The Rhevireon Chronicle: The Ascent of the West

by Maxwell F. J. Kaeser

  ‘So what about you, you’ll come or not?’

  ‘I’d rather stick to the wheel, we got to lose no time, this lake can’t be trusted when the sky blindfolded, Senior!’

  23:35, he got to what seemingly was the end of the tunnel, there was a door-panel, it definitely had a similitude with the one at the shop, and a red sign affixed onto it, saying it was a, PRIVATE ENTRÉE. The man with Vitruvian tattoo slipped in.

  ‘Five minutes late, we’ve been waiting for you, I would have asked you to take a seat, but there are none! So a stand would be less improper!’ said the auctioneer, dressed in the black tie, and an unmistakable gas mask; and so they all looked at him, the incognito bidders, posing with their capes on, and masks surrealist; each of them had a bag of leather in hand; the young gentleman nodded in respect, and so they did in return, and then only they stared away; and so he seeped sight around the place, an old pumping station; the floor of which was carpeted, the rag which had a square in the middle, the middle which was calculatedly filled with the bidders in precise congruence to the four equal edges and four equal angles of the square, the square which the courteous intruded had no spare spot within, so he was left out of; hereon, he had to stand by them, apart from them.

  ‘Kings, queens; rooks, bishops; knights, and pawns, let me introduce myself.’ He spokes to them, by his side was a lady, who somehow and for a self-evident reason into the place she summoned up an aphrodisiac genius loci, and recognizably enough, she wore no mask. The auctioneer continued, ‘I am a life member of the Sub-rosa Auction Click of Trustees with a degree of Treasurer. The body is responsible for selecting what is to be sold and what not across auction houses of the megalopolis, assembling few of the best auctioneers out there. While she, is my assistant for tonight, and so I’m your official auctioneer for this session, for which the Trustees had this.’ Onto a table, the lady brought a little box, an aluminium box.

  ‘Thank you,’ he politely said, and he unlocked it, and they were on fire to see. ‘Yes, this is it, the nomenclatured, the Metaphormula.’

  Inside the padded case were two pairs of ampules and two hypodermic syringes.

  ‘Each of these sealed vials contain the Metaphormula, but, what is the Metaphormula?’ and a brief lecture had commenced, ‘first off, I ought to give notice that this is no larceny item, the Trustees have gotten rights to this discovery exclusively. No source I’m allowed to disclose, nevertheless. Secondly, here is secret of the trade: the upper pair of ampoules has each containing a viral vector; the other pair, a helper virus. But what is a viral vector exactly? Molecular biology speaking, a viral vector is a pathogenic virus, a modified one, utilized as a medium, that is, to transfer genetic material into the cell of the host it infects; it is because viral germs have throughout the history of horizontal gene transfer developed an active molecular mechanism to deliver their genomes into cells of the organism they contaminate; however, our virus is helper-dependent, that is, sterilised, it had the enzymes necessary for viral replication deleted; that’s why, there’s the helper virus, so as to offset the deficiency in proteins required to produce copies of the viral vector, hence, instead of generating more copies of its pathogenic agents, after infiltrating the targeted cell, it will regenerate only the virions carrying the sequence we designated for it, encoded in DNA. If this is the procedure, then, what is the solution? It is the genome of a mutant species whose bloodline traces back to the exclusion areas of the Eastern Europe, this is a species that was introduced to our ecosystem by some mad scientists only to bad results, what we did in our labs was to extract sequences from the genomic loci of interest, had it modified, tested, corrected, and tested, but failed. Yes, every in vivo experiment we had undertaken failed, either the transduction was prevented by the immune system of the host, or that even after the transcription was executed properly, that translation of the gene of interest inside cell of the host met a success rate of over ninety five percent, we saw an abnormal aggregation of gene product developed correlated with an overactivity of cancerous oncogenes, or, that a viral replication occurred and the host was affected, by the disease the pathogen virus we exploited as a vector had carried, encoded in RNA, due to an ineffective deletion. Anyhow, the positive side about it still, the expression of our modified gene was accomplished at least once; and what does that mean, is this!’ the lady unveiled a glass box, inside which was, ‘carnivorous nocturnal moths.’ Deformed creatures, feeding on meat.

  ‘For this!’ exclaimed one of the caped men,‘take the risk of a virus infection, develop a malignant tumor, or spend the rest of my life paralyzed, for this! And above all, pay for it, huh! what logic is that? Hell no, this is not for me.’

  ‘This is an experimentation, no more, no less.’ Responded the auctioneer punctually, comprehensibly it could not have been the first instance of him dealing with an unhappy bidder; it seemed he was dead sure, thoroughly knowledgeable of what he talked about,‘to prove my claim to you, you have my warrant, the human anatomy is something different, hence, your cell will react differently to the genetic expression, only to evolve into, the ubermensch.’

  ‘Above or under, bullocks!’ vehemently, the same man expressed his disapproval in a furious undertone that revealed his foreign sounding accent, he took back to spout,‘neither I’m persuaded nor impressed by this freak show, yes it failed, failed to meet my expectations, I’m out.’

  ‘Exclude him.’ The auctioneer ordered his assistant. There were three adjacent doors, she opened him the one in the middle, ‘follow the tunnel, there’s an elevator.’ The man whose foreign demeanour, cast over the assembly a charm of fiery vagary to tear off his masquerade, so they discover his true identity, and pry an admission out of him; inadvertently exited the scene from the door in the middle.

  ‘Two pairs of ampules,’ the auctioneer segued with the same technical language, indifferent to the minor incident,‘with the upper contains a viral vector, the lower pair has a helper virus, therefore, we have pairs correlative; the X pair column, and Y pair column. The thing is, they vary in potential, that is, the X genome has a temporary effect on the human body, its genetic makeup was modified as to fully express itself inside cell of the host, before it will gradually turn recessive, and eventually be dominated by the hereditary inferior genotype of the host; the Y genome, anyhow, was designed to be permanent. It’s up to you.’ He clapped hands, and said,‘so let’s start this, I think rules of this silent auction are easy to comply with, there’s no registration, I set the value and initial price, and you make your bids. By rising the hand and pointing with one finger, to ascend the price by five thousand dollars, two extended digits, for ten grands, and so on, an open hand, for fifty thousands at once, and crossed fingers for thirty-five thousands. The base price is set at the forty grands mark, which is written on the board, on which every new price shall be tagged with chalk. Who ascends the bid?’ he signaled them to begin.

  The first bid was made, with five thousands from the disguised in a Servetta mutta; instantaneously, the assistant proceeded to mark the latter with chalk onto the black board, a wooden trestle propped up the board; accordingly, the gentleman with the Vitruvian tattoo rose his hand with four stretched fingers, twenty thousands; his move was met with fifteen thousands from a third bidder; then four digits toted up the price by a fourth, a Pantalone; an open hand from the fifth bidder, a Bauta; and the masque game progressed on and on; a tacit nexus of interconnected plexuses of the black market.

  Elsewhere, in the midst of the ocean.

  Geovany shut door of the berthing, he approached his wife, Hoyden quailed against the wall, he kissed her, but she refused to; ‘no, I said no,’ she yelled at him, ‘you don’t want to talk, not want to eat, to drink, but this,’ he forced her into it, ‘this doesn’t have to do with you, you’re mine and so you’ll do as I please!’ he abused her, tore her clothes off, she writhed away from his grasp, a crystal glass reached to the ground, and, there was knock on the door.

  01:05 a.m
., it was long now since the séance had been carried into effect, the auctioneer however, hadn’t ever changed his position, thrusting his hand in his bosom, beneath his shirt.

  As it devolved into a dichotomous auction, the game was constricted to subsume but two bidders, the innominate one behind the Larva mask, and the man with the Vitruvian tattoo; if only he knew if it were truly a male, if his rival in reality was a woman behind that mask, then psychology would play out, the female condition. With only eighty five thousands he’d left so far, far from it he was.

  The innominate held up his arm, with a five thousand offer; forthwith, the man with the Vitruvian tattoo, bade by three, making him on top of it for a while; until a four regained the innominate the take over; before he once again was countermoved, as the man with the Vitruvian tattoo multiplied the price by a four; right off the bat, a fifty thousand from the innominate summed it up; hence, the assistant marked the sum; and, nothing, the auctioneer must signal end of the game, as long as none any further bid; and thusly he did bid, when he rose his hand, he with the clawed mask crossed fingers, thirty-five thousand dollars from his part, and the auctioneer retreated, the innominate about to hold up his arm, to make his bid one more time, he however withdrew; the masqueraded men winked at each other, and the man behind the Larva mask nodded his approval, his loss; ergo, the auctioneer signaled culmination of the séance, his assistant marked the final price, and he with the Vitruvian tattoo, segued into a state of elation, he snickered, behind his own guise.

  ‘The Metaphormula sold at three hundred and fifty thousand grands.’ The auctioneer confirmed.

  The caped men, stepped aside and made him a narrow passage to let him pass, likewise, he advanced through, only then he did pay attention to the position of their feet, as identical as they bechanced, they formed an oblong angle, and he could smell a mélange of all these fragrances, their costly perfumes; now that he was at the presence of the auctioneer, he was handed over the box to contain the Metaphormula, in return the man with Vitruvian tattoo submitted him the bag of leather, the assistant inspected it, the bag full of bill straps; upon validation, she guided him to one of the three doors, the one to the left.

  ‘Follow the tunnel, there’s a—see for yourself!’ said the auctioneer.

  ‘It’s alright, everything’s the way it should’ve been.’ Geovany talked to the vigilant skipper, and back he closed the door, he carried on to button his shirt off, while Hoyden stood there, with her dress ripped off, and she no longer did resist him, not anymore, when she let him make the consecrated love to her, what she’d never experienced before, the touch of his hand stifled her breath, she shuddered as he went down from her lips to bury his face into her neck, divulging how enamoured with her he was, that her sovereign ego stirred him the most, telling her this and that in low indistinct insignificant words, the last of which were, ‘you little whore of…’

  Hoyden cut her husband’s throat, with the broken crystal.

  XIV

  SELF-PORTRAIT OF A DOPPELGANGER

  July the 04.

  She bent against the toilet seat, barfed in whatever she’d taste of early that morning, and she ran her hand through her belly, how tight her waist had gotten. With a handkerchief she then wiped her eyelids.

  08:55 a.m., the receptionist had a skim over the list, towards its bottom was the chaplain’s daughter’s name; it was her turn for the trial run, they had her among the many other applicants, the impeccable, svelte women at the waiting room of this modeling agency.

  ‘Nesrin Laraichroyss.’ She stood straight, when she was called upon, ‘just sit down, you should be next.’ She right away was told; Nesrin put the earbuds back.

  Madam Arenithe entered the cathedral, the cathedral she’d daily frequented since that night, the night she was humiliated, kicked outside the Heidentor Grounds. She’d a seat there, her usual place at the pews, and she prayed for her.

  THEY DID IT AGAIN! was the title.

  Professor Nescio riding a bicycle on his way to the Aletheia, stopped by a roadside stall, while leafed through the paper, he got hooked, so more of it he read.

  Gassed to death, nineteen people were found dead at the old pumping station in the Borough 8: the Aures; initial forensic investigation asserts the cause of death to be direct exposure to a lethal dose of poison gas; all except for the nineteenth person who according to our sources was a half naked woman, on whom were no signs of violence or sexual harrassment, excluding the feasibility of human trafficking, eighteen of the other victims wore capes and masks, their corpses were nailed to the ground, arranged in the form of a trefoil knot, their livers were extracted the barber’s way, while their money in leather bags remained untouched, leaving more questions to be answered in a sea of other possibilities, the most likely of which is that of a sub-rosa auction that went wrong; all in a similar vein to an incident, back in the last decade, also attributed to the Sub-rosa’s internal series of retaliations, although the case remains closed to the present day.

  Again and as maintained by our source on condition of anonymity, one of the masked men turned out to be, a senior official under the Occidental Regnum wing of the Neopatrician Party, a pretty hard blow to the card tower they happened to call a coalition government…

  He placed the paper into his satchel, and cycled away.

  ‘Stick that tongue out, and make me a grimace, yep, that’s it!! Stroke your hair, you got fetchin’ wanton ringlets over there, look at that! Six, five, four, and voila!’ blustered the photographer, the cissy type, as she posed for him in a shooting session.

  ‘She’s just we’re looking for,’ noted the agent, to the photographer’s side.

  ‘Okey, you come back tomorrow,’ he spoke to the girl as he was done, ‘so you’ll know, we land you in or nope, bye bye!!’ Nesrin left the photo studio.

  The portrait painting of himself concernedly stared him in the face, the portrait of his child self hung on wall of the lounge room, the lounge space at his residence, a villa on the hillside; above anything else, the room reminded one in a gallery of art, the exotic private collection decorated every corner, looted artifacts; a sample of the loadings brought home during the periodic hostile expeditions, undertaken by the triple Os throughout the continent, the homeland distributor was of course, the auctions; while the clientele, people like him; who took proper care of himself and believed in hedonism as a lifestyle, who went to bed early and got up early, except for the weekends when he didn’t sleep at all, someone in his early twenties who every morning abode by his quotidian chores, who worked out his fit body, had steam shower, before he would neatly trim his stubble with straight razor and apply mousse to his hair, who dressed semi-formal and listened to blue-eyed soul while he had breakfast consistent with a balanced diet in the terrace by the sweeping-around garden, who didn’t drive to work or got-by by any other means of transportation, simply because he didn’t have a job, although he had an occupation, specifically, occupation as a self-claimed artist, who spent his days facing glass mirrors, making self-portraits, paintings that don’t sell, in other words, someone heir to a rolling uncle.

  The oil painting of a boy with a symbol, in fact, was the only masterpiece he was entitled by will to, yet it hung on the same crooked nail where it had always been, amongst the many other works by his late uncle, the prolific painter, a professional who did his best to pass down the knack to his nephew, but passed away without, and the other works were sold off, by a broke with spoiled taste nephew, who grew up to become, a gentleman with a Vitruvian tattoo, whose nickel-and-dime self-portraits had the signature, Gilbert V.N..

  The villa had a reputation, as a resort for the Zentrum’s créme de la créme; every weekend they congregated there, the entrepreneurs, highbrows, celebs, and law makers, without flouting their p’s and q’s to gossip, entertain one another, and share their interest in art, reprehending postmodernism, ignoring symbolism, and praising classicism; a recreational thing for them, extra-charge for him.

&
nbsp; At 14:25, that the tableaus had long gone, without prospect in life, with a credit balance, the real estate mortgaged; the box was on the ceramic table, and a potassium cyanide capsule.

  At the apartment complex.

  He got into his jacket leaving his place, before she’d step in his way.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she spoke to him, Madam Arenithe, now seemed to have gotten annealed at Hoyden’s absence,‘you know what your doctor said!’ she added.

  ‘Yeah, I won’t be late.’ Dusk responded.

  ‘Just in case I left for the store before you came, late as yesterday, get your dinner out the fridge!’

  ‘Don’t have to, I’ll have something out.’ He took his leave of the apartment.

  At the villa by the hillside.

  He nervously pulled the plunger, tapped the syringe, and looked his distorted painting in the eye, Gilbert pierced the hypodermic needle into the sore lump, his cervical vertebrae, injected himself to the spinal cord, his pupils dilated, he dropped the ampoule.

  At a red signal, he’d borrowed her truck without her knowing, it wasn’t the Sabath, Arenithe wouldn’t have given him the keys. It was green now, just as Dusk hit the gaz, on the spot he’d to jam the brakes on, and the truck pulled up so hard and slithered the yard, when pedestrians, out of nowhere huddled into the road, she was there, Arenithe amidst them, no that wasn’t her, it must be him yet green about the gills, he should had stayed in bed, but then he’d miss their tryst; tussling with the driving wheel, when his left shoulder not so reliable in plaster.

  Vega emerged from the ashes; day 1, of the metamorphosis.

  At the villa, abruptly he regained consciousness, the lounge had blacked out, the curtain wall giving view of the cityscape, the city lights that were enough to illume the place, became turbid lights, he tried to rise to his feet, but he stumbled on the nail, his legs failed him, terror-stricken, he crawled by the wall, searched for the light switch, pushed the switch, no light, none in his eyes, he was blind; he crept towards outside, no keys to the outside, confined inside, within a box, disoriented, the box, he evoked string of the events, he wanted to cry for help, but he could not, no voice he had; he groaned, a gravid mare drowned in a peat bog, in delirium, he smashed the pieces of art, nobody heard the rampus, he reached to the mirrors, shattered the glass by the glass, but still didn’t hear the din, he was deaf; demented, he tore at his self-portraits, something presided on his back, inside his back, leeching on his bone marrow, he rummaged through the floor, the pill, he gravely had to get the pill, a scissor, that’s what he got, and he cut into the hump, forming out of his vertebral column, he curled up underneath the table, onto the table was a canvas and palette, unsettling visuals possessed his mind, some kind of an entity, a blind, deaf, voiceless, entity. In a breakdown, Gilbert painted down whatever that he saw, with gusto.