Smoke still clung to the air when Phillip arrived at the crash site. Not from fire, but from the geyser of steam still leaking from ruptured boiler tanks. The twisted iron frames of the two locomotives lay motionless on the tracks, locked together like two beasts that had collided head-on with unstoppable force. One engine had ridden halfway over the other. Steel wheels had jumped the rail. Timber carriages splintered like matchwood. One third-class wagon was almost flattened entirely.

Bodies were already removed, covered with linen sheets along the embankment, but Phillip still felt like he could see them. A woman's torn bonnet hung from a broken coupling rod. A child's wooden toy lay crushed against a wheel. Splinters of carriage wood, jagged rail iron, shards of broken glass—scattered across the field.

He stepped down from the carriage.

Henry followed silently. He didn't carry ledgers today. He didn't say anything.

The Duke of Wellington stood further down the tracks, speaking to a local magistrate. He looked older than Phillip had ever seen him. He spotted his son but didn't wave. Only nodded, quietly.

Commander Vale, recently returned from Portsmouth for unrelated inspections, stood near a group of engineers and railway stewards. When he saw Phillip, he looked relieved—then grim.

Phillip walked to the center of the wreckage. Men paused when he passed: railway surveyors, engineers, constables, coroners, even dock workers who had come from Portsmouth to help recover bodies. Most of them knew him. Some had worked with him. Some had family members who might be under those linen sheets.

One of the engineers began to speak, but Phillip lifted a hand. Not to silence him, but because he didn't trust himself to answer.

He walked forward slowly, boots crunching against broken ballast. He reached the locomotive wreck—the one from the northbound line. Its smokestack was bent sideways. The front buffers buried deep into the opposing tender.

A blackened engineer's cap lay against the rail. Not crushed. Just sitting there.

Phillip crouched.

He didn't touch it.

Henry approached quietly. "They say it happened at dusk. Both trains running full speed. Neither expected the other."

"And no signal?"

"No signal," Henry confirmed. "Only scheduled time charts and manual dispatch. The line was single track. One train was delayed. The other left early. They didn't know."

Phillip stood again. He looked at the rails—one long strip, uninterrupted through the countryside. The very efficiency he had praised—fast lines, direct routes, minimum stops—now made deadly flaws clear.

Vale stepped over fragments of carriage wood, stopping beside him.

"They had runners," Vale said. "Men who carried instructions from station to station. But runners are slow. Horses faster, but not fast enough. Messages only move as fast as legs do."

Phillip didn't respond.

The Duke of Wellington approached, quiet, deliberate. He looked at the wreckage, not at his son.

"I rode horseback," the Duke said, voice low, "past three villages. There were people standing in the road. Waiting. No one knew if their families were on board."

Phillip turned to him. The Duke looked older than yesterday.

"There must be a faster way," the Duke said. "Not for trains. That work has been proven. But for information. Something must travel faster than horses, faster than men. Something invisible, instantaneous." He looked at Phillip. "The Admiralty will ask you soon—can such a thing exist?"

Phillip looked at the two locomotives. Twisted metal. Destroyed lives. Two powerful machines—incapable of knowing each other existed until it was too late.

He spoke at last. "I don't know if it exists."

Henry, standing silently behind him, almost looked surprised.

Phillip continued. "But I know it must."

That evening, they gathered in the local stationmaster's office—one of the few buildings within miles sturdy enough to hold a meeting. The walls smelled of damp wood and burnt coal. On a central table lay sketches, crumpled schedules, handwritten dispatch logs. Phillip stood at the head of the table—not because he was asked to, but because everyone kept looking at him.

"This was not a mechanical failure," he said. "The wheels held. The boilers didn't rupture before impact. The rails did not bend. The brakes were applied."

Several engineers nodded. They had already found the skid marks.

"It was not a fault of steel," Phillip continued. "It was a failure of timing. A failure of communication."

Henry stood by the ledger, silent.

Phillip drew a single line on a blank sheet of paper.

"One line of track," he said. "One. Trains share it. Yet, if one leaves early, or one is delayed, everything falls apart. Because no one knows where anything is."

The magistrate nodded somberly.

Phillip looked at him. "What time did the northbound train depart?"

"Seventeen minutes late," the magistrate said.

"And the southbound?"

"Six minutes early."

Phillip looked down at the track diagrams. "Twenty-three minutes. That's all it took."

He paused.

Commander Vale leaned forward. "Then the question is not how to build stronger trains, or wider tracks. The question is—how do we send warning in time?"

A railway steward sighed bitterly. "We send a man on horseback, carrying a note. Or we send a runner. But when distances grow…"

He didn't finish.

Phillip's hand moved across the paper. He drew another line, parallel. Not a track—just a line. Then, he drew marks across it at even intervals.

"These are stations," he said. "Waypoint posts, lantern towers, mile markers. They already exist. Men walk from one to another carrying information." He paused. "But what if those stations were connected—not by men—but by something faster?"

Vale frowned. "Something faster than horses?"

"Something faster than steam," Henry added.

Phillip didn't smile. He was thinking.

The Duke watched him quietly.

"They use copper wire," the Duke said suddenly.

Everyone turned.

He continued, calmly. "Miners in Cornwall. They send signals through copper wire. They say it carries electric current. Rings a bell when the line breaks. They use it to monitor mine shafts."

Phillip turned fully to his father.

"No message," the Duke said. "Just a signal. But the signal… travels through the wire. Faster than anything."

"How fast?" Phillip asked.

The Duke shook his head. "They say… instant."

That word did not fade in the room. It stayed.

Instant.

Phillip sat down, not because he was tired—but because he needed to sketch. His hand moved. Lines. Signals. Copper. Stations. A machine—not to move trains, but to move information.

Henry watched him. "Phillip. What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking of the ones my father said, instant communication."

He knew one, and that technology is called telegraph.

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