Episode 10: Secondary Attempt

THE SCIENTIST: Experiment 31E, secondary attempt.

Date: November 4, 1843.

I hesitated over how to designate this set of notes. When I began Phase E of Experiment 31, I had decided this phase would be devoted to human experimentation, and anything less would not count as part of the primary sequence of attempts, hence the designation secondary for animal attempts. However, today’s attempt feels as if it deserves to be called something more than secondary. It was…

I thought I would be more cheerful. But things have…turned. There is a tension that was not here before… I don’t know how to correct it…

The circumstances behind this attempt certainly helped create this awkwardness…but it wasn’t merely that…

Let me start from the beginning.

When the Boy…when John and I returned from our excursion to Devon, we found Agnes had done well in her role as caretaker. She had taken her duties seriously and had done them exceedingly well…all except for one.

Agnes never liked John’s cat. The two faces bothered her, disgusted her. When tasked with caring for it while we were away, she failed to properly feed it, not wanting to be in its presence for too long.

When we arrived home, Stove was barely alive. John tried to save it, but…this morning, poor Stove stopped breathing.

John was…inconsolable. He loved that cat…I don’t know why…but he did… I’d gotten used to it as well… John thought Stove might be a girl, it’s hard to tell when kittens are so young, but he’d started calling it—her…Lady Stove. I refused to add that title to Stove’s moniker originally, but…seeing that poor kitten, cursed with such a deformity but having survived for nearly two months, all thanks to John’s devotion…

I helped him wrap Lady Stove in an old blanket. I offered to take her remains to the boiler myself, so he didn’t have to dispose of her like he’d disposed of my failed specimens, but he insisted on digging her a proper grave. I let him, sent him off with a spade to dig a hole behind the manor, to lay this…remarkable little thing to rest.

Once he was out the door, I brought Stove to my laboratory.

Perhaps it was…selfish of me to be thinking of Stove as a potential test subject. A specimen. But here it was, the perfect opportunity fallen into my lap, and just as I had procured a new ingredient for my formula. I was eager to see if the Breutelia pendula would have the hoped-for effect. I had worked for so long… With everything that has happened recently—with all the people making threats and imposing deadlines—I couldn’t let this slip through my fingers.

And…I have to admit…I thought if I could bring back Stove…John would stop grieving. Thanks to the Rubedo he’s now worried about his family…and of course, his own health is obviously…

I thought it was something nice I could do for him. So I created a new variant of the formula. Not wanting to use up the sample I had just procured, I took a small amount of what I had stolen from Hooker and supplemented it with what I had managed to isolate from the Rubedo’s false panacea. My last experiment that had used some Breutelia pendula separated from the panacea had shown no dangerous effects, so I assumed it would cause no problem. Then I did the boiler work myself to charge the electricity and placed Stove on the slab.

I injected the formula—I had to make adjustments due to the size of the specimen, of course—and then added the electricity—again, making adjustments for size. I waited, fearing I may have only produced a cooked cat rather than a revived one…

Then her eyes opened. All four of them.

Stove was alive. Alive.

It worked.

All I’d needed was more of that one ingredient, and it worked.

Stove let out a meow and stood up. I removed the electrodes from her skin. She tried to bite me, but [laughs] she tried to bite me. Because she can, because she’s alive.

The formula, the procedure. It works!

Of course, Stove had only been dead for a few hours. I think that was part of the reason for my success. After that last specimen, I knew—I knew—I needed a body that was fresh—as fresh as possible. And here, here she was. The perfect specimen.

And she is perfect. Alive and well.

I was ecstatic. I scooped up Stove and ran out to where John had just finished digging her grave. I held Stove out to him.

“She’s alive!” I said.

John’s face went through a wide array of emotions—disbelief chief among them—but then Stove meowed, and I thought he would cry with joy.

But then…something changed. A shadow swept over his eyes. He looked at me…in a way he never had before.

“What did you do?” he asked.

I stared at him in confusion. I held out Stove closer to him so he would take her, but he backed up a step, away from Stove. Away from me.

“She’s alive,” I said again. “You don’t have to bury her. She’s alive!”

But John was shaking his head. “Why?” he kept saying. “Why? Why did you do that?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “She’s alive, John. I brought her back. You don’t have to be sad now—”

“She’s not one of your specimens,” John spat. “She’s not part of your bloody experiment!”

He had never spoken to me like that before. He had never raised his voice, never swore at me. I didn’t…I didn’t understand why he was so mad…

“But…but she’s alive,” I said once more. “If it weren’t for me, she would still be dead. I brought her back—”

“Did you ever stop to think I didn’t want you to?” he shouted. “I didn’t ask for this! I wouldn’t have asked for this. Things die, Vic. It’s nature. It’s what—it’s what’s meant to be. You can’t stop it, you shouldn’t stop it. When my mother died I…I wanted her back. I would have done anything to get her back. I was just a boy—I needed her. But…if I’d had the chance to bring her back, I only would have brought her back to a world of pain and suffering. A world that didn’t care about a mother who had gotten sick, or about the children she left behind. A world that, for many, death is a relief. And bringing her back…I would only have lost her again. No one can live forever. She would’ve died—again. I would’ve had to grieve her—again. I wouldn’t want to go through that twice. She’s in a better place, even if that place is only in the dirt, because she can’t feel pain now, she can’t hurt.”

There were tears in his eyes… I…I had done that. I thought I was going to fix things but…

“John…” I said, uncertain as to what to say.

But John took another step back. He picked up the shovel. He would not look at me.

“Stove wasn’t meant to live long,” he said. “I knew it when I took her in. I just thought…I thought I could give her a nice life while she lasted. Make it easier for her. Give her a memory of happiness she could take with her when she goes. But now…” He glanced at the cat in my arms and shook his head.

He walked away, leaving me beside the empty grave.

I stood there…I’m not sure for how long… Dark gray clouds had rolled in overhead as we’d argued, and now the wind picked up, the sky growing darker.

Stove growled at the first roll of thunder. I turned back to the manor as scattered drops of rain began to fall.

I’m here in my study now, Stove in her makeshift bed. We’ve been staring at each other… She looks the same to me, but…to John…I think all he sees is a monster…

This was a successful attempt. After struggling for so long, I now have proof my theories are correct. I have done what no one else has been able to achieve…

But I don’t feel like celebrating.

I should… I should be happy… Why do I care…

I’ve never stopped to think…am I doing the right thing? I’ve always seen morality as…subjective. Restrictive.

John objected so vehemently to the raising of the dead, but…who wouldn’t want to bring back those they’ve lost?

John thinks those who have died are in a better place… Is that true? I have never been religious. My mother never encouraged it. My father was a deist, rejecting religious texts in favor of finding proof of God in nature. My mother…she was raised Catholic, although she never spoke of it around my father—like many people, he didn’t trust Papists—but she never practiced any form of Christianity outside of acknowledging a handful of holy days. Neither she nor my father cared if I was a good Christian, or a Christian at all. I can’t recall the last time I was even in a church… I don’t know if my mother even believed in a god. Honestly, I don’t think I do. Is there an afterlife? Is there some great judgment we must face when we die?

Is there a soul?

Where would a soul be, in the body? When does it first manifest within us? When we die…where does it go? Is there some other world, hidden from this one, where we all go when we pass on? I know many religions believe in some form of an afterlife—Solomon says Judaism teaches of one, and of a spark of the divine within us all, while Rahul believes in reincarnation, where the soul is reborn again and again until it achieves enlightenment and gains freedom from this cycle. If there is something after this life, like so many believe, what is it like? Is it another world or plane of existence? Is it a paradise—or a place of despair? If I bring back someone who has died, am I pulling their soul back from this other world, yanking them away from some earned reward—or punishment?

What if…what if the soul can’t return? What if my process only brings back the body, the physical remains, not the spiritual essence of the resurrected? What would such a person be like? Does a soul influence who a person is? And if I bring someone back without it, are they just a husk, a shuffling, shambling corpse?

I don’t think I believe in a soul… But I know there are many who do. Even the ancient Egyptians preserved their dead because they believed the soul needed the body to live forever in the afterlife. Without the body, the soul could not enjoy the hereafter.

Are the body and soul forever tethered? What about when the body decays, turns to dust? Is the soul now tethered to that dust, scattered to the winds?

What of those bodies that have been dissected in medical theaters? What of their souls?

What of Jeremy Bentham? His body preserved as an auto-icon at his request, his head mummified. Is his soul still attached to that gruesome, desiccated thing? Is his soul bothered by how the preservation was not to his exact wishes? Or is it just a dead man propped up in a box?

Are we beings filled with some supernatural light, or we as spiritually empty as the ground we walk on, no more special in the grand scheme of the cosmos than stones and dirt? Or is that dirt we walk on built of the souls of all who have decayed and become one with the earth? Are we treading on the souls of the ancient dead…or is it just…dirt?

If there is no soul, then when we are gone, we are truly…gone.

Is it better for some to be dead, to stop all thought, all experience? To simply…not exist? The idea of no longer being aware of the world, of no longer thinking terrifies me. The idea that my mind will one day…stop…and then I will be no more… I would like to postpone that for as long as possible, and I know I am not alone. Look at the alchemists trying to find the secret to immortality. To live forever, to be able to constantly learn new things, experience history as it happens…who wouldn’t want that? Who would prefer death to that?

But I suppose…the experiences of this world are not equally dealt out to everyone. They don’t all live in manors, with servants and money and the opportunity to explore whatever they fancy. Many must work in degrading, backbreaking jobs and still struggle to have enough to eat. Their lives are full of suffering… If they were brought back, what would they be brought back for? To return to the mines, the factories? Kept alive in perpetuity to be crushed by the cogs of the machines that need their blood sacrifice to keep a select few in wealth and comfort?

If resurrection became the standard response to death, the workers would never be allowed to stop working. Their lungs would fill with coal, their bodies poisoned with lead, again and again, killing them over and over, never allowed an end. Perhaps…in that case…being allowed to die would be a relief. To rot in the ground would be preferable to rotting in a factory.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

If you lose someone you love…and you know they would want to come back…what would be the harm?

My mother told me so many stories about people who returned from the dead, and certainly no one in those stories thought the resurrected was better off gone.

There was the story of the man who had sacrificed himself to save his friends. His body returned to new life, but his mind had become separated from it, placed in the care of another. And those he had sacrificed his life for risked everything to make him whole again, to bring him back.

Or the story of the scientist with the terrible luck, who seemed destined to die again and again, brought back each time. At no point did he regret his return to life, even when he lost access to a higher plane of existence where he had achieved god-like powers. He descended back to a normal human life and returned to those he loved.

Or the tale of the man who had lost his beloved, watched him die in front of him, only to later discover his love still alive. But his love had been tortured, twisted, hammered into a weapon. Despite all that pain, he was still glad his love was alive, and he rescued him, had him back again.

These are joyous stories of the dead returning, even after they have lived lives of suffering.

But of course, those are not the only stories Mother told me.

There was the one…the one that inspired this journey…

Mother loved to tell me that story, and I loved to listen. Something about it always brought a tear to her eye. She once said…she called it the “book that should have been.” She said it was meant to have been written and published, shared with the whole world, but something had gone wrong. I’d asked her why she didn’t write it herself, but she refused. I never could make sense of what she meant, and she never mentioned it again.

But that story fascinated me from the moment she began telling it…

A man, a scientist like me, became obsessed with the thought of giving life to inanimate matter. He built a creature, a man from pieces of the dead, building it up from bones to veins to everything else, crafting the creature like Prometheus molded men from clay. And one day, he breathed life into this mound of dead flesh, bringing this new being into existence.

He didn’t just bring back the dead. He. Made. New. Life.

I was always fascinated by how he found a way to revive what was once dead. Piecing a new being together was less interesting to me, but the restoration of life…that caught my imagination. I wondered if it was possible. I read everything I could get my hands on. As I became flushed with excitement over the possibility of resurrection, my mother always tried to remind me of how the rest of the story goes.

Yes, he brought dead flesh to life. But he was terrified of what he created. The being, which he had tried so hard to sculpt into beauty, was hideous and frightful in appearance. The scientist shunned it, abandoned it, and the creature was forced out into an uncaring world, where it plotted its revenge. The scientist lost everything—and everyone—in the monster’s rampage. Determined to make the creature pay for what it had done to him, the scientist chased him to the ends of the earth. But the story is not a triumph for him. The scientist dies, the creature lives. He truly lost everything, including his own life, due to his hubris.

Of course, I pointed out to my mother that the scientist brought that misery on himself. He had abandoned his creation simply because he was frightened of it. If he had shown compassion and taken the time to teach the creature the ways of the world, none of the tragic events would have occurred. The monster in that story was the scientist, not the creature.

My mother happened to agree, but she still didn’t like me playing with the dead. She warned me that sometimes our best intentions can have dire consequences. She refused to let me continue my experiment.

Then my father died.

Things…changed then. Mother sought solace in Lydia and cared little what I did. I don’t think she approved of the experiment, but I think she accepted it as inevitable. She no longer stopped me. Only my own failure to discover a working formula caused me to put it aside…until Mother’s death years later. Then the obsession consumed me once more. I could focus on nothing else, nothing except those last days, as her illness caused her to descend into madness. The things she said…those final moments…

John might be able to let his mother stay in the dirt, but I cannot. Not if I can undo what became of her. John says it’s nature to die, and yes, I suppose it is. But must we accept it? Can’t we defy nature, like we have done so many times before? We can harness the wind to sail across the ocean, we can sow the fields to feed ourselves without needing to hunt and gather. We can fix the natural order when need be. Why not this as well?

Perhaps the inevitable is not so inevitable. Or at least, it can be postponed until we are truly ready to let go. My father was too young, so was my mother, so is—

Has John so readily accepted his own demise? Has he made peace with the consumption that is killing him? Does he see his own death as a relief? Is there nothing in this life he wants to hold on to? No one he will miss, who will miss him? Does his family know?

If he dies…would they want me to bring him back?

Would I bring him back? After his outburst today…I know he wouldn’t want it. If I offered, surely he would refuse. He doesn’t wish to be a…specimen… I don’t want him to be one either. But if I find him one morning in his room, skin cold, breath ceased…and I have the ability to return him to life…

If I could do it…

But he wouldn’t want me to… [shivering, sad breathing]

The world is not as logical as I would like it to be. There are…far too many…complications…

I will have to accept his wishes, however things turn out…

But there are those who would want to be returned. There are those who will not, cannot, accept the capricious whims of nature. And I can be a boon for them. I am so close, too close, to give up now…

Today…was a success. That is what I should focus on. Even if I am the only one who can see it.

Agnes brought me my dinner before I began recording these notes. When she saw Stove restored to life, she paused.

“I thought it died,” she said, her voice filled with no regret at the loss of John’s pet.

“I brought her back,” I said. I couldn’t remember how much I had told Agnes about my experiment, if she knew my ultimate goal, but I didn’t care. “John doesn’t want her now, though,” I added.

Agnes nodded, eyeing the cat. She never cared for Stove, but the look she gave her now… It wasn’t the revulsion from before.

It was fear.

“What do you plan to do with it then?” she asked.

I shrugged. I honestly didn’t know. I still don’t.

But Agnes nodded slightly, a steely look in her eye.

“If you need to…dispose of it,” she said, “I have a pistol in my room. I bought it when I lived with my father over his bar, to keep out the rowdy customers who sometimes wandered too far upstairs. You could use it…or I could do it for you.”

I thanked her for the offer, but I had no intention of killing what I had just brought back to life. She nodded again and left.

I suppose Agnes meant well, but Stove is my proof, my justification for years of toil. I will not be disposing of her. I will only be moving forward.

It is time now. Time for another attempt. I will need to contact Herman, hopefully for the last time. I need a specimen, a human specimen. And it needs to be fresh.