A Helping Hand

When one lives in a city, one would expect that living in it would be pleasant, or at least not too unpleasant. Unfortunately, as a city grows, problems begin to acc.u.mulate which makes living in the city increasingly uncomfortable.

One key issue that faces large cities is the disposal of sewage. In medieval times, people often dumped the contents of their chamber pots directly onto the streets. This of course leads to the streets being completely filthy and often people would have to wade through their own excrement. If a city became overly large without a well functioning sewage system, it would be constantly enveloped in an awful stench.

That is why, building the sewage system in Hermes was one of the first priorities. This was paired with the introduction of toilets which removed human waste from homes into the sewers. After traveling through the underground pipes, the sewage would eventually be taken out of the city. With such a system, the city would be free of the smell of human excrement.

There was only one problem left, what to do with the raw sewage. There was the lazy solution, to simply dump it into the river. Of course, this would be highly irresponsible and would lead to the pollution of the waterways. People living downstream would end up suffering from diseases from drinking the water. In order to preserve the water quality so that it may be used by others, there needed to be a way to treat the wastewater to make it safe.

Back on Earth, there was a complicated series of processes used in wastewater treatment plants. First, large tanks would be used to settle the wastewater and solid waste would be skimmed off and removed. Then, various bacteria would be employed to decompose the remaining organic material in the wastewater. After that, the water would be filtered through sand to remove more particles and also filtered through activated carbon. Then the water would be treated with various chemicals to disinfect the water, and then more chemicals would have to be added to remove those chemicals.

Overall, it was a very complicated process, and many of the necessary processes required technologies far more advanced than what was available to Hermes. So, in the beginning there wasn't much option other than to remove the solid waste to be buried and dump the water into the river.

However, circ.u.mstances were such as to allow a solution to appear. This solution was of course only made possible by magic.

A recently awakened witch named Jenny had an ability that on the surface, appeared to mostly only be useful for combat purposes. Her power allowed her to summon a pet which looked somewhat like a lizard. Once she summoned it the creature wouldn't disappear even in the presence of God's Stones of Retaliation. However, she could only have one at a time. If it died then she could summon a different one.

The creature was initially quite small and it didn't seem to be useful for much. However, Jenny discovered that after feeding it food, it was able to grow larger. Initially, the creature was only able to eat things that were normally thought of as food for animals. Once Jenny attended more biology classes and learned about the nature of cellular respiration and how energy was produced in cells, her ability underwent an evolution.

Now, Jenny's creature was able to eat essentially all kinds of biological material. Even the smallest creatures like bacteria could be eaten. Learning about all the different kinds of life that existed really broadened Jenny's worldview.

The creature was amphibious and was thus able to survive both in and out of water. Jenny spent much of her day accompanying the creature and playing with it. Her creature soon became like a close friend and she named it Levi. Levi would often spend his days eating and as it ate it grew larger and larger and thus was able to eat even more.

The food needed to support Levi was quite astronomical. There seemed to be no limit to how much it could eat. As more material went in, the creature just seemed to get larger. It was very expensive to feed Levi.

Then, Steven thought of a solution to solve two of his problems at once. Levi could be used to clean up the sewage by eating it.

The wastewater was now redirected to fill up large tanks, and once those tanks were full Levi was put in to swim around. During this time, all of the organic material in the tanks would end up being consumed, leaving the clean water behind. The water would be very clear as the particles would all end up being eaten up. Even many microorganisms would be eliminated, leaving the water very clean.

The water was safe enough that it could be fed back into the intake of the water system after going through the same disinfection that the ordinary river water would also undergo before entering the water system. Now, Hermes could reduce the amount of water that it had to take from the river and it wouldn't be outputting harmful waste products.

Jenny and Levi seemed quite happy with the arrangement.

One afternoon, Jenny ran over to Levi after finishing class. The treatment facility built to house Levi was quite a distance away so Jenny had to travel pretty far. Even so, she would come over every day to play with him.

Upon seeing Jenny run over, Levi jumped out of the tank toward Jenny who caught him in a hug. Jenny's clothes got soaked, but she didn't mind. She often rode on Levi who was actually able to move quite fast now that he was large. It was like having her own carriage. She would also play fetch. Of course, she would have to make sure the ball wasn't something that Levi was going to eat, otherwise she would quickly run out.

The girl and her monster frolicked on the grassy field. An observer would never suspect the important role that they played in making the city pleasant to live in.