Allah knows my name…

It’s been three years since I came to the Sudan. When I left home, I was no more than a boy. I was not raised by a father, but by a map awash with pink that hung in our dining room. A map which the man (who claimed to be my father) spent more time and love on than any of us. A map that would not only come to possess him, but my brothers, one by one, as they got older. Until it was finally my turn.

It was no surprise when I came home that day to find our house packed with men in uniforms. Three times before I had watched my brothers go through the same spectacle. As I walked up the drive, I wanted to run there and then, but only my mind could conjure escape. My legs led me blindly to my fate.

‘In the name of the Empire!’ they cheered as they clinked and raised their glasses to toast her. But if the empire is a woman, then she is a cold one. All my time here, I have never heard her sigh, let alone her heart beat.

Whilst the desert sings to me…

All I have seen here in her name is a bloody set of footprints left behind by the men of the 21st Lancers and those who march with us.  From Ferkeh in the south to Khartoum in the north, our trail is marked across the sands like a rotten vein that takes the life from the flesh around it.

Now in Khartoum we sit and wait as Kitchener builds his city. Like most rotten things, we fester in the sun and the stench hangs low and wide above our heads. It is not the smell of boots that have walked a thousand miles, nor of cordite or sweat. It is a stench of the darkness that is yet to come.

You have shown me there is light…

The stench in this place gets stronger every day as more evil pours in by the shipload. They arrive like clockwork, from all corners of this earth. Slave traders, tricksters, opportunists are all here. Some hide behind their European verandas, their cocktails parties and their ideas of respectability. Most hide behind the cold of steel where life is valued at no more than an inch of brass and a ball of lead – those are the ones I prefer, for the aforementioned are blind to their curse.

A month ago, two old European gentlemen came down from Egypt and started to go door-to-door in search of the young and vulnerable. ‘In the name of art!’ they said. I did not see art, but just two twisted old men of ruin.

They would be my third and fourth victims…

This is the stench the place has been plunged into, but there is fresh air to be found away from this pit. The Desert.

The first time I went, I was in an intoxicated rage. My heart yearned for escape and for a quick end to my hell. I cannot remember if I ran or I walked. All I can remember are the faces of those who I passed, who I cursed and bedeviled.  Then I remember just lying there, waiting for the sun and the heat to lift me from this land.

As the sun set, having burned my skin, I cried in disappointment that my chest should still rise and sink, and the blood should still pump through my corpse.  There I stayed through the night, and sung a wordless song of melancholy, till I found myself lifted as the desert made its comfort known to me. I watched as tiny grains of sands were carried by the wind into a dance beautiful and complex. I could not surrender myself there and then, but it would entice me into coming back.

And back I did come. Soon it became a daily pilgrimage, and those who I had first scorned began to open to me, and I to them.

They call me Sarsarun …

It was as if I had been let in on a great secret which only they and I could understand, and they took great joy in my swift metamorphosis. It was they who taught me, not through words but through love, to understand the dance in the sand. They taught me to see and hear with my heart again.

I knew the first part of my transformation was complete when, while walking back from the desert, I went to accost two men from my own platoon who were violating one of the young girls of the village.  They did not recognise me when I called to them to stop, nor did they recognise my face when I was inches away and had brought my sabre to their throats.

They were my first and second victims…

One of these days, I will come to the desert and not return to the barracks. I am no longer that fair-skinned boy from Sussex who was afraid of his father’s scorn. But the desert has yet to make me a man, for I have yet to learn its lesson of peace.

Teach me…

Take a look out of the window; do you see those rocks, just to the north of Herm island? Six nautical miles. Even in bad weather, it is a trip of no more than forty minutes. With the current, you could probably swim it in a reasonable time. You would certainly be able to reach the island of Herm in less than thirty.

It was out there on those rocks where my boat, the Elicia, ran aground, and what I am about to tell you happened.

No doubt you have heard rumours about me. I will leave it to you to work out which ones are true and which are not – I hate to disappoint. On this occasion, however, you have the luxury of hearing it from the horse’s mouth.

I have friends in Spain who needed my help. Naturally not everyone is happy with the fact that I run guns – oh come on, do not act shocked that I admit this openly. Apart from a couple of old ladies in St.Malo, it must be one of the worst kept secrets around these parts. It is with the British Royal Navy that I have the most bother. They are always keen to stop me at every opportunity. They have the notion that I emptied out an armoury of theirs in Southampton. Ah – I see from the look on your face that you have heard that story.

Those Royal Navy chaps can put a shiner on a good day so I do my best to avoid them, which normally means moving at night; as indeed it was, when I was returning from my little mercy trip.

The Elicia was a Scottish wooden fishing trawler. The guise of being such a craft, I’m certain has helped many a time.

I was coming up from the south of Herm island, when I got a signal that there was a navy boat in dock. While it was the small hours and I had an empty cargo hold, as I said, the British can put a shiner on a good day. I decided instead to take my boat out of view of the harbour for the following reason: those Brits can be quite observant. While it would not be uncommon for them to see a fishing boat out at that time, it would be odd to see one without its nets out, ready to go, or without a hull full of fish.

A swell was beginning to build up as I went to put the crane arms out for the nets. It then all happened in a flash. There was a guide cable which ran through the pulley on the arm to a gear on the engine which, when engaged, should have pulled the nets along and out onto the arms. What happened however was that, less than a second from engaging the gear, I found myself hanging upside down with the bottom of my left leg oilskin trousers caught in the pulley.

I did not realise immediately, but my foot had been crushed in the pulley. I felt no pain at first, which I put down to adrenaline. I did try to reach up to the crane arm, but the swaying action from the swell made this nigh on impossible. I watched helplessly as the boat came stern-to onto those rocks.

Where the sun should have been rising in the sky, tall black clouds were forming. I knew no one would be venturing out today, and that any hope of being spotted was gone. Before the rain came, a wave, accompanied by a roar, dislodged the Elicia and began to thrash her about between the rocks. I could see through the centre hatch, she was beginning to take on water. It was then that I realised I was either going to be dragged down or be lambasted against the rocks.

On my belt I carry a knife – you will find most fisherman do. Perfect for geting the hook out of a fish, but not much else. I had a notion of trying to save as much as my leg as possible, and tried to haul myself up, to cut my leg above the ankle, but the sea had other ideas.

The first cut was the most painful. I had to muster considerable strength to get the knife to break the skin, and when it was no more than an inch in, a violent wave caused me to rip the knife upwards – that is pain.

I was going to light a cigarette as a distraction. Instead, I ended up biting down on the entire packet as blood, rain and seawater flowed down me.

It felt like great pockets of heat were escaping me, as I forced the knife crudely through the flesh. The tendons, while tough to cut, I do not remember causing me much pain. I was part fascinated and part distracted, as when cutting through one of them I felt the muscles in the back of my leg tighten then let go.

The Elicia was sitting below her water line by the time I got to the bone. The temperature had dropped and the heavens had joined in on my punishment. The packet of cigarettes had now become pulp, but it was a welcome distraction when the acrid nicotine filled my mouth as I began to saw.

I didn’t have to saw far, as a combination of my weight and the swaying did the rest. In the water, and the right way up, I felt my body began to drain. I don’t know how much blood I lost, but I have a vague memory of using my belt as a torniquet while I was in the water.

The next thing I remember was awakening on the beach of Herm, where I was rescued later that day. For those hours I was on the island, I watched the crane arm bob before finally vanishing – a moment I marked by mustering what strength I had left and burying the knife in the sand.

My experiment worked and I have my proof that Newton was wrong. I have been exploring ways to pass on my observations and I feel that, after going through this in my head, the following is the best way I can find.

Let us say that today, I walk across Dulwich Common. I pass a gentleman who I have never made the acquaintance of. Neither do we acknowledge each other as we pass.

When I retire that evening, I dream the event that took place on the common in the exact same way. From my observation point, the gentleman I passed now exists in two states.

The first, the past where I passed him.
The second, where I dreamt I passed him.

Now let us theorise a third party, an observer. In the context of the park this may be a nanny who is sitting on a bench whilst her care run around. She witnessed myself passing the gentleman and introduces a third state. It is the state, and the only state, where both I and the gentleman are observed to exist.

We can refer to both the first and third states as being part of the Real. I know it to be real for it is my observation, and because the nanny is the only witness to both me and the gentleman existing in the same space. If I know I exist, then for me to be real, so must too that third state be real. As the second state is a product of my observation in the first state, we can note that for the first and second states to exist, the third state must exist.

Now I will refer to the second state as the unknown state. As the nanny did not see my dream, she did not observe me passing the gentleman in my dream – there is no verifiable evidence, but both I and the nanny in the first and third states have observed the gentleman to exist in that space. We must then conclude, that the gentleman in the second state can both exist and not exist.

I trust you are still with me. These three states, the First Real, the Second Unknown, and the Third Real, comprise the very fabric of our Universe. But that is not to say there are not more states. Imagine that the nanny went home tonight and dreamt about the same event I did. From her point of view, she has the three states, but because I also dreamt it, I now have my 3 states, plus her 3 states. If you will now entertain that the gentleman also dreamt of the event, that becomes 3 plus 3 plus 3.

Each time there is a difference in the event (say I dreamt that the gentleman’s cravat was blue and not red) this causes what I refer to as a new plane of reality, and all the states from the previous plane are repeated. (3+3+3)+(3+3+3). Now think of all the people you may pass in a busy day in London and, as I’m sure you can imagine, the numbers get big very quick – everyone has that first state which is observed by many combinations of third states, which means an infinite number of second states, on an infinite number of planes.

There is an indescribable amount of energy holding this together. I would need a blackboard to run through my hypothesis here, but my final observation is there is no mass or force. Ha! I will have to be fair, however, and give Newton his ‘action’. My experiment has also, unexpectedly, proven that time is irrelevant, which I have yet to understand.

So you see, after I fired my machine up, the iron support I was forced to use (thanks to not getting the funding from the Academy) broke. As I went to stop the machine from falling over, the carrier tube shattered and I was covered in my Huygen fluid, which was the key to this whole experiment. Amusingly, you may say, I now have no mass, nor can I apply any force. My eye-line was fixed in that split-second before I was covered in the fluid. From this viewpoint, I have witnessed my experiment over and over again.

Sometimes the differences are slight; my hair is longer, the room a different colour. Other times it would cause Charles Darwin to spin in his grave. I am sure that by these laws, there eventually must come a state where the ‘me’ doing the experiment, will notice the ‘me’ watching, and act accordingly. Though I do worry about the problem of time.

I cannot see, but I feel as if the walls of my laboratory have long since gone. It was about observation 400 when I felt the wallpaper was getting mouldy. Around 800 to 900 I could have sworn I smelt fresh paint. Long after I stopped counting, I felt at one point there were children in the room with me. And then there was an entire period of cycles where I regularly imagined I could hear sirens, followed by large explosions, until that ended abruptly. Now there is the feeling that I am in an open space. Sometimes I feel as I can taste the dew in my mouth.

I feel quite content, for I am watching the mechanics of the universe. I never get tired or bored and each cycle teaches me something new. I am also happy to fulfil myself with the thought, that one day, I will get back to that Academy, face my critics and physically shove Newton’s Principia where it belongs.

“Certo. Inglese?”

“Si.”

Adam Fletcher pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow as the young lady behind the counter at the Poste e Telegrafi stepped off her small stool to reach one of the blank telegram forms behind her. She picked up one of the green slips, laid it out neatly in front of her and poised her pen ready to start.

“Questo i testo di telegramma?” she paused “What text of telegram? ”

Adam felt as if the air was being ripped from his lungs as she looked up at him and smiled. What would he say? He had it all worked out in his head before entering through the door, but like the air from his lungs, words were now rushing out of his head. He excused himself from the counter and sat on the tiny bench in the room, the heat overwhelming him. While his peers would be counting down their final days before retirement in the luxury of an oak carved office in London, Adam had spent the last three weeks on a hunt that had started on the coasts of Cornwall and had become a race against a decrepit sea-going boat and the European rail system.

He had only been two days behind the boat when he had arrived at the port of Lisbon in a post-revolutionary Portugal. Some expensive information bought here, had informed him that the boat Ta Metut would head first to Morroco to resupply and then would be proceeding to Gibraltar – which Adam had hoped would be where he would make his intercept. Seven days he had waited and the ship had indeed come into the port, but had not docked, the Captain having chosen instead to anchor in deep water and send a small lighter ashore for whatever business it had.

Information had been harder to come by on the ship’s next move. A Corsican Merchant Captain had told him that these Berber pirate ships normally kept away from the French Algerian coast and the most likely next stopping ports would either be Civitavecchia or Napoli in Italy. After that the boat would only land at obscure ports in Asia Minor where westerners were not welcomed. It would end its journey in Syria and from there its cargo would be taken deep into Arabia. This was something Adam could not allow to happen – Isabella, the daughter of his best friend of thirty years, was a part of that cargo.

Having arrived in Civitavecchia two days previously, he had instructed his business partner to wire him more funds; he had known he would have to have help if he was to have any chance of rescuing her. He had spent the first night scouting the most run-down looking bars and brothels around the dock, but to no avail. He had in his mind a romantic notion of finding a British crew he would be able to rally to his cause in the name of righteousness; reality would be much different.

Along the main dock front had been a brothel with a bar that stretched out along the quay. He had been drinking there, watching the clientele in the hope of finding that crew when he had felt a blunt object being pressed into his lower back. A voice had whispered “Lira, Lira”. Adam had slowly gone to reach for his money, but as he did the look of his friend the morning after Isabella was kidnapped appeared his mind. It was the look of a man who had lost everything and it filled him with rage.

He had then clenched his fist and unleashed a punch that belonged to man half his age and twice his size, sending the vagrant flying backwards. In an area in which fights were an hourly occurrence, he had been surprised to find himself surrounded in response by several of the other bar patrons who branded knives.

Adam had got into a boxing stance – if he was to have gone down it wouldn’t of been without a fight. The stand-off had been broken just as quickly as it had started when the brothel’s Madam had pushed her way through to the vagrant and started screaming at him Italian. She had then made Adam sit down and started to scream at him.

An ex-navy Dutch fisherman Pauel had helped translate. The youth who had tried to attack Adam had been her son, and she had berated the boy, not for robbing her clients, but for having had the daylights knocked out of him by a man who was old enough to be his grandfather. She had then demanded to know Adam’s story and so he then told it, not just to her but to the entire bar.

He had spoken of his friend having found love later in life, and had described how the man had lost his wife in childbirth; how he had brought up a beautiful daughter he doted; how the child had taught him to love the world again. He had told of their holiday in Cornwall when the Berber pirates had come in the middle of the night and kidnapped the fourteen-year-old girl. Adam had spoken of how he could not bear to look at his friend the next morning, then how he had for the last three weeks been trying to get to the boat.

By the time dawn had come, Adam had had all the assistance in place that he would need to take on the pirates, including the Madam’s son. Pauel had warned him that half of those who had taken his money in the promise of help would not turn up, but Adam had been sure that even half would be twice as much as he’d need. Pauel had also offered his boat and crew (for a price, of course) in case the chase needed to go further.

This had been four hours ago; Adam got to his feet and walked back over to the counter. The Ta Metut was due to arrive this evening.

“Signoria, erm, testo…” he watched as the young lady picked up the pen, he cleared his throat and continued ” H…O…P…E…”

“Et tu Brute?”

The words echoed loudly around the room as Brutus thrust his dagger into Caesars Chest and watched silently as the dictators body, now devoid of any life, fell to the floor.  The lights came down and the crowd went wild.

Duke Vessèy had done it again, as the lights came back on and the crowd shouted “Bravo!”, he stepped forward still holding the knife and bowed to the audience who continued to shower him with praise.

He only put on one play a year and it was normally of a historical context and strictly for one night only. The audience were invited personally by the Duke himself and he carefully selected people he believed to be of a certain bel espirit.  There were many who had tried and failed miserably to obtain an invitation by bribery, for his plays were the talk of legend in European aristocracy.

The plays were written by the Duke himself who was fluent in Ancient Greek, Latin and French and even if the time period was not classical or part of French history, he would normally assimilate the play into one of those languages.  The preparation work that went into them was staggering and he would spend all of the 364 days between them as a recluse, meticulously planning, writing and organising the next one.

He paid the patronage of several artists at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris and  in return, they provided set designs and backdrops, which were masterpieces in their own right . Three years ago the play had been about the Rape of the Sabine women the main backdrop of a burning city was so atmospheric that the audience swore that somehow the Duke had made the flames move. One scene in this year’s play had featured Caesar giving a speech in the city of Rome and the perspective was so perfect and the illusion set, that the audience started looking around the room trying to trace the continuation of imaginary walls.

The Duke had set up a palazzo in Florence for the sole purpose of making the costumes each year and they were made of the finest silks and materials money could buy. Cleopatra’s robes had taken over  two thousand man hours and was sewn with real gold thread. The costumes from previous years’ plays were proudly displayed in the great hall at his Château which his guests would walk past on their way to the theatre he had set up in the East wing – perfect for getting his audience in the mood.

No expense was spared on props either: last years play had been based on the story of Ivan the Terrible and the Tsar’s staff had been decorated by no less than fourteen of the finest goldsmiths of  London. This year twelve  armourers were employed and installed on the grounds to produce the Armour for the large battle scene depicting Caesar conquering the Gauls.

The effects were also perfectly executed: the audience dived to the floor as a volley of arrows flew past their heads into the Gauls on stage. Huge gas lamps high above the audience made them sweat as the action moved to ancient Egypt, but it was the blood they loved most. The front row was sprayed as a Centurion brought his sword across a barbarian’s neck, to which they responded with a cheer. When King Ptolemy brought the freshly decapitated head of the General Pompey through the audience, splattering them in blood and entrails, they let up a large roar of approval.

The crowd rose to their feet as the house lights came up, and the Duke continued to bathe in the ovation. He stood there for a good five minutes before bringing his fingers to his lips and requesting his guests to join him out on the patio – he would of course get changed first so as not to shatter the illusion of the world he had just created.

As the guests piled out, no one had noticed that Caesar hadn’t moved.

I have come to fear the nights in here as much as I fear the sound of artillery. It is bedlam when the lights go out and nightmares are relived. It always begins in the same way – the names of the fallen are screamed out, and too-late warnings are issued. Silence always follows, and then the sobbing begins. We cry for those we have lost, for the wounds we have endured, and for those we miss. I ask: Is this what it is like to be damned?

The day never seems to bring light and the air is thick with death. There is a brown stream of watery blood and mud which comes in from under the door, but I do not know if this is real or not. I spend my time peeling back the sounds; from the corridor I hear the people coming in and the bodies going out. In another ward I hear a man who is always weeping slowly, and past that the noise of engines as vehicles go back empty and come back full. The distant sound of explosions and gunfire remind me constantly where I am – Hell.

Of the seven I arrived with, three now lie in the morgue and a fourth has contracted tuberculosis. The other two I choose not to remember. I am not sure if they are still men. I am not even sure if I am. My skin feels metallic, my mouth tastes of mud, and my blood feels like acid. I scratch hard at my wounds so I can feel the pain.

The nurses, doctors and orderlies seem to float here, and I lay in my bed and worry that the monster which is grinding its way through the men out in the fields, will soon come for them. At night I hear them weep too, but each day they come back. They are braver than I.

I will not write to you about any of these things. Instead I will start my letter as I always do. I will ask how you and father are doing, how my younger brother is, and has he got in any more fights at school. I will then tell you how I am getting better and how I hope to be out of this place in four weeks. I will tell you how frustrated I am to not be at the front, and the sooner I’m back there fighting the better. I will then conclude on an amusing story or a comment about a pretty nurse, and sign off by saying how one day we will all be together again.

I will write this way, because I want you to be proud of me, to love me and to remember me. Without your loving thoughts in my mind, I would truly be damned.

The population of Break Creek in the spring of that year stood at 124. There had been three births, but seven deaths, that summer, and both the Wellington and Paquette families had left the community altogether. The Wellingtons departed after the landslide in July, a landslide that many believed had led to the poisoning of the underwater streams that fed the wells in the community. The Paquettes left late in September, for a reason that none of those who stayed begrudged them – they were scared.

No new families arrived, and by the time of the harvest, the population stood at 101.

Over the last few weeks, the air had become filled with tales of ancient Indian spirits; curses from two-hundred-year-old witch trials; even the glass that had broken in one of the windows of the small chapel that served Break Creek was blamed. As the harvest came to an end, the townsfolk had come to a conclusion. There was one in their community who was rarely to be seen. One who, when everyone else came to help in the landslide, did not come. The same one who did not come to offer aid when the Browne farm was on fire. One who lived far away from the others in a cabin on the ridge. One who they had all become afraid of. And one who Tom Brule was now leading his party against. They were armed with rifles, pitchforks and anything else they could gather.

–000–

In the small tavern at the heart of the town, Joe Clayton cursed the two hours that had passed with no sign of Tom and his party. The agreed signal was a fire on the ridge where the cabin sat, which was clearly visible from the window Joe sat next to. Two hours had been plenty of time, and it was clear something had gone wrong. Sitting around Joe were his two oldest sons, his three brothers, and his brothers’ oldest children. There were fourteen of them in total, and in their hands they all held the same make and model of Winchester rifle. The Clayton family was well-established in Break Creek, being three generations in, and owning a well-respected horse ranch. The weapons had been purchased especially for tonight, and whilst Joe could easily afford them, he hoped the fancy repeating rifles would somehow earn their price in the future too.

They had been purchased from a fellow everyone in town had come to know as the Stranger. The Stranger was a trader who had been passing back and forth through Break Creek all summer, his main clientele being the gold prospectors up in the mountains north of the creek. How he had come to be known by that name, no-one was quite sure, but everyone welcomed him. When the landslide occurred, the stranger handed out shovels from his wagon, never asking for compensation. When the fire occurred, he stopped and helped ferry water from the creek to the flames. Whenever he passed through, he always took the time to chat to those he came across, and was always ready with a helping hand, no matter how banal the task. In fact, if it wasn’t for the Stranger, the summer could have been a lot worse. Joe raised his glass to him as he stood up, and left the tavern with his band in tow.

Joe and his family were well-used to hunting together in the hills around the town, and were able to move swiftly and silently up to the ridge. When the cabin was in view, they spread out in a line.

Joe whispered, “Not going to give this son of a bitch any chance. As soon as we get near that door, fire.”

Inside the cabin, in the dark, Tom Brule lined up the members of his party, with their guns facing the door.

“Not going to give that son of a bitch any chance when he returns. As soon as he gets near the door, open fire.”

They turned my presentation into a complete farce, all that remains of the quarter scale model I had spent the last six months working on is a shouldering heap of brass and glass. Even though I had crafted it to be fully operational, it was never meant to be switched on. I stressed that at this size, the brass used in the carrier tube would not be able to take the excessive temperatures. The model does not scale 1 to 1 and that on the final version it would need to be some four inches thick, but that patronising philistine who deliberately sat at the front to annoy me, pulled the lever despite my protests.

What infuriates me the most, and I have already broken the lead on my pencil twice trying to write this, is that they did not acknowledge what they saw in front of their own eyes for the brief moment the model worked.

The parabolic mirror did its job and focused the light through the prism. The colour separation happened as expected, and the concentrated heat began to set the boiler in motion. At the same time, the dynamo began to spin into action and the electromagnets began to charge.  They could clearly see through the inspection window that in the chamber the separate colour rays of light were behaving exactly as one would expect.  Except for the blue frequency which was clearly showing signs of bending.

But oh no, they said the inspection panel was too small on the model, or that I had been lazy in my construction and the glass was at fault.  Anything but what they clearly did see. If this had been my full size machine, there would be no doubt as to the results.

I should stop my ranting for a second and should note I was pleased to see, as predicted, the blue light was being drawn into the carrier tube.  The boiler,  having raised what I call my Huygen mixture to the correct temperature, began to fill the glass piston chambers on either side of the machine. The fluctuations in the electromagnetic field began to raise the fluid from the pistons and into the carrier tube itself. Sadly, the model could not take the sudden increase in temperature, but I have no doubt that on the full scale model we should then observe the following:

Once enough light has been pulled into the carrier tube, the pistons will fire.
In turn, this will cause the blue light to accelerate through the carrier tube.
At the other end, it will gain more force as it is passed through the mirror array.
Finally, it will pass through the oscillating gates and onto the screen.

Oh what a treat it will be, those precious laws of Newton they hang so dearly onto would be shattered in a second (or should I say in a non-second(?)) I can picture their faces now, they would have to build a hundred new academies to study my results! They would also have to admit that all this time, I had been right.

I have resigned myself to the fact that I am never going to get that grant I so desperately need from them. To hell with the academy!

I am not going to let myself be humiliated like that again, it was a pantomime from the start, something they set up for their own twisted amusement. I am tired, tired of walking through the corridors of the institute and being constantly ridiculed; tired of coming home at the end of each day feeling drained and alone in my work.

I spent the early part of this evening in my workshop walking among the casting moulds for the final machine. I admit that in my anger I was tempted to take a sledgehammer to the lot but…

I made some quick calculations, which I will need to double-check, but there may be a way I  can complete my machine. There is no escaping the fact that Admiralty brass is the only alloy that has the right properties for the carrier tube and that is a cost I am going to have to bear.

However, I can substitute most of the brass needed in the frame with iron, and I will melt down the fireplaces in this house if I have to. For the rest of the construction, I am going to have to improvise and adapt. I can save money by letting my housekeeper go and I am sure that the contents of my library should raise enough funds to see this venture through.

All I need is the machine to operate for at most one minute, just enough time for the pistons fire and the light show to begin. I know Newton is wrong when he says that time and space are absolute and after the brief glimpse today, I want to satisfy my own curiosity – I want to prove to myself that all these years of work I have put in are not in vain.

I want to see into those other worlds.