"Has there been any news from Castel? What did the Lord say? Is the White Calamity about to dissipate completely?"
Alexei carefully held the receiver with both hands and spoke urgently into the black box before him.
This was something newly developed by Castel. The Lord called it a telephone.
It was said to use electricity. Alexei truly did not trust electricity very much. Although both the wires and the telephone had tightly sealed protective layers made of metal mesh, he still felt a sense of fear.
That evil things dwelled within electricity was an ancient rumor. Though the Lord had repeatedly assured them otherwise, acceptance was ultimately a process.
Oddly enough, the explanations given by the technical priests of Empire Truth who had come to install it put him more at ease.
"Sacred filter capacitors have been installed inside. The warped higher harmonics of evil things will all be blocked!"
What a satisfying explanation.
Unfortunately, Alexei had also received a complete advanced education. After spending some time reading the relevant papers himself, he discovered that this was merely rhetoric meant to fool people.
Perhaps this was the curse of knowledge. Once one possessed knowledge, it became difficult to obtain that cheap sense of reassurance.
Fortunately, after reading those papers, Alexei had also gained a basic understanding of the development of electrical power. He knew that this telephone was indeed relatively safe, which put him at ease once more.
That great circle from reassurance to reassurance was precisely what Theus hoped to achieve. He wanted people to retain the most basic ability to question things, rather than, like the Mechanical Cathedral, elevate technology onto an altar and worship it.
Understanding was one thing, but at the thought of his voice being transformed into evil electrical currents, Alexei still could not