Spectacular Moments of Wonder with Dr. Monocle: That Certain Gentleman Read online

  Spectacular Moments of Wonder with Dr. Monocle:

  That Certain Gentleman

  by John Theesfeld

  © 2011 Copyright by John Theesfeld. All rights reserved.

  Published by Dr. Monocle Books

  ISBN: 978-0-615-51298-3

  doctormonocle.com

  [BW Office U92]

  Post Date: *. **nd, **** (redacted and censored per Lord Lawrence Richards, on authority of The Ministry of Communications)

  Published under PrintWorks by order BW17a.175468, subset 14. Monarch-approved. University-accredited. CouncilWorks, uninformed. TrustWorks, alerted. CopyWorks file: 97912180-functionality removal, attenuated by inactivity. Signed papers: See file.

  Editing Clerks: Thomas Rundleby, Victoria Crutchens, PrintMaton 2578 (Automaton Type-Set and Checked).

  Proofer: Frodderick Wormfodder; Facts and Reference Auditor: Geraldine Wilbur.

  Beholden Jester Forth. Account xx-inside formula theoretical upside, follow through. Fall in, cover thoroughly, hinder accountability, responsibility, discussion. Forms Y18 and V27, applied and accounted for, pending actions withdrawn.

  Notes: Seemingly preposterous (Lord Bennington); Interesting, but highly unlikely... (Dr. Paulina Pettelshon); Shyte. Pure and utter shyte (Prof. Willis); further notes can be found in the archives along with critical reviews.

  1

  I thought it to be a fine lecture, although, I may be biased in my assessment of matters. It was the first of my summer lecture series. While it may have lacked tales of adventure and thrills and excitement, it made up for in providing a new realm of scientifical and theoretical thought. It was what would become an entirely new branch of philosophical exploration (one 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. There they sat; students, peers, and colleagues, either nodding off or checking their pocket watches.

  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 perch upon my left eye (a recent gift from The Monarch presented to me by my friend, Royal Advisor James Travis). I looked a proper gentleman for my audience. There before them, 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 was glad that no one seemed to notice, I was just as saddened as to the notion that no one was paying attention. Alas, a sound I can only describe as “thwack” followed by that of an abrupt groan of disdain on my part brought the attention of the audience back to me.

  Dean Wormfodder had allowed me, or rather insisted, that I present my lecture in old SteamWorks Hall, a gorgeously grand old hall; a gently curved, concave, nearly spherical room with stadium-like seating almost reaching to the ceiling. It was a room daunting to the untrained speaker and just big enough for the ego-maniacal one.

  Everything was finished in a deep, dark wood tone. Copper furnishings. Recessed gaslights. Stained-glass windows. Greats had given their best in that very hall. Originally it was used to give presentations on cadaver dissection and anatomy lectures, but I think I was the first to have actually died on that stage - right there during my first lecture for the season.

  Unfortunately, most of the audience 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 beyond that which we see. Of course, this lecture was interesting to very few, uninteresting to many, and fell on the deaf ears of those lost within their own meandering thoughts of the impending summer season.

  I even found myself checking 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.

  With the advent of the more powerful outer-orbis telescopes, we’ve discovered other planets and moons. Beyond that, stars like our own sun. Masses of these stars creating cosmic neighborhoods. On the other hand, with microscopical inspection, we find matter is made of smaller and smaller particles.

  But what if there were other worlds or realms we couldn’t see, but existed? It can get the best of you, wondering, “Why bother?” It’s an impossible theory to prove, the idea of infinite worlds in which no two are exactly alike. Imagine, other realities like our own, but two can be eerily similar by chance. Just like an elsewhere snowflake, we just are in this world. Another elsewhere snowflake almost identical in structure, but perhaps for one minor detail. Perhaps so minor and trivial it seems unnoticeable.

  I expanded further that contrarily 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 wouldn’t even be able to experience it, let alone recognize it as something familiar.

  I suppose another way to expound would be with the very text in my journals and correspondence. Two worlds exactly the same, the only difference being that this text was written from my home instead of my university office, as I am doing so now. Two realities (infinite really, but I kept it small for the audience), this and another, in which everything is the same except in one I decided to write 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. And from this very difference, a world of difference would emerge. I don’t believe any journal entry or piece of correspondence after that point would be the same as the other in the other world. Imagine this the world over, making choices, all of the possibilities. Pure randomosity in it all.

  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 that after comparing the two after eons, they look nothing alike.

  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 red. I don’t believe I would be affected in any such way by a red ribbon. I suppose in a third reality there is a version of myself who utterly hates red 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 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 asked this question to my audience to a reply of a muffled cough followed by pure silence.

  I couldn’t say how, not with our current steam technology. 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 Kew states the amount of energy it would require to tear apart the aether is more than any of our steam tech could handle. The actual scientifical understandings of the matter are riddled with holes.

  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 and chaos. 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. Maybe the realities exist in a vast space, an aether within the aether, if I may. Like bubbles in a fresh pint of ale. Maybe vast worlds within a vast space, some bouncing off each other, some crashing and tearing each other apart, some compacted together. Maybe by such vast distance, there’s no way to access another world. Unless all those worlds were part of a bigger reality. It can boggle the mind.

  I used the large globe to the side of the staging area. The large orb spun smoothly. It was a much older rendition of an older atlas. I explained to my audience the idea of geological shiftings and slippages. At one time, it is thought, Orbis Minor was not together as one, but spread out all around Orbis. Large masses of land separated by vast oceans. Yes, oceans, as in plural. More than the one Orbis Sea that covers our globe.

  Some men of science call this fantasy. Others support the notion of a geologically alive orb of rock, one that changes over ages of eons. Imagine our world, made up of vast watery borders. Northward Territories down to Southland, from Western Ocean to Eastern Bay, split and fractured into multiple land masses.

  We can only imagine how life on the planet would have evolved and changed over time. Assume we crawled up from the muck. Politics, cultures, societies, governments all changed and different from all that we know now. It would truly be an alien world to our eyes. Perhaps that world does exist elsewhere within the aether.

  I began again with another example. 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. I gave a good spin to the globe catching my fingers between it and the ornamental hinge allowing it to spin. I retracted my hand as it stung an awful feeling up to my elbow.

  I regained my composure. “Now, imagine our planet, Orbis,” I carefully ran my hand over the large globe. “But, it is not Orbis. But it is Orbis! But not...”

  The audience was that of a hard one to reach, but I explained thusly: Orbis is called something else, something odd we do not understand. And Orbis Minor, the entire land mass, is broken apart as it was 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 have possibly been? That exists elsewhere, in a different world, a different realm. It is a reality for someone else. The implications could very well rattle an unsettled mind.”

  I didn’t continue my lecture for much longer. I do believe courtesy is a wondrous virtue, so I cut my lecture short for those slipping into deep wake-less sleep. Though I did take questions from a few in my audience:

  A woman’s voice called out, “Could you perhaps enlighten us as to the outcome of the debacle with the Gentleman Pirate?”

  A young man, presumably an armchair explorer and textbook adventure asked next, “What ancient relics do you believe are still to be discovered?”

  The voice of an unfortunately uneducated, oafish windbag called out from the back, “How do we know you’re the Dr. Monocle from this reality?”

  Question after question after question that had nothing to do with the lecture I had just presented for the past hour. There was talk of gravity and mass and time and space and the inter-workings of it all. 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 underdwellar communities into the more populated metros? And that of maldeviant communities, as well?"

  I didn't very well have a take on the subject, none which I could easily explain there. To the mainstream, maldeviants were freaks; mutants creeping into the metros, and that was never a good thing for those who needed to keep up appearances. 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 exited the auditorium. All but one. The University Dean, Frodderick Wormfodder, waited for me to get my papers together.

  “Very good. Very good, indeed, Dr. 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. The amazingly complex gear system of each joint was astounding.

  Aside from his arm, old Wormfodder was augmented all abut his person. His left ear was 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 the 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 worn and beaten leather briefcase.

  Wormfodder held up his hands to show the contrast between his real hand, withered by time, and his clockwork appendage, “Me clapping doesn’t really have that effect, Arthur. Anyway, 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 hinted with a smile.

  “My adventuring is behind me, so are those old stories. 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, my dear Wormfodder, just an educator who happens to get caught up in things not sanctioned by The University. Or The Monarch. Or The Clockwork Foundation in full, really.”

  “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, and spinning of his steam tech replacement parts filled the silence.

  With that, I fastened my briefcase closed as Wormfodder exited. It was silent once again and the air hung heavily. I broke the emptiness 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 were too eerily reminiscent of 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 my eyes could see: The University, University City, Haverton Falls in the far distance, the skylines and cityscape 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.