Carsten returned home the next day to inspect Ava’s work. He wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. Although he was but a young man, he was already a breed apart. Ava certainly knew this, the house staff knew this, his siblings had begun to figure this out, and his classmates, too.
When a stranger heard Carsten speak, they would have an involuntary, almost unconscious pause. Then he or she would listen with seriousness to what he said. His voice itself was no more unpleasant than others his age, but beneath it was a hard and unnatural authority. He was wise beyond his years. To see a young man hardened by calamity is not a rare thing, but one who has consciously chosen a stony worldview certainly is.
He stood in the servants’ quarters with Ava waiting, hoping for praise. But she knew praise would come only after her works were proven and complete. As he instructed, the shutters were closed and locks placed on them. There was a large, solid table set in the right side of the room from the front door. The entire wall to the left was covered with sturdy bookshelves. They were bare but for a set of dictionaries in German and English. The room was well lit with lanterns and candles.
Carsten was pleased, very pleased, but the room wasn’t complete. Ava and the staff had done well, but more was needed. The lock must be replaced, and the windows covered with heavy, light-blocking drapes. Ava said these were ordered. He would need more books, specifically books of translation from Latin to Greek, from German to French, from Hebrew to English. He would also need other reference books, basic texts on science and medicine and mathematics.
Ava could read in only a rudimentary way, but that wouldn’t be a problem. He would send her out into the city, to the booksellers and supply houses and she would come back with what he needed.
He looked at her and smiled. She was enraptured. He allowed her to reach out to him, to cover him in her kisses. Nothing made her happier.
When he was finished, she left to help her mother prepare the evening meal. He retired to his room to make a list of items he needed. The books, yes, and a large chalkboard. He knew that he was making this up as he went along, but he was trying to gain understanding, and this was just the beginning.
***
Within the next two days, the laboratory was complete to his specifications. It was Saturday morning, and he sat alone in the house’s mostly unused library. He had already eaten breakfast. His family was sleeping off the pain of the previous night’s drinking. He never saw his father anymore; Otto Ernst drank alone in his room.
Carsten found a few books heaped carelessly on a table and a chair. His mother’s books. Palm reading and astrology and the Frenchman Michele de Nostredame. This sort of thing was very fashionable amongst the leisurely wives of wealthy men, and frankly it horrified Carsten. This was the age of reason, yet the powerful still reverted to this flotsam and jetsam of the Dark Ages. To him, it was as useless as the pieties of the Catholic and Lutheran Churches, who, when not waging pointless wars for some imaginary deity, lined their pockets with the coins of the gullible.
What Carsten saw touring the hospital and visiting the metalworks of his family were results. He saw diseases and maladies exterminated, iron ore shaped by scientific process into steel that rendered the iron and bronze cannons of the past into museum pieces. If the practice or belief didn’t lead to tangible results, Carsten had no time for it.
There was a note left on the table as well. It was Greta’s handwriting, stained with red wine, her favorite. The note was meant for Greta and Uli’s eyes only. It even said that. They were plotting an intrigue against Karin and Wilhelm concerning their mother’s “lost fortune” and had retained the services of a “genuine” psychic medium from Versailles by the name of Madame Beauchamp.
Everything about this note disgusted Carsten. This was the work of sick people plotting against the others over the dwindling family fortune. That these sick people were having sex was doubly revolting: scheming against their own family members that they were also fucking. And then to be so pathetic as to leave the evidence out in the open because they were so drunk… it defied description. This was what humanity did with the gifts it was given. It squandered them in acts of pettiness that shattered the foundations of everything worthwhile.
Carsten closed his eyes to clear his mind of his disgust. This was not all there was to life, this couldn’t be. He had seen order and reason, and that small light told him there was a way out, he just had to seek it with all the resolve that he could muster, or die trying
He would have to address this situation, but not engage his siblings on their terms. There could be no recriminations, no side taking. That would be functioning at their level. But he could not allow them to steal from the family fortune. He would follow them to their destination, view their dalliance with this “seer”, and he would know whether they were even capable of some sort of conspiracy.
CHAPTER TWO
The carriage driver’s name was Karl Kreutz, and like all the members of the staff, he understood not to speak unless spoken to, not to ask why, and to simply obey. Like others of his class, he knew he was expendable and wouldn’t be missed, or even remembered, if he was fired. So when Carsten gave him his instructions, he said ‘yes, sir’, and didn’t ask why.
Carsten told him he would be hitching a ride on the back of the carriage that night. This was the way that the braver poor got across town in a hurry. Sometimes carriage drivers or their passengers got upset with people who did this, but mostly they ignored them. His siblings never even noticed when this happened, so that would make this easier. He would dress as a young, poor man in clothes provided by Ava. Karl would stop at an agreed street corner and Carsten would stealthily jump on the back of the carriage.
Anyone who knew him would marvel at this. He wasn’t like this. The world knew Carsten as studious and book smart, but this plan? This was outside the norms of polite society. This was reckless, transgressive. Carsten was simply breaking rules without a second thought.
Ava implored him with her eyes that this was too dangerous. He could fall off the back of the carriage; he’d never ridden like that before. He could get caught by Greta and Uli.
But she said nothing. Hers was to love and obey, never to question.
***
That night, Carsten laid out his “new” attire and admired Ava’s flair for the authentic. Then he laughed. They looked authentic because they were authentic. She simply went to a clothes store for the poor and bought some used items. He smelled them. They had been washed, but underneath was the scent of work and sweat and frustration.
He put on the grey-brown clothing. He put on the hat to complete the ensemble and looked at himself in the full-length mirror. It was stunning. Here was a different person looking back at him. He could put on these clothes and enter another world, live another life, learn things he could never learn otherwise.
He opened the door to his room and stepped out into the hall. He looked both ways to see if anyone—staff, siblings—were waiting to call out in surprise at the hooligan who had broken in. He locked the door behind him and quietly walked towards the back door. The well-worn soles of the shoes didn’t make the crisp clicking he was used to. As he walked out into the darkness, it came to him that he now played by the rules of this disguise, his appearance marking him as one who did not belong here. He walked across his lawn as fast as his legs would carry him.
When he got to the street, he pulled the collar of his jacket up and put his hands in his pockets and looked straight at the ground in front of him. Just a stable boy walking home after a long day of work. He glanced to his right or left across the broad lawns at the opulent homes. Even though his home was dwarfed by a few of these, he knew a truer picture of class and privilege. With this in mind, he was disgusted anew by this errand. His siblings, so insulated from reality, sought to employ a psychic charlatan. With all they were given without a whiff of effort, they still sought to cheat their own family.
The carriage came to a halt at the narrow in
tersection. Carsten jumped on the back and held on. When it lurched forwards, his hat almost fell off, and he grabbed for it, nearly losing his footing. For the next minute, he held on for dear life with his eyes closed tight as the carriage clattered over the cobblestone streets. Then he opened his eyes and smiled into the chilly wind.
CHAPTER THREE
It was an upper middle class neighborhood, with row after row of neat, narrow three-story apartments. What stood out was the line of carriages for the wealthy, with drivers standing by or attending to the horses. Gas lamps lit the street, where men were smoking, chatting about their days at the office, looking at the carriages, some laughing at this silliness. Most just looked on without judgment. Perhaps they were used to the contrivances and pretensions of the wealthy. The children were in bed, the lights going out in some windows. It was an altogether civilized scene from an altogether civilized city.
Carsten jumped off the back and ran straightaway to the other side of the street, his head down and his hands in his pockets, before his siblings could exit the carriage. He noticed that the driver, Karl, took an extra few moments to make his way to the carriage door. He was a good man.
Carsten took up position at the end of the block, where he would have a good view of all Menkenstrasse Street. His siblings were greeted by a man in a somber suit and top hat who ushered them into an apartment, labeled Number Five.
He watched closely for a count of thirty seconds after the door closed. He looked at the front. It was well lit, but no radiance shone from inside, so either the windows were covered to completely block out light or the séance would be conducted in a back room. This was where his plan relied on improvisation and luck. He couldn’t sneak in through the front door, where all of the carriage drivers and the neighbors would see. He couldn’t peek through windows for the same reason. That left the back. If he had no luck there, then this was a fool’s errand.
He detoured up the block and then doubled back with the same head down, hands in pockets posture. As long as he looked like he was going somewhere, he was invisible to the middle and upper middle class, or at least not worthy of notice.
He entered the alley behind Number Five Menkenstrasse and saw a young man about his age, in the better clothes of the middle class, staring intently through a keyhole. Apparently, many teenaged boys learned things peering through keyholes.
When the young man realized that he was spotted, he jerked his head around and appraised him for about three seconds, assessing that Carsten was not worthy of notice and was not a threat. He immediately went back to the keyhole.
Carsten walked up to the boy’s side, but was ignored. Carsten tapped his foot impatiently. Still he was blanked. He tapped the young man roughly on the shoulder. The young man turned furiously, putting his finger to his lips in the universal command for silence and went right back to the keyhole.
Carsten tapped him on the shoulder, rougher this time. The young man stood and raised his fist. He didn’t throw the punch because a ruckus would certainly end his entertainment for the evening. The boy turned out to be considerably bigger than Carsten had first believed.
For a moment, the idea of fighting a bigger boy in an alley intrigued him.
His feet instinctively went into a fighting stance and his fists were lifted.
Yes, this evening will not be wasted after all.
But then the cold calculation came back. That it could be fun to fight this bigger boy was not as pressing as what could be viewed through that keyhole.
He put his fists down, bowed his head politely and took a step back. He held up one finger to say, “Give me a chance.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a five-Mark coin. He held it up so that the other boy might see it. The boy was amazed; his mouth opened, and he gaped stupidly at it.
Carsten wasn’t sure, but to this boy, that was a lot of money.
Carsten looked at the boy: Are you willing to be gone?
The boy nodded, eyes wide.
To let the boy know he was serious, he pulled out what was in his other pocket. It was a set of brass knuckles. The boy stepped back. He didn’t feel like fighting anymore.
Carsten flipped the boy the coin, put the brass knuckles on his right hand, and waved dismissively. Be gone, fool, and count your blessings.
Carsten Ernst looked through the keyhole and fell into a cruel paradox.
Most séances are fake things, designed to steal the money of the gullible, naïve and desperate. But some are real. Be it by ritual, or by some natural talent, the dead can be channeled, the dead can speak, the dead can be questioned, and the dead may just answer.
He saw his siblings, he saw their wealthy friends, he saw the top hat man, and he saw her. She was stunning, with black hair and porcelain skin. She wore a simple black dress, revealing a beautiful white cleavage. All eyes were on her. She sat with her palms down on the table, eyes closed.
The man in the top hat removed it, sat down, folded his hands and prayed in a language Carsten couldn’t place. It wasn’t French; it was something harsh and abrasive, something eastern, something Slavic.
The wealthy patrons sat silently.
Then the man placed the top hat back on his head, raised his hands and shouted into the air. It was some kind of vulgar invocation, dramatic and ugly.
Then it happened.
The girl’s head tilted back and she gasped. Her mouth opened to cry out in pain, but no sound emerged. She trembled, her breathing quickened, and her chest heaved. She broke out in a profuse sweat, but it wasn’t sweat—it was clear, gelatinous. It came out of her pores, it streamed out of her skin, it soaked her dress. And then it began to pour out of her nose and mouth and from between her closed eyelids. The crowd shrank back in their chairs as the source of their amazement took a more disturbing turn. They gasped and cried out, but they couldn’t move, transfixed.
The substance flowing out of the girl seeped into the air, slowly and gracefully, melting upward. It rose, coming to a halt in a cloud above her, swirling like cream in coffee. Her head tilted forward toward her audience, and she opened her eyes. They were golden brown, luminous. She breathed shallowly, carefully, as if balancing over a great precipice. She whispered in her strange, harsh accent, “We are being watched.”
Carsten ran, he ran like no man he could imagine had ever run. He ran through back alleys and dared not turn around. He felt those luminous golden-brown eyes behind him, pursuing him, disembodied, floating on a sluice of translucent slime extruded from a beautiful black-haired girl. He hid in the shadows of a nearby alley close to the intersection where he was supposed to meet the carriage. He wasn’t afraid of the dark, but he was afraid of those eyes.
Those eyes had known he was watching.
He saw something that was not possible.
But he wasn’t hallucinating.
He hadn’t fallen into the mass hypnosis of the Pentecostals. To fall prey to that sort of thing, one had to wish to fall prey to it—and be willing to have their own gullibility used against them. The same principle applied to séances and all witchcraft.
Pure nonsense and showmanship.
But what he saw couldn’t be faked. He couldn’t blame himself for being gullible because he had no desire to be taken for a fool by Slavs out to steal from silly Germans.
But this wasn’t possible. There had to be an explanation. No matter how much money his siblings and their insipid friends paid, it wouldn’t be enough to create an optical illusion of that sort. He had seen world famous magicians, but never left with the belief that what he saw was more than a performance.
Carsten swore by thinkers like Nietzsche and Feuerbach. He was a materialist and a rationalist. Darwin was to provide mankind with a roadmap, but now Carsten had come to a cul-de-sac in the rational order.
Part of Carsten cried out, This isn’t fair! The universe is rational! The universe is ordered and mechanistic! Why, then, have I seen this thing? But he had no answers. And that, to him, was the gravest insult. He m
ade a fist and shook it into the night air and said, “I will know this thing. I will understand this thing. I will not be denied this!”
Carsten ran out into the street and leapt onto the back of the carriage. He hoped they were as stunned as he was. Serve them damn well right, he thought. But those anaesthetized clods couldn’t know the magnitude of what they had seen. To be able to appreciate the extraordinary, one has to be coherent. When they arrived home, he hid as his siblings walked into the house without a glance at the world around them.
When he got back to his room, he took off his disguise, folded it neatly and put it into a drawer. He lay in his bed and thought, How do I figure this out?
Must I read those tedious books of superstition in the library? Those things were written for fools, for the express purpose of taking money from fools.
Then what texts are there that can get closer to the source without the chicanery? Are there such things?
Have serious men studied such things?
Where, then, do I start?
CHAPTER FOUR
He woke up after a night of tossing and turning and half-remembered dreams. He saw himself on a vast and empty stone plain under a sky of boiling black clouds. Giant sounds came from beneath the earth, and he placed his ear to the ground. Chanting. He looked at the clouds and saw the black mists solidify into a roiling mass of tentacles… and then he awoke, sweating through his sheets.
He sat straight up. His mind snapped back to the night before and the impossibility he witnessed. He had seen something real, something that could not have been faked.
Just a few days before, he had been on a tour of the hospital where he was impressed into a new worldview to rescue him from the despair of his loathsome family. He saw order, meaning, reason, and comprehension, forms to tear the blinders of ignorance from man’s eyes and lift him from darkness and into the age of reason.
The Singularity Cycle 02 Song of the Death God Page 2