. He is very talented artist and codewriter, so show him some attention and if you want, he can make some cover art for you too.

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