Appendix 27-IV: The Lab: The Perpetual Motion Machine (Part 2

Appendix 27-IV: The Lab: The Perpetual Motion Machine (Part 2)

(August 2nd, July 20th, 2011)

The artifectors were encouraged by the devastating success of the prototype. The problem was no longer Can it be done? but rather How do we do it without blowing ourselves up?[1]48

Drawing boards were drawn upon and formulae were formulated. Rare materials were worked into arcane shapes. Two entirely new branches of artifice were created.

They tried running a network of wires around the House, the first time in many years that any of them had seen any part of the House except for their own exclusive corner of it.[2] It wasn’t enough. They created a number of devices which could siphon the energy from the network.[3] It still wasn’t enough.

The tower, and the permanent lightning storm that resulted, solved the problem.

[1] The issue of Should we? never came up.

[2] Several artifectors never returned and were feared lost. Lost, not dead.

[3] The one that they found the most useful was a kettle that they used for boiling the water for their tea, a vast improvement over the fireplace.

48

The comments contain arecord of the fact that, after receiving underwhelming reviews for a now-lost first draft of The Perpetual Motion Machine (Part 2), August 2nd decided to inject more humour into the vignette by what August 2nd themself described as “trying Pratchett’s ‘footnote’ style”, referring to Terry Pratchett’s frequent use of humourous footnotes in his Discworld series.