“You were gone a long time. I was worried.”
Danny bent down to take out his tools. “Even if I’m gone for a while, you still can’t do this. It’s not healthy for the town, or you.”
Colton shifted. “I didn’t know,” he murmured, “if they would send another mechanic or not.”
“They almost did. I wouldn’t blame them, either.” Danny stood back up, screwdriver in hand. He pointed it at Colton. “But they seem to have had the same thought I did. Since you’ve been such a bother, the Lead’s decided that a mechanic should stay here in town. Permanently.”
The look of alarm on Colton’s face almost made Danny smile, but he kept his face stern.
“Permanently?” Colton repeated. “Who?”
Danny flipped the screwdriver so that it now pointed at himself. “Me, of course.”
There was a stunned silence. Colton’s lips curled upward.
“So excuse me for taking so long, but it’s a bit of a mess reuniting with one’s father, learning to drive a new auto, and packing all in one go.” He glared at the spirit, though his own lips were twitching. “Well? What do you have to say?”
Colton’s grin burst like a firework across his face. Suddenly he was sweeping Danny up in his arms, and they spun dizzily across the floor. Their laughter lit the tower from the inside out, burning into a new star.
It wouldn’t be easy. Being with Colton came with a price, but one that Danny was willing, even glad, to pay. They would be careful. They would be together. They would make it work.
Anything was possible.
A Note on Timekeeper’s London
In Timekeeper’s timeline, the construction of highly mechanized clock towers hundreds of years before the 1870s spurred the Industrial Revolution to happen a great deal sooner than it did in our own timeline. As a result, the England I portray benefits from technological advances that weren’t invented or widespread by 1875. These advances are quite useful for the clock mechanics of London, as they need to relay information and travel quickly.
Below, I’ve listed what liberties I took in portraying this technologically advanced England:
Telephones
In 1861, Johann Philipp Reis developed an electromagnetic device that captured and transmitted sound, including musical notes and spoken phrases. Over the next several years, inventors experimented with audio telegraphs, some of which were achieved using the tones of tuning forks. Inspired by these attempts, Alexander Graham Bell began to tinker with harmonic telegraphs in 1873, which led to an 1875 experiment with his assistant, Thomas Watson, using the first functional telephonic device in recorded history.
Timekeeper takes place in 1875, so naturally, these inventors would have had made major breakthroughs several years earlier in the book’s timeline. Telephones aren’t common in the Timekeeper world, nor do they work particularly well, but mechanics are required to have one in their homes so they can be contacted in the event of emergencies (as we see with Danny and the Lead).
Cars
The first steam-powered vehicle was designed in 1672 by Ferdinand Verbiest, but it was Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot who built the first model in 1769: a steam-powered tricycle. He designed and built other steam-powered vehicles, but they had problems with water supply and steam pressure. Since then, various types of vehicles and engines were tested and tried, but the first motor car in central Europe wasn’t constructed until 1897 by a Czech company called Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau.
Steam-powered vehicles did, in fact, exist during 1875, but they wouldn’t have been the same models that are depicted in Timekeeper. The higher demand for technology launched factories sooner, and in larger numbers. With more resources than the Victorians in our world had, automobiles—or simply “autos”—quickly became a must-have commodity.
Women in Society
Technology and society are intrinsically linked. If one alters, so must the other. In this case, the Victorian society in Timekeeper differs from the typical Victorian culture we’re so used to in many ways, the most obvious being how women are regarded in large cities. During the Victorian era, the issue of women’s employment was fought by tireless feminists, including Millicent Fawcett and Frances Buss. The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women was founded in 1859, led by the Queen herself.