DORE

Dore ran his fingers through his soft ginger hair. His eyes strained to look at the hundredth blueprint to come across his desk that day. He leaned leisurely against his large cushioned chair and lifted the blueprints as his gaze moved.

The blueprint was of a small horseless carriage, the workshop’s most recent project. In this design, the boiler sat in the center between the passenger car and the driver's seat. He shook his head. Idiots. His father employed idiots. He tapped his fountain pen at the paper, making big splotchy dots. His hand stopped for a second and then drew widely all over the blueprint ruining it.

“Ridiculous,” he said to himself. Did they want to hurt someone? If the boiler was that close to passengers they could risk injury.

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes, pinching his nose. He groaned. There’s a knock at the office door. His footman spoke from outside, “Sir, your father has sent a telegram.”

Dore stops rubbing his eyes and sits up straight. 

“Enter,” he said.

His footman entered the room with a letter in hand. Jorg had been by Dore’s side since he was young, joining their household when he was just a teenager. It was a prestigious job for an Agostogian. He wore a waistcoat in a similar fashion to Dore’s own but less expensive, but not too cheap to not dishonor the family name. He handed Dore the letter.

Dore opened it and skimmed the contents. It was the same thing every day: his father inquiring about the progress of the horseless carriage. He didn’t seem to understand that changing their entire mode of land transportation might take time. 

“Does father really expect this to materialize overnight? It’s been four months since I started,” he said more to himself than his footman.

He stood up and walked over to the window. Dore watched the quiet streets dimly lit by tall street lamps. The electric lamps had been one of his own creations from his college days. His final thesis really. His father expected him to continuously spit out profitable ideas like it. The lamps brighten the city beneath him. The buildings were all three to five stories tall, made of brick and stone, and a few metal giants pumped smoke into the sky. The smoke filled the city from the factories’ tall thin chimneys. If Hadzat was the city of steam, the city of Riereng beneath him was a city of production. A productive city his family profited from. His father dictated that running one of their factories would be a part of both his and his younger brother’s education. But, running the factory and being the family’s golden goose proved difficult for even Dore.

Dore flipped open his pocket watch checking the time he already knew. Far too late in the night for him or anyone else to be working. Very few people traveled the streets this late into the evening. Dore watched as a single horse-drawn carriage clattered across paved streets. It stopped in front of a large house. A young lady in a long elegant dress and her partner a young man in a dress coat and top hat exited the house. He watched them joyfully chat. The man spoke with the carriage driver as the lady nervously fidgeted with her parasol. Dore smiled. Most young nobles like himself would be going to parties on nights like tonight.

Dore had never been a normal child though. His attention wandered back to the carriage, the cause of his current stresses.

The horse waited patiently for its master to order them to move. Dore tapped at the window’s glass.

“No need for the horses,” he said. 

The couple boards the carriage giddy for their night out. The driver takes the reins. Dore leans his head against the cold window in contemplation. The reins won't be necessary either.

His eyes widen. “That might work,” he said. The pieces came together in front of him. His imagination pulled pieces of metal from the surrounding buildings to form a box covering the horses. The box attached itself to the carriage cart; bolts and welding secured it in place. A pipe flew from a nearby chimney and attached itself to the bottom of the carriage and the black coal smoke bellowed out of the back. The driver steered his new creation out into the night with a wheel in hand. 

Dore smiles out the window. “That might work,” he said again. He sped over to his desk and scribbled down the blueprint onto the nearest piece of paper. 

“Why move the power source when we can adapt it,” he thought out loud. It might take them a while to figure out the dimensions and the ventilation system, but design #43 may be their lucky number.

He chuckled to himself. “Vince is going to get a kick out of this.” Just like that, his excitement vanished. He had been able to forget for a second that Vince had been sent away. 

Dore slumped back into his chair and stared off into the distance. He’d likely still be en route to Hadzat. His father said it was for his education but Dore knew better. Vince hadn’t been meeting his expectations, the expectations that Dore had accidentally set himself, so their father sent him away. He needed Vince out of the business eye.  “Vince…” He must be lonely. Dore was lonely when he left for college. Growing up in that household it had always just been him and Vince.

The footman cleared his throat. Dore had forgotten to dismiss him. He still stood in front of the desk, arms straight by his side, with a subtly annoyed smile on his face. “The little lord?” he asked.

“Right, I forgot you were still here,” Dore said. Dore grimaces at the letter from his father that the footman had brought. He picked it up with the blueprint he had drawn.

Dore smiled at a devious thought. “Tell the workshop crew they can leave early. I’m required at home,” he said.

The footman nodded. “Yes, sir. Anything else sir?” He asked.

Dore got up and led the footman to the door with a new skip in his step. He took his coat from the rack and held it motionless for a few seconds. There wasn’t anything he’d need from the workshop for a while assuming things would go as he predicted.

“Should I prepare a carriage… Sir?” His footman asked, staring at  Dore confused.

Dore suddenly smiled at him. “Nonsense. Why would I cram myself into a carriage on such a fine night?” He said.

“Fine night?” The footman looked out the window at the smoke-filled night like any other.

“Of course it is,” Dore insisted. He held up the folded blueprint. When he had an idea that was gold he knew it. “I have leverage.”

Dore left the factory and his confused footman behind. He took a deep breath of the filthy air and looked up at the clouded sky, not a star in sight. He smirked at the thought of his father’s reaction once he refused to work so long as Vince was absent. Over years he had become quite good at negotiating on Vince’s behalf with his father. Dore would say that the only reason he excelled so much was so Vince could have it easier.

“Now he’d have no choice but to bring Vince home,” he said to himself. His father wouldn’t risk losing his heir and lead inventor.