Totality Through Time
Copyright© 2026 by Art Samms
Chapter 6
I returned to the factory two days later with a purpose I could justify aloud: curiosity.
It wasn’t entirely untrue.
“Back again, Monsieur Wallace?” one of the floor supervisors said as I entered, recognition flickering across his face. “Have you come to admire our chaos once more?”
“Something like that,” I replied, offering a polite smile. “I’m interested in how you’ve structured the interior load. Distribution, support—things of that nature.”
He nodded as if that made perfect sense, though I suspected it meant very little to him in practical terms.
“Stay clear of the main assembly lines,” he said. “And mind the wiring. It’s ... temperamental today.”
Temperamental. The word lingered as I stepped further inside.
The heat was more pronounced than before. Not just ambient warmth, but pockets of it—localized, uneven. I could feel it shift as I moved through the space, rising near certain clusters of machinery, dissipating elsewhere.
The air carried a sharper edge, too. The faint scent of ozone I had noticed on my first visit was stronger now, threaded through the heavier smells of oil and heated metal.
Something was working harder than it should have been.
I moved slowly, taking care to appear as though I were simply observing structure, spacing, the relationship between beams and load-bearing elements. I paused at intervals, studying joints, supports, the way the ceiling trusses distributed weight across the span.
All of that was real. But it wasn’t what held my attention.
It was the wiring.
Cables ran along the walls and across the ceiling in bundled lines, secured at intervals but not always consistently. Some sagged slightly between anchor points, their insulation worn in places where friction or heat had begun to take its toll.
At one junction, I stopped.
A cluster of connections had been assembled hastily, the wires feeding into a metal housing that looked recently modified. The casing didn’t quite align with the mounting brackets, leaving a slight gap where it should have been flush.
I crouched slightly, angling my head to see better. The insulation near the entry point had darkened—not burned, not yet, but stressed. The kind of discoloration that came from sustained heat, not a single failure.
“Careful with that,” a voice said behind me.
I turned. Moreau stood a few steps away, hands clasped loosely behind his back.
“I wouldn’t want you to injure yourself before forming an opinion,” he added.
“I’ll try to avoid that,” I said, straightening.
He stepped closer, his gaze following mine to the junction box.
“You’ve found one of our less elegant solutions,” he said.
“It looks recent,” I replied.
“It is,” he said. “Demand has increased faster than initial projections allowed for.”
“So, you expanded capacity.”
“We adapted,” he corrected gently.
I nodded, though the distinction felt semantic.
“And the load?” I asked. “Is the system designed to handle it?”
A faint pause.
“It is designed to handle what is necessary.”
He didn’t answer the question.
I glanced upward. Several lines converged above us, feeding into a central conduit that ran along the ceiling toward the main assembly area. The density of the wiring increased as it approached that point, the lines drawn tighter together, their arrangement more compressed.
“How much redundancy do you have?” I asked.
Moreau’s expression shifted slightly—not defensive, but attentive.
“You ask very specific questions for a visiting architect,” he said.
“I’ve seen what happens when systems are pushed beyond their intended limits,” I replied. “Structure doesn’t fail all at once. It accumulates stress until something gives.”
“And you believe that applies here.”
“I believe it could.”
He considered that, then glanced around the factory floor. The machinery continued its steady rhythm, workers moving through their tasks with practiced familiarity. To an untrained eye, nothing appeared wrong. But once seen, the inconsistencies became difficult to ignore.
“There is always a margin,” he said. “A space between what is ideal and what is required.”
“And how wide is that space?” I asked.
He smiled faintly.
“Wide enough.”
I didn’t respond. Instead, I moved deeper into the factory, toward the central assembly area. The noise increased as I approached, the overlapping rhythms of multiple machines creating a dense, almost physical pressure. Belts turned in synchronized motion, gears meshed and released, metal components fed through processes that shaped and refined them in precise increments.
And there—I stopped.
The configuration. It wasn’t identical. But it was close enough.
A long iron beam angled across the space, part of a support frame that had been temporarily repositioned to accommodate new equipment. It sat lower than the surrounding structure, its placement interrupting the usual flow of movement.
Beneath it, a series of electrical assemblies had been arranged—wiring, housings, partially completed units waiting for installation.
The proximity was wrong. Too close. Too compressed.
The image surfaced immediately. Not as memory, but as overlay. Sparks. The beam. Smoke rising through a space that looked ... exactly like this.
I took a step closer, my focus narrowing.
One of the workers adjusted a connection, tightening a clamp that held two lines in place. As he did, a faint flicker of light snapped across the contact point—a brief, sharp discharge.
He didn’t react. It was small. Expected, perhaps.
But it shouldn’t have been happening at all.
“Transient,” Moreau said from behind me, as if reading the shift in my attention. “A minor irregularity.”
“That’s not minor,” I said quietly.
“It is contained.”
“For now.”
The words slipped out before I could soften them.
Moreau stepped up beside me, his gaze following mine to the same point of contact.
“You see a flaw,” he said.
“I see a system under strain.”
He folded his hands behind his back again, considering.
“And yet it functions,” he said. “It produces what is required. It meets its purpose.”
“Until it doesn’t,” I replied.
A worker passed between us, carrying a component from one station to another. He ducked slightly beneath the angled beam without looking up, his path clearly habitual. Too habitual.
The margin for error was narrowing. I could feel it. Not in some abstract, theoretical sense, but physically—like standing near a structure that had shifted just enough to signal that its equilibrium had been compromised.
The image in my mind sharpened. Not because I was remembering it more clearly, but because I was beginning to understand it.
It wasn’t random. It wasn’t an isolated failure. It was the natural conclusion of what I was seeing now.
“You’re aware of the risk,” I said, turning slightly toward Moreau.
“I am aware of the requirements,” he replied.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” he said. “But it is the one that determines action.”
I held his gaze for a moment, searching for hesitation. There was none. Only calculation.
Across the floor, another flicker of light snapped along a line, brief but visible. No one stopped. No one questioned it. Because here, it was part of the rhythm.
I exhaled slowly, stepping back, forcing myself to take in the entire space again—not just the details, but the system as a whole. The strain. The compression. The inevitability.
The accident wasn’t just plausible. It was building itself.
And for the first time since seeing the image, I understood something with complete clarity. I wasn’t looking for a single moment to prevent.
I was standing inside a process that had already begun.
I approached it the way I would have in my own time—indirectly and carefully. With just enough detail to be taken seriously, and just enough distance to avoid drawing attention back to myself. It felt like the safest first move.
The Fournier house had a small writing desk in the sitting room, positioned near a window that overlooked the street. Claire used it in the mornings for correspondence, her handwriting precise and measured. I had watched her enough times to understand the rhythm of it—the pacing, the formality, the way language carried weight when it was arranged correctly.
That night, I borrowed the space.
The house was quiet again, the same low lamplight casting long shadows across the floor. I sat at the desk with a sheet of paper in front of me, pen hovering, aware of how much depended on something as simple as phrasing.
If I wrote too little, it would be ignored. Too much, and it would invite scrutiny I couldn’t afford.
I began slowly.
A concerned observer. That was the tone I chose. Someone with enough knowledge to recognize a problem, but not enough authority to demand a response.
I described what I had seen at the factory—not in technical language that would feel out of place, but in practical terms. Overloaded lines. Heat accumulation. Improvised modifications to accommodate increased demand. The proximity of electrical assemblies to structural elements that could amplify damage if failure occurred.
I avoided anything that sounded like certainty. No predictions. No dates. Only descriptions of risk.
When I finished, I read it through twice, adjusting a phrase here, softening a statement there. The final version felt balanced—measured, credible, easy to dismiss if someone chose to, but difficult to ignore entirely.
I left it unsigned.
The next morning, I delivered it myself. But not to Moreau—that would have defeated the purpose.
Instead, I found one of the administrative offices connected to the Exposition’s oversight committee—a place where concerns, complaints, and logistical issues were routed before they reached anyone with real authority.
The clerk at the desk barely looked up as I placed the folded letter in front of him.
“For review,” I said.
He nodded, already reaching for a stack of similar documents. It disappeared into the pile without ceremony. That should have been expected.
Still, as I stepped back out into the street, I felt a brief, fragile sense of progress. I had done something. Not enough—but something.
I returned to the factory two days later.
At first glance, nothing had changed. The same rhythm. The same heat. The same layered noise of machinery operating at full capacity. Workers moved through their tasks with the same practiced efficiency, their motions shaped by repetition and necessity.
I walked the floor slowly, retracing the path I had taken before. The junction box I had examined still sat slightly misaligned. The insulation still showed signs of stress. The central assembly area still held that same dangerous compression of space and function—the angled beam, the clustering of electrical systems beneath it, the narrow margins for movement.
If anything, the activity had intensified. More units in progress. More materials moving through the space. More strain.
I stood there for a moment, letting the realization settle. Nothing had changed. Not a single adjustment. Not even a superficial one.
A flicker of irritation rose, sharper than I expected. I had been careful. Specific. Clear enough to warrant at least a cursory inspection.
“They brought it to my attention.”
Moreau’s voice came from beside me, smooth and unhurried. He stood with the same composed posture as always, hands loosely at his sides, his expression neutral but attentive.
“The letter,” he continued. “Unsigned. Detailed. Thoughtful, in its way.”
My pulse shifted, just slightly.
“I assume you receive many such warnings,” I said.
“Not many,” he replied. “But enough.”
He glanced around the factory floor, taking in the movement, the machinery, the ongoing work.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.