931 years of the Invergar calendar.
The city fell into a dark slumber, above the night sky huge zeppelins swam slowly like giant whales Cyclops-like lights were cast from them, moving across the sleeping city to observe.7
Lorenzo stood at the corner of the street, puffing away with a cigarette in his mouth. The tobacco was laced with wakeful herbs which even in the dead of night kept him incredibly lucid and even said to be a little excited.
With this faint excitement, the cane gently tapped the ground, striking lightly according to the rhythm of the impression.
He was waiting for someone, and as a general rule he liked to spend his waiting time thinking about just about anything, as long as his brain wasn't idle.
Lifting his head, he looked at the dim streetlight as his thoughts gradually drifted away.
...
According to the parallel universe concept, under the huge scale, all the incredible things will happen, or under this concept, these are destined to happen.
Like in one world the speed of light can be exceeded, Saturn's rings are a giant donut, Tesla was a great wizard who manipulated thunder, Hawking was a bronze dragon who controlled time, and King Arthur was really a girl.
So well, all things are possible.
And then there is a certain modern world where mankind started the first industrial revolution, where rumbling steam engines slowly propelled huge steel creations, where railroads paved every inch of the populated areas, where productivity was liberated, where the economy continued to rise, and where the perfect era came with a blaze of steam.
...By all rights, the plot should be like this, but like the concept of parallel universes, there's always something beyond the pale.
So what if ... The coming of the electrical age was delayed?
Like the myriad of assumptions about the story, what if the thread of history that everyone is familiar with shifted slightly?
The second industrial revolution kicked off after that, but hell the world didn't enter the electrical age because of it just like Newton laying under a tree with the most crucial apple in the history of physics about to hit him on the head when the unlucky kid rolled over and mankind was briefly deprived of the formula of gravity as a result.
The world did the same thing, and the damned era ran off the path of normal historical development when they realized that boiling water could drive everything.
Electrical technology failed to dominate this flood of steam, failed to be utilized on a large scale and only existed in a small number of places, and the internal combustion engine, which was much more efficient at converting heat, failed to be discovered by the world.
Larger and larger steam engines were built, and they became more and more complex, to the point where they eventually became the hubs of cities, the hubs of the world.
They were bloated and large and inefficient, but when that grandiose body of steel came into view, all were in awe.
Lorenzo lived in such a time, a time where sanity and madness coexisted.
steel and steam, mystery and the unknown.
The shrill roar of steam interrupted his thoughts, and looking to the side, fiery white gases erupted from the merge cover near the street, then under the cold evening breeze they condensed into uncountable droplets that drifted away, finally dispersing into a grayish mist that covered the entire city.
It was a hell of a time, and this was a hell of a city.
The group of psychopaths at the Mechanics' Yard had dug out the city's subterranean floor and built the largest steam engine ever built there, and to do so had dug kilometers of underground channels to bring the Thames River into that iron furnace, where it burned around the clock and drove the entire city's mechanical factories.
The complex underground system is their discharge facility, and every day thousands of tons of water vapor are purified and circulated to surge up into the streets, where it later turns into a pattering rain that falls.
So the place was gloomy all day long, with no daylight to be seen.
Glancing down at his pocket watch, he saw that it was almost time, and then at the end of the street came the sound of rapid breathing and running.
At the end of the street there came the sound of rapid breathing and running.
It seemed that the man he was waiting for was right on time.
Lorenzo dropped his cigarette butt and slipped his hand under his heavy trench coat to remove his beloved Winchester.
Just like the concept of parallel universes, there was a man who was known as the Great Detective in these hellish times...of course the Great Detective was what he called himself. He's not someone with a great reputation, and he's not even a master of deduction, merely a second-rate detective who likes to coerce suspects by force.
That's what those who knew him called him, Lorenzo Holmes.
The sound of footsteps grew closer, just out of earshot, and he blushed furiously.
"Welcome to Old Dunlin! My friend!"
The second-rate detective rushed out of the street corner and laughed openly at the running figure, then in the stunned eyes of the black shadow, he affectionately pulled the trigger in his hand, and the Winchester let out that booming loud noise in this night.
Amidst the dazzling gunfire, the black shadow was knocked to the ground before he could react, scarlet blood flowing down the cracks in the stone tiles and into the sewer.
As the gunfire dispersed, shortly after the patrolmen with rifles surrounded the place, and the lights from the Zeppelin above the night sky illuminated the place as if it were daytime, but at the moment there was nothing here except the already cold corpse.