Jailys zi'Valcas was (about) thirty nine years old and all in all things had gone much better for her than she'd ever realistically thought she'd get. She'd been born on the streets among the Discarded: that collection of the disgraced, remnants of broken houses and the disowned and an orphaned one at that. She barely remembered her mother, who had died when she was five. After that her struggle for survival had gotten more desperate for the next four years as she barely managed to scrounge, steal and otherwise get enough to keep herself alive until she'd had the remarkable fortune of getting work with House Valcas's naval lamp factory as a ward. In part because while she could still stand she'd been a bit scrawnier than most of the others. What followed was eight years of apprenticeship in the trade of metalwork, slave handling, the basics of reading and writing and some basic lessons in combat. It was a hard and demanding life in exchange for basic food and a warm place to sleep, conditions worse than those of a consecrated slave but steady. After that came a few years of service in House Valcas' seventh company in which she'd displayed acceptable competency but not the warrior spirit, followed by becoming a formal ward doing that unremarkable job for a few links overseeing a small number of slaves as they put together oil lamp (mostly navel models). After two years she finally was allowed to keep her wage as her childhood debts to house Valcas were paid off. She'd achieved a steady place at the bottom of the legitimate hierarchy without so much as as a sibling to put a good word for her. When that day came as far as she could see her prospects for promotion so was as far as she could see was marrying a higher status ward or some junior member of a minor house.Then unexpectedly thirteen years ago she'd been given two books: one on the language of the Coldlands and the other (which was written in that barbaric tongue) was called "Electrical Technician's Primer: Second Edition" and was marked with what was then a strange hexagonal device. She was told to read it and try to make as much of it as possible. The book contained a fair amount of information about a strange new systems using copper wires and the force of electricity, which she was to learn and master it. Soon was given her own small workshop, a few slaves, allowances of raw materials and equipment and a slight pay increase. Afterwards she got the occasional power cell or light cell or book that they'd acquired. Bit by bit she'd put together a few items and submitted he reports. Jailys was amazed with the ideas of electricity and the possible applications there-of, even if her department was a footnote compared to the work being done on other projects relating to steam engines and cannon production. Five years ago her tiny domain got an unexpected boon when she'd received Nadia Galuskov, a captured Infrastructural Engineer specialized in the electrical mysteries. Having been sufficiently motivated by the prospects of disobedience Nadia had shown Jailys the depths of her ignorance in the field and despite some having to deal with a few lingering bad habits that needed to be dealt with she'd provided her with insights. With that (and an increase in her workforce and budget) she'd managed to achieve a lot more. Her department got a further boost with the war. Her personal domain of twenty slaves and three overseers was still a secondary, but she could actually make more than make the occasional novelty (even if the fans she'd put together were fairly popular) or translated book. She'd gotten a personal congratulation from the lady and a considerable raise a year ago when her team perfected a light cell, which was now entering limited production.The boon of actually having two mostly intact Infrastructural ships to look over made her giddy. It had given her a proper meter-stick (as Nadia would use the term) to compare her work against. The most notable thing that they had were the radios. The ability to send out messages long distances using electromagnetic waves was a major boon to their forces at sea and on land. Linkglasses did have some advantages over them, but on the same note radios had their own set of advantages, none the least of which was the fact that they could be more easily produced. She'd managed to put together a simple receiver using quartz crystals last year which according to spies in Infrastructure worked. Now work was finishing up on the second half of that.After finishing some early paperwork to get some more supplies, Jailys strode into her workshop on this cold winter morning and watched as her workers did their tasks. She saw Nadia looking over a set of blueprints at her workbench."How are repairs on our main project proceeding?" She said to her in the authoritative tone one used for interactions with slaves, though somewhat unusually in the Infrastructural version of the coldland langauge. So far the Dark Elven language was indelicate and lacked useful vocabulary in matters relating to this new field.The former Infrastructural dipped her head in fear and began following Jailys as she walked "Everything is doing just, just fine. Mistress. The burnout was not as severe as we'd feared, though we did need to replace a tube and a speaker. Hopefully work will be done by mid day and we can make another test this afternoon."As she went by she noticed the prototype as it was slowly reassembled. It was their third attempt at building a working radio transmitter and so far it was their most successful. It worked, for a bit anyway, but tended to malfunction and was quite finicky. She knew the principle quite well by now and it was mostly based off one of cargo ship's radios which were from what she saw quite effective, the problem lay in execution. Knowing how something worked did not tell you how to go about making it. Most of Jailys' job was filling in the blanks in those processes. She was pretty sure she'd get this set working, but she was also confident that they'd have to go through one more prototype before they had something ready for production. She did not mind that, better to face a little grumbling about delays from her superiors than deliver a half baked product and risk loosing everything she'd been so fortunate and worked so hard to achieve when the hunt was on for a scapegoat.Previous- Infrastructure: Part Two Hundred and Fifty One Next- Infrastructure: Part Two Hundred and Fifty Three