Fic: Double drabble: Magnificent Progress
Mar. 24th, 2007 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tj_roweTitle: Magnificent Progress
Word count: 200 words.
Characters: Jack Spicer, Jack's ancestors.
Summary: There was magic, and then there was progress. Magic was old and dry and had been around forever, but progress had electric sparks.
*
Until the turn of the 18th century, the secrets of Shen Gong Wu creation were passed on from grandparent to grandchild, keeping the old ways known and used.
Then the industrial revolution came. Steam power, engines and electrics dazzled the patriarch of the time, and he tried to integrate the new power sources with the old knowledge, ending up with items that had the same result but a more modern approach in the making. Progress was a magnificent thing, he decided.
His granddaughter was even worse. She moved from London to California to Hong Kong, following the new technology, and gave the grimore to charity. Who needed all those silly rituals when a handful of lube and an external power outlet could do the same job in half the time? Not her!
Her grandson gobbled the knowledge greedily, and she rewarded him with her (patented) back-strapped flying machine when he told her that he wanted to follow in her footsteps, and humoured him when he decided to one day take over the world.
Progress was still progressing, silicon oxides replacing diamond and superconducting nano-compounds replacing copper. Hovering automobiles replaced flying carpets and talking, thinking, fighting robots replaced fire-spewing jewellery. It truly was magnificent.
Word count: 200 words.
Characters: Jack Spicer, Jack's ancestors.
Summary: There was magic, and then there was progress. Magic was old and dry and had been around forever, but progress had electric sparks.
*
Until the turn of the 18th century, the secrets of Shen Gong Wu creation were passed on from grandparent to grandchild, keeping the old ways known and used.
Then the industrial revolution came. Steam power, engines and electrics dazzled the patriarch of the time, and he tried to integrate the new power sources with the old knowledge, ending up with items that had the same result but a more modern approach in the making. Progress was a magnificent thing, he decided.
His granddaughter was even worse. She moved from London to California to Hong Kong, following the new technology, and gave the grimore to charity. Who needed all those silly rituals when a handful of lube and an external power outlet could do the same job in half the time? Not her!
Her grandson gobbled the knowledge greedily, and she rewarded him with her (patented) back-strapped flying machine when he told her that he wanted to follow in her footsteps, and humoured him when he decided to one day take over the world.
Progress was still progressing, silicon oxides replacing diamond and superconducting nano-compounds replacing copper. Hovering automobiles replaced flying carpets and talking, thinking, fighting robots replaced fire-spewing jewellery. It truly was magnificent.
