Chapter 161

Humans naturally yearn for that which is rare, noble, and great; commonality has never been enough to satisfy the restless spirit. In this new world and burgeoning nation, people fixated on these rarities with a renewed fervor, driven by a uniquely functioning Christian ethic that provided a profound psychological shock. They hungered for honor while thirsting for salvation, venerating poverty and striving for diligence in their fervent desire to serve the community of the Great Angel.

“What exactly is that man doing?” Nemo asked one day, gesturing toward a solitary figure.

“O Angel, that man is practicing the path of asceticism,” an observer replied. “He has restricted his meals to the absolute minimum to discipline his flesh…”

Nemo tilted his head, his expression one of mild concern. “Such a path seems only to drain his strength and jeopardize his health. While he is free to choose his own hardships, of what use is a body in agony if it achieves nothing beyond the pain itself?”

“Pardon?”

The Angel leading the community clearly had no appetite for “unnecessary” suffering. If one were to pursue a life of hardship, it had to be a “useful” one—for instance, the toil required to manufacture more goods of higher quality and lower cost for the benefit of others.

The community responded to Nemo’s observation with startling speed. The people realized exactly what their revered Angel demanded: he wanted deeds that truly benefited the world. Private moral cultivation achieved by staring at a wall was insufficient. Silence, celibacy, and temperance were meaningless unless they served the greater good of helping one’s family, neighbor, and ultimately, all of humanity.

Thus, the Industrial Monasteries were born.

It was the inevitable result of the human instinct to pursue the rare and the noble. A religious ecstasy gripped the community, a collective excitement at the prospect of building a world alongside a living, holy Angel. Recruiting for these new monasteries was effortless.

However, the human longing for comfort remains an eternal constant. It is no easy task to compel a man to perform grueling labor if he is already wealthy enough to live in abundance without it. At the time, those participating directly or indirectly in the monastic labor movement accounted for roughly thirty to forty percent of Virginia’s population. While this seemed a significant figure, it also meant that the remaining sixty to seventy percent were effectively living idle lives, sustained by the efforts of the Agricultural Knights and the labor of others. These citizens preferred donating small portions of their wealth to public works or performing brief stints of volunteer service rather than committing to true toil.

To put it bluntly, they found it bothersome.

Since the Angel did not force them and they remained faithful in their religious lives, society simply allowed them to enjoy their leisure. After all, the goods produced by the existing factories and monasteries were more than enough to keep the community prosperous.

Yet, for the individual factories and monasteries, this stagnation was unacceptable. The paramount goal of expansion was being stifled. From their perspective, the market was exploding in every direction. The Bishopric of Florida had already proven itself to be a massive consumer market over the past few years.

Similarly, the Wabanaki Confederacy—which, in the original timeline, would not have appeared until the late 17th century—had formed decades early and on a much larger scale to reap the benefits of the Union. Joining them were the Iroquois Confederacy and the Shawnee, both of whom brought populations numbering in the hundreds of thousands into the Union’s economic fold.

To provide all these people with fields tilled by tractors, and to establish the strongholds and churches of the Knights across such vast territories, required immense resources and labor. As millions came to depend on the community’s output, the factories and monasteries viewed the idle population as a tragic waste of potential. They wanted more people to participate in the labor—not just because it was economically sound, but because they believed it was morally right. They sought a way to draw in those who had abandoned work, whether due to a perceived lack of skill or simple complacency.

It was in this climate that Nemo bridged the gap between the university and the factory.

The tractor factories and their associated monasteries were the first to move, followed swiftly by the various subcontracting parts plants. Soon, a myriad of miscellaneous workshops physically adjacent to these facilities joined the fray.

“In the parts production process, the section where we carve the metal consumes too much time,” a request to the university began. “This throttles our total output, so we ask for an improvement.”

From a different perspective, this demand for productivity could be interpreted as a problem of accessibility. The metal-carving work requires too much skill, making it impossible for anyone but a few specialized monks to perform. Redesign the process to be simpler and easier.

“Regarding the metal-carving issue,” the university faculty—still lacking proper buildings but already brimming with ideas—suggested a series of alternatives. “What if we mimicked the ‘lathe’ that the Nameless One distributed to the jewelers long ago? Would that not make the work significantly easier?”

Many of these initial suggestions failed or proved impractical for the field. The professors, though chosen from among the most skilled craftsmen, could not be experts in every niche. Yet, their research occasionally provided revolutionary turning points.

There is a reason technological progress was so sluggish in the pre-modern era. Humans live by inertia, and society is maintained by that same momentum. A craftsman can survive by working exactly as his father did, passing on identical techniques without change. Furthermore, rapid development both advances and destroys a society. One only has to look at the medieval guilds and their fierce dedication to maintaining technical levels and controlling production to see why.

But the factories and monasteries of the Union had no old society to protect. The Continental Covenant was only a few years old, and a proper government had not existed in Virginia for even a single generation. They had only two commandments to follow:

Produce more goods for more people. Offer nobler labor to more people.

Beyond these, they had nothing to lose. Consequently, they followed the university’s advice without resistance. It was thanks to this lack of friction that the participation rate in the monastic labor movement jumped by another ten percent. Those who had previously been excluded due to poor craftsmanship were now able to join the collective labor. Though it was only a ten percent increase, it represented tens of thousands of new laborers—a number sufficient to spawn countless new factories and monasteries.

Soon, the factory owners and Abbots began to tilt their heads in wonder. While it was true that their influence had expanded with the new influx of labor, the growth was far outstripping their expectations. No one could pinpoint the exact reason, but a profound, subterranean change was shifting the very foundation of the community.

***

In the 21st century, people often view the early modern period of the 16th and 17th centuries as the twilight of religion.

This is a half-truth at best.

While it is true that the Reformation broke the absolute power of the Catholic Church and no religious movement ever again drove society with such singular force after the Great Religious Wars, the reality was far more complex. The very fact that a wildfire of reform swept across Europe and drew almost every nation into wars of faith proves the intense piety of the era. People were fervent in their pilgrimages, dedicated to charity, and aggressive in their persecution of “heretics” like Jews and witches. They bought indulgences with zeal, and the ranks of those wishing to become monks were always full.

Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries remained an era dominated by religious passion. But why? Why did tens of millions of people, not just the elite, pray to the heavens with such fervor for centuries? Among many reasons, one stands out: they had nothing else to be passionate about.

Religion was everything. Every holiday and festival was tied to a religious calendar. For the masses struggling to survive, these events were the only outlets for their energy, causing them to cling even more tightly to their faith. Life on earth was too wretched to merit much attention, and even if one did care, it was unlikely to change. Thus, focusing on the eternal glory of heaven was the most economical choice. People did not expect their tomorrow to be different from their today, but they believed that every day spent in faith brought them closer to infinite celestial splendor.

Perhaps the cynical atheists of the future were right: when theaters multiply, purses grow heavy, and hope is discovered in the present life, people stop searching for it in the clouds. When a path to prosperity and social climbing opens up, man naturally grows cold toward the life beyond.

This logic began to apply to the people of the Virginia community.

“Ah, greetings, Nameless One…!”

“O Nameless One! Please, look this way!”

It wasn’t that they grew cold toward religion—how could they, when the proof of heaven walked before their eyes? The Angel who had granted them a new life and a new homeland was a living testament to their faith. However, their lives had become too brilliant for them to focus only on heaven. For the first time, they were able to satisfy their own desires.

Initially, they indulged in wild extravagance, draping themselves in multiple layers of fur, adorning their clothes with jewels, and obsessing over building larger houses. They spent their wealth as quickly as it came. They were intoxicated by this newfound affluence, reveling in rare foods and fine drinks.

But as I said, commonality cannot satisfy. Once wealth became common, it too became something one could grow tired of. While some sought honor and spiritual elevation in the monasteries, others began to harbor different thoughts. They had lived lives steeped in religion, and upon coming here, they had learned a new way to live. They were bored of luxury, yet they did not wish to throw themselves back into the old, narrow religious life. They had already tasted too much of what the world had to offer.

“Say, Taron? What are your sons up to these days?”

“My sons? Why do you ask?”

“You’re getting on in years. You should think about your legacy.”

“Hmm… you’re right. I’m training them to take over the factory.”

“Is that all? You should look further ahead.”

Taron, a Welshman who had risen from a common carpenter to a respectable factory owner, found himself lost in thought after such a conversation with his neighbors. What should he do with his children?

“What will happen after you’re gone?” his friend asked. “You must think of your lineage.”

This particular friend had recently been participating in the monastery’s activities with renewed vigor and had sent all his children to the university. Every spare coin he had was invested in his children’s education. Taron felt a sense of dissonance at being told to care for a “lineage”—he was, after all, just a carpenter—but he found himself nodding in agreement. “Yes, I suppose it’s time I gave it some thought.”

Upon returning home, he felt a strange fluttering in his chest. Taron decided to send his children to the university and simultaneously began to scale back the frequency of his lavish banquets. He reduced the number of luxury items in his home and simplified the meals served at his table. His family was initially bewildered by the change, but they accepted it as he became more energetic in his daily affairs.

Taron took the portion of wealth he used to spend on luxury and used it to expand his newest factory. To prepare his children for the university, he hired retired knights and technicians as tutors. He poured more hours into his work, cutting back on time spent in indulgence and pleasure—as if the work itself had become the goal. Taron couldn’t identify the exact cause of his transformation; he only knew that his friend’s words had acted as a catalyst.

After I’m gone. 

A legacy that wouldn’t end with his death. Wealth. Permanence. A lasting glory that continued even after the grave—but one that repeated here on earth, rather than in the celestial realm.

Many moved as Taron did. Without even realizing the shift was occurring, they began to trim their excesses. Some built new factories; some established new monasteries; some sent their children to the university. Reinvestment had begun in earnest—for their businesses and for their lives. They strove to educate their children, run their factories, and steadily grow their wealth, seeking a permanence that would last through their children and their children’s children. They had learned to be honest about their desires.

In a sense, they made the same choice they had when they were consumed by religion. Having achieved most of what they could on earth, they dreamed of eternal glory and power. More wealth, more glory. Temporarily forgetting Jesus’s counsel about storing treasures in heaven, they began to carefully gather their treasures here on earth.

It had been four years since the planning of the massive construction projects following the Queen’s death. While Virginia was now a land of steamboats, breakwaters, paved roads, and universities, this internal shift was perhaps the greatest change of all. A traveler from the 21st century might have looked upon it and called it the seed of the capitalist spirit.

And then… the blood-soaked year of 1618 arrived.