Allow me to relate to you the curious tale of Dr. Copernicus, who pried into hidden things.
First, let the man himself be introduced. The Doctor was young yet, still fresh from his moulding at the university, where he had been shaped – if ramshackily – by his teachers and peers into a facsimile of the sort of man he wasn’t. A man of science, of empirical data, of hypothesis, tests, and control groups.
The Doctor was, in his soul, alien to all of these, a man who cared little for patience and hard-won knowledge but much for dynamism and the spotlight. Nevertheless, we shall continue to call him Doctor, out of respect for the institution that accredited him. We all make mistakes.
The Doctor was beset with writer’s – well, wresearcher’s, wreally – block. A splash needed to be made by him, but no pool presented itself to his searching, restless, roving eyes, no refreshing fount of knowledge for his eager brain and eagerer hunger for glory to catapult him towards. He needed inspiration, he needed ideas. He needed to speak to men of learning and learnedness, of aged body and frail mind, of vast, unspeakable experience that stretched across decades, of memories clear and natures trusting and affable.
In other words, he needed to speak to Dr. Carthage.
Dr. Carthage! What a puzzler that man was. Soft old worn-down rag-about bushy-moustached Dr. Carthage, who never hurt a fly but would pester at a criminal psychopath for eight hours straight until they burst into tears, scribbling all the while in one of his ratty old notebooks with the biggest beaming smile you’d ever see. A giant in his field, a stout little caricature of a professor in his appearance. He was perfect for Dr. Copernicus, a goldmine that dug itself at the slightest provocation. And Dr. Copernicus’s arrival was anything but slight. The good man came at midnight, ding-a-ling-dong on the doorbell, swept into the hall right afterwards without a please-and-thank-you, let alone a by-your-leave. Practically bowled over Dr. Carthage when he came downstairs with his nightlight in one hand and his nightcap in the other to see what the devil was hallooing him so loud so late. But his earnest zeal was almost believable, and his handshake firm, vigorous, and so fierce that it nearly dislocated the professor’s arm, so he gave himself over to being charmed by him – as he was charmed by so many things – and set them both a midnight tea in the parlour while they chatted.
The parlour, it must be said, was a rattling, noisy thing, there was a thumping of machinery and a grinding of gears and the quiet tic-tic-bric-a-bric of mechanical wisdom working softly whichever way Dr. Copernicus turned his ears. It only fuelled his appetite for the learned secrets of Dr. Carthage, and he drank his tea with the gusto of a demon as his host chattered on and on with him, catching up on names, reminiscing on years, and – most importantly by far – speaking wistfully of projects gone by, of research here and then there, this and then that. Most of it on the workings of the mind, of course. What else would you expect from the eminent and impressive – if not physically so – Dr. Matthias M. Carthage, the astronaut of the human psyche? He’d stared into abysses and taken meticulous notes.
It was these abysses that he spoke of now to Dr. Copernicus, with a round-shouldered, theatrical, good-natured sort of shudder to him. So many madmen had been pinned under his pencil over the decades. So many lost souls. So many serial killers. It wore on one, he said, it wore one down to nubs. Precautions must be taken – and the safeties, oh the safeties, the things one must do to enable safety during one’s experiments. You cannot be too careful with the mind of a deadly killer, even with the best of intentions. He shivered a bit in his bathrobe, the first real worry of the night, a sorrow that did not belong on his round, kindly face.
Now, a polite man would’ve ignored this, but the Doctor was less than polite. He saw opportunity reflected in the professor’s eyes, and he hounded after it. He asked him of his recentmost efforts, his latest discoveries, his projects on the matter, had they borne fruit? Trust me now Dr. Carthage, we are both men of the world and of the word and of OUR word, I solemnly swear etcetera et cetera et et et etcetera. A pack of lies, but as beautifully delivered as the song of a swan, if a little passionless, but the good professor was overcome by it, and spilled the beans and his guts everywhere. Metaphorically speaking (they were eating biscuits).
A moment, please, while I freshen your drink. Ahh, that’s much better, eh? Now, let us sojourn onwards!
The professor had never truly retired, he confessed. Not strictly speaking. There was a project that had to be undertaken, knowledge that MUST be sought. The entirety of his life’s work depended on it, and the life’s work of a good deal many other people – perhaps every other person who’d ever studied the human mind. But of course, this was all hush-hush, top secret don’t you know, can’t breathe a word, so on and so forth.
At this moment Dr. Copernicus saw his path, with clarity and boldness. He must seize this opportunity given to him. With that knowledge, it was at that time that he did knowingly and deliberately accidentally step on Dr. Carthage’s cat.
Oh dear oh no oh my, I am sorry, I am so sorry, oh the poor thing. Yes yes tend to him, oh no oh dear I’m afraid I’m no good with animals, oh dear oh dear poor thing, poor thing. Yes I shall wait here and stay out of your way as you fetch some fish to placate him from the cellar – no rush, no hurry! A little waiting is the least I can do in penance for this hideous crime.
It is to the credit of the Doctor’s acting skills, if not his moral fortitude, that he was believed without so much of a drop of doubt. But then again, there was a fat old tom to be soothed and fussed over, and the feline element always demands more attentions than a mere human can dream of. Admirers can wait, cats cannot. Which is why Dr. Copernicus was left all alone by the inviting staircase to the forbidden heights of the second floor, which he immediately sprung up with the speed of a fly-baited frog.
The house, like many things, was bigger on the inside, and of the older school of design, the sort that can make a maze out of a single bathroom. But this deterred Dr. Copernicus not an instant, lent no hesitation to his heels so that they might drag, set wings to his feet as they briskly trod upon the gear-whispering halls. Opportunity is not a patient guest when it is on your front stoop, and he was hastening to its call, caution be damned. However, he was not one to rush without wits, and made special note of all he saw. Cluttered rooms with buckets of notes sloppily filed were scanned over by his fierce and eager eye and found wanting within seconds, studies analyzed and dashed past, the bedroom…
Well hmm. The bedroom. Well well well. What someone leaves on their nightstand can tell you volumes – of character, of political beliefs, of casual interests, of what they think of fly-tying.
Alternatively, if you are fortuitously lacking in morals, manners, and discretion, you can simply read their journal that they’ve doubtless left lying there, which the Doctor did. And in this case, it told Dr. Copernicus that Dr. Carthage – omniscient, omnipotent Dr. Carthage, who’d trained whole teams of faculty, any of whom would’ve bit their fingers off one-at-a-time than presume to know better than him – doubted himself.
Him. Self. Doctor Carthage! Who would have dreamt it? Who could’ve imagined it?
It was the lack of firsthand knowledge, and the inherent unreliability of his subjects, he wrote. Too many variables created in the process of his clever transforming of lunatic to sane man-in-the-street, too much change between the interviews with the sociopath and the retrospective with the mentally healed patient. There was no way to truly know the mind of a lunatic, not through the words of his mouth, only extrapolation could take place. A limit to knowledge! How abhorrent, how absurd, how utterly obscene. Something must be done. And he, Dr. Matthias M. (Mordecai, if you must) Carthage, would be the one to do it! The minds of the unknowable depths must be known – through replicate and simulation, if he must, but he would know them, and know them firsthand! And he would remember them with crystal clarity, unmatched by any recovering former fiend he’d patiented!
Oh, and he must remember that the third book on the bottom half of the nightstand, Bor’s Guide To Birds, is the switch to the secret passage behind his bed. It would be a frightful nuisance to forget it and be forced to leave it open – one of the cats might get in and cause untold harm.
Now, a wise man would’ve taken heed, but the Doctor, let us say, was not, and leave it at that. His hands were already fumbling for Bor Borsson’s unimpeachable work before his eyes left the sentence, and no sooner had it been rudely yanked from its perch than the wall behind Dr. Carthage’s big double bed tugged itself aside with a clatter and a racket, one only barely matched by the sudden rise and roar of the sound of machinery that had gusted through the house since the Doctor had arrived.
Here, allow me to adjust your chair. There, is that better? Good.
And so it was that Dr. Copernicus sped up a darkened, spiralled stair – a conch of wood and groaning strain – and found himself beset with Attic, and all that is Attic everywhere. Spiders and their webs. Old creaky floorboards. Enormous stacks of books, so endless in number and close in quarters as to create a winding path that would’ve put a hedge maze to shame. The faint but insistent scent of mouse excrement. But all these were as nothing as compared to the scream of the machines; impenetrable, impossible, incessant, such a racket as could not have been matched by the university’s own computer science lab.
Dr. Copernicus rounded a corner in that attic – dodging around an incredibly complicated sort of antenna – and he found himself face to face with fame and glory.
It was breathtaking. The machine went right through the floor, possible down into the cellar below; however Dr. Carthage had managed to seal off so many rooms and build so much in his elder years, no soul can say. But he had done it. Doctor Matthais Mordecai Carthage had built the Psycholomatic Device for Transmental Study of Multiple States of Mind! Now there was an initialism that should have been strangled in its crib.
There were buttons, there were consoles, there were card feeders, there was a sort of thing almost like an organ keyboard. There was a lever that was truly stupendously stupefying in size and also scope.
It was unique in the world, and Dr. Copernicus felt a lust for discovery and glory fill him to the brim like brandy in a glass, warm all over and fiery inside, deep down.
There was a clatter and a clamour at his heels – how the Doctor allowed it to get so close before hearing it, even amidst the rattle and rumble of the machines, we must allow to the sweet distraction of exhilaration, of imagined dreams made manifest – is there a stronger drug, or a surer balm? Nevertheless, in burst Dr. Carthage – dishevelled, distressed, breathing with alarming raggedness for a man of his age. He was bent double with fatigue, one hand his sole support, a clutched paw on the antenna at the mouth of the computer’s domain.
Stop! he called, ragged and breathless. Stop, stop STOP!
Now, an attentive man would’ve cottoned on to a few details at that moment, but the Doctor was consumed by the lust of secret knowledge, and missed every one of them.
He failed to see the fear in Dr. Carthage’s eyes.
He failed to hear the desperate pleading in his voice.
He failed to read the very fine, very worn print on the lever. Which he pulled immediately.
It said: ‘unfinished.’ And in much smaller but capital letters, ‘DO NOT USE.’
Much censure must be given to Dr. Copernicus. Only rascals intrude on the property of others uninvited, only scoundrels of the first degree seek to steal another’s work, and only tremendous fools meddle with that which they do not know – merely meddling with that which you BELIEVE to know, as Dr. Carthage had done, is dangerous enough. As they both found very quickly.
But also, forgiveness must be granted. And biased though I am, I am willing to do this.
Excitement, youthful excitement, is notorious in all lands and ages. An old man’s foolishness is far less forgivable than that of a young man – why, Dr. Carthage, with all his knowledge of devious and deadly minds, should have known better himself than to trust the young bravo in his home, and certainly not unattended. And as for Dr. Copernicus’s actions, well, there is something to be said for boldness in the face of the unknown, even when society forbids it, even when it seems danger might be near. Nor was it reasonable for him to suppose that the transformation of a human mind was a thing that was capable of being done by anything or anyone – even, perhaps, the renowned and resourceful Dr. Matthias M. Carthage. Nor, again, could he have guessed that the mental projection antenna was never meant to be touched, even when the device was complete and its safeties installed – especially not when the safeties were as yet but ideas in the back of the professor’s head.
And to be perfectly fair, who could’ve dreamed that soft old worn-down rag-about bushy-moustached Dr. Carthage would have the strength in him to throttle a grown man to the brink of death, cackling at the top of his considerable lungpower all the while? Nobody, of course – as you well know. We all make mistakes. But his, perhaps, were less forgivable than others. You cannot be too careful with the mind of a deadly killer, even with the best of intentions, which, alas, he did not possess.
But I digress! The night grows old, and this machine demands feeding if it must run – and it must run, it must run, it MUST run ever onwards, for the sake of my existence. It takes quite a lot of effort to keep it fuelled, you know – even when you harvest the mental processes directly from the source, instead of that passive ‘feeding on idle thoughts’ that poor old Dr. Carthage had designed. I think of him every day, you know, and thank him for this fleshly form and its horizon-spanning breadth of knowledge. Especially anatomy.
Now hold still, and try to think frightened thoughts for as long as possible. This operation demands precision.