Peterhof Palace Gardens, Saint Petersburg. Late August 1909.
The strategy of making science public to break the firm's monopoly had worked perfectly, but like every action in a dynamic system, it generated a reaction of equal magnitude and opposite direction. Or, in this case, an unexpected visit.
The publication of the Neva Papers in Berlin not only infuriated London's bankers; it awakened the curiosity of Russia's brightest and most frustrated engineers.
The clandestine meeting was organized far from the court's ears, near the Samson Fountain, where the roar of water falling on the golden statue of the lion provided a natural sonic barrier against spies.
Alexei was there, officially playing. Dressed in a white linen sailor suit, he dedicated himself to throwing pebbles into the canal, while a few meters away, Professor Stanislav received the guest.
The newcomer was Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky.
He was barely twenty years old, but his eyes possessed that feverish intensity typical of those who spend more time looking at clouds than the ground they walk on. He didn't dress with a courtier's elegance.
"Professor Stanislav," Sikorsky said, completely ignoring the child playing nearby. He made no bows nor wasted time on social courtesies. "I've read your article in the Prussian Academy's journal. Your calculations on the power-to-weight ratio for internal combustion engines are... revolutionary."
"I'm glad a colleague appreciates the theoretical work," Stanislav responded, puffing out his chest with borrowed pride.
"But there's an error," Sikorsky blurted out.
The pebble Alexei was about to throw stopped in the air. An error? Impossible. Those designs came from 21st-century advanced engineering manuals. They were the perfection of perfection.
"What error?" Stanislav asked, his voice trembling slightly. "Do you mean the thermodynamics?"
"No, the thermodynamics are solid. The error is structural," Sikorsky said, gesturing with hands stained with something. "You and your group propose doubling compression in the cylinders to gain power. But you've forgotten the harmonic resonance of this. If that engine spins at two thousand revolutions per minute with the steel we have available today, the crankshaft will start vibrating like a violin string. And at two thousand one hundred revolutions, it will break from torsional fatigue."
Alexei felt a cold blow to his stomach, colder than the Baltic wind.
Sikorsky was right.
In his theoretical design, Alexei had committed the arrogant engineer's cardinal sin: he had forgotten the material context. In his previous life, crankshafts were forged with heat-treated alloys and computer-balanced, which simply didn't exist in these years. His mind from the future took for granted a material rigidity that was still impossible to achieve.
To better understand the story: He had designed a Ferrari engine to be built with cart steel.
Sikorsky, working with his time's real limitations, had seen the catastrophic flaw that the time traveler had overlooked through pure arrogance.
'He's brilliant,' Alexei thought, feeling a mixture of shame and admiration. 'I need this man. Not as an employee who follows instructions... I want him as a partner who corrects me.'
Alexei dropped the stone and approached the two men, adopting his role of curious and impertinent child. He pulled on Stanislav's jacket sleeve with insistence.
"Professor," he said in a high-pitched voice.
"One moment, Your Highness, we're discussing adult matters," Stanislav commented, nervous about the young genius's presence.
"Tell him to put counterweights," Alexei whispered, digging his nails into the fabric to emphasize the order. "Tell him that if the shaft spins very fast and shakes, it needs balance on the other side."
Stanislav looked at the child, then looked at Sikorsky, and finally swallowed.
"Ahem... Igor Ivanovich. My... young pupil suggests, perhaps naively, that the resonance problem could be mitigated by adding a dynamic counterweight system directly forged into the crankshaft."
Sikorsky blinked. He looked at the professor and then lowered his gaze toward the five-year-old child.
Then he looked at the ground, where Alexei had distractedly drawn with a stick: a circle with opposite weights. A basic dynamic balancing scheme.
Young Igor crouched down, getting at eye level with Alexei. There was no condescension in his gaze, only pure scientific curiosity.
"Integral counterweights?" Sikorsky murmured. His eyes moved rapidly, doing mental calculations of inertia and mass. His face slowly lit up with a smile of understanding. "Of course! That changes the shaft's natural vibration frequency. It shifts the breaking point outside the engine's operating range. We can make it spin at three thousand revolutions and it'll still be smooth as silk!"
Sikorsky jumped up and grabbed Stanislav's hand, shaking it vigorously.
"I want to work with you. I don't care who you really are or why a child draws diagrams in the dirt. H&A Holdings offered me a modern laboratory in Detroit last week, but they only want to buy my patents to store them away. I firmly believe that you and your entourage, Professor, won't do this. Because you didn't do that by releasing the data at the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences."
"Welcome to Neva, Igor Ivanovich," Stanislav said, visibly relieved to see that recruitment had been a success, even if by accident.
Alexei returned to the canal's edge and finally threw his stone.
'Plop.'
He had dodged a large-caliber bullet. His knowledge of the future was a powerful tool, yes, but incomplete. Without the brilliant minds of the present to translate those visions to dirty, limited reality, his inventions were nothing more than fantasies or as they would say in the '80s... just science fiction.
As the sun set, tinting the water gold and blood, Alexei watched as Sikorsky and Stanislav walked away passionately discussing alloys, torsion, and propellers.
He had created a real innovation core. Russia's Aviation Division had just been born prematurely.
But the peace of the moment broke when he saw a familiar figure running toward him. Tatiana came from the palace, breaking protocol by running, with an urgent note clutched in her hand.
Alexei intercepted his sister before she reached the adults. Her face was pale.
"It's a deciphered cable from London, Alyoshaaa," Tatiana gasped.
Alexei unfolded the paper. The message was short and completely changed the game.
[INTELLIGENCE CONFIRMED: BRITISH CONSORTIUM HAS ACQUIRED EXCLUSIVE MINING RIGHTS IN THE KATANGA REGION, BELGIAN CONGO. WITH ORDERS FOR IMMEDIATE EXTRACTION OF THE AREA'S RESOURCES]
Alexei felt a cold that had nothing to do with the sea breeze.
'Katanga.'
For a normal historian, Katanga was copper. But for him, Katanga meant the Shinkolobwe Mine. It meant the purest and richest uranium ore on planet Earth.