And Now For Something

Completely Different.

Once upon a time, some number of years ago, I had an informal but clear understanding with the publishing industry: I would send them an original short story or novella every couple of months, and they would send me cheery letters explaining how they could not use that particular story at that time. Or how they liked the story, but it wasn't quite in their wheelhouse. Or that they really, really liked the story, but they didn't publish 'genre' pieces. Or that they had gone out of business and that future correspondence should be sent to a Kinney Shoe store in Orlando.

True, it wasn't optimal, but at least there was a system, and using that system I finally amassed a collection of such letters large enough to build that guest cottage for the castle

I'd been planning for years.

I also built up a small reserve of short stories which I still enjoy disinterring and reading from time to time but which -- given the general "Holy Fuck, we're all doooooomed!" state into which the publishing industry has fallen since the days when were doing our quaint pas de deux -- are unlikely to ever see the light of day again.

This one I did on a flight from Baltimore to Chicago. I set myself the goal of writing an original science fiction/murder mystery that would:

1. Explain the very strange circumstance surrounding the death of Edgar Allan Poe, and,
2. Be executed entirely in an authentic Poe-style voice.

I posted Part One last year here.


Here is Part Two

The Despairing Posture of his Fall
by
driftglass

Part Two

...
I can tell you exactly the moment when the idea came into my consciousness.

It was aboard the short rocket flight to Chicago. In the children's section, an attendant was reading one of his stories -- "The Incredible Tale of the Fantastic Prince Mothbury" -- to a crowd of rapt faces. Even adults were taking pauses from their work to lean back and listen to the old, familiar tale being quietly related to the youngsters in the back.

It was at that moment that I resolved to kill him.

I could see, all in a flash, how much like the remorseless murderers of his later works he really was. No one escaped him. I could also see how the idea of his obliteration had always been there, building gradually, by degrees, but had been hiding and waiting for some moment of divine inspiration. After all, since I am not mad, what would be the point of dwelling on avenging myself upon a man who had been dead for more than a century?

As you know -- or rather as you could not know --“Mothbury” is the tale wherein are mentioned the first inklings of the author’s great insights about the nature of time itself. It is here, in this children’s fable, where he first writes of both the “rubbery skein of the real” and the “soap-bubbles of time.” These humble beginnings were the starting point for a journey that led at last to his final masterpiece – “The Helical River of Chronos.” Until the day he died he vowed that the premise of “Chronos” was simple fact (or would be) and that the traversing of time by men would one day be as common as the traversing of seas.

It took a century, but again he was proven right.

Upon hearing those famous phrases again, at that moment, the plan came to me, unfolding itself into my mind, fully formed and complete in every detail. I threw my head back and roared with laughter at the perfection and symmetry of it. Through his smallest work the Great Man had delivered to me the means to eradicate him!

I was astonished by the change that had come over me.

I had been, I might fairly say, a sullen sort of fellow, prone to nervous affectations and halting speech. As I disembarked the flight, I could feel a physical change sweep over me. My step was confident and sure. I smiled and nodded to all. Instead of heading off to attend to business, I made my way to the University, to the building that had been named in the Great Man’s honor and to the very laboratory where work progressed on the methods of moving men through the veil of time and safely back again.

My means of gaining regular access to the lab and thence, uninterrupted, to the machinery itself is a matter that, no doubt, you would find incredible even if you were inclined to believe the rest of my story. And yet I tell you that this above all is the easiest to believe.

To begin with, in my world, science is not so closely guarded a trade as it is here.

Scientists are classed somewhere among the artists and professorial class, much lower than, say, a captain of industry. Entrée into even the most prestigious lab would not present an insurmountable problem, especially as I offered myself as an educated man who would work the lowliest position for pennies.

It was so very simple! Even you can no doubt call to mind a dozen occasions where a man of a certain temperament with a mind properly focused on a single task and inflamed by God has performed amazing feats, and my cause, I assure you, was every bit as infused with divine fire as any have ever been. The clarity of my thoughts, my absolute focus on a single object, made straight the path to my objective and, in no time, I found myself as a trusted assistant in the Temporal Studies Laboratory at the University.

That I had made it past all obstacles with such ease only strengthened my belief that my mission was directed from some divine source. That I had been given such zeal and glibness of tongue as I had never experience before was beyond doubt. What further proof did I require that the Almighty Himself had taken a hand!

My first journey was almost my last.

I had earned the confidence of the staff to such an extent that they left me to secure the facilities on nights when they all left to dine at local establishments. I waited for such a night all through the Fall, waiting for the solid, heavy Chicago winter to ensure that, once out and away on their own affairs, they would likely not brave the streets again to return to the lab whatever the cause. Snow and sleet began falling on just such a night and as I locked the door behind the last of the scientists, I began to prepare.

I had studied the steps involved well, if indirectly. I had asked many, many questions (scientists do so love to talk), but in small bunches and never of one person too often. All was prepared, but first I had to wait: thus far no one had ever returned to the laboratory after midnight, so I resolved to wait until one a.m. to begin the first step.

The hands of the large clock that dominated the far wall crawled by interminably. I checked the accuracy of the device against my pocket watch three times, and once, certain that it had stopped, I clambered up the filing cabinet to press my ear against the machine. It dully ticked off the seconds oblivious to my anxiety.

As the moment approached I began cursing the slow passage of time aloud. ‘Why,’ I shouted, ‘must this damned night limp along like a dying dog?’ Especially, I wondered, when I was about to leap a span of over a century!

I was then startled almost to death by a sudden, rapid tapping on the front door. The hour stood at five minutes before one. How could this be!
...