December 5, 1911. 18:00 PM.
Neva Technical Solutions Central Offices, Saint Petersburg.
While in the Winter Palace's Telegraph Office they celebrated the intellectual victory of having recruited Europe's brightest minds, just three kilometers away, in the Vyborg industrial district, reality had a much more bitter taste than it appeared.
Neva Technical Solutions' conference room didn't look like the headquarters of an expanding company; this unicorn company had the command post of an army in retreat. The large oak tables were covered with commercial route maps, production reports, and urgent telegrams pinned with red thumbtacks that already left a great mark on the Empire's geography.
Professor Stanislav stood before the blackboard, erasing Tsiolkovsky's airship diagrams with a dirty rag to make space for something much less inspiring: the list of corporate casualties.
When Alexei entered, still with the euphoria of Einstein and Bohr's telegrams vibrating in his blood, the room's atmosphere hit him like a wall of wet brick.
"Bad news, Professor?" Alexei asked, removing his coat and leaving it on a chair.
Stanislav turned. He had deep, purple-colored circles under his eyes. He had spent days dealing with furious industry captains and terrified bankers.
"Catastrophic, Your Highness," Stanislav said bluntly. "The victory with airships and military engines is an island in a sea of disasters. The blockade isn't limited to our secret division. It's too tedious to say the least."
Stanislav pointed to the blackboard.
"Russo-Balt Tractors: production fallen 60%. Transmission shaft bearings are missing. There are three hundred chassis rusting in Riga yards, Lodz and Warsaw Textile Industry: English Platt Brothers spinning machines require maintenance. There are no spare parts; spindle bearings are seizing. Two factories closed yesterday. Three thousand workers on the street, Southern Railways: New superheated steam locomotives are stopped. Only the old ones work, the ones with blacksmith tolerances."
"It's a domino effect," Alexei analyzed, approaching the data. "They cut the smallest, most complex piece, and the entire machine stops."
"It's worse than that," Stanislav continued, pulling out a black leather folder. "They're not only buying SKF and FAG production. They're pressuring insurers. Lloyd's of London raised risk premiums for any cargo destined for Russia by 400% this morning. They allege political instability due to the Kiev attack."
"And the French banks..." Alexei guessed.
"Crédit Lyonnais has frozen revolving credit lines for our cotton and rubber importers. They say they need to review previous guarantees. It's a siege, sir. An invisible siege. There are no warships blocking Kronstadt, but the effect is the same. They're asphyxiating us; sooner or later we'll fall and that's what they'll want."
Alexei sat at the table's head. He felt the weight of one hundred seventy million people on his shoulders. He had provoked London's financial dragon, and the dragon was spitting fire on the innocent, as it always has.
"I have three representatives from the Moscow Industrialists' Association waiting in the antechamber," Stanislav said in a low voice. "They're desperate. They have a proposal."
"Show them in."
The door opened and three men entered. They weren't aristocrats and even less nobles, they were merchants, bearded men with good-quality but poorly cut frock coats, with large hands and shrewd eyes. They were Russia's nascent bourgeoisie, the men who moved grain and iron across all the Empire's internal and external borders.
The leader, one Morozov, owner of a dozen textile factories, didn't make exaggerated bows to the monarchy. He got to the point.
"Your Highness," Morozov said, twisting his hat between his hands. "We respect what you're doing with the army. But our machines are dying. My looms are stopped. If I don't produce fabric, I don't pay salaries. If I don't pay salaries, the Bolsheviks recruit my men."
"I know the situation, Gospodín Morozov," Alexei said calmly. "What do you propose?"
"There are... alternative paths," Morozov said, lowering his voice and looking at his companions. "We have contacts in Odessa. And in Vladivostok. There are Greek and Armenian merchants who can get German bearings. They buy them in Constantinople, change the labels, and bring them in as clockwork pieces or mechanical toys."
"You speak of smuggling," Alexei said.
"Let's rather say a kind of parallel market," Morozov corrected. "The price is high. Five times market value. But it's better to pay five times for a bearing than to close the factory. We only need the ISD to... look the other way at customs. For your agents to let the boxes pass unopened."
Alexei looked at the industrialists. He understood what they were about to do, they hadn't done it yet but knew it would be better to notify than to do it first and have permission for execution.
The silence in the room stretched, tense as a steel cable. Stanislav looked at Alexei, waiting for the order. 'Let them do it. Save the economy.'
But Alexei was thinking twenty years into the future.
"No," the Tsarevich said.
Morozov blinked. "Your Highness?"
"I won't authorize massive smuggling," Alexei said, his voice hardening. "If we buy German bearings through the Ottomans at five times their price, who wins? . They sell the product and we bleed paying the surcharge. We enrich Odessa's mafias, we corrupt our customs. And worst of all... we remain slaves."
Alexei stood up. He walked to Morozov, reaching the height of his chest.
"If we accept this crutch now, we'll never learn to walk. Next month they'll block copper. Or nickel. Will we pay ten times more then? Until when?"
"But we have to produce!" one of the other industrialists exploded. "We can't invent a precision industry overnight!"
"No," Alexei conceded. "But we can change the machine."
The Tsarevich turned toward Stanislav.
"Professor, bring the System B blueprints."
Stanislav's eyes widened. "The fluid bearing design? The one we use for airships? Your Highness, that's Neva's intellectual property. It's a secret patent. It's cost us millions to develop."
"Bring it," Alexei ordered. "And bring the chief draftsman."
Stanislav ran out and returned minutes later with a tube of blue blueprints. Alexei unrolled them on the table, pushing aside the loss reports.
The blueprint showed a cross-section of a shaft. Instead of steel balls, there was a white metal (Babbitt) bushing with geometrically complex high-pressure oil injection channels.
"Gentlemen," Alexei said to the industrialists. "This is a pressurized fluid friction bearing. It doesn't need Swedish steel. It uses lead, tin, and antimony. Materials we have in abundance in the Urals."
"Does it work?" Morozov asked, skeptical.
"It works," Alexei assured. "We've made a forty-ton airship fly with this. It's dirty. Yes, it consumes oil, but requires an extra pump. But it's indestructible and can be manufactured in any Moscow foundry with sand molds."
"How much will the license cost us?" the merchant asked, pulling out his mental checkbook.
Alexei looked at the blueprint. It was cutting-edge technology adapted to wartime. In the normal capitalist world, it would be worth a fortune.
"Nothing," Alexei said.
The word fell in the room like a bomb.
"What?"
"Stanislav, starting tomorrow, I want these blueprints mass-printed," Alexei ordered. "Send copies to all textile factories, all tractor plants, all the Empire's railway workshops. Publish it in technical bulletins."
"Your Highness... that's... that's socialism," Morozov murmured, pale.
"No, Morozov. That's national survival," Alexei corrected. "The Tsar gifts you the technology to save your factories. In exchange, I want one thing."
"What?" Morozov asked, looking at the blueprint with greed and astonishment.
"I want you to stop crying and start casting. I want you to adapt your machines. I want you to flood this country with oil and white metal. For Russia to smell of burnt lubricant from Warsaw to Vladivostok. But I don't want to see a single box with German seals in your warehouses."
Alexei rolled up the blueprint and put it on Morozov's chest.
"If some want to kill us of thirst by cutting off the tap water. So we're going to drink from the river, even if the water is murky. Go and build."
The industrialists left the room stunned, carrying under their arm the strangest technological gift in history. They were going to have to redesign their machines, yes. They were going to be less efficient, yes. But they wouldn't have to kneel before other Empires to survive.
When they left, Stanislav collapsed in a chair.
"We just gave away Neva's competitive advantage, Your Highness."
"We've bought time, Stanislav," Alexei said, looking out the window toward Saint Petersburg's night. "We've created a standard. Now, all Russian industry will use our system. Others can keep their perfect steel balls. Because that's all those sedentary bureaucrats who like to make others suffer have."