“Incoming hail, Captain.”
“On screen Ms Darta.”
“Aye, Captain”
“What is this, I said on screen!”
“I am sorry Captain, the ads are unskippable since the last firmware update”
“I’ll be in my ranting room”
Edited 24d ago
poweronstorytoot
I grew up in countryside networked with cane trams. Diesel motors pulled trains of dozens of room-sized wire bins of sugar cane through the fields and towns to the mills. We fished off the rail bridges, rode on the brake vans, and danced amid the ashfall from the fires used to prepare the two meter high fields for harvesting. That all-summer plume of smoke from the mill isn’t smoke. It’s steam. 150 year old steam engines power the mills, boilers heated by dragons fed with bagasse, the sugar rich fiber left over after crushing and pressing the cane. NOTHING flames hotter than a dragon on a sugar high. But won’t they use their flame to melt the chains, you ask? Darling, those dragons aren’t chained; they have a sweet tooth and love the work.