by Rob Shepherd
How do I know he was a doctor? That’s easy; because he knew what to give us to fix everything the way we wanted. I just don’t know which kind of doctor he was exactly. Some sort of specialist, I’d say. And definitely one of those smart fellers from another country.
Edie and I were so excited we headed straight home. Didn’t even stop to buy smokes! Once we got in the house we didn’t waste any time. Edie and I drank the potion—which was kinda gritty and tasted like burnt black licorice—and climbed into bed.
Now, according to the old doctor, I was supposed to imagine the female I most hoped our child looked like if we conceived a daughter. My wife was supposed to imagine the male she most hoped our child would look like should we conceive a son. The doctor said it was vital that we focused on our person of choice particularly during—in his words— ‘the transfer of fluids’. That’s when—
Oh, you know?
Okay then.
Edie blushed a little bit when she told me that she’d be picturing that guy with the great cheekbones from all those pirate movies. I thought that was a good choice.
I asked my wife if she thought that vintage pinup model with the dark brown bangs and button nose was due for a comeback. Edie grinned and said, ‘Why not?’
So away we went and I gotta admit, things got pretty hot pretty fast. At least they did for me. I started by focusing on that haircut and those legs, you know? Then I got to thinking about all the money our kid would be raking in once they grew up and made it big. I imagined a hot tub full of hundreds and me diving in. I thought of this big wad of cash, ol’ Ben Franklin grinning back at me over and over and over and -Bam! Next thing I know, the fireworks are going off and Edie’s looking at me kinda surprised.
‘Oh Dewey, was that it?’ she asked. Her eyebrows were halfway up her forehead. ‘I kinda drifted off there for a minute.’
Edie stroked my hair but the look on her face told me somethin’ weren’t quite right.
‘I can’t stop thinking about that old fellow and his office,’ Edie says to me. ‘That fire pit, all the crazy masks n’ such. And especially that little shrunken head hanging there; I just can’t get that shrunken head out of my mind.’
I just nuzzled up beside her and found myself wishing we’d stopped for smokes after all.”
Dewey finished talking and leaned back in his chair. Doc Haggard kept his eyes closed for another minute or so. “A bunch of Ben Franklin heads all in a row, and an authentic shrunken head,” he murmured and looked up. “Dewey, have you or Edie been back to see the doctor?”
“Which doctor?”
“That’s the conclusion I am close to drawing, yes.”
Dewey narrowed his eyes. He secretly wondered if old Doc Haggard might be going senile. “No I mean, which doctor? The old guy in the alley?”
“Yes, Dewey.”
“No. I mean, we tried, but he was closed. Gone. Like he’d never been there.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“The money is gone from our account though, so we didn’t imagine it, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Dewey leaned forward as a new thought suddenly sprang to mind. “Hey Doc, do you think we oughta contact the Better Business Cabinet?”
“Bureau.”
“Yeah, that. Because if this guy was lying—”
“No I don’t believe he was.” Doc Haggard replied. “Let me explain. Nurse Anders and I were using something called a sonogram on Edie there in the other room. We use it to look at the baby while it’s still in the womb. That way we can make sure the baby is healthy and developing like it should.”
Dewey nodded. “Like a sneak preview.”
“Exactly. So first of all, you should know that Edie is pregnant with twins. Secondly, based on the images we’ve seen, the potion worked exactly as advertised, though you may regret your thoughts about shrunken heads and multiple Ben Franklin faces at the moment of climax.”
Dewey’s train of thought finally mustered up enough momentum to leave the station. “Wait a minute. So you’re telling me that we—”
Doc Haggard nodded. “Congratulations to you both on your granted wishes.”
Adrian Ludens lives and works in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He loves exploring ghost towns and watching hockey games. Adrian is the author of Bedtime Stories for Carrion Beetles. Visit him here http://curioditiesadrianludens.blogspot.com/
The Fabled ‘Movingphotographic’ Device of Sigurður Pétursson
By Sergio Palumbo
Það liggur í augum uppi…
(Translation: It lies in the open eyes…)
Old Icelandic proverb
The life of Mr. Sigurður Pétursson was completely turned upside down when the fair-haired, thirty-year-old scientist first received news of the movie camera built by William Friese-Greene. Actually, his daily routine had never been ordinary, so to say, as the young man had always been busy collecting and assembling various machines and weird devices. He often restored them by using any kind of spare material, old instruments, or metallic parts found in the junkyards. He would also salvage parts taken from the dumpsters of the few research facilities existing in the area that experimented with the most disparate fields of magnetism, electricity and the likes. But he had not had any luck in the end, at least so far. During those months he was focusing on the new techniques that had come to light recently, so the scarce details of that new motion-picture film camera, which was apparently capable of taking up to ten photographs per second using perforated celluloid film, made him think that was the right direction to go. These results had been published in a brief report in the British Photographic News on February 28, 1890.
It was of no importance afterwards that the apparent unreliability of the wondrous device developed by Friese-Greene failed to make a good impression during a public demonstration, which was held later that same year. As a matter of fact, the events that such news put into motion seemed greater than the memories of that old — and today almost forgotten — first example of a movie camera.
But seemingly, many new things were happening in Iceland at that time. This was in spite of the fact that, since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark-Norway had become two separate kingdoms via the Treaty of Kiel, and Iceland had remained a Danish colony throughout the entire 19th century. During this time the country’s climate had continued to worsen which resulted in a huge emigration to the New World, particularly Manitoba in Canada. Around 15,000 people out of the original population of 70,000 had already left.
But a national consciousness had arisen, inspired by ideas coming from other European countries, and a real Icelandic independence movement had taken shape starting in the 1850s. This sense of national pride, a true national identity, had continued until 1874 when Denmark finally granted Iceland a constitution and limited home rule, which many people hoped would be expanded later.
In 1897 the young man’s hometown of Reykjavík had a population of only 4,000. Situated in southwestern Iceland, on the shore of a wide bay, it was the heart of economic activity for the entire island. Believed to be the location of the first permanent settlement in Iceland, which the fabled Ingólfur was said to have established around 870 C.E., it hadn’t become an official trading town until early in the 18th century.
The taste of new discoveries, technology never seen before, and powerful industries that you could smell everywhere, coming mainly from northern Europe, had even touched this island far away from the rest of the mainland and from the other traditional Nordic countries. These things combined to fuel the hopes and the aspirations of the few men of science who lived there around, men like Sigurður himself.
For example, having discovered that super-heated geothermal water was available for the taking by simply drilling far enough down for it, the Icelandic people had just begun building unusual structures. These were similar to iron sheds or copper facilities, built next to their houses and on established locations, which used this peculiarity of the area to provide hot water. In so doi
ng, they took advantage of the geothermal water as an agent in the heating of cold, spring water rather than making use of it directly - as its content was too mineral-rich and would cause corrosion and damage to plumbing equipment. Therefore, they were filling the land with small geothermal plants here and there, quickly changing the scenery with floating wooden platforms, tall structures and metallic towers belching steam day-and-night in unusual clouds in a way nobody would have ever expected over the course of the previous centuries.
It was as if everyone could now build and make use of their own small factory, at a small expense, to perform this task of heat exchanging. In fact, if the government would have properly allowed its citizens the freedom of installing such structures and making the right spaces available, Icelanders could have soon become a people of steam entrepreneurs, even more than would have ever been made possible previously in the British Empire or in France as well, bringing about a true the Age of Steam in Iceland.
Just thinking of the local people that was going to turn themselves from peasants and fishers, as they had always been, into men at the head of many small private-owned enterprises — each one endowed with its own free-of-charge energy supply — seemed strange and even difficult to imagine. But that was what the Icelandic country was actually turning into with the passing of years. What if the inhabitants of the island had been more than a few and the recent trends in technology, along with the news of the most interesting finds in the science field, would have reached their coastlines earlier than it actually happened? There were researchers already at work trying to develop systems that could transmit data across very long distances, from one point in Europe to the opposite location on the other side of the world via some incredible means - but Sigurður wasn’t doing that, anyway.
As for himself, the long-haired, excessively fair-skinned scientist — instead of starting and upgrading his own business by means of water as an agent in the heating process — was presently working on a variation of the new machinery developed by Mr. William Friese-Greene that had made a good first impression on him - when he found something that set his research in another, unexpected direction.
But it wasn’t some other news from abroad that made it all happen - on the contrary a day trip he made to Geyser was the event that changed it all in the scientist’s life. And which could have changed everything for the population of the island, too, if only things had gone differently…
Before movie cameras became photographic devices capable of taking a sequence of photographs on strips of film through an intermittent mechanism — which many thought was going to be very popular for private use in the next century — the first tries at getting such a reliable instrument were full of failed attempts, faulty machinery, and experiments that usually made a poor show of themselves around the world. As for Sigurður, the film he had obtained so far, which was meant to be played back later in a movie projector at a specific speed, hadn’t look good enough to make a person’s eyes and brain adequately merge the separate pictures together to create the illusion of motion. Despite all the improvements the man had made and the many upgrades to his ‘Movingphotographic’ camera — using the first device of William Friese-Greene as an example and source of inspiration over the course of those summer months — the outcome of his studies and his sad conclusion was that the mechanism didn’t function the way he really wanted it to. Sigurður seemed to have come to standstill and he didn’t know how he could get something better, eventually.
So the man had took the opportunity offered by an old acquaintance of his that owned a farm not far from the city center, and went out for a trip, in order to clear his mind and find some inspiration that could prove helpful in his further studies. His friend’s estate was about 50 miles from Reykjavík by horseback, of course, and along some difficult roads.
“You’re going to see some wondrous scenery, my dear Sigurður,” Gísli Gíslason told him as they were riding along on chestnut horses. Their mounts were a sturdy breed, though small - an Icelandic horse from the Akureyri area. Those were usually not taller 13 or 14 hands — 56 inches — but they were very good at going over mountains and hard terrains, and had lived on the island since the time of the first settlers, as a matter of fact. They had well-proportioned heads, with a short neck, broad at the base, legs strong and short, while the tails were full, with coarse hair, and set low. Typical of such a mount was the characteristic double-coat developed for extra insulation in cold temperatures.
“I don’t doubt it!” the man replied, looking at the greenish/brownish outfit his short-haired, light-eyed friend wore that made him look like a perfect countryman. Gísli was endowed with a typically tall Nordic stature and was just two years older than him. A light tweed jacket and heavy trousers were the best clothing for such a trip - surely more appropriate than his Victorian cutaway coat with dark, refined pants, which were versatile but too stylish for such a trip. His clothing allowed anyone to instantly figure out that he was a well-mannered, although sedentary citizen - and his clothes could prove useful in case of rain, which wasn’t a rare occurrence in July in the area.
“Let’s have a pleasant ride, then…” the other said, encouraging his friend to follow him.
Sigurður secured his black coachman-like hat on his head and signaled his horse to proceed along, his blue eyes pointing towards his friend’s mount hairy tail.
The destination of the day, as suggested to him by Gísli himself, was Haukadalur - a wide area laying to the north of the Laugarvatn, in the south of Iceland. Along the way, the two made some stops: after enjoying the views of the highland road and a few ponds, they were greeted by a wide gray blanket of clouds and rain. They then rode quickly to visit the main features that region was noted for: the typical landscape was mainly composed of old lava fields covered in moss with the occasional bit of greenery and farmland. It was almost completely flat, and only a few trees — the strongest and hardiest ones, apparently — stood hither and thither. In that area one could see some of the most famous sights of the island, along with an appreciated supply of fresh air: strange springs, mud pots, many amusing discolored rock formations and, most of all, the Geyser, sometimes known as The Great Geyser, that was the first of its kind to be described in a printed historical document and the first known to modern Europeans, too. Its name derived from the Icelandic verb geysa, meaning, “to gush”, coming from Old Norse. It was said to erupt 4 to 5 times a day. There were also more than 40 other little hot springs and smaller fumaroles nearby. Since 1846, the research of the Geyser by a famous man of science had resulted with the explanation of the mechanism of that activity. Until 1894 a local farmer owned the Geyser area, then it was sold to an Irish man (the future Prime Minister of Northern Ireland…) who initially erected large fences around the site and an charged an entrance fee for visitors wishing to view it. But the following year, he appeared to tire of his project and gave the area as a present to a friend, who dropped the entrance fees.
Supposedly activated by earthquakes in ancient times, such an unusual spot was the feature that had made the valleys nearby become the prime tourist attraction of Iceland since the 18th century. Eruptions at the Geyser were able to hurl warm water up to 229 feet in the air. The ground all around had shades of yellow and green, and it was constantly steaming - so it was difficult to stay on that spot for more than a few minutes.
There had been a recent earthquake in the area, just one month before, according to what Gísli had told him, and the activity of Geyser had increased since then. As the man was able to see for himself, the vapor now coming from the source in the ground looked darker, more aggressive, spluttering. Who knew what was occurring right now in the deeps, under that place…
While looking at that show of natural power and admiring such warm water going up into the sky, along with the huge vapor all around, a new idea came to his mind. ‘What if you could put a bridle on such energy? What if you just could get hold of that and insert it into a container - be it a
steel or an iron box, provided that it was strong enough, and then make a good use of it?’ Sigurður told himself, ‘That would be much better than the geothermal water used for production purposes by the small factories built in the countryside. It would even be much better than the common water heating usage that any of the main facilities on the whole island had started to profit from over the course of the last years…’
But it was known that the vapor escaping from that source in the ground had always been very strong, and a past try to build a copper structure on it — in order to hold and use the geyser’s energy — had proved to be a disaster, actually.
Sigurður still believed that he had to have a try at that. Of course he was talking about using a simple steel…it wasn’t something presently connected with his research and study, but it could turn out to be very useful, or at least helpful, in the very near future. After all, he wasn’t interested in overpowering the Great Geyser.
So the young man did it, by using one little vial he always had with him for study purposes, then closed it thoroughly and promised himself he would check at home the potential of that vapor, sooner or later.
***
Being immersed in nature, that was always very beautiful and very good to Icelandic people, Sigurður was no exception - even though he was more attracted to new technologies and modern devices, undoubtedly. But the scientist really appreciated spending the day outdoors, and enjoyed the show the wonderful Geyser freely offered them over the course of the morning and in the afternoon, too.
After taking leave of his friend and returning back home, Sigurður immediately busied himself working on his device again. His head was full of new inspirations and interesting adjustments he was planning to put into action as soon as possible. Looking at the mechanism he had built so far, he thought of it another time and decided he had to change something here and there. As a matter of fact, the modifications he wanted to make were more than simple adjustments, as his ideas were going towards another direction at present.