"...I can't get my hands on any Darwinist critters easily. A stormwalker or landship would fit that bill nicely, I don't think you have walking tanks in your world? Not exactly the kind of thing I can buy from Bar. Maybe a little one, minus guns. I could steal a few pieces of tech from the camp but that unpauses time out there and probably warns everyone."

"Is there anything that's made completely of metal?"

"I don't really think so? Maybe mechanical calculators, but you have those too. Everything impressive enough to be proof has some fittings and stuff. I could probably install those, though, if I choose something mostly made of metal. You thinking that Emily can make one?"

"If you can draw up plans or something, yeah."

"Hmm... Yeah, I can probably do that."

"Sounds like a plan, then. What're you planning to do about fittings?"

"Pick something that needs as few as possible, put them on my tab from Bar. Hm... Would a walking scout thing, maybe ten feet tall, with a mount point for a machine gun and rockets be convincing?"

"Maybe. I think we could probably build something that fulfilled that description if we really wanted to, do you know if plans for a civilian thing that operates off the same principles would be available through Bar?"

"Definitely. I imagined you wanted military hardware, though, to help with the proof thing."

"Right, the civilian model is to establish that these run on principles that we don't have and would have a hard time inventing before asking you to do the work of drawing up plans for the military one."

Walta asks Bar for the schematics published in a certain scientific journal on control mechanism theory.

They operate on physical principles, sure. Engines provide the power. But the methods used for balancing it, to compensate for oversteering, to control the things so elegantly - that's all new. Maybe some experimental robots running on computers could do it too, but these don't use any computers at all. Essentially just fancy clockwork.

"Ooh, wow, yeah, this kind of thing'll do great."

"Nice! We drew a lot of inspiration from the Darwinists to hear it told, how animals move, but there's lots of tricksy cleverness in here either way."

"People in my world draw a lot of mechanical inspiration from animals too but we don't have Darwinists to copy from."

"I suppose we possibly had better groundwork, more detailed study of animal movement? Hm."

"I think a lot of the things we do are more efficient...it takes a lot more motive force to take a step, especially with metal legs, than to turn a wheel."

"Yeah, the biggest reason to use walkers is their adaptability and flexibility. Trains, trams, passenger craft - none of those walk. Though a lot of effort goes in to making the walk more efficient too."

"What exactly do you mean by passenger craft?"

"Airships, landships, and seaships that are meant for civilian use only. Except landships don't work at all without legs of some kind."

"What are your roads like?"

"They're... Roads? I'm not sure what you mean by that."

"In our world people mostly get around on land in wheeled vehicles. Are your roads not in good enough condition for wheels to be practical?"

"Wheels work. Quite well in some cases, especially going from town to town. Roads are usually a lot slower than taking a train or ship though. And owning a private car is an upper-class thing. Or, like, a tractor if you're a farmer."

"They get less expensive over time. It's more common than not to own one, by our time. Are landships less expensive?"

"Buying a landship ticket every day, or just train tickets, to go to work and using the trams to do shopping and such is cheaper and much less hassle than owning a car or a fast walker of your own for most folks."