Old Dunling, broken dome.
This is a secret place, connected to the outside world by only one elevator. All other communications with the outside world rely on a system called pneumatic pipeline logistics transmission. The pipelines responsible for transportation are spread throughout the entire broken dome. Capsules containing documents travel rapidly under the power of pneumatics. This kind of thing always has a sense of mystery. Even the people who store the capsules don't know where the documents will go.
This is where all the documents finally gather. In the Hundred Years' War, Ingwig lost a lot of books. Therefore, in the facilities of the new era, every department is very concerned about the preservation of documents, even the Purification Agency.
Countless pipes fell from the dome like falling star tracks, and finally poured into the pool filled with insulating liquid at the feet. Lights lit up at the bottom of the pool, illuminating the copper pillars one after another, as if it was a sacrificial ceremony in ancient mythology, emitting a magnificent glow.
The man in gray robe stared at the bronze pillars so intently that even the elevator opening again did not attract his attention.
"What are you looking at?"
Arthur walked out of the elevator and said to his old friend.
"Those Difference Engines."
The gray-robed man pointed at the differential engines submerged in the insulating liquid. They were combined together like upright copper pillars, with rubber-wrapped cables inserted between them, like seaweed surging on the seabed.
This is also a product of technology, a miracle that came with the advent of the steam age. It can increase the speed of multiplication and improve the accuracy of logarithmic tables, convert complex formulas in function tables into differential operations, and replace square operations with simple additions.
This is just a small part of it; the largest difference engine clusters currently are being built on perpetual motion pumps for the benefit of mad scientists.
"In fact, I sometimes wonder if we have gone astray."
After another period of silence, the man in gray robe spoke again.
"Just like steam technology, we have reached a bottleneck. No matter how much we improve it, we can't break through that limit... Have we taken the wrong path from the beginning?"
He was in deep thought, gazing at the ritual bronze pillars. They were the embodiment of technology, but if civilization became extinct, would there be new life that would worship them like gods
"Even with the Difference Engine, the limit of what we can do with a thing is to make a bigger one, like the furnace column, like this Babbage array."
"This is just an escape, not a technological breakthrough. If we continue like this, we will be like a bloated person being strangled by the throat."
Silence. Arthur was just silent on this question. The man in front of him was Inglvig's technological heart. If he was confused about this, only that man could give him an answer.
"Didn't you go to the end of the world? Didn't the keeper give you the answer?"
Arthur asked. The gray man made all the decisions in this regard. He didn't even know where the end of the world was. That thing was a secret in the gray man's mind.
"No, he didn't even see me. I almost froze to death on the ice."
The man in gray sighed, then looked at Arthur.