[Long. All right. She exhales slowly, glancing away for a few seconds as she gathers her thoughts.]
Columbia debuted in 1893, at the Chicago World's Fair. There were any number of founders, because Comstock's abilities to get funding were great, but not perfect. He also had a fair few people on what he called his board: people who would work on varying issues. I, of course, was there as the person who made the damn thing fly in the first place. A few others there solely for their purses, or because they brought a personal expertise to the field: a police commander, an economy expert, so on and so forth.
And, when it came to the raw labor, to building the city up, and more importantly, to keeping people in their places . . . he had Jeremiah Fink.
[Rosalind crosses her arms under her chest, the movement not defensive so much as angry.]
Jeremiah Fink was not intelligent the way you and I are intelligent, but he was very clever. He knew how to wheedle and promise and cheat, and he all but enslaved his workers under the guise of employing the impoverished out of the goodness of his heart. He was the perfect man through which Comstock got vast legions of virtually unpaid labor, and because Fink chose those populations that were minorities, no one fought for them.
[Herself included.]
The other way Fink got his money, though, was through plagiarism, pure and simple. He was intelligent enough to understand how things worked, even if he couldn't come up with them himself. And sooner or later, he was wealthy enough that suing him was pointless.
He badly wanted my inventions, and accordingly, I kept them close to my chest.
[That's the first part of the story. The second is a little easier.]
I told you Comstock styled himself a preacher, and that I aided that lie. With it came others, more and more outragous, until at last one of his lies grew too sinful to ignore. We intervened. And then, a few days later, our machine exploded.
Tell me, what do you think more likely: that I made an error? Or that Comstock hired a man familiar with my work to sabotage one of my machines and make our death look an accident?
no subject
Columbia debuted in 1893, at the Chicago World's Fair. There were any number of founders, because Comstock's abilities to get funding were great, but not perfect. He also had a fair few people on what he called his board: people who would work on varying issues. I, of course, was there as the person who made the damn thing fly in the first place. A few others there solely for their purses, or because they brought a personal expertise to the field: a police commander, an economy expert, so on and so forth.
And, when it came to the raw labor, to building the city up, and more importantly, to keeping people in their places . . . he had Jeremiah Fink.
[Rosalind crosses her arms under her chest, the movement not defensive so much as angry.]
Jeremiah Fink was not intelligent the way you and I are intelligent, but he was very clever. He knew how to wheedle and promise and cheat, and he all but enslaved his workers under the guise of employing the impoverished out of the goodness of his heart. He was the perfect man through which Comstock got vast legions of virtually unpaid labor, and because Fink chose those populations that were minorities, no one fought for them.
[Herself included.]
The other way Fink got his money, though, was through plagiarism, pure and simple. He was intelligent enough to understand how things worked, even if he couldn't come up with them himself. And sooner or later, he was wealthy enough that suing him was pointless.
He badly wanted my inventions, and accordingly, I kept them close to my chest.
[That's the first part of the story. The second is a little easier.]
I told you Comstock styled himself a preacher, and that I aided that lie. With it came others, more and more outragous, until at last one of his lies grew too sinful to ignore. We intervened. And then, a few days later, our machine exploded.
Tell me, what do you think more likely: that I made an error? Or that Comstock hired a man familiar with my work to sabotage one of my machines and make our death look an accident?