From the private journal of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, Orkney Islands,
12 June 1815:
“…last night’s storm was so perfectly timed, I can only see the Hand of Providence in it. I had finished the final touches on my second, and God willing perfected, creation that very morning, and was in want of only the tremendous power needed to imbue him with the vital essence of Life itself. I had resigned myself to waiting days, perhaps weeks, for the storm I needed, despite the constant fear that my first, monstrous, creation would appear at any moment to claim fulfillment of my promise to fashion him a bride.
But Fortune smiled upon me for once, and amidst the tempest the lightning struck the great rod I had affixed to the roof, and pulsed through my machines before flowing into the lifeless form I had fashioned through my hard-won taratoembriological processes. The still body glowed briefly and spasmed as it absorbed the animating life force from the very hand of Zeus! Forgetting all that had come before, in the moment that my creation drew its first breath, I exulted in the act of Creation and felt myself a modern Prometheus…”
Sensation. Light. Cold. Shapes. Sounds. Now one of the shapes looms and sounds come from it. More sensation. Muscles contract, awareness of self suddenly blossoms. I… am! Restraint. Frustration. The sounds the shape makes change. Soothing. Muscles relax. I repeat the sounds with… my voice…
From the private journal of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, Orkney Islands,
15 June 1815:
“…amaze me! In just three days my glorious creation has gone from the mind of a newborn to that of 10 year old boy. Given the rapidity with which his “brother” learned (and that all self-taught) it should not surprise me, I suppose. Had I taken this course then, what tragedies might have been averted? William would still live, and poor Justine –but there is no point in dwelling on the unchangeable Past. One can only learn from the mistakes one has made and strive to engender a brighter Future.
“And the rapidity with which my new creation absorbs knowledge gives me hope for that Future. One mistake I will not repeat is to treat him as merely a Creature, but rather as a Man. Or a boy, at least to begin with. And boys need names. When my first creation came to me and proposed that I construct for him a mate, he told me tha he had taken a name for himself – Adam, as he was the first of his race.
“It was this that gave me anguished nightmares, after he had wrested a promise from me to fulfill his desire. For if I made for him his “Eve,” and even if they were to leave Europe, and inhabit the deserts of the New World, as he had promised, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children… and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the species of Man a condition precarious and full of terror. Had I the right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?
“And it was this growing fear that finally turned my hand from the work of my promise, and led me to conceive of a new angel to counter my older daemon. And so, in keeping with “Adam’s” biblical conceit, I shall name this new child of my hand Seth, after the son who followed doomed Able and cursed Cain…”
I grow in knowledge each day, and each day I am amazed at the wonder of the world that Father shows me. He claims the World is much greater and more diverse than “these barren islands we perforce inhabit.” But it seems to me that there is wonder enough here to occupy a lifetime – each rock, each blade of grass, the change of light and shadow over the course of the day… the sunrise and the sunset, the blue sky, the storm… and the night! The night, so full of stars and wonder. Each of these contains a Universe, and I can scarcely conceive of what other wonders there might be…
Father has told me of my origins today, and of my terrible brother, after I asked him why I looked so different from him. At first I was sad, to think I was merely a thing created, like a hammer or an alembic, but Father grew angry when I said this to him. He said that he, like all of the race of Men, were creations of the Hand of God, and that made me no different than any other. I appreciated his attempts to console and brace me, but I think his logical reasoning in this is unsound, and I have my doubts…
From the private journal of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, Orkney Islands,
27 June 1815:
“”…his appearance. At seven feet tall Seth stands a foot shorter than his “brother;” his form is properly proportioned and his limbs lithe and strong; his features are regular, even beautiful; in short, an improvement in every way. But he will never pass in the society of Men unnoticed, for he yet shares some traits with “Adam,” traits I have yet to master.
“Like my first creation, his skin, while a healthier hue than the yellowish tint of that other, is pale to the point of translucency, barely disguising the workings of the arteries and muscles underneath – indeed, with a strong light from behind one can almost sense the structure of the skeletal frame in the limbs. His eyes are a blue so pale as to be almost silver, though their hue darkens and lightens with his moods… and they seem almost to glow at times. While the hair of his head flows thick and black, aside from his eyebrows the rest of his form is as hairless as that of a marble statue…
“…he seems never to forget a thing once it has entered his mind, and he is now my equal in history, rhetoric and natural philosophy – indeed, I am certain he would surpass me if he had not exhausted all the books I brought with me to this retreat…
“I have succeeded, I believe, in inculcating a strong sense of honor in him, and of service in defense of the weak. I pray this will be enough to bind him to my defense if – when – his “brother” comes to hold me to my promise of a mate. Despite being the smaller, Seth is, I believe, the stronger of the two, for I devised better methods of increasing muscle density and resiliency since my first ill-fated attempt…”
A summer storm rages outside tonight. Father has grown increasingly tense, even irritable, this past week. He says nothing, but I know he fears the inevitable return of my brother, his first creation. How angry will Adam be when he finds that Father has not, in fact, created him a bride, but rather a brother? A brother to supplant him…
Father shrieks in sudden fear, and I turn to see a face leering in at us through the window. His visage is as hideous as Father had described it. His watery, glowing eyes glare hatred at us, his long black hair plastered to his head by the rain, and his black lips pulled back over his prominent white teeth in a rictus of fury.
A moment later the door burst inward, rain and wind accompanying the entrance of Father’s greatest fear. The water pours from his translucent, jaundiced skin, stretched so tight over his flesh that it seems about to burst… and he is immense. But his voice is surprisingly pleasant, a deep baritone, deeper even than my own.
“So, Victor, you betray me once again, more cruelly than ever before! For you had given me hope, in your promise to create a female for me with whom I could live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. And now that hope is dead, crushed beneath your treacherous boot heel.
“As will be all you hold dear, Victor, for I shall–”
I lunge at my brother as he moves forward, fearing that he is about to murder our mutual creator. We are locked then in a wrestling grapple, staggering back and forth across the room. Although he is larger, I soon realize that I am stronger… I begin to force him backward, toward the door.
But suddenly I grow dizzy… the room seems to spin, and the strength seems to flow out of my limbs. Where my brother’s hands touch my flesh they glow, and it seems as if he is drawing out my very vitality, the essence of my life force, and absorbing it into himself. My vision narrows to to a dark tunnel as I collapse to the floor.
“Ah, I have not felt so invigorated since you first woke me,” I heard Adam say, though I could not even move my head to see him. “I promised you that all that you loved and held most dear would die at my hand if you did not fulfill your promise to me, Victor. Draining the life essence from this beloved new “son” is just the beginning. I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you curse the hour of your birth.”
The last thing I hear as the darkness sweeps me into oblivion is a last, ominous threat from the Creature.
“I will be with you on your wedding night, Victor.”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
From the partially burned laboratory notes of Dr. Henry Jekyll, London, 11-13 October 1885:
“…the building was long derelict, but with the [undecipherable] boom, the place was scheduled for demolition. My researches led me to it just in time, and I was able to bid on the lot I suspected – [undecipherable] – stein.
“…my joy on opening the largest crate! I had been correct, and it contained – [unintelligible] – which had not, after all, perished in the Arctic wastes in 1818, as Captain Buchan had claimed. Perhaps the account as published by his sister was purposefully misleading… did Frankenstein survive after all, returning to civilization aboard the HMS Dorothea with the body of his Creature? But if so how –[page missing]
“…his few surviving papers make abundantly clear – the body in the crate with the papers is the good doctor’s second creation. It has been accepted in scientific circles that Frankenstein’s second effort had been a female, which he had destroyed – [large undecipherable section] – and the tragic murder of his bride on their wedding night – [undecipherable] – –body and his journals in storage before he began his pursuit of the Creature across Europe…”
From the partially burned laboratory notes of Dr. Henry Jekyll, London, 17-19 November 1885:
“…growing frustration. Frankenstein’s notes are infuriatingly incomplete, but I have reconstructed his apparatus as best I can. The body of his second Creature remains incorruptible, and I am convinced that if I could but provide the correct motivating force it would live again. But the lightning – [undecipherable] – time and again ineffective…”
“…Stamford described it’s effects most exactingly. Whatever energy this stone emits, perhaps its strange properties can substitute for the electrical energy I seem unable to – [undecipherable] – amford has promised to introduce me to Watson as soon as possible. I can only hope the man might be induced to part with his Afghanistan souvenir at a reasonable– [undecipherable] – must read his latest work in the Strand before we – [undecipherable] – do not wish to arouse the suspicions of his famous…”
From the partially burned laboratory notes of Dr. Henry Jekyll, London, 21 December 1885:
“…success! Or so I thought, at first. But though the Creature opened its eyes once I had grafted the stone into its chest, and the flare of violet – [undecipherable] – no other sign of life or consciousness. I fear I do not share the particular genius of Victor Frankenstein… but given the man’s fate, perhaps that is not such a – [undecipherable passage] – give up this line of inquiry. But my parallel study of the the Creature’s strange blood has shown great promise in relation to my main research – [undecipherable] – separate a man’s demons from his true, more angelic…”
I awake instantly, moving from the black nothingness of oblivion to full awareness with no transition. One moment I was not, the next I am. Again. Unlike my original awakening, however, I understand what I am seeing… I know who I am. But I cannot move, not a muscle. I cannot even blink, my body is like stone. I should be distressed, but I feel a strange lassitude, almost as if I am separate from my immobile form. Is this the soul, then? Do I – can I – possess such a thing?
I listen to the man whose face looms so anxiously over me, as he rails against his inability to match Father’s genius. I strive, in a distant and removed way, to convey to him that he has succeeded, that I am once again aware. But in no way can I communicate, and eventually he leaves me to stare at the brown water stain on the ceiling that is the only thing in my fixed line of sight.
It is difficult to know how much time I have spent in this strange state of suspension, but it feels like weeks. Dr. Jekyll, as I learn the man who has (at least partially) revived me is called, speaks often to himself as he works in his lab. A boon to me, of sorts, as I learn from his disjointed ramblings that some 65 years have passed since that terrible night in Scotland.
Through the haze of my lassitude I feel a stab of pain at the realization that Father must be dead, if not at the hands of my cursed brother than by the ravages of time. I am alone in the world, unless it be that Adam still lives – possible, as Father felt our synthetic flesh might well be incorruptible. Do I want him to be alive? If he killed Father, than I will stop at nothing to see him destroyed. But if he showed mercy, if Father lived out his allotted span…
I come and go, my mind slipping into a fugue state when there is no external stumulus to keep it occupied, and so I have no certain feeling for the passage of time. Dr. Jekyll speaks often of shame and guilt, of the unclean thoughts and feelings he has, and appears to be seeking a way to separate those feelings from himself.
Now I hear a second man, loud and crude, and apparently no friend of the doctor’s. He disparages his host as weak and foolish, and Jekyll makes no demure. I think at first he might be a thief, but he appears again and again to read the doctors lab notes and sneer.
He has finally come within the narrow scope of my vision, and he is as hideous a creature as his voice implied! Although different in every particular from the twisted face of my brother, his is its veritable twin in malevolence and evil.
“So, you are the well to which that spineless jellyfish Jekyll returns in his efforts to suppress me. Well, the well is run dry now I know his secret, and Edward Hyde will no longer be forced down into the darkness!”
He is lifting me now, with astonishing ease, and I catch glimpses of the laboratory I have only been able to imagine before, until he tumbles me into a crate. My fixed stare looks upward and the last thing I see is Hyde’s evil leer as he tosses the smoldering remains of Dr. Jekyll’s notes atop me and lowers the lid into place. Then there is only darkness. And after the pounding of a hammer and several jolts and jars there is no sound… nor any other sensation.
I do not know how long my mind holds out, but eventually the darkness of oblivion takes me again and I know no more…
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
JJ Astor looked at the manifest and frowned in puzzlement. It seemed this crate, locked inside a more high-tech container, had been at ZeroPoint Energy’s warehouse storage facility for almost a decade… almost since the founding of the company in fact. And in all that time, as far as he could tell, no one had bothered to open it.
Which was strange, since they’d paid $10,000 for it, a not inconsiderable expenditure for a young startup. Acquired from the Smithsonian during one of their periodic purges of artifacts gathering dust in their own basement, prior to that it had been part of a shipment in the mid 1960s from the British Museum to their American cousins. And the Brits had kept in in their own basement for almost 70 years, part of the estate of one Dr. Henry Jekyll, deceased in 1886.
Jekyll, Jekyll… why was that name familiar? Oh, yes, he’d heard the name in a course on abnormal psychology and early meta-human science. The man had turned himself into a monster with an experimental serum, back in the late 19th Century, and had murdered several people before apparently committing suicide. They’d made several lurid movies about it over the years, although he’d never seen any of them, and the phrase “Jekyll and Hyde” was still part of the popular vernacular.
Well, the crate and whatever “unique energy signature” it contained was his now, since he’d acquired most of the assets of the now defunct ZeroPoint Energy during their bankruptcy liquidation. It had increased the size of his own Apergy Systems International by half again, and at pennies on the dollar. Now it was time to see what he’d bought…
A few minutes later JJ was staring down in bemusement at a pale, almost translucent corpse, with a fist-sized gemstone of an unusual violet color embedded in its – his, there was no doubt as to gender – chest. Partially burned papers were scattered over the body, and an undamaged sheaf of older, brittle pages were wedged beneath the head.
But was it a corpse? How could it be? If the chain-of-custody paperwork was to be believed, no one had opened the crate in 130 years. Maybe it was a mannequin or something. But the flesh, while too cool to be alive, was pliable and clearly human, in texture if not looks. And lifting the eyelids showed pale blue and very human eyes. Maybe the undamaged papers could shed some light on the mystery…
Carefully lifting the brittle pages from the crate JJ laid them on the lid, now stretched diagonally across the opening. He began to read. Twenty minutes later he was on his phone.
“Kyle, you have to get over here, NOW! You will NOT believe what I just found!”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The next day JJ and his friend and teammate Kyle Steiner stood in Kyle’s lab in the AzTech Tower, staring down at the pale body of Victor Frankenstein’s second creation, pondering their next move. They had both read Frankenstein’s journal and what they could decipher of the partially burned lab notes of Henry Jekyll. Kyle had scanned them all into the Vanguard’s mainframe, fearful of losing anything given their aged fragility.
“Didn’t you once say you were related to Victor Frankenstein?” JJ asked Kyle, bending closer to look again at the mysterious gem in the creature’s – in Seth’s – chest. It glowed faintly, and he frowned.
“Oh, distantly, and not directly,” Kyle replied, focused on drawing a blood sample from the construct. “I think my great-great-great-grandfather on my grandmother’s side married the middle daughter of Victor Frankenstein’s younger brother.
“My grandmother didn’t like to advertise the connection. She considered Frankenstein a mere alchemist, and didn’t want that association to taint her own researches into true chemistry. I’m not sure she really believed he’d created life, but I know for a fact that she nevertheless quietly studied his surviving papers during her earliest attempts to create the compound that eventually gave me my own powers. Damn, I wish she was alive to see this…”
After several hours of testing and debate, the scientist and the engineer agreed that the attempt should be made to revive Seth. If Frankenstein’s journal was to be believed, this creation was neither evil nor homicidal. But just in case, both men were in their heroic guises – Quanta out of simple caution, Scion because he wanted the boost from his armor for his natural bioelectric discharge.
“It’s no lightning bolt,” he grinned over his shoulder at Kyle as he laid his hands on the construct’s chest to either side of the embedded crystal. “But given its biological origin, I think my blast might be able to simulate whatever Frankenstein’s lost equipment did as it stepped down the voltage of the raw lightning. Here goes…”
Blue electricity flared around his hands, and seemed to flow into the translucent body, spreading quickly throughout the still form. The two men waited, both unaware they were holding their breath. Just as JJ was wondering if it might be time for a second jolt, blue eyes flew open and the chest rose as the construct drew in a breath. The heroes let out their own in unison.
Seth sat upright on the lab table and looked around, focusing quickly on the two strange men on either side of him. At least he assumed they were men…
“Where am I this time?” he asked calmly. “And what is the year?”