《Heatherfield's Fates》


 Unan

    I do not fear death; rather, I fear living a life which is not worth dying for.


    In every fleeting moment, there seems to be an infinite number of possibilities presented to us. Yet we are unable to scrutinise each and every decision we create to its fullest; we do not possess the time to thoroughly think through everything that we act upon. It is precisely from this predicament, that the problem of decision arises; opportunity cost.


    There will exist instances where we indeed possess the time to deduce and calculate decisions we deem satisfactory, but the overwhelming majority of decisions¨C they are decided by chance. There will be a time where our hand will be forced to choose with no light on the matter.


    This fact of reality Entoine could never come to terms with. He could not accept the fate of uncertainty; that destiny could not be reduced to a series of logic gates of which he could manipulate to produce desired outcomes. Often during these episodes of mental disarray, he remained in bed awake for multiple days; as if asleep; his mind eating away at itself as he sought to free himself from the shackles of chance and luck.


    One tempestuous night, where the windows battered with soft hail and the howls of the night roared in the blazing wind, Entoine came to a decision. A decision which he had scrutinised to its fullest over the course of five sleepless nights, with full confidence in his mental faculties despite the severe medical ordeal he had undergone. He would search for a way to defy the inevitability of chance.


    When he had returned from his mind¡¯s realm of scrutiny he had awoken to his servants pondering if their master had passed during sleep. They shuffled across his room; silhouettes wandering about behind the thin curtains which lined his velvet and regal mattress.


    ¡°Order! What is all this commotion? I shall have none of it. All of you return to your posts at once!¡± He commanded in his voice, surprisingly fierce as a lion upon waking from a sleep by disturbance. Each maid and butler left the room, for they dared not to trifle with him.


    Time is fleeting- every second not lived to full potential is a waste.


    And this truth had gripped its claw around Entoine with increasing strength every day, every minute- every moment which he perceived himself as not fully maximising his time in pursuit of enriching himself. And all he could do was watch the ornate clock on the wall as its finely smithed arms danced away the ballet which recounted his finite life.


    He would have it no more. From the moment he awakened from his deep meditation in the confines of his chambers, he would forge himself anew. No more was Entoine Heatherfield the Fool of Mercury Hill. If death possessed no strength to part him from his ambition, then nothing would. His destiny was certain to him now. He would enhance his mind¡¯s capabilities of thought to a point where merely miniscule and negligible increments of time was spent on the act of deciding.


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    In mere hours, he had regained control of his hands, with which he rang a servant to haul the contents of his study to be transported to his room. Despite the butler¡¯s audibly shaken voice at the sight and demeanour of his master, he obliged, and undertook his duties at the utmost haste to not linger within the strange and otherworldly confines of that accursed room.


    If ghosts and spirits, demons and devils, and all the supernatural beings which purportedly walk among us in the shadows are products of a higher, spiritual force, then whatever malignant energy which so heavily festered the air of the Heatherfield Manor¡¯s study so thoroughly as if a miasma of a pure heartless being, must be one birthed of a scientific power.


    The room lay at the distant end of an unlit and creaky corridor. As the butler entered the room, the sense that he was alone dissipated, and not in a preferable sense. A thousand, distant eyes were observing him. Hidden in the shadows and glaring from every nook and cranny. They observed him. They deconstructed his every fear and began creeping into his psyche. Whispers began to waft in the silence,


    Everything will be gone. Nothing matters. Not you, not this world.


    The butler returned to Entoine¡¯s quarters, wheeling along a desk which housed all of the Master¡¯s studies. He stood up from under the untidy sheets of his velvet bedding and gestured his hands for the table to be drawn closer to his bedside. The butler continued wordlessly, unusual to be sure, but Entoine was oblivious to it all. Dismissed in an instant, little did he know that the butler which had served him at that instant was never to be heard from again.


    And from that moment, Entoine began to realise his plans. In all pursuits of the scientific method, one''s first step was observation; the gathering of information, of values and data. But before such, one must deduce: what information is being sought? Entoine however, had come to the realisation of this fact too, for it was a pointless endeavour otherwise.


    His time- his decisions; how much time did it take him to scrutinise each decision and choice he took? In this question however rose another; what defines a decision? He had then compiled three categories of his decisions: one which required little thought and decided the most trite of matters- what he desired for dinner, what clothes he wore, and matters of the sort; another which required a degree higher of thought but did not determine much significance- which leisures he fancied on certain occasions, what matters he would attend to concerning the estate on a particular day, and so forth; and the last form of decisions- ones which concerned matters of the utmost importance, concerning the trajectory of his life, the pursuit of his studies, and all that ails the minds of those who buried themselves in mountains of knowledge and vast libraries.


    In each of his decisions, Entoine sought to deduce the increments of time he required to undertake them. The first category required him an average of eleven seconds to scrutinise, while the second category required him an average of four minutes and seventeen seconds. The final and third category, being of an illusive nature, required much more time to properly calculate based from his lived experiences. Once he is able to deduce them, he mused, he shall control fate itself.

 Daou

    Destiny is determined by those who believe in its existence.


    It had been a fortnight since the Master of Mercury Hill stirred awake from his great illness and embarked on a scientific journey of the most bizarre nature. Visitors of the manor had been spooked by the purported aura of cold and unfeeling malice which lingered along its hedges and brick walls- twisting the branches of the former into thorny brambles and producing cracks appearing deeper than itself within the latter.


    A wine trader who frequented the estate and supplied the House of Heatherfield with their vintages had fled on his carriage upon the sight of an alleged spectre through a window on the third floor- Entoine¡¯s own bedroom. Whether real or merely fabrication, there was no denying the strange happenings which have begun occurring since the eve of the Master¡¯s plunge into the supposed ¡®sciences of the mind''.


    Within four days and a week, Entoine had regained sufficient strength for mobility with legs, though aided with a walking stick. The man was a walking corpse- his face pale and wrinkled, despite being in relative youth; his body emaciated and frail as if skin gave way to bone and muscle none. This ghastly form began to roam the halls as it once did as a livelier man, yet his indifference to those around him never once altered.


    He continued to spend extensive lengths of time among the vast mounds of scripture housed by the family library, where he pondered and pondered. And there he deduced the duration required for his third category of decision; Among piles of financial records and his life¡¯s history, he had calculated the answer. Five days.


    Entoine now knew, from this moment onward, his journey truly began. He would practise his mind and soul to surpass his own limitations. Juan Ponce de Le¨®n sought an immortality too vague and undefined, and that was his greatest folly. Goals required tangibility and boundaries for one to reach them. For Entoine, he had defined his goal before he began to set off in its pursuit; he would master the ability to create any decision in as little time as possible. With as little time spent on deciding, he would finally attain a freedom he would have never known.


    How long is the present? How many seconds denoted in a moment?


    The following morning was bleak and brumous as light showers coated the rolling hills along the lonely and windswept hills of the countryside.


    The cold had imbued the air lingering in the cellar with a moist and dank miasma. Within the bowels of the manor¡¯s vast array of tunnels and underground constructs, Entoine pondered atop a desk strewn with his schematics, and beside him stood a man of a far shorter stature, wielding a ball-peen hammer and dressed with a well-weathered apron.


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    Entoine had designed a machine capable of assisting one to commit any task or skill, regardless of intricacy, completely into one¡¯s memory- not through the virtues of study or practice, but through direct alteration of the brain itself. A velvet collar lined with a short metal strand protruded at where one¡¯s neck would rest, and from this collar slithered a cable that ran from a controlled power source. A trapezoidal prism of brass plates, a face which bore several lulling gauges and clocks, and a single lever.


    With a gesture of his master¡¯s hands, the dwarf stepped forward and retrieved the schematics. Upon the next instance, hammers began to clank as rivets joined sheets of brass upon the dwarf¡¯s working stone. Entoine merely observed as the machine materialised and the dwarf progressed. As the matter concluded, he gave little commendation to his short-statured servant before ordering a pair of butlers to wheel up the contraption to his quarters.


    And now, he stood before his dreams; his destiny and his collective beliefs of science and philosophy- a thesis on the limits of human capability. He would learn everything that there is to learn. He would solve every problem which he could discover. All intellectual pursuits, achievable and within reach. It seems all fear of death had dissipated from Entoine long ago as he adorned the collar with complete disregard of his personal safety. The gauges on the console sprung to life as Entoine mused his last thought as a being purely human.


    All questions are solvable; the unsolvables merely require more time.


    The electric sparks of the machine flashed in Entoine''s eyes, not unlike a dazzling horde of thunderbolts upon a tempest. His eyes widened as he grunted a lulled cry of pain- a muted howl as his body weakened. He fell to his knees before the searing sensation of agony ceased upon the next moment. Entoine knew then, the machine was a success.


    The brain will do all in its power to avoid sensations of displeasure and pain, and will overcome any obstacle when otherwise faced with such. The electrical shock was of a magnitude of agonising far surpassing any naturally induced source, hence too should its results be of unnaturally extraordinary calibre.


    Entoine spun a knob underneath a gauge, setting it upon approximately five seconds. Producing a small folio he had ordered to be compiled by his loyal assistants whilst he himself was deep within the bowels of the library, he unhesitantly struck the lever downwards and seated himself upon an armchair. Now, its hitherto unknown contents shall be revealed.


    The folio began as the first page of coated paper leafed away. A set of multiple choice mathematical questions laid within. He calculated each with thundering speed- each within five seconds. The machine lulled and ticked away as the timer reset itself after each question. Equations flickered in his mind momentarily before concluding with a solution, and he had finished one page. Another awaited, and he hurried on. The timer too, ticked on. Questions upon the natural philosophies and the sciences. Requiring not more than five seconds, he comprehended, deduced, and solved each of the multiple choice questions.


    The page turned once more, and Entoine¡¯s thoughts ground to a halt. Before his eyes, inscribed in ink upon the hide-paper, laid a question so brief and simple, yet one he could not answer by will of mind alone.


    ¡°What time is it?¡±

 Tri

    Man processes thought in nebulous form. Machines are grounded.


    Time slowed down to a grinding halt as Entoine braced for the inevitable pain. The question unanswered, the searing lance of electrical shocks would soon reinvigorate him to numbingly painful levels. A fountain pen tumbled away from his palm as he became frozen still; the pain of the shock completely overrode his motor functions and stiffened his limbs.


    That was not supposed to happen.


    Entoine knew as much, and drowned in a daze of adrenaline, he decided that there was indeed a technical problem. He then decided that it had been with the capacitors; they were gaining increased voltage with each consecutive shock. And at last, he deduced the source of the problem, each chain of thought in less than five seconds. The capacitor plates were converging closer with each shock; each consecutive discharge growing in intensity, an occurrence he had not anticipated.


    He tumbled off the velvet cushion and shuffled on his knees in a haste towards the wheeled contraption. He simultaneously felt the severe pain of his arthritis upon his knees yet he perceived no feeling of displeasure at all. Perhaps the severity of the electrical shocks had rendered lesser pains to be perceived as so minuscule; the human perception of value is disproportionately biassed against small increases at higher numbers.


    He swung open a pair of brass panel doors upon the machine¡¯s lower half, exposing its electrical mechanisms. And to his horror, the ordeal was far worse than his prediction.


    Placed upon the left side of the cavity was a square of conductive material, its two sides adjacent to the ground coiled in wires; an electric transformer. The coils on the right side were beginning to touch one another, rendering the contraption useless; It was not mitigating the large charge of its power source as intended. Entoine was now enshackled to a machine capable of discharging the power of lightning, tenfold.


    Blind is the man who lives for ambition yet practices no caution.


    Entoine never heeded such a lesson however; perhaps its simplicity eluded his lust for the complex and the intricate- He lived to be on the forefront, and now fate arrived to guarantee that he pay the price of such a living. Three unbearably long seconds had raced away, and as his eyes ticked up towards the row of gauges a final time, so too did the timer tick away a penultimate second.


    No one would bore witness to the moment of his supposed passing, and as such Entoine¡¯s last words would remain unknown and unspoken.


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    Days prior to his passing, one concerned butler had written an urgent message to the brother of the deceased; one Harlan Heatherfield. Away from the family estate on business throughout most of the year and often choosing to return to the summer estate out by Cairnsbury, Harlan was not known to be amicable with his own brother, but the urgency of the matter had left little option. The butler entrusted the letter onto a messenger, instructing him not return unless Master Harlan had read the message, after which he was to accompany the master to the estate.


    ???


    Across a continent of vast peaks and an ocean of perilous trenches, Harlan could not be further away from his accursed family estate. atop a fellen log and concealed within a grove of drooping breadnut trees, he gazed at the ephemeral beauty of the Polynesian sunset. He sighed as he pondered a single thought- what exactly was he running from?


    The clouds overhead began to lightly trickle into a tempest as a distant roar of thunder tumbled along the wispy whispers of the wind. Adjusting his three-cornered hat, he picked up his rucksack of scientific instruments and continued on his way. In front of him, a scene utterly sublime presented itself; a column of smoke towered atop the curved slopes of the imposing volcano, its contours brightly highlighted by the mosaic of clouds that casted light through its cracks. Dusk was fast approaching, and he needed to return to shelter soon.


    Each hell is constructed to punish each individual accordingly


    Harlan approached the clearing where his expeditionary force had set up tarps and various tents as camp; dishevelled poles stood crooked among their fallen comrades that lay discarded, leaving warped and slanted roofs of tattered cloth; every minute the ambience of chirping birds and dusk crickets were interrupted by a chorus of coughs- an epidemic of yet identified viral strain. He secured his scarf around his face, leaving only his aquamarine blue pupils visible upon his face. But unlike their usual glint of defiance driven by his incurable stubbornness, today his eyes were muted- a dulled and exhausted shell of who he once was. He was tired; he wanted to return home.


    A lingering feeling of inexplicable suspense had accosted him throughout the past three days. He had awoken upon the morning of his expedition''s first night upon the island, drenched in a shivering cold sweat of terror; a nightmare had stirred him, continuously recurring for the consecutive past three nights.


    He would find himself alone within his younger brother''s study; the mountains of oblique texts scientific and literary, the eerily unnatural lack of cobwebs within such an unorganised and decrepit mess, and the solitary glow of the oil lamp upon Entoine''s desk, dwarfed by the engulfing sorrow which haunts that room- the sorrow of someone unable to bear a life where one could decide nothing. A mirror appeared before him. Reflected within was a younger face; himself about five to ten years prior. Moving naught but a twitch, he saw his reflection begin to move. It sighed heavily, its face heavy in its palms before it turned away; fading from view as the mirror too began to grow distant, as if he too was unconsciously following his reflection; running away. A sorrow which he too held; a sorrow he chose to defy by recklessly seeking adventure in pursuit of asserting his own freedom.


    It haunted him. It spoke to his guilty conscience how he was no better than his brother, the so called Fool of Mercury Hill; worse, comparatively, for he had abandoned his own sickly brother to his own fate. Unsupervised and left alone with no company whom held the capacity to comprehend him, and no company whom he could comprehend. Harlan pondered how it seemed as if a higher power was warning him with premonitions, and he decided it was best to heed such a warning; no more would he flee from his demons- he resolved to face them once and for all.