started my new job yesterday. i am beginning to learn that free espresso can be a very bad thing. i have now not slept since sunday night and am not feeling the slightest bit tired. my room mates want to know why my feet are constantly tapping.
is there such a thing as too much of a good thing? i just may find out.
however, thanks to my latest caffeine jag, i bring you the eleventh episode of The Adventures of Hunter Cartwright. all past episodes can still be found in my previous journal entries, and i am contemplating just randomly throwing some of the earlier episodes out to the boards. i dunno, what do you think? what are the odds anyone else around this site actually want to read some half-assed homage to turn of the century fiction?
give me input, damn you. information is the only thing i have any passion for anymore.
regardless, lets see if any of you can pick up on the blatant refernces to some of my favorite authors stories, ten points and the first look at the twelth episode to the first person who does.
have fun.
Eleven
The wind tears and clutches as though it were a corporeal thing. The air screams with a manic tone that contains equal parts accusation and abuse. The very stability of the real seems questionable in the face of such speed and violence from a medium with no weight, no density. It is almost as if the world is screaming, screaming at this assault on its very paradigm.
And over and through it all I can hear Stacia laughing.
The world passes in a blur of color and form. The traditional brick and cut stone homes of Providence Lane shoot past in the overly bright false-light tone of reds and greys and fading greens. The steady glow of the electric lamps that line the road have melded into a single band of pale blue-white, each incandescent globe blurring and flowing into its neighbor. The city flashes by us, as if it were moving while we stood free and saw it go.
I clutch at the back of the seat before me, fingers bone white against the supple black leather, and will myself not to scream. Behind smoked lenses, my eyes have ceased to blink, darting rapidly and franticly of their own accord, driven by the fear that we may strike something, anything, at any moment. That at this speed they will have no chance to see death coming.
Speed, no longer an abstract concept of math's and equations, it has become a physical entity. A thing whos force cannot truly be measured in numbers and figures, but once experienced will leave any paltry mathematicians musings as mere febrile fantasies.
The sound of the air around us reaches an unbearable pitch, becoming the last cry of a dying behemoth. Vaguely, faintly, I can still hear the capricious, lilting laughter of Stacia. The lovely, brilliant tones of her exclamations lend a further air of the surreal to a situation that has already moved past the boundaries of my minds ability to cope. I am certain that I am going quite mad. That this has all been some fevered dream and that I must be restrained securely in the dim ward of some hoary institute. The screeching of the wind about me no more then my own mad cackling echoing in my ears.
Merely laughter.
For a moment, it does not register. My fingers still cling with a vise like grip to the seat before me. My wild eyes still twitch and dart to the blurred images of the passing cityscape. My mind struggles desperately to cope with a world gone too fast. And then it dawns on me that all I hear is merely the softly fading giggles of Stacia. That the only thing I feel is soft leather between my fingers.
Bit of a thrill, isnt it. calls Hunter from over his shoulder, Thought you might appreciate a taste of the world at ninety miles an hour,
I unclench cramped fingers, leaving deep marks in the supple black leather of the seat back.
How...? What...? Where... where did the wind... the noise go? I finally manage in a voice that sounds dangerously close to mania.
Ahhh. Well now, that is simply a matter of reapplication of technology. As I am sure you are aware, the repulsor engine simply generates a force that repels objects. What most people forget is that these objects can range from something as large as the surface of the planet over which our carriage moves, to something as tiny as the particles that make up the minute mass of the air around us. All Ive done is produce a set of baffles and projectors for the repulsor engine that surround the compartment we are in.
Ingenious. I say with awe in my voice, my previous terror fading in the face of yet undreamed of calculations and technology.
Not at all, my boy. As I said, just a simple reapplication of existing technology. Rather ashamed I didnt think of it sooner.
Boys and their toys. laughs Stacia.
We have slowed considerably, traffic rising around us as we get closer to the center of Arkham proper. The few horses rear back from the bone deep thrum of our repulsor engine, shod hooves striking panicked sparks from the cobbled street, as gawking drivers make no efforts to calm their animals. Pedestrians stare openly from stone walks, shop fronts or even pause in the street to watch the sleek, flowing lines of our carriage dart through traffic with a speed and ease unmatched by the slower, more conventional repulsor driven cabs and wagons about. A band of children come rushing out chasing and cavorting, laughing and calling, in the wake of our passage.
My earlier fear has completely dissipated, and I find myself now caught up in the heady excitement my fellow passengers have felt all along. Stacia turns from her seat and smiles at me, a smile that I can see mirrored on my own face in the dual reflections cast by dark round lenses. My gaze, no longer driven by terror, begins to drink in the scenes that flow smoothly past us.
The avenue has broadened, though it affords no chance at increased speeds as traffic has grown with it. The buildings have grown taller, more and more of them shedding the traditional trappings of New England architecture in favor of the more modern designs introduced by the artists Pickman and Wilcox and the mathematician Gilman when they unveiled their plans for the Miskatonic Spire. Though Pickman and Gilman have now vanished, both amidst strange and blasphemous rumours, and Wilcox is hopelessly mad, the strange angles and cyclopean dimensions of the structure has caught on, and many have duplicated the odd geometries in their own plans.
These buildings are all constructed of strangely colored stone, quarried off the coast of Massachusetts, and oddly pliant metals brought back from the most remote regions of the Arctic. The stones are jet, yet like the black opals of the Australian continent, half seen colors and striations dance just beneath their polished surfaces. The metals are at first glance a tarnished silver in color, though a strange bluish sheen seems to shimmer across their disturbingly soft and warm surface.
Both of these materials were discovered by Hunter, who brought them back to Miskatonic University at first for study by the greatest minds the geologic and metallurgic sciences could offer, and later as the materials for the construction of the architectural wonder that is the Miskatonic Spire.
Their is the sharp, chemical hiss of a match being struck. The air about me fills with the rich scent of tobacco, lazy blue tendrils of smoke roiling past me in the slight draft allowed by the repulsor field. Stacia has lit herself a cigarette and now lounges easily in the corner of the carriage door and the seat back. She has raised the goggles to her forehead, dark hair spilling over the black band and smoked lenses in gently swaying strands. Those brilliant green eyes are nearly hidden by half closed lids and long black lashes.
So, she says casually, exhaling bluish-grey smoke as she speaks, care to explain exactly what is going on Hunt, or were you just planning to leave us in the dark?
Hunter turns towards her, that strange grin of his playing upon his lips as he maneuvers the steering levers with the grace of long practice.
Referring to anything in particular, or are we just looking for general knowledge about the nights events, dear?
Stacia shrugs in a way that I sense is very familiar to her. An eloquent motion that seems to imply unconcerned interest and resigned acceptance of whatever may come.
As I am sure you figured out, our good friend Professor Mortum saw fit to visit some of his creations upon us this evening.
Stacia takes a drag from her cigarette, her facial expression never changing, and then gestures in a yes, get on with it roll of her wrist. The cherry red ember at the end of the cigarette traces a circle in the air.
During their visit, they managed to acquire an object I had been studying in my office at the time, namely, Horatio Moores calculating engine.
Stacia arches one elegant eyebrow at this, causing the right lens of her goggles to rise slightly, What would Mortum want with the Ghost?
More importantly, what would Mortum AND Wilhelm Von Krupt want with the Ghost? When I was investigating the R-A.T.S. unit Victor and Warren managed to procure for me, I noticed certain improvements to the circuitry imbedded in the mask. Either Jervis has made disturbingly vast and rapid improvements in his understanding of autonomous programming circuits, or he has received aid from the one man I know who already has developed such a circuit.
My curiosity finally gets the better of me, and I find myself interrupting their conversation despite the impropriety.
What are you talking about? Jervis Mortum? Wasnt he the mad man who tried to raise the dead? The one who fled the university after you exposed his plot to raise an army of corpses? And Horatio Moore was the mathematical prodigy, the one who was working on an electronic calculating machine. But I thought he disappeared last year? I remember the uproar in the mathematics department when they lost their prize student.
Stacia turns her head in my direction, eyes still half closed, small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Hunter turns to look at me over his shoulder, deftly maneuvering between a repulsor cab and a couple walking down the street even as he does so.
Quite right about Mortum. Hunter replies, that vague sound of amusement dancing behind his words, As for Moore, he didnt disappear, he died. Turns out he had been suffering from a severe case of consumption. It was too advanced for anything to be done for him, so he set out to cheat death by converting his intellect, his emotions, his memories, his very mind essentially, into a mathematical code that could be loaded into a prototype calculating engine. He succeeded, but in the process killed his body and drove himself quite mad.
After his, shall we say, false demise, he began to call himself the Ghost and managed to coerce a number of his former colleagues into aiding him in a plot to infiltrate the power grid of the university. Some strange notion of his that he could use the networked grid as a means of advancing his own computing power.
Fortunately, one of Moores companions happened to be a client of Stacias, and foolishly mentioned the plan to her. I managed to come upon them just as they were finalizing the last connections between the Ghosts engine and the universitys main power junction.
Client? I ask uncertainly, What exactly is it you do Ms. Brennar?
Stacia opens her eyes the rest of the way and smiles broadly at me, perfect white teeth flashing from between soft pink lips. Something about the smile and her expression causes heat to rise in my face, and I find myself turning away from those dazzling wide eyes.
Maybe someday youll find out. she says in a voice that sends shivers down my spine and heat spreading through my loins.
Now, now, my dear. laughs Hunter, The last thing I need is you corrupting my newest assistant.
Stacia just turns toward him with a look of pure innocence stamped across her features. I am certain that I have never seen anything more angelic in my entire life, and my heart aches pleasantly within my chest.
Anyway, continues Hunter, laughter still playing in his voice, after I left you two in the salon, I went with Victor to check my records concerning the work of Von Krupt. He had a brilliant piece published in the London Journal of Science last year that I had filed away. A piece on the construction of what he called mechanical men and the physics and circuitry that would be required to allow a full range of autonomous motion in one. As I had suspected, the diagrams presented by Von Krupt bore a passing resemblance to the actual circuits in the R-A.T.S. unit. It would seem Von Krupt has continued to refine his techniques, and more importantly, decided to share them with Mortum.
Before I could take my inquiries any further though, I received a call from Blackwood Asylum that Brand had escaped. And so we are here to investigate.
I had been so engrossed in what Hunter was saying that I had failed to notice how quickly we had progressed through the city. We had already passed through the greater metropolitan area and were now on the outskirts of both the city and the furthermost edge of Miskatonic University. Hunter was currently easing the carriage to a stop outside the single most terrifying building in Arkham: the Blackwood Asylum.
is there such a thing as too much of a good thing? i just may find out.
however, thanks to my latest caffeine jag, i bring you the eleventh episode of The Adventures of Hunter Cartwright. all past episodes can still be found in my previous journal entries, and i am contemplating just randomly throwing some of the earlier episodes out to the boards. i dunno, what do you think? what are the odds anyone else around this site actually want to read some half-assed homage to turn of the century fiction?
give me input, damn you. information is the only thing i have any passion for anymore.
regardless, lets see if any of you can pick up on the blatant refernces to some of my favorite authors stories, ten points and the first look at the twelth episode to the first person who does.
have fun.
Eleven
The wind tears and clutches as though it were a corporeal thing. The air screams with a manic tone that contains equal parts accusation and abuse. The very stability of the real seems questionable in the face of such speed and violence from a medium with no weight, no density. It is almost as if the world is screaming, screaming at this assault on its very paradigm.
And over and through it all I can hear Stacia laughing.
The world passes in a blur of color and form. The traditional brick and cut stone homes of Providence Lane shoot past in the overly bright false-light tone of reds and greys and fading greens. The steady glow of the electric lamps that line the road have melded into a single band of pale blue-white, each incandescent globe blurring and flowing into its neighbor. The city flashes by us, as if it were moving while we stood free and saw it go.
I clutch at the back of the seat before me, fingers bone white against the supple black leather, and will myself not to scream. Behind smoked lenses, my eyes have ceased to blink, darting rapidly and franticly of their own accord, driven by the fear that we may strike something, anything, at any moment. That at this speed they will have no chance to see death coming.
Speed, no longer an abstract concept of math's and equations, it has become a physical entity. A thing whos force cannot truly be measured in numbers and figures, but once experienced will leave any paltry mathematicians musings as mere febrile fantasies.
The sound of the air around us reaches an unbearable pitch, becoming the last cry of a dying behemoth. Vaguely, faintly, I can still hear the capricious, lilting laughter of Stacia. The lovely, brilliant tones of her exclamations lend a further air of the surreal to a situation that has already moved past the boundaries of my minds ability to cope. I am certain that I am going quite mad. That this has all been some fevered dream and that I must be restrained securely in the dim ward of some hoary institute. The screeching of the wind about me no more then my own mad cackling echoing in my ears.
Merely laughter.
For a moment, it does not register. My fingers still cling with a vise like grip to the seat before me. My wild eyes still twitch and dart to the blurred images of the passing cityscape. My mind struggles desperately to cope with a world gone too fast. And then it dawns on me that all I hear is merely the softly fading giggles of Stacia. That the only thing I feel is soft leather between my fingers.
Bit of a thrill, isnt it. calls Hunter from over his shoulder, Thought you might appreciate a taste of the world at ninety miles an hour,
I unclench cramped fingers, leaving deep marks in the supple black leather of the seat back.
How...? What...? Where... where did the wind... the noise go? I finally manage in a voice that sounds dangerously close to mania.
Ahhh. Well now, that is simply a matter of reapplication of technology. As I am sure you are aware, the repulsor engine simply generates a force that repels objects. What most people forget is that these objects can range from something as large as the surface of the planet over which our carriage moves, to something as tiny as the particles that make up the minute mass of the air around us. All Ive done is produce a set of baffles and projectors for the repulsor engine that surround the compartment we are in.
Ingenious. I say with awe in my voice, my previous terror fading in the face of yet undreamed of calculations and technology.
Not at all, my boy. As I said, just a simple reapplication of existing technology. Rather ashamed I didnt think of it sooner.
Boys and their toys. laughs Stacia.
We have slowed considerably, traffic rising around us as we get closer to the center of Arkham proper. The few horses rear back from the bone deep thrum of our repulsor engine, shod hooves striking panicked sparks from the cobbled street, as gawking drivers make no efforts to calm their animals. Pedestrians stare openly from stone walks, shop fronts or even pause in the street to watch the sleek, flowing lines of our carriage dart through traffic with a speed and ease unmatched by the slower, more conventional repulsor driven cabs and wagons about. A band of children come rushing out chasing and cavorting, laughing and calling, in the wake of our passage.
My earlier fear has completely dissipated, and I find myself now caught up in the heady excitement my fellow passengers have felt all along. Stacia turns from her seat and smiles at me, a smile that I can see mirrored on my own face in the dual reflections cast by dark round lenses. My gaze, no longer driven by terror, begins to drink in the scenes that flow smoothly past us.
The avenue has broadened, though it affords no chance at increased speeds as traffic has grown with it. The buildings have grown taller, more and more of them shedding the traditional trappings of New England architecture in favor of the more modern designs introduced by the artists Pickman and Wilcox and the mathematician Gilman when they unveiled their plans for the Miskatonic Spire. Though Pickman and Gilman have now vanished, both amidst strange and blasphemous rumours, and Wilcox is hopelessly mad, the strange angles and cyclopean dimensions of the structure has caught on, and many have duplicated the odd geometries in their own plans.
These buildings are all constructed of strangely colored stone, quarried off the coast of Massachusetts, and oddly pliant metals brought back from the most remote regions of the Arctic. The stones are jet, yet like the black opals of the Australian continent, half seen colors and striations dance just beneath their polished surfaces. The metals are at first glance a tarnished silver in color, though a strange bluish sheen seems to shimmer across their disturbingly soft and warm surface.
Both of these materials were discovered by Hunter, who brought them back to Miskatonic University at first for study by the greatest minds the geologic and metallurgic sciences could offer, and later as the materials for the construction of the architectural wonder that is the Miskatonic Spire.
Their is the sharp, chemical hiss of a match being struck. The air about me fills with the rich scent of tobacco, lazy blue tendrils of smoke roiling past me in the slight draft allowed by the repulsor field. Stacia has lit herself a cigarette and now lounges easily in the corner of the carriage door and the seat back. She has raised the goggles to her forehead, dark hair spilling over the black band and smoked lenses in gently swaying strands. Those brilliant green eyes are nearly hidden by half closed lids and long black lashes.
So, she says casually, exhaling bluish-grey smoke as she speaks, care to explain exactly what is going on Hunt, or were you just planning to leave us in the dark?
Hunter turns towards her, that strange grin of his playing upon his lips as he maneuvers the steering levers with the grace of long practice.
Referring to anything in particular, or are we just looking for general knowledge about the nights events, dear?
Stacia shrugs in a way that I sense is very familiar to her. An eloquent motion that seems to imply unconcerned interest and resigned acceptance of whatever may come.
As I am sure you figured out, our good friend Professor Mortum saw fit to visit some of his creations upon us this evening.
Stacia takes a drag from her cigarette, her facial expression never changing, and then gestures in a yes, get on with it roll of her wrist. The cherry red ember at the end of the cigarette traces a circle in the air.
During their visit, they managed to acquire an object I had been studying in my office at the time, namely, Horatio Moores calculating engine.
Stacia arches one elegant eyebrow at this, causing the right lens of her goggles to rise slightly, What would Mortum want with the Ghost?
More importantly, what would Mortum AND Wilhelm Von Krupt want with the Ghost? When I was investigating the R-A.T.S. unit Victor and Warren managed to procure for me, I noticed certain improvements to the circuitry imbedded in the mask. Either Jervis has made disturbingly vast and rapid improvements in his understanding of autonomous programming circuits, or he has received aid from the one man I know who already has developed such a circuit.
My curiosity finally gets the better of me, and I find myself interrupting their conversation despite the impropriety.
What are you talking about? Jervis Mortum? Wasnt he the mad man who tried to raise the dead? The one who fled the university after you exposed his plot to raise an army of corpses? And Horatio Moore was the mathematical prodigy, the one who was working on an electronic calculating machine. But I thought he disappeared last year? I remember the uproar in the mathematics department when they lost their prize student.
Stacia turns her head in my direction, eyes still half closed, small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Hunter turns to look at me over his shoulder, deftly maneuvering between a repulsor cab and a couple walking down the street even as he does so.
Quite right about Mortum. Hunter replies, that vague sound of amusement dancing behind his words, As for Moore, he didnt disappear, he died. Turns out he had been suffering from a severe case of consumption. It was too advanced for anything to be done for him, so he set out to cheat death by converting his intellect, his emotions, his memories, his very mind essentially, into a mathematical code that could be loaded into a prototype calculating engine. He succeeded, but in the process killed his body and drove himself quite mad.
After his, shall we say, false demise, he began to call himself the Ghost and managed to coerce a number of his former colleagues into aiding him in a plot to infiltrate the power grid of the university. Some strange notion of his that he could use the networked grid as a means of advancing his own computing power.
Fortunately, one of Moores companions happened to be a client of Stacias, and foolishly mentioned the plan to her. I managed to come upon them just as they were finalizing the last connections between the Ghosts engine and the universitys main power junction.
Client? I ask uncertainly, What exactly is it you do Ms. Brennar?
Stacia opens her eyes the rest of the way and smiles broadly at me, perfect white teeth flashing from between soft pink lips. Something about the smile and her expression causes heat to rise in my face, and I find myself turning away from those dazzling wide eyes.
Maybe someday youll find out. she says in a voice that sends shivers down my spine and heat spreading through my loins.
Now, now, my dear. laughs Hunter, The last thing I need is you corrupting my newest assistant.
Stacia just turns toward him with a look of pure innocence stamped across her features. I am certain that I have never seen anything more angelic in my entire life, and my heart aches pleasantly within my chest.
Anyway, continues Hunter, laughter still playing in his voice, after I left you two in the salon, I went with Victor to check my records concerning the work of Von Krupt. He had a brilliant piece published in the London Journal of Science last year that I had filed away. A piece on the construction of what he called mechanical men and the physics and circuitry that would be required to allow a full range of autonomous motion in one. As I had suspected, the diagrams presented by Von Krupt bore a passing resemblance to the actual circuits in the R-A.T.S. unit. It would seem Von Krupt has continued to refine his techniques, and more importantly, decided to share them with Mortum.
Before I could take my inquiries any further though, I received a call from Blackwood Asylum that Brand had escaped. And so we are here to investigate.
I had been so engrossed in what Hunter was saying that I had failed to notice how quickly we had progressed through the city. We had already passed through the greater metropolitan area and were now on the outskirts of both the city and the furthermost edge of Miskatonic University. Hunter was currently easing the carriage to a stop outside the single most terrifying building in Arkham: the Blackwood Asylum.
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
thats really sad to hear.. for many many reasons.. and i'm not quite sure how to react.