Beware a saboteur by the name of Gimaldi. That wretched fool is in cahoots with that which would separate me from my inspiration. I've never met a man named Gimaldi, but I had a terrible nightmare about a man named Gimaldi, and he was trying to kill the creative in me. He was hellbent on stopping something that he said I was unwittingly a part of. A freak. I'll never mix business with any man named Gimaldi. I cannot convey how horrible this nightmare was.
The passage was followed by a rough sketch of a man looking like Gimaldi, but with long teeth and books for eyes. The image was menacing enough in a cartoonish way, and strengthened Leopold's desire not to speak to Gimaldi ever again. Perhaps, thought Leopold, Gimaldi was trying to steal the former artist's sketchbook for his own gain, and was now being chummy in order to obtain it from the new owner.
After their last soiree where Leopold was able to showcase his newest creation at the scientist's house, Ensopht had been pleasantly surprised with the product, lauding it as a fabulous first step that catapulted the synthesis into becoming actuality.
Other strange fascinations took hold of Leopold and his creative urges. Perhaps feeling closer to the interests of Dr Aymer, Leopold incorporated more images from genetics into his art. Rather than let the sketchbook itself dictate his creative enterprise, Leopold brazenly began filling its back blank pages (which had multiplied from three to thirty by a process known only to the magic of the sketchbook itself) with his own derivations and sketch experiments. The book never left him, and he took it with him to the most uncanny of places – under bridges, in abandoned industrial parks, besotted alleys, unkempt fields, and wherever might strike his esoteric fancy as zones of dilapidation and neglect. This, he thought, was necessary, for he began thinking in revolutionary colours: the synthesis and its outcome had to emerge from the forgotten spaces and the longest shadows. Of course, Leopold had been spared the true character and purpose of the synthesis, and so his interpretation was crudely literal and a tad bit shallow. Indeed, the synthesis was to emerge from forgotten spaces and long shadows, but these spaces and shadows were the zoned places of a collective unconscious, the insatiable drives clamouring to be set free. This was known to but the few, and Leopold was merely an unwitting instrument toward the satisfaction of what would come.
Ensopht had to ensure that Leopold would not attempt to make his work too public. Any dizzy kind of publicity would have sequestered Leopold in the art world's fad-formation and would endanger the providence of the synthesis. It was for this reason that, not trusting anything to chance, Ensopht secretly persuaded the Parson Gallery to cancel Leopold's show.
Meanwhile, the madman, Dr Wally Wyman, had finally completed his anticipated book on the philosophy of immanent energy. The work itself was radically more composed than its writer, as it is so often the case that the writer and his text are two distinct entities that only meet in passing. The metaphysics book was already on its way out, soon to be in the proofing stages when strangers are introduced between author and text by an editor outside this cozy twain. Despite the soon-to-be departure of the text into the plethora of a violent academic market of the grievously unread, Wally decided to celebrate with a package of nickel-cadmium batteries.
The last third of his book was padded with more poetic description than he was usually known for. Something creative was welling up within him, and he attributed this to a long absence from his electricity habit. “When the body loses its electric vivacity, the mind compensates by adopting the electric character of the poet.” It was shabby reasoning, but Wally did not think it warranted anything more than that.
In this mood, he decided to write a small story. It began this way: “Two men are charged with writing my story, each blind to the other's intentions... “
A moment of epiphany compelled Leopold to scramble about for paper and a pen; he felt the strange compunction to scrawl the notes toward what would perhaps become a kind of short story. He could envision the entire plot, up to a certain point where it fell apart and became hazy. His determination would bring him to this hazy point in order to transcend it, to bring the plot into perfect, spherical shape. It began: “Two men are charged with writing my story, each blind to the other's intentions... “ He could not stop himself; a writing without choice, as if dictated to his mind from a currently unfolding event.
Wally rested his pen, exhausted and unsatisfied. The story he had began had not been properly wrought the way his initial enthusiasm had thought it would be. He resumed, just as halfway across the city Leopold also resumed: “In that amoebic mass of bodies turning themselves over and over, we six were each in a kind of curious transformation. In a crash mode, in a fusion, in the reformation of a genre composed of six once distinct bodies goaded toward completion by a sphinx-principle of sorts. And this sphinx, a varied composite of mixed matters, of disparate parts forced into union, was much bigger than us all. In unison, we were more than the sum of our parts. Our parts, taken individually, leave only the riddle unsolved, but together in their context forge by way of the synthesis what the actuality of the merger must betoken.
10
The Prophet and the Third Man Discuss the Mechanics of the Synthesis
The rain was still slashing the streets, the sewers gurgled, and the wind whittled the rain drops into knife points. Ensopht and the Third Man had an unavoidable meeting in the warmly lit enclosure of a coffee shop, couched behind specialty beverages, the internal ambience standing sentinel against the inclement elements on the exterior of its arbitrary shell.
“They are writing one another now,” Ensopht said.
“Really? I guess that was to be expected. I hope to be the result of their composition, that I may have all my details filled in, that I may accede beyond being this... this... fetus of a being.”
“The time draws near. Your part in all of this is steadily becoming secured.”
“My part? Must I play just a part?”
“Why, yes, who has ever heard of a mirror without its corresponding reflection? You are aware of the plan, aren't you?”
“Yes, It tickles me. But must I be so repressed in this new entity?”
“Take heart, good fellow. You will have prominence; the reflection will be freed from the mirror, and you will stand without bounds. The scientist has already given in to his darker impulses, the artist has realized his newfound lineage, the philosopher has clued in and welcomed the synthesis... So, as you can see, everything is proceeding according to script. I truly wish someone of your... stature and puissance... could be made to play an even stronger role, but we need our checks and balances. We all make our compromises in this act of fusion. Do be at ease that you will be appropriately represented.”
“Do they show concern at how nebulous I seem?”
“Yes, but that is your nature, necessarily so. For them to know exactly who you are – or, rather, what you represent – would upset them. Are you not the incarnation of cruelty, what the foolish psychoanalysts call the Id? I think you've done well to keep quiet and unprepossessing.”
“Cruelty must survive harsh winters, avoiding detection. What use is horror that never abates, never relents to allow its opposite? Horror needs stark relief in order to be effective. I go about my business quietly.”
“The synthesis will resolve all the contradictions, forming mountains without valleys.”
“And I shall sit here, counting down the seconds,” the Third Man said flatly, using his spoon to carve an ellipse into the already battered wooden table. “Would I become as much like them as they would become more like me?”
“No one will be divisible or distinguishable in the final product. All parts will be harmoniously blended. It is the creation of the consistent and seamless character. There is both design and madness in it. We who have thrown our shoulders into this task, dipped our shovels into the virgin ground, know what is at stake: the politics of a people to come. Our part is necessary.”
“I look out on all of this and feel the swelling des
ire for great change. I see it in the murderous flash in a young man's eyes, I feel their need to hate like the buzzing of radio waves. Equality, tolerance, democracy, all these polite prescriptions upon them... that they begrudgingly obey for lack of any other viable alternative. The people secretly await the despot, the great era of the tyrant who will give them the permission and encouragement to exercise what they truly wish to express. Peace has been bad for all of us, a stale-making thing. It has been too long in this bloodless state, and I feel the painful yearning of the people to return to an age of atrocities to redefine the good and the evil. Enough of the aborted apocalyptic visions that failed to materialize, and enough of the diplomatic souls that would smooth over every tension by forestalling the inevitable angry violence of the people. The people want the cruel tyrant to tell them what to do, to tell them what they feel is okay.”
“And so the synthesis will unleash that very thing, freeing them through tyranny.”
“How much longer? I am becoming anxious to get to work.”
“Not much longer now. Patience. You have waited this long and you will be rewarded.”
“What remains to be done?”
“The bookish man must fumble through a few more of his convoluted codes, sleuth after those things he cannot yet understand. The Librarian has seen to it that the bookish man will be kept occupied for a little while until he can finalize the synthesis.”
Somewhere, in the distance, a spectral machine was purring. Over the skyline was slung a dark necklace of heavy and hideous clouds that seemed to frame the cyclopean and unblinking eye of a watchful moon.
31
Cipher
Again, I would be the victim of enigma. A postal deliverer came to my door and had me sign for a package. When I opened the manila envelope, and the bubble wrap, there was a smaller entirely black envelope inside with chalk-white letters that read: “To: Gimaldi. From: Mr. Clysm.” No return address either on the black or outer envelope. By the heft and size of it, I could tell the contents contained a book. What I didn't know was the entry of this book would soon consume roughly 20 straight hours of wakefulness.
It was irregular but not unheard of for some prospective sellers who trusted my name to send me a sample of their wares, but these were usually sent to me with far more protective packaging.
Written in an elegant cursive script was a note to me:
Dear Mr. Gimaldi -
A dear colleague and friend of mine has recently been the victim of treachery resulting in his untimely death. I am rather certain who was responsible, and I also have knowledge that you have been the victim of a rather unpleasant set of mysterious circumstances. I am entrusting this manuscript to your care much in the way Marci gifted unto Athanasius Kircher the mysterious Voynich manuscript in 1666. I do know it holds the key to what you are looking for; namely, the name of the book that records the outcome of the nefarious synthesis. It is beyond my abilities to crack the code, but I was told that you are a bit of an enthusiast in this regard. Please accept this gift along with my luck. The cost of this book is immaterial to me, so do not feel in any way obliged to offer any remuneration. In closing, please, find out the name of this book, locate it, stop this synthesis from taking place, and maybe there will be some justice for my dear friend A. Setzer.
-Clysm.
Another book, and another mystery. The envelope contained a quarto manuscript in parchment, measuring 5” by 9”. I set to work discovering all I could about the manuscript before concerning myself with the wending mystery of the contents. I took out my notebook and recorded the size, and other details. There was no author and no date. There would be no clue as to who financed it since there was no colophon, and parchment does not have watermarks. Dating the manuscript proved difficult, but not impossible. Texts written on parchment existed up until the invention of the printing press when rag-linen paper replaced production, even for the most sumptuous editions. So, this meant the text was presumably incunabula: written, by hand, before the printing press. There were only sixteen pages in the manuscript. Without any further clues, I examined the paleography, looking for stylistic script and common abbreviations that may have narrowed when it was written. Despite what “Clysm” wrote, the text was not, upon deeper inspection, written in code, but rather cipher, as was common for the period (which I narrowed to 1350-1450). Only one word was intelligible on the first page: “Pergamena”, which only means “made in Pergamum”, a stylized way of saying the text was written on parchment. On the second page was a Latin inscription that stated that there were two keys to this text. The first key was to be “lowered in its tree by one,” which I knew to be to take the letter and go down one step in a cipher column. Those medievals occasionally used silly methods for concealing their words and meaning (which wasn't always too necessary given the fashion of the times for being abstruse)
The text itself came with this cipher:
.O H..W.E.H.. U..W K.D.K.J.K.O, U.R.R.O
WC.J.D H.. .G.K.K, .O E.D. WC..S.O;
.O H..D WC..M.K.O, E.D. .G.K.K
Otherwise, cipher or pure gibberish. Due to some of the conspicuous repetitions, I reasoned that it was unlikely there would be a grille involved. Grilles being, of course, only useful if both parties had the same card with the right chits punched out to be overlayed upon the text. From what I knew about ciphers, I applied the most common:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
(J)
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
(U)
V
W
X
Y
Z
The result, by lowering each ciphertext by one letter in the column was this:
.T Q..C.N.Q.. H..C R.S.R.V.R.T, H.B.B.T
CL.V.M Q.. .P.R.R, .T N.M. CL..D.T;
.T Q..M CL..S.R.T, N.M. .P.R.R
Although this seemed to read to be as gibberish as the first ciphertext, after staring at it confusedly for half an hour I suddenly suspected that the periods were actually standing in for vowels. Given my understanding of Latin, the most reasonable vowel that would appear in the formulation “.T” would be an “E” to spell “Et” (most often represented as “&” in medieval texts). It took another few hours of trial and error to come up with the right vowel substitutions. As if the word “key” was the key, I located the Latin word for it (”clavem”). After much frustration, I finally came to a rational phrase, one that seemed very familiar:
ET QUICUNQUE HAEC RESERAVERIT HABEBIT
CLAVEM QUI APERIR, ET NEMO CLAUDIT;
ET QUUM CLAUSERIT, NEMO APERIR
From here, it was an easy matter to translate, and a trip to the search engine revealed these to be the last lines of Roger Bacon's Epistola fratris Rogerii Baconis de secretis operibus artis et naturae et de nullitate magicae (1252). The letter was written by Roger Bacon to a colleague in enigma since it contained his recipe for making black powder. The letter begins with a long exposition on art and nature, and is filled with Bacon's predictions for horseless carriages, flying machines, the telescope, underwater equipment, suspension bridges, and elevators. However, the last line of the epistle was inserted with a highly significant purpose, and this was where the second key would prove important. The Bacon line itself can be translated as his rather dramatic finale to what black powder presents humanity; namely, that it is like a door that, when opened, no man can shut; and if shut, no man can open.
Exhausting a few other possibilities, I decided to follow the numerological line, thus rendering the now deciphered text thus:
56 889385 8153 25452115296, 8125296 331154 889 175292, 56 5546 3318496; 56 8884 331845296, 5546 175292
A hopeless kludge of numbers. On instinct, I reduced the numbers further so that “56” would be 5+6 = 11, and 1+1=2. The result was a more manageable, but possibly erroneous 2586687822721528. But this would prove the right way of going about it since, on the following page was a devotional text of four lines copied from some passage in the Bible. This was prefaced by a text written backward that the key was “in four fours”. I counted off the sixteen numbers I had in my collection and applied the numbers to pick out the letters so that the first letter was two letters in, the next five letters after that, and so on, so it would look like this:
x2xxxx5xxxxxxx8xxxxx6
xxxxx6xxxxxxx8xxxxxx7xxxxxxx8... &c.
The letters I was able to fish out were these:
DEAR
SATR
OCIT
ATIS
The Infinite Library Page 45
