Editing Joseph Dippel

&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Awake again, with only fifteen years gone.  My slumber grows shorter every time I lapse into Lethe; Paracelsus’ elixir is working.  In one, two more lifetimes at most, I won’t need to slumber again. <br> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;But the world in my absence hasn’t been a happy place.  A conflict so terrible held Europe in its glove that they still call it the “War to End All Wars.”  God willing, that’s true.  The thing’s I’ve seen in the doppelganger’s brain; single guns worth a regiment that cut men down like chaff, the terrible yellow gas that blisters a man’s skin until he tears it open and boils the inside of his lungs until they fill with blood.  Sad, barbarous humanity.  The sulfurous fumes you left over the fields of Europe should serve as a premonition for your future fate. <br> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;And in the wake of the war…  The New World is on the rise to becoming a great power, but the Tsars are gone.  And the Mad Monk along with them, if my double’s observations are to be believed.  A pity.  <br> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;The thing knew nothing of the old castle, though.  Damnable homunculus.  Was it harmed in the war?  The secrets I lost when I fled there… <br> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;But my work goes on.  This most recent doppelganger has tested the nutri-wheat under all conditions I laid out for him and every test met with success.  One final season, under my own observations, and I’ll be ready to begin raising the crop in earnest.

&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Fuchs has been and gone.  It disturbs me still how he knows, always, when I’ve awakened.  Is it a trick of his own, some power he possesses?  Or is it a property of the elixir that will soon seep into my veins?  To know when others like me walk the world? <br> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Has Fuchs even taken the elixir?  He is a chemist of no mean skill, but I am unsure if he knows Albertus Magnus’ art.  Certainly he has never spoken as if he knows first-hand the fire of life that courses through my veins. <br> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; He has told me of new players who walk the world, and some old friends who have not yet passed on as he or I had hoped.  It seems I was right about Tunguska.  That should prove interesting.  Vaneko still lives, which is no surprise.  I’ll renew that old friendship soon. <br> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;And then there’s the Lazarines… Harper’s alive.  But then, he always has been.  Fuchs saw him skulking around Vienna.  I don’t think he’s connected my name with any of the old madness, though.  We’ll see… <br> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Fuchs has also repeated the tale of the Mad Monk’s death.  If he believes the story, then it might just be true after all.  He doesn’t seem to know about the daughter, though, nor does he need to.  If she’s but half-followed in her father’s footsteps, she might become a valuable aid to me in my work.

&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Beaumont writes from Boston with tales of a man name of West who’s trying after some of my old experiments.  It seems that he served his country in the War and came to the conclusion that no one would miss a handful of corpses out of thousands.  Wretched, degenerate ghoul. <br> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Still, it’s the folly of youth to walk the same paths their elders have followed to no avail.  I have written him a letter wishing him luck and offering him a tour of my laboratories, should he so desire, but I don’t hold out much hope for his success.  Despite the elixir and the homunculi I distill, I gave up trying to engender life in the fully dead in, what, 1831?  It’s a fool’s errand, but his sins and blunders are worth watching out for.

&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Three months and I’ve grown out the first of the new floronic men.  Another failure.  I’m still convinced that Darwin’s study of the carnivorous plants are still providing the structure I need to get the thing to move.  It responds to outside stimuli, but never with directed force.  I need to grow a more developed system of nerves, but that’s a system that no plant has.

&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Stalin is a fool, and I will not help him with this line of research.  No matter what he offers, no matter his friendship with Vaneko, breeding apes and men together is a fool’s errand.  And in want of my services Stalin has chosen a fool to run it for him.  Ivanov is an able breeder of horses, but he is no scientist.  No matter how many rubbles the steel man dumps into Ivanov’s pockets, no matter the number of women he tries to impregnate in that laboratory in Georgia, no matter how many trips he makes to Guinea, chasing after his stories of ape-men, a breeding project of this sort simply will not work.