Chapter Sampling 01.000
[The following is a sample chapter from Spectacular Moments of Wonder with Dr. Monocle: That Certain Gentleman, further work from the novel can be found here.]
Chapter 01.000
I thought it to be a fine lecture, even if I do say so myself. Although I may be biased. It may have lacked explosions, adventure, and thrills, but what it lacked in excitement, the lecture made up for in what would become an entirely new realm of philosophical exploration and thought (that no one would care about for another few decades, as it turned out). We were upon the precipice of something new and great, an unknown world of exploration.
That day, I wore a brand new three-piece suit, a brown tweed; a fresh new band around my top hat; fresh mustache wax to curl my gray whiskers. I put a fresh new shine to my shoes. And I even polished a new monocle to wear upon my left eye (a recent gift from the Monarch presented to me by my friend, Royal Advisor James Traggis). I twirled my umbrella casually and paced thoughtfully and kept myself animated throughout the entire lecture. I knew little about showmanship, but just enough to keep my audience awake. I had hoped.
Although, I must admit, I did give myself a good smack to the side of my own face as the twirling of my umbrella became a little too theatrical for my own good. While I’m glad no one seemed to have noticed, I’m just as saddened as to the notion that no one was paying attention. Alas, a sound I can only describe as that being a “thwack” followed by that of an abrupt groan of disdain on my part brought the audience’s attention back to me.
Dean Wormfodder allowed me, rather insisted, my lecture be given in old SteamWorks Hall, a gorgeously grand old hall; a gently curved, concaved, nearly spherical room with stadium seating reaching to the ceiling. Everything was finished in a deep, dark wood tone. Copper finishings. Recessed gaslights. Stained glass windows. Greats have given their best in this hall. Originally used to give presentations on cadaver dissection and anatomy lectures, I think I was the first to have actually died on that stage.
Unfortunately, I think most of the audience, a mix of students and professors mostly, expected something rather different than what I presented to them. They came in expecting stories of the high seas, of freeing slaves, of battling monsters, beasts, and vicious creatures that truly only exist within the confines of the imagination. Instead, I presented an idea which I had been toiling with: a many-worlds theory. Of course, this lecture was interesting to few, uninteresting to many, falling on the deaf ears of those lost within their own meandering thoughts of the impending summer season.
Indeed.
I checked my timepiece, not once, but twice. I feared I was dragging the audience down into a mire of boredom. They were pulling me down with them as I grew voiceless with the lack of reception. Many care not about the philosophical and theoretical. Such is the world I live.
It can get the best of you, wondering, “Why bother?” It’s an impossible theory to prove, the idea of infinite realities in which no two are exactly alike, but by chance alone two can be eerily similar. Just like an elsewhere snowflake, we just are in this world. Another elsewhere snowflake almost identical in structure, but for one minor detail. Perhaps so minor and trivial it goes unnoticeable.
For example, there is a reality that exists apart from our own in which nothing is the same, not even here, this, now. It could be so different, that we, with our senses, couldn’t even experience it. But there is one so similar to our own that the only difference might be that I’m writing this journal from my home instead of my university office as I am now. Two realities, this and another, in which everything is the same except in one I decided to write in my journal from The University, but in the other I go home to do my writing instead. Everything up to that point in both worlds was exactly the same.
Interesting? Confusing? Big deal of dire haberdashery, you say. Yes, I suppose, but I imagine this would lead into a divergent reality where whatever happens to me here within the walls of this University affects my future differently than if I were to be typing this from the typewriter in my home study. Everything was the same in those two worlds up until that point. Then they diverge, going on and becoming two very different worlds. Then again, maybe not by very distinct alterings (or perhaps alterations is the word) or maybe barely any at all. Perhaps the two once-exactly same worlds become so completely and vastly different.
Perhaps even more mundane… A trivial matter much like the color of the ink ribbon in this typewriter. As I am here, it is black as the gravend’s feather. Perhaps in another reality it is blue. I don’t believe I would be affected in any such way by a blue ribbon. I suppose in a third reality there is a version of myself who utterly hates blue ink and goes so far as to kill his secretary over the matter. The spectrum is wide, I suppose, even in the oddest of fashions.
I often tend to dip into a daydream of other worlds, other realities that could be like our own, but very, very different. It is merely a philosophical exercise of which I enjoy immensely.
Damn be to those who awake the day dreamer.
I do say. But I also do wonder, just a little itch of thought, “Could we possibly access another reality?” I don’t know how, not with our current steam tech. I’ve seen various mathematics from other schools of thought on the matter. To be honest, I could have been looking at an ancient hieroglyphics lost to time for all I knew. I believe in his book, “The Aether That Binds”, Dr. Morgan Oliver Kakuthorne states the amount of energy it would require to tear apart the aether is more than any of our steam tech could handle.
Even if we had the means, though, there’s no telling what would happen if we could tear open the aether of space and time and reality. I sure wouldn’t mind witnessing such a fantastical occurrence, though. I think it would be absolutely splendid, in fact. It’s just that there is no guarantee that tearing a hole or punching a doorway through the aether would create a link between two different realities. Unless the realities exist in a vast space, an aether within the aether, if I may. Like bubbles in a fresh pint of ale. Maybe vasts worlds within a vast space, some bouncing off each other, some crashing and tearing each other apart, some compacted together. It can boggle the mind.
I began again with another example. And sometimes there are moments in which you get lost. I became lost somewhere in a meandering tangent of wondrous thought as I talked to my audience of peers and fellow gentlemen of higher learning. Imagine our planet, Orbis, I spun my hand over the large globe in the room. But it is not Orbis. It is called something else, something odd we do not understand. And Orbis Minor, the entire land mass - from Southland to Northward Territories - broken apart as it were several million years ago. Splotches of land scattered across the sea… People scattered about. But they are just like us. They live just like us. They talk just like us. Everything is similar. Perhaps things are off just a smidgen. Who knows how wildly different things could possibly be?
I do believe courtesy is a wondrous virtue, so I cut my lecture short for those slipping into deep wake-less sleep. I took questions from a few in my audience.
“Could you perhaps enlighten us as to the outcome of the debacle with the Gentleman Pirate?” A woman’s voice called out.
“What ancient relics do you believe are still to be discovered?” A young man, presumably an armchair explorer and textbook adventure asked next.
“How do we know you’re the Dr. Monocle from this reality?” The voice of an unfortunately uneducated, oafish doof called out from the back.
Question after question after question after question that had nothing to do with the lecture I had just presented for the past hour. These people lived in the past and were unable to see the future was ahead of them. This was a new realm of thought, but no one seemed to understand. Unenthusiastically I gave short, often one-word answers. Eventually, I just waited out my time.
A student somewhere from the middle of the auditorium spoke up, “Professor, what is your take on encroaching maldeviant communities into the more populated metros?”
I didn’t very well have a take on the subject, none which I could easily explain here. Maldeviants were freaks; mutants creeping into the metros, and that was never a good thing for those who needed to keep up appearances. Though, the over-riding belief among the masses was that all maldeviants were of a distasteful nature, which of course has never been the case. I answered, “Well, encroaching is… Maldeviants… I don’t really have an opinion on the matter.”
Another student popped up, “Dr. Monocle, would you mind going into detail on Gorillian dining practices, specifically dining practices in relation to ritual?”
“Well, I had not prepared any material on the subject matter of Gorillians…” I offered my apologies. Did I not just spend my morning lecturing on a many-worlds theory? Did no one hear a thing I said? Frustration had already set in by this point.
“Excuse me, Professor,” a young lady stood up in the front, “on the subject of Gorillians, do you have any future plans to go back to study the Gorillian Fever Sect? Will you be working with the Gorillians closely?”
I glanced upon my pocket watch during her question, wanting nothing more than to be out of that lecture hall. “No, no plans at this time to work alongside the Gorillians…” I remained polite, but I caught the tone of frustration sound from my mouth. My patience wore thin and began to crack, just ever so slightly.
There were still hands raised throughout the audience, like ship masts swaying in the bay, a fog of inquisitive minds below. The corners of my mouth turned upwards slightly, a polite half-smile forming. “I’m sorry, but I believe our time is up. I would like to thank you all for coming today. Thank you.”
There were a few respectful applause that were drowned out by the sound of shuffling and people trying to leave the hall.
Eventually everyone left the hall. All but one. Dean Frodderick Wormfodder waited for me to get my papers together.
“Very good. Very good, indeed, Professor Monocle.” Scraggly, old Dean Wormfodder came forward. The man was a walking testament to the tech of our time: his replacement arm was made of the finest steel, shined and polished beautifully. The articulating fingers, a majestically intricate series of hinges, pulleys, and gears. His left ear carved of the finest oak. I suppose one could call them glasses or spectacles, but they were truly independent monocles over each eye, built into his face and head. Without them, Wormfodder was nearly blind due to being sprayed in the face by a venomous plant some years ago. The contraption allowed him use of different types of monocles on each eye, giving him sight. Wormfodder was losing pieces of himself regularly and replacing them with some of the finest our steam tech and clockwork services had to offer.
“Ah, were you the one applauding at the end?” I smiled. I gathered up my notes, putting them back in order, filing them into my attache.
“I don’t suppose your next lecture will be any more exciting? Perhaps something along the lines of good ol’ fashioned exploring and adventuring?” Dean Wormfodder smiled.
“My adventuring is behind me. I’m afraid you’ll be getting only more of the same from me, weird thoughts from my strange decrepit old mind. And, no, senility hasn’t taken me away. Not yet, at least.”
“It really is a shame, Arthur.” Wormfodder said, “They want to hear your tales. You’re a hero to all.”
“Hero?!” I blurted out, chuckling, shocked he would even use the word, “Certainly not, Dean Wormfodder, just an educator who happens to get caught up in things not sanctioned by The University.”
“Consider yourself what you will. And please don’t be late for the send off, Arthur.” Dean Wormfodder walked to a faculty door off to the side of the stage, “Quite a famously eclectic group of expiditionaries, don’t you think, Arthur? It’s quite a to-do for the University. Be well.” He limped away as the ambient whirring, clicking, spinning of his steam tech replacement parts filled the air.
With that, I fastened my attache closed as Wormfodder exited the hall. It was silent and the air hung heavily. I broke that silence with a deep, unintended sigh. I walked to the stairs and trekked upwards, slowly and steadily. I thought about my time, the time I had left and how I did not want to spend it in this hall, regardless of how lovely it was. I didn’t want this room to be my last years. The woodwork that decorated the walls was an intrinsically styled coffin. At 76 years of age, any confined space starts feeling a little too confined and eternal.
I walked to a window and looked outwards onto the world. Before me, sprawling as far as the eye could see: The University, University City, Haverton Falls in the far distance, the skylines and city scapes of each metro balancing and blending into each other. Their buildings each distinct, yet uniform, all reaching skyward. Steam, smoke, and fog obscured parts and pieces of the display before me, but I had seen it all before. I had seen it all before many times. Outside of this window from which I stared was once my playground. Now, I was relegated to speechify my more interesting days on this planet. I felt pathetic at times. Pathetic and old. And I had an entire summer lecture series to remind me of how pathetic and old I really was.
I used to sit in these seats. For a long time, hours a day, at least 3 days per week, several weeks per year, I sat in these seats and listened. Sometimes I took notes. Sometimes I doodled. Then I moved on, out of the seat, out of the classroom, into the world. I lived my life, I explored, I experienced, I excelled. For years, over half of my time thus far, I spent out in the wild, collecting facts, proving hypothesis, cataloging species, adventuring in between all of the studious activities. I was only doing what I knew how to do best. And where did it get me? Back into the very classroom I started, just on the other side of where I once sat.
It was all very dour to me in this very instant of gazing out the window and it was then, within this sullen state of mood, I realized this was the final chapter of my life.
