Chapter 30: The Water Tower and the Bathhouse

What? Steam-Pressurized Water Pump? The term was utterly foreign to me, a string of technical jargon from a world I didn't know. Yet there it was, clear as a bell in my mind, a label for the strange, hissing apparatus before me.

This must be another of Parula's memories, I reasoned, trying to find a logical explanation for the impossible. I had experienced this several times now since being thrust into her body—these fragmented pieces of knowledge, surfacing only when I saw the object they related to. But this felt different. It wasn't like remembering something, a gentle unfurling of the past. It was more like having a page from a madman's engineering manual branded directly onto my brain, a sudden, jarring download of alien information. So, Parula must have seen this machine before and heard someone name it. That had to be it. It was the only explanation that wasn't terrifying. When I asked Jared, however, he just shook his head, his expression blank. He'd never seen the thing before, let alone knew its name. Strange. For a simple beggar girl who couldn't read or write, Parula had apparently known a great deal.

Just then, another wave of information, more detailed and horrifyingly technical this time, flooded my consciousness. The pump works by forcing high-pressure steam down a primary conduit into the well shaft, displacing the water and forcing it up a secondary pipe into the reservoir. A dedicated boiler house must be nearby, connected via the insulated pressure conduit.

No. This was impossible. This was not a memory. How could Parula have known any of this? These weren't just names; this was an understanding of mechanics, of physics. A little girl from the slums wouldn't know words like "conduit" or "pressure," let alone understand the principles of a steam boiler. This knowledge wasn't hers. It was mine, but it wasn't from my past. It was new. It was an implant. But before I could spiral into the terrifying implications of that thought, my eyes followed the path of the conduits as indicated by the alien information in my head. And in that direction, I saw a building that made my heart leap with a sudden, desperate hope.

It was a bathhouse. A grand, domed structure, its copper roof stained green with age, with four tall chimneys venting plumes of clean, white steam into the hazy sky. Its windows were paned with alternating pink and blue glass, glowing warmly from within, and a heavy curtain shielded the entrance from prying eyes. Next to it, four massive, riveted boilers sat like great iron beasts, constantly sighing out clouds of hot steam, their pipes connected directly to the water tower beside us. I couldn't read the sign above the door, but the purpose of the building was unmistakable. From the design, and from the sight of patrons entering and leaving with wooden trays carrying soap, towels, and clean clothes, I knew what it was. Another wave of knowledge, unbidden, confirmed it. A public bathhouse. It drew its water from the well, heated it to scalding in the great coal-fired boilers, and then used the resulting steam to power the pump, creating a self-sustaining cycle of water and heat.

It all made a grim sort of sense. The cramped, squalid tenements I had seen, most without private privies or baths, many without any plumbing at all… how else could the residents of this district maintain even a basic level of hygiene? The water tower couldn't possibly supply every flat, not with such a strange, inefficient steam-powered pump. So, the residents relied on public facilities. A public latrine for their waste, and a public bathhouse for their cleanliness.

I no longer cared where this strange knowledge was coming from. My entire being, my very soul, was now focused on that bathhouse, on the promise of hot, clean water. A bath was more than a luxury; it was a ritual, a memory of a civilized life, a way to wash away the filth and the horror and feel human again.

“Parula, we’ve found the well. What now? Should I go find a bucket?” Jared’s voice broke through my reverie, pulling me back to our immediate, grim reality. “Eh, Parula?” He tapped my shoulder.

“Ah! Brother Jared,” I said, my voice suddenly light, adopting the affectionate, wheedling tone I knew Parula must have used, a tool I was learning to wield. “How about we go look over there?” I pointed towards the bathhouse, my heart pounding with a desperate, unfamiliar hope.

“Where? The… the bathhouse?” He looked at me, utterly bewildered, as if I had suggested we try to fly to one of the three moons. “Parula, you want to go for a bath? What for? There’s no need for that.” For Jared, a bath was a cold splash in the canal, or a drenching in a sudden downpour. For the people of the slums, for the forgotten dregs of this city, bathing was a foreign concept, a bizarre ritual for the rich and the idle. But for me, for the person I used to be, it was a necessity, a desperate, aching need I felt with every fiber of my being.