Dear Q.,
Do you mean, In the beginning? Time and date of birth. High noon infatuation? Vivid descriptions of the Indonesian stork who wove between Othello and I a strawberry hanky for all to observe, like a magic, like a spiderweb adorning the back wall of a cave organized by lightning?
I felt certain we'd moved pass the issue of origins, but I'll take your bait and tell you something of my selves in anticipation of your man Panza's return. I swear, not to tell the truth, but to complete the movement that subverts, rather than buttress the reigning social order. As you can understand, the backdrop of this castle destroys my ability to balance humanity and terror for all of us. All my instincts swerve toward the instant extinction of life by an agency impossible to see. Mesmer calls it Magnestism, but I'm hoping they pick a word that inspires more awe and horror, particularly since this new magic may prove the most formidable method of preventing criminals such as myself from perpetrating their crimes. I have already reformed many of ways. Fewers swords hang from the hips of empty armour in the corridors of the castle, and no gun hanging on the wall in act one fires its projectiles in act three. What is this dynamo, you ask? Electricity!
I was born at the age of thirteen and spread newspapers and candy amongst soldiers during the 30 years war. I rode rolling freight cars, and learned the telegraph, whereupon I announced messages from city to city despite my hard-drinking and hard-fraternizing with tramps - wrinkled jackets, hats with torn brims. I doubled the capacity of the world's wiring by inducing induction coils, and quadruplexing the castle with materials invented in a small hamlet about twenty-five miles southwest of the castle. I triumphed on a different scale while my father - oh never mind. Electricity defies lineage, and besides, the idea of a talking machine remains ridiculous, despite my chosen profession!
Pants baggy, vest flying open, coat stained with grease, hands discolored by cigars juggled between high-pitched fingers, I managed to keep my face clean-shaven, which came in handy for the series of headshots I had taken during the years I required the public's attention - I was a solar eclipse jumping like a badger, black smoke billowing from pockets - illuminating glass and kerosene.
This photo shows me hoping to learn how to revive my first victims. I used lightning, under Mesmer's tutelage, to kill rats, mice, a fairly large kitten, and a dog. I staged experiments to determine the value of executing elephants and paid dearly for my philosophical discoveries, purchased at the expense of humanity. Soon philosophy would divorce itself from physics and the natural sciences, freeing me from the materials of morality evermore.
Is this answering your question? Will Sancho recognize me on the other end of these crisscrossed wires? Or shall I pronounce him dead after ten minutes on the other end of my hand-cranked magneto generator?
Ecstatic paroxysms superinduced on the same day, swinging between resuscitation and death. Some hospitals in Denmark created electrifying rooms for therapeutic shocks, but worried more about inserting shocks into rather than applying shocks onto - it's hardly necessary to inform you that I immediately funded the latter set publicly while secretly whisking the other into my hamlet noted above. I left rheumatism, paralysis, neuralgia, sciatica, asthma, dyspepsia, consumption, erysipelas, catarrh, piles, epilepsy, pains of all sorts in the spine, kidneys, liver, heart, inflimation and ulceration to the public nurses while devising special pleasures for inclusion in the next Sears catalog. Curses for impotences.
At this point I was also still using animals in my experiments. I made tidy profits by convincing local animals shelters and pet owners that their burdens and loved ones were floated safely into the afterworld with only minor manipulations. Rather, I studied these fresh infusions of energy carefully, convinced that my ability to capture death in the spark would inspire what Carl Laemmle (president of Universal Pictures) would later call "those kinds of movies." And Sigmund Freud - easily exhausted, but well aware of the fluid chemistry underlying neuroses and neurasthenia, the me
rcury and aresenic of all human communication.
Out of money, out of time, out of facts, I composed a terminology based on reactions in my notebooks. "Alternating rapid death," and "Reverse current suffering." These were published in journals alongside extended analyses of the components of human blood, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, only so many songs can be sung with two lips, two lungs, and one tongue.
Pride and reputation ruined me when Mesmer, never mind the world, refused to praise my efforts. I built a forty-foot tall model of my master lit from within by 13, 000 standard incandescent bulbs. Twelve steps of multicolored (flower) bulbs (this time) led up to the top of the pedestal, which contained a miniature, but workable guillotine - a symbol of the changes to come. For I intended to bolt my new invention into a fine-wire killing machine. Balky, dangerous, complex. Mesmer would sit first, or so I planned, and at the same time, I need him to serve as the nail in his own coffin. If I burned him beyond ash, beyond microbes even the wind refused to carry, I could never show my upstart condition the ropes - or cables - of my industry.
[letter breaks off unsigned.]
rcury and aresenic of all human communication.
