Un éclair de génie

A steam punk short story written for a literary challenge, twenty-four hours to write a short story which had to satisfy some constraints.
I had good fun taking it on, even though I felt uncomfortable with the 18,000-character limit. I had to speed up the ending. I had more than enough material to go on!
Rodolphe is a genius inventor, or close to being one… He's just had a great new idea to present to the Inventorium, the yearly congress of inventors…

Read the short story.