XII. The Age of Electricity and Other Terrible Ideas with Great Lighting
Electricity entered human life like a caffeinated wizard wearing copper.
Suddenly streets glowed at night and people realized darkness had been freeloading all this time.
Bulbs replaced candles, which was good news for houses tired of burning to death because someone sneezed at supper.
Telegraphs let messages outrun horses for the first time, proving that humanity's deepest dream was always "what if gossip, but faster."
Telephones followed, allowing relatives to interrupt you from miles away.
Cities crackled with wires, ambition, and exactly one man in every neighborhood who licked a battery to see what would happen.
Inventors became celebrities.
Frauds also became celebrities.
Sometimes they were the same person wearing a better mustache.
But when the lights came on in a dark room, every human alive had to admit it: science was doing magic now.
At this stage the cats shifted from mystical management to industrial supervision and began sitting on blueprints with terrifying scheme energy.