Reanimatrix

by Pete Rawlik

  “Teach me.” I wasn’t whispering anymore.

  Maris spun around and had the most delicious grin on her face. “There would be something perversely decadent about undertaking such a project. You are sure, this is what you want?”

  I nodded, and bowed my head a little, not in shame, but rather in shy acceptance of the choice I had just made.

  Maris lifted my chin and brought her lips to mine. She tasted of cherries, and scotch, and sex. “It will be my absolute pleasure,” she said.

  It took longer than I thought, but that might have just been me taking advantage of the situation, to linger longer than I needed to. It’s the little things that matter, and you should take pleasure wherever, and with whomever, you find it.

  CHAPTER 15

  “The Issue of Dr. Jekyll”

  Found Amongst the Papers of Megan Halsey A Report Commissioned by the Bank of England November 10 1888

  Mr. Klein,

  As requested I have met with Doctor George Edward Rutherford concerning the issue of Doctor Jekyll and his estate. This meeting took place on the fourth of November, 1888 in my London office. Present as witnesses were representatives of the Bank of England, Mr. Banks, and Mr. Darling.

  Dr. Rutherford is an unusual man, quite large, loud, and condescending, with a huge black beard covering his face and extending well down his chest. He was particularly annoyed at being summoned to meet with me, and bristled when I noted that any failure to keep our conversation completely confidential might besmirch the reputation of our client, or his family, and might therefore require us to pursue legal action. Rutherford took that as an affront and suggested that, given the behavior of our client, his former mentor, he doubted the ability to successfully litigate any such action including libel or slander. Once the unpleasantness of our position was clearly outlined I asked Rutherford for an account of the events of the summer of 1882. Rutherford’s narrative of that summer is reproduced below for your files. The transcription is from my own notes as well as those of Mr. Banks and Mr. Darling.

  “The summer of 1882, you say? That was the summer my employers and I traveled to the American state of Massachusetts. A small college was hosting a summer series of lectures by visiting professors, and I had been hired to act as assistant to three of them: the medical researcher Doctor Henry Jekyll, philologist Professor Henry Higgins, and the vivisectionist Doctor Jean-Paul Moreau, who, still being notorious amongst the general public for his experiments on animals, joined us incognito. I, as something of a polymath and polyglot, seemed extremely well suited in serving the needs of these three distinct and distinguished researchers.

  “Our voyage to New York on board the SS Arctic was uneventful and pleasant. Professor Higgins entertained himself by talking with the crew and other passengers and making notes on their dialects. Monsieur Moreau spent much time in the kitchens examining the anatomical structure of whatever things the deckhands brought up out of the sea. Henry, Dr. Jekyll, that is, spent the days reading and outlining a series of experiments in which he planned to expose animals, particularly primates, to a compound of his own design, one he said should have a radical effect on the baser instincts of the animal. It was a relaxing trip and I must say that the staff of the ship was most accommodating.

  “We were met in New York by our host, a fussy little man, an engineer of some sort, by the name of Perry. It took us a little more than an hour to clear customs and lay claim to our luggage. The port of New York is an amazing place, massively cosmopolitan, ferociously busy, and I fear it may one day overshadow the great transportation hubs of Europe. Our bags followed us from the port to the station where we boarded a railcar. This final leg of our trip took us north through Boston and then into the countryside beyond. The beauty of Massachusetts rivals that of Wales and Scotland, and the small town that we finally disembarked at was quaint, picturesque, and reminded me of similar places in our own country, such as Denton and Causton. The station in Arkham, for that was the name of the place we finally came to, is old as American cities go, and the architecture reflects the influence of the British settlers. The streets were lined with beautiful elm trees, and in the early June winds they swayed back and forth, creating a lyrical, rustling sound.

  “Our quarters were but a short walk from the station, and just blocks away from the campus where the trio of scholars would be lecturing. Doctor Perry had arranged for us an assistant of sorts, someone who would make sure that we could find our way around, make our appointments and our meals. Evangeline West was surprisingly charming, a lithe woman in her midtwenties with blond hair and stunning green eyes. She was well educated, and well versed in all manner of issues and subjects. She was a fabulous conversationalist, and on more than one occasion regaled us with tales concerning her uncle, who, if I understand things, was a hero of the civil war, and afterward served as an agent reporting directly to the President. Her tales of egomaniacal dwarfs, giant mechanical spiders, and armored steam engines were as fanciful as they were beguiling. Many an evening we four spent enchanted by her tales. Had I known where such things would lead I would have done my best to discourage Miss West, perhaps even asked Perry to find someone else.

  “Our lecture schedule at Miskatonic University was light, and it allowed for much socializing and independent work. Professor Higgins became fast friends with a local historian, a Professor Everet L. Watkins, and the two would take daytrips to the various villages in the area, including Witches’ Hollow, Bolton, Kingsport, and Innsmouth. I even accompanied them on a weekend trip to the neighboring state of Maine to visit a dreadfully sad place called Derrie.

  “Most of my time, however, was spent assisting Moreau and Jekyll. The two had found a way to merge their studies. Jekyll had not been able to obtain the primates he had wanted to experiment on, Arkham being more provincial and less well supplied than London. Instead, Jekyll was using rabbits, of which there was a regular supply. His experiments involved exposing the animals to a chemical reagent delivered via syringe to various organs and structures, including the brain. Jekyll would then watch for any observable reaction. Afterward, the subjects would be turned over to Moreau for dissection and measurement of induced changes.

  “It was my responsibility to prepare the reagents and the animals and under the supervision of my seniors administer the dosages. Evangeline, Miss West, recorded notes during each experiment and later transcribed them. Her fortitude in this process was quite surprising. Most individuals of the fairer sex are somewhat squeamish when it comes to the vivisection, but Miss West was not only capable and levelheaded, but singularly unemotional, at least in the laboratory. Gentlemen, I will not muddle about. Miss West was quite unlike any other woman I have ever met. That summer she was vivacious, beautiful, and frankly forward about her desires. When we were not in the labs she would take us dancing. We all went even though it was only Moreau who was really capable of matching her. Even Jekyll was seduced by her charms and took to the floor to join her.

  “I had at that time been in Jekyll’s employ for less than a year, though I did have occasion to take some coursework with him prior. In that time, I knew that he had occasional liaisons, but he was always discrete, and the exact nature and extent of his interactions with the fairer sex were always ambiguous. The same can be said of Jekyll’s relationship with Evangeline West. I can make no comment on the nature or extent of their interaction, for as I have said I was a hired man, paid by all three men. If you wish exact details of the nights that Jekyll and Moreau spent with West, I suggest you contact Doctor Moreau.

  “What I can provide are recollections of my direct observations through June and into late August, when we returned to Britain. There was a particularly memorable day in late June; both Moreau and Jekyll were in high spirits, as was Miss West, and there was an inordinate amount of frivolity in the laboratory. This unprofessional atmosphere made working difficult, and by late morning it was clear that no significant amount of work was going to be accomplished. Thus, when Miss West
suggested an afternoon picnic, I saw no good reason to oppose the idea. The day was warm but not unbearable and the four of us took our repast in a small field to the west of the college.

  “It was at the height of the day that we began to hear a strange and faint resonance, coming from the east. The hum grew louder with each passing second until finally it resolved into a reverberating roar not unlike that of a large freight train. Evangeline, who grew up in the midwestern portion of the continent, took this sign to indicate a tornado, but as we scanned the sky for signs of the devastating twister, we discovered something wholly else. Plummeting in a linear trajectory across the sky was a fireball that was leaving a trail of thick, black smoke in its wake. It was as if some omnipotent deity was using a massive and invisible pen to bisect the sky. Its course took it directly over Arkham, Miskatonic University, and our own locale, and as it did so droves of people came out to look at it. The angle of descent was steep, and as it passed behind the trees I was already making estimates as to its impact location. I was only a few seconds into my calculations when we all felt a low but definite wave of ultrasonic sound moving through the earth. Not long after, we observed a pillar of smoke that rose up in the distance to mark the location of the meteor’s impact.

  “Motivated by the event, we quickly tracked down Professor Perry and convinced him to allow us to locate the fallen object and collect samples of the thing for study. He agreed, but he was entirely uncomfortable allowing Miss West to travel into the field, and given that we were only visiting scholars, a member of the faculty would have to travel with us. Moreover, Moreau fully admitted that he had little interest in actually collecting the sample, but was more than eager to aid in the experiments. In the end, Perry found a senior member of the geology department who shared our desire, a gregarious man by the name of Axel Lidenbrock. With his assistance we spent the afternoon laying out a search grid, arranging for travel, and gathering up supplies we might need for this local expedition. Lidenbrock and I estimated a probable impact zone and which local farmers and residents might be able to provide us guidance. These plans were quickly disposed of as word came to us of a farmer from the area who had come to town announcing the impact of the meteorite just yards from his home. Noting the man’s name, we located his homestead on county maps and determined the shortest route that we could take to the area, fully planning to arrive there before the nine o’clock hour the next morning.

  “We took a wagon, driven by Lidenbrock, with Jekyll seated beside him and me in the rear with all of our equipment. It was a warm summer day, the road was well maintained, and the slow journey into the countryside was a welcome change of pace. Lulled by the blue sky, a cool breeze, and the tune that Lidenbrock was constantly whistling, I quickly dozed off, only awakening occasionally when we encountered a rough patch in the road or encountered another wagon. We had been traveling for two hours when we finally came to the farm owned by Ammi Pierce. It was not his land that the fireball had impacted on, but his house marked the path that led to the farm which was our destination. After surveying the way forward, an overgrown and rocky footpath, it became clear that the wagon we had come in was too delicate to proceed. We made arrangements for the horse and soon, accompanied by Pierce and his wife, were traversing the trail on foot.

  “The three-mile walk over rugged terrain led us to a set of ramshackle buildings, weathered gray with age. We were greeted by Nahum Gardner, a simple but amiable man, and his wife, Abigail, whom he called Nabby. The couple had three boys, strapping young lads who were quickly dismissed, along with both women, while the professors and Nahum examined the strange object that had embedded itself in the yard near the well.

  “It was oblong, one could even say that it was crudely lozenge-shaped, rust-colored and seven feet long by five feet wide, and three to four feet thick. This matched the description reported the previous day, though as with many reports from laymen, the size had been exaggerated. Gardner denied this, saying that it had noticeably shrunk overnight. He pointed to the crater and noted where a gap between the object and the surrounding edge had developed. Gardner also reported that overnight the thing generated a soft greenish glow. This luminescence excited Lidenbrock, who attempted to isolate a section and observe the phenomenon himself by cupping his hands over the surface. He pulled back almost immediately, for the extraterrene substance was strangely, even uncomfortably warm. Intrigued, Lidenbrock called for the geologist’s hammer and with a single swift blow gouged a chunk of the material away from the main body. The six-inch-long sample was oddly soft, pliable but tough, like rubber or tar. Lidenbrock declared it wholly unlike any other meteoric compound he had ever heard tell of.

  “Borrowing an old pail from the kitchen to carry it, Doctor Jekyll slipped Gardner a dollar, an outrageous sum, or so I thought at the time, and the five of us, three learned men and the Pierces, tramped back over the countryside. At the Pierces’ farmhouse, while Ammi tended to the horses and wagon, Mrs. Pierce made us some simple cheese sandwiches and fresh cool water from Chapman’s Brook, which ran the length of both the Gardner and Pierce properties. As we were bidding our farewells and Mrs. Pierce was tidying up, she accidently took hold of the pail which held our sample. It took her only a moment to realize her mistake, but instead of setting the bucket back down, she instead peered at it with a most puzzled expression and called for us to join her. The specimen, she claimed, had decreased in size, shrunk since we first obtained it. I could not validate her observation, having little recall of the exact original measurements. Lidenbrock snorted and scoffed at the idea, politely but forcefully asked for the bucket, and then marched out of the house. Jekyll followed without a word, leaving me to apologize for my seniors and thank Mrs. Pierce for the meal.

  “Our journey home was uneventful, and with some delay for the return of the cart and supplies we were soon in the laboratory and experimenting on our acquisition. Dr. Moreau and Miss West had set up a series of experiments, and frankly the five of us, including Lidenbrock, were like children with a new toy. Even Higgins, who had expressed no interest in the whole ordeal, joined us briefly and even organized a brigade of sandwiches and drinks as we toiled away into the night.

  “As for the specimen itself, it was still uncomfortably warm, and despite liberal applications of refrigerated air, ice, and dry ice, showed no tendency to cool. On the anvil it was highly malleable and showed an unusual elasticity. As Gardner had noted, it was indeed luminescent, and when heated before a spectroscope displayed bands with unfamiliar colors which brought to mind the recent work on the detection of infrared through photography by William de Wiveleslie Abney. Under heat we detected no volatilization, even when we introduced the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe. Taking our lead from Walter Flight, we heated the sample on charcoal but were unable to detect any occluded gases. The sample was magnetic, and therefore clearly metallic in nature, but application of the borax bead test produced wholly negative results, which suggested a range of possible candidate metals. Placing the sample in a crucible, we subjected it to a variety of solvents including water, alcohol, ammonia, ether, caustic soda, carbon disulfide, hydrochloric acid, and nitric acid, to no effect. Only when we immersed the thing in aqua regia did we observe three reactions. The most noticeable reaction was the production of something similar to a Widmanstätten pattern, which is normally produced when applying nitric acid to octa-hedrite iron meteorites; that such a reaction did not occur during the direct application of nitric acid was in itself a conundrum. The second reaction was a detectable change in mass, which as we watched the sample on the balance, seemed to be slowly but definitely growing steadily less. Finally, the application of aqua regia seemed to engender a change in temperature to the sample which now seemed to be more tolerable. Fearing that we had initiated some kind of catalytic reaction, we placed the sample within a sealed glass beaker and evacuated the gaseous contents. This seemed to stabilize the sample, and as it was well after midnight, we all retired for the evening.

  “Mu
ch to our chagrin and surprise, the isolation of the sample in the glass beaker did not prevent its slow decay. Indeed, not only had the entire mass vanished, the beaker itself was gone as well. The only physical evidence that remained was a small charred spot on the wooden table. Flabbergasted as we were, the five of us were also intrigued and were quickly theorizing possible explanations for the sample’s strange affinity for silicon, bizarre optical properties, and reactions to aqua regia. Lidenbrock suggested that the meteor might be comprised of an element, or compound of an element, previously unknown to science. As Jekyll and Moreau debated the possibility, I noticed Miss West slowly rise up and cross over to the chalkboard. There she began to make a list of all the properties that we had attributed to the sample. Once she was finished, she stepped back and seemed to be thinking intently. This went on for a few moments, and then she once more went back to the board and carefully wrote the name Selwyn Cavor.

  “Moreau and I both knew of Professor Cavor by his reputation as a genius in the realm of physics, but what Miss West could be referring to was lost to us. Cavor, at least according to Miss West, had consulted certain volumes in the Miskatonic Library on a project that seemed relevant to our current situation. In trying to resolve certain discrepancies in the vortex theory of gravity, Cavor theorized that there must exist a type of matter that exhibited behavior antagonistic to that of normal matter, and instead of being attracted to a mass, was instead repelled by it. He referred to such a tendency as anti-gravity. West was proposing an advancement of Cavor’s theory, a form of matter that was almost entirely antagonistic to normal matter. This so-called anti-matter, when in contact with normal matter would induce a reaction that released energy, perhaps as both light and heat, but because it represented a complete annihilation of both components would leave no waste products.

  “As West touched on this last point I realized what she was driving at. She believed that the meteorite we had sampled, the one that still sat in a field outside Arkham, was made of her theoretical anti-matter. Lidenbrock scoffed, but Jekyll and Moreau came to her defense, and soon we were all convinced that Miss West was, if not entirely correct, then at least taking a step in the right direction. However, so intent were we on trying to explain the behavior of our missing sample, we had nearly forgotten all about the source itself. Realizing that time was of the essence we once more divided into two groups. Lidenbrock, Jekyll, and I would return to the Gardner farm and obtain another sample, and begin negotiations for acquiring the entire meteorite. In the meanwhile, Moreau and West would attempt to develop a method for isolating the material and preventing its spontaneous decay.