The
white light that surrounded Karl Kessler was not comforting, nor was
it angelic. It was noise, screaming, endless audio-visual noise. It
burned through even his hands and eyelids, and he was sure that even
if he jammed pencils in his ears he would still hear the
flesh-shearing shriek that burned all around him. He didn't know how
long he hung there—not long enough to forget that there was
something beyond all this. He couldn't change the fact that minutes
seemed like hours.
After a
time, he was no longer alone. The fuzzy fingers of static that
crawled all over him were displaced and replaced with warm hands made
of flesh. He nearly screamed until he remembered that a scream was
also a name, but there was no reason to be afraid. The person who had
confronted him in the vast white void was Dr. Melcher.
“How
did you...?”
“I was
going to reveal my origins to you, Charles. I just didn't have time.
My own ego got in the way—I should have been looking at you
and realizing you had fallen asleep. It's no surprise that Marvel was
able to track us. There were bound to be negative consequences for
dreaming in the world that serves as one's Dreamland.”
“O-of
course. Um. Now how did you...?” He cut himself off. There
was a more important question, though once more he was irritated at
being reduced to asking questions. “Where is this place, and
how did you get to it?”
“This
is the Lost Stream. I told you about it, remember?”
“I
remember, even though I was asleep.”
“Oh,
come now, Charles—I know you were tired but you couldn't have
fallen into too deep a...”
“Why
do you keep calling me Charles?”
“Why
do you keep calling me Dr. Melcher?”
“That's
your name. I learned it in...”
“...in
a dream, Charles. Sorry, Karl—for Karl Wagner, correct, one
of your or our selves from...Bowery at Midnight?”
“You
call it that too? With Wagner and Brenner, their dual role?”
“I'm
relieved, Karl, that we share that commonality. Even here, in the
Lost Stream, where even memory can be removed from existence, we
can't hang onto the past. That's what
Bowery at Midnight is
about, isn't it?”
“What?”
“In
our dream, Brenner was so desperate to fight against death that he
became the most ruthless of criminals, to squeeze out blood-money
from every tap he could find in his city. You remember his
gang-leader face, so much wiser and bitterer than the officious Nazi
Nardo. With his pilfered funds he created zombies, wanting to turn
over every grave. Take away every loss. Beneath every villain there's
a reason. Brenner must have lost someone, and that's when he stopped
having your 'goodness.' In my dreams, he hated you for
being naive—you were evil, a blockage in his quest to get back at
whoever that nameless person of his past was. That dream was supposed
to be about how death is death, and you must accept your mortality.”
“And,
what...then...are the other dreams about?” Karl had to ask. He
would do anything to avoid staring into the Lost Stream, where again,
all the colors from all the things happening within in ran together
into that crackling white.
Melcher
sighed. “Well, you already know what Ape
Man and Return
of the Ape Man are about,
even if you maybe don't remember those ones enough to have titled
them. Black Dragons is
about how people are usually not how they seem and trust is flimsy.
And Invisible Ghost...”
“Social
isolation? Dependent relationships?”
“Probably.”
Kessler
bit his lip. “So you're not actually called Dr. Melcher, then.”
“No...no,
not really. That name was a signal, I think—Marvel hid in the
Divide, and all the alterations we induced in each other formed the
first base of his power. That power gave him the strength to build a
human body. I...was hesitant to tell you my true name before.”
“And
now?”
“Now...I
am still hesitant.”
Karl
frowned. “How...bad can it be?”
“Melcher
is a name related to Malcolm, which means 'king.' In the Bible, one
can see the root of this name: Melek. Melek was the name of an
ancient God that the ancient monotheists distorted into something
evil—a rival and enemy of El, their One True God. You'd better know
Melek, I think, by the name...”
A flash
of machinery, priests working aimlessly and endlessly at its knobs
and switches. Nude slaves pouring into a rabid and bestial mouth.
Steam flashing from Hell and metal.
“Moloch.”
Karl took in a deep breath, after he spoke the word. “Your name is
Moloch.”
“I am
Moloch. Or Melek. Once upon a time, I was the twin brother to the
creature history names as El. We weren't Gods, at least I don't think
so. We were the sons of an abstract being comprised of a slurry of
energy and matter. El was...unbalanced. Once the local worshipers of
Shamash turned from their God to worship Him, it began affecting His
mind. Feeding His ego. The cult of Shamash died off, but it was echoed later in time
when people found Yahweh or Allah instead. Echoed...mind you...”
“Where
are you going with this?”
“El
began to turn his followers against me, creating rituals that
simulated my murder. He claimed that I induced people to throw their
children into ovens which sat beneath an idol of myself.”
“Did
you? Do you?”
Karl
spoke the question haltingly, but they both laughed. They understood
the Divide now.
When
Moloch stopped laughing, he said: “So much for Black
Dragons. You're trusting me
now.”
“That
one's a racist piece of trash, anyway.”
“No, I
never killed children, or demanded sacrifice. Not like Belphegor,
another local 'king,' and not like...El Himself. The war against me
eventually became overwhelming. Too many of my followers were
murdered or persuaded to the join the El cult. I was forced to locate
a piece of ancient machinery from the dread city of Wal-Un-Porga, and
by modifying it I was able to alter its appearance and its targeting
system. Though it would burn out after a single use, I had built what
Dr. Dexter would construct later, a Gateway. It crossed through the Lost
Stream into the B-Side. I made it look like one of the blazing ovens
they accused my followers of using to murder their own spawn, full of
roaring flames, and I allowed them to perform their ritual on me in
reality. El underestimated me. I'm mortal, somewhat, but his ritual
was too crude to inflict real damage on me—I don't care how
ceremonial a dagger is, it still can't inflict anything I'll just
shrug off.
“In
any case, I seemed to perish screaming in a sudden burst of flames.
I'm sure my twin called it an act of divine providence, and from
their perspective, never again did I return to their continuum. El
was victorious. He would be butchered, in his own time, by blood
transfusions from Sol Invictus and Odin and others, who diluted him
with paganism. It was inevitable, really, and the only sin of it is a
refusal to acknowledge it. Now I'm diluted as well, but that's simply
because I choose to abstain from Godhood. I'm human, with human
dreams. But I don't know if I assumed that role to fit your dreams,
or if I, being a former God, once dreamed you, and you are merely a
shard of me...of the ThrΓΌn
of Tzaa.”
Karl
was disarmed twice over. “The ThrΓΌn
of Tzaa.” Like a clockwork mechanism, like a nearly-lit strand of
thread on a great, interconnected spider-web, he thought back to the
library. Had Marvel arranged
that somehow...his
reading of the weirdly-pulpy grimoire that the library just so
happened to have? The book seemed distant from him now, and he
realized at once that it was simply a thing in a dream. The
convenience of his finding it was like a thing in a dream...
Moloch
felt Karl think this over, without intruding on his thoughts.
Something was wrong. If there was a book on Earth-20181-A that
depicted the ThrΓΌn
of Tzaa, it should show El or himself. As one entity (granting
consent silently and naturally), they mulled over the memory of the
book, with Karl feeling Moloch's sudden apprehension.
The
book recorded a different name for the ThrΓΌn,
the Son. Instead of the demigod Melekthrunsthaaa there was the vast
and complicated Agthrunsthaaa.
A
bloom of pulp erupted in their shared mind, and both of them cried
out, desperately trying to avoid the first syllable of that long
name. From Karl, Moloch knew Lovecraft. The name seemed to stand out
now as one of those strings of unpronounceable syllables the pulp
writer was fond of. Somehow, a name like that had power—a name
belonging to no language except for the babbling of lunatics. “Agh”
was anxiety's scream, but “Agthrunsthaaa” was anxiety cracking
the mind wide open and scrambling the contents.
That was
what they faced now. Moloch grew cold.
“We
shouldn't have thought that,” he said. “In the Lost Stream,
things become strange, like I said. We can
exist here in a
material sense, but we shouldn't.
In the same way that one shouldn't
read old grimoires.”
“I-I
don't understand what's going on, Moloch. Are you going to be
alright?”
“I
don't know. History on Earth-20181-A now records that Marvel is the
son of Tzaa, with access to all of my progenitor's abilities. And yet
Marvel's origin was as one of the humans resurrected or imprisoned on
the Gaudium object.”
“Who
is Tzaa? What does he have to do with any of this?”
“Hopefully
nothing. His name isn't like that other name, Agthrunsthaaa, but you
can use your imagination when you understand him to be the father of
two Biblical deities. He is a virus-god, an idea that Lovecraft might
have liked. His realm is in the disgust of the fecundity of growing
things...a perversion of life, life as a thing to be hated.”
“This
is all pretty, uh, metaphysical, doctor.”
“I'm
not really a doctor. And yes, it is, but we are in a metaphysical
realm. We must begin traveling. Remember that Marvel brought you
here. I suspect that he is here also, and we have to journey to him.”
He pulled that tight black thing even tighter about himself. “Hurry.
I'm getting colder.”
They
began to walk, and it was like there was a path beneath their feet.
But at the same time, with every step, Karl felt like he was going to
fall down into an open sky. He had always imagined, he realized, that
that was what it was like to try to walk in Hell.9
“Where
are we going, exactly?” Karl asked.
Moloch
coughed. “Dreams are stories, and as we wander through our dreams
we are bound to a narrative...Marvel will have a castle waiting for us at our story's conclusion. The Tower of
Babel, as it were—that Tower led to the confusion of language, and
we're going into a snowstorm that confuses minds.”
Karl
sighed. Moloch clearly had it in his head that he was dying. As a
result he was choosing to talk in bullshit rather than straight
answers. In any case, he generally got it. There was a guaranteed
“final confrontation” that had to satisfy some urge somewhere.
Just like in dreams.
As they
walked, there was nothing to do but talk. Looking to their left and
right, they saw flashes of things that could have been; lives they
could have dreamed into being. Moloch saw a demented elderly butler
named Casimir, who wandered in dark passages attending to the needs
of a cruel doctor; otherwise he was Paul Renault, who lived on the
Caribbean island of St. Sebastian, bringing the dead back to life as
monsters just as Frederick Brenner did. (Names were tangible in the
Lost Stream and they would stick in your head and crowd out names of
real people you once knew.) Karl could have been Frank Chandler, an
occult expert who used magic for the forces of good. He was also
kindly Dr. Werdegast, gentle and relaxed but tortured and vengeful,
and hateful of cats.
Moloch
didn't want to forget himself—if he did so, the same would follow
with Karl, and vice versa. He knew he would have to talk, but once
more he couldn't resist speaking like he was on his deathbed. “I
think what has happened thus far, Karl, has been my fault.”
Karl
didn't ask.
“Your
alternate selves appeared on Earth-20181-A because I attempted a
magic spell that I learned in my studies. The Cantrip of Altosagha.
Altosagha being the root-word for 'alter ego.' Ego, as you can
surmise, is the '-agha' part of that word. At some point in history, Marvel must have
created the Cantrip. It is Marvel's power that allowed me to
accomplish my goal, the creation of independent doppelgangers who
were nonetheless subservient to my will; the things the spell calls
'alter egos,' differentiated from simple doubles or doppelgangers. I
needed to see if it could be done...I was a younger man. I did
this when we were about seventeen, in human terms, anyway. I had to
reteach myself everything once I crossed over to the B-Side, and
became a humanoid. It was easier to learn the second time around.”
Kessler
recalled himself at seventeen and smiled thinly.
“The
Cantrip of Altosagha pulls one's dream-selves out of the Dreamlands
and makes them into real people...except they have a bond to the
conjurer, being from the conjurer's imagination. By using it without
the proper spiritual training I attracted Agthrunsthaaa, for he is
the master of the Cantrip...it's tied to the influence and grip he's
had on the layers of the Dreamlands.”
“My
only response is,” Kessler said then, “that I am intrigued by the
prospect of Marvel's other name being at the root of 'ego.' It does
have to mean something more than a monosyllabic scream, right?”
“All
is possible in the Dreamlands. Some beings similar to myself can
travel in time. Maybe that syllable was implanted in the minds of
ancient humans in some universes. Ego is simply the pronoun 'I,'
ultimately. Freud chose it as a stand-in for 'I' when describing the
second layer of the mind. The common colloquial references to ego, as
in excess pride, perhaps more properly apply to the Freudian id,
the...selfish baby aspect of the mind.” And he laughed then.
“Etymological genesis by way of time-travel—I have told you the
B-Side was strange, stranger than your world in ways I can't
succinctly say, but I am still a madman among my people for thinking
of such things.”
“Is it
still considered common to reach into a literal, tangible
dream-dimension to casually remove the identities one takes in dreams
and fashion them into literal, tangible people?”
“...I
am not sure. We are recluses, aren't we, you and I?”
“Yeah.
Yeah, we are.” Karl stuck his hands in his pockets. His feet were
raw under him; he wanted to stop traveling, to stop wandering deeper
into madness. He thought he remembered a desire to become mentally
ill as a child. He didn't want to dismiss the idea that there was
misunderstood knowledge, wisdom, and, yes, even stability in what was
commonly called insanity by the general public. He assumed that the
mind contained fantasy kingdoms full of ideas worth writing about, or
trying to pitch in Hollywood. That was probably what Marvel had
latched onto, when he had claimed to be a West Coast screenwriter.
Of
course, he was aware of the fact that that desire to plumb the depths
of “madness” could have been a false memory. He walked faster,
hoping to reach their destination sooner, trying not to think about
how it's more advantageous to walk than run in the rain. Yet he would
rather be distorted than forced to endure a long nothingness.
Nothingness was a slack tongue that had forgotten flavor—puffed up
lips, meaningless hand movements. A lack of objective, forever.
But
before they knew it, it was upon them. It was easy now to reconsider
the possibility that Agh, or Agha, invented Ego. The thing was huge, made of rigid stone—straight, angular, ruined, and
pristine. It was hard
to look at, and had a different appearance every time they blinked. But always, always colossal, and giving the impression of
being...Carpathian.
“How
do we even enter such a thing?”
Moloch
said it at the same time as Kessler. They looked at each other, and
nodded. They had to just keep walking. That was all there was to it.
They may
have crossed a drawbridge over a moat that might have had a horde of
crocodiles within it—under an archway which may have had a
portcullis. The brickwork around them was mossy and spoiled; regal
and proper. The halls were abandoned and crowded with servants...it
went on, and after a time Kessler was walking with his eyes closed.
Moloch's steady hand touched his shoulder when they finally reached a
stable space. A bubble of solid events, maintained doubtlessly by
Marvel's will.
It was a
corridor, which appeared to be on a high floor. Kessler couldn't
recall climbing any stairs, even when his eyes had been closed. In
any case, the torches mounted on the walls illuminated a series of
ten portraits, which Kessler silently took as “family portraits.”
Somehow, these ten men were significant to Marvel. From an arbitrary
sequence he observed: an Asian man wearing a uniform that belonged to
a cheesy science fiction film; a bald monkish white man with a sinister old
face; a stern bearded man who seemed to be clad in the outfit of a Nazi; a
handsome man, dressed for political office, with a nearly-theatrical
grin; an obese teenager who was so fat as to be androgynous; a bony, hulking
thing that had to be a special effect, looking like an agile, prone
Frankenstein's monster; an out-of-focus figure in a poorly-rendered
photograph, whose gender, race, and demeanor were hidden; a priest,
wearing thick spectacles and sporting a cruelly conservative
hairstyle; a pudgy white suburbanite, perhaps a schoolteacher,
dressed casually; and finally, a loathsome fleshy thing that looked a
bald human without eyes, whose skin was pale and teeth were long.
“Ignore
it,” Moloch said. “It's part of Marvel's dream.”
“Shouldn't
we study his dream, so that we can be prepared to confront him?”
Moloch
did not reply. He was looking hungrily at the torches, craving their
heat. His timeline was becoming thin because of what Agthrunsthaaa
had done to him. But with a slight struggle he ignored the light. “We
have to keep moving. We'll face him soon enough.”
There
was a winding staircase ahead that had to be from an old movie seen
in one of their childhoods. They walked long and far up this
staircase, again completely unaware of the true dimensions of this
castle. Soon they were in a surprisingly small room, and present was
Agthrunsthaaa.
There
was no drama to him. He kept the same form he always did, wearing the
stylish but plain suit, tie, and slacks. His shined shoes glistened
along with his round glasses and polished teeth.
“Thank
you for coming all this way, gentlemen. Rest assured, you had little
choice in the matter, but it is still meaningful to me.”
“We've
assembled what you are, Marvel, and if you meant for us to come here,
why don't you just kill us already?” asked Kessler.
“You
don't know the full extent of what I am. You will both die,
assuredly—one in mind, the other in body...and history, and
existence, admittedly. Kessler, it seems you are lucky. I hold
nothing against you because you are a helpless mortal. I will ensure
that the destruction of your mind is as painless as possible.”
Kessler
made a small noise, a noise that shuddered. “I just wanted to find
my wife.”
“She
was never real, boy,” said Agthrunsthaaa, with a nearly hucksterish
voice. “She was the light on the lure of the angler fish. I made
her.” And he grinned then.
“Show
him kindness. He's suffered,” Moloch said. His voice was so gentle
now—murderous Dr. Melcher was so far behind now.
“So
have I, more than you can ever know. Better to lose a wife who never
lived than a real family whom one could never replace. In any case,
Moloch, Kessler is just a thing—a puppet, a shell. A cast-off. And
if Kessler is just a cast-off, a piece of fallout from you,”
Agthrunsthaaa mused, “then I can make him into a new Moloch, or a
reasonable facsimile. I was born in the fires of the Lost Stream, and
I will not fade away as you will. Your fading-away will be my first
examination of the weaponization potential of the Lost Stream. The Stream
permeates throughout the entire Multiverse, you know. Using my own
power, plus powers of the ThrΓΌn
of Tzaa, I can enter any universe I wish. Or render any event
non-canon as I wish. I will have dominion over reality.”
“Why
would you want that?” Moloch's voice nearly creaked now.
“You
invoked me and mingled with me when you spoke my Cantrip. I saw your
lineage, and I saw Tzaa, and as the master of the Dreamlands I knew
his power would be the way to my success. Dreams are strong but also
soft...they're not a sure route to the power of revenge. You used the
Cantrip to see if you could, and from there I found the key to my revenge—”
“Who
do you want vengeance on?” Moloch asked.
“Don't
interrupt. By changing cause and effect with the Lost Stream I can
remove you from existence, and thus guarantee that I will always have
your power, and the power to remove you. To control canon is to
overcome the two barriers of existence, entropy and paradox. Do you
get it? In fact, it was toying with canon's power to allow 'clean
passage' over paradoxes that led to my creation. My family and I were
given peace after our torture in the construct of the Gauds...but
that doesn't matter now. That construct was gone long before I
destroyed it, when it got too small for me, even if it was the first
thing that helped me realize my potential. I've clearly already
succeeded, Melekthrunsthaaa. Kessler's book, and many others like it
throughout the universe, already record the name Agthrunsthaaa
instead. There's no point in fighting me, even if you had to come
here. I made it so you had to come here, so I could use the Lost
Stream to erase and replace you.
“The
name Agthrunsthaaa doesn't have any meaning, save for the fact that
it's part of Multiversal history now. A being of my power is bound to
get lost in time; becoming ancient by interacting with the
myth-makers of antiquity. I am an external context. I was able to
graft my own context onto the Multiverse...doesn't that make me more
worthy of being the son of a virus-god to you?”
“I'm
scarcely a virus, it's true,” the Son of Tzaa said.
“What
say you, Kessler?” Agthrunsthaaa asked. “I hope the idea has not
become too screwy.”
“I
feel nauseous,” Kessler said. “But I'm beginning to understand, and I understand that you should not have the power you want to take.”
“You
both speak bravely, openly—I suppose it figures, as you are the
same man.”
Moloch
stepped forward. “He's brave because I'm brave. I'm brave because
I'm not a man, with a man's weaknesses.” And he paused. “That
ought to include pride. I can't assume that he didn't dream my
courage first.”
Agthrunsthaaa
started laughing, and it was a laugh that hurt Kessler as bad as the
whine of the Lost Stream—it was that whine, but crossed with
the sound of air rushing through a wet corpse. Moloch didn't care;
this laughter was nothing to him.
“To
me, Agthrunsthaaa, you are still young. You didn't even stand on the
sands of Canaan,” Moloch said. “I've dealt with upstarts like you
before.”
---
9.
Hell is not merely a term that is relevant to psychology (consider
the psychology of guilt, shame, sin, crime, and punishment). Hell is
a certifiably real place.
When
I woke up from the blow Vivian dealt me I found myself in a dank sea
cave—you could smell the salt on the air and hear the rush of the
waves. I was shirtless and tied to a chair. Oliver stood over me,
with Vivian behind him.
She
plead for me. I will give her that. She did not try hard, but she
begged him to spare me. It didn't matter—the fact that it was
happening at all was a sign of how deep the betrayal was. If
anything, she was putting on a facade I was meant to see through. I
don't need to describe what I was feeling in my heart. But I have to
write now about how it felt on my body.
Oliver
evidently had studied the methods of the Inquisition. In the
background, I saw something burn red and release smoke. Before I
could focus on it, Oliver struck me across the face with a wooden
rod. After I cried out he wiped this rod off, and looked at me
keenly. “Across the Atlantic, in whatever equivalence to Old Spooky
they have in England, canings would be curricula regulars.” Then he
hit me again; the bruise howled as it crawled across my cheek. For
about fifteen minutes, he struck me again and again, at his leisure.
It was impossible to predict the blows' rhythm. It was like Chinese
water torture, but instead of water droplets to the face it was blows
from a mahogany rod.
Once
that was done he retreated the embers that I'd since forgotten. A
long rod, thinner than the wooden one he'd just used, emerged from
the steaming coals. It ended with a flat, circular brand, roughly the
size and shape of a hockey-puck. I flailed back, my bruised lips
uttering resistance, but just above my heart his weapon flicked out.
The circle irrevocably tattooed itself onto my chest, eating inches
into the skin until I feared my lungs would burst into flames—from
both the screams and the dark scars that ate down into my flesh.
He
let me rest after that, but only barely. When my eyes opened once
more, and my screams echoing in my ears finally left me, I saw
something white and plastic in his hand. He let me take a good look
before he slammed it down into my kneecap. It had been a
syringe—filled with what, I have no idea. I tried to ask him what
it was, but he spoke first: “It's short term. Only a half hour.
Only.” And a moment after that—well. I have still never known
what it's like to have fire-ants crawl under one's skin; but I have
felt a simulacrum of such.
It
may have been hours, it may have been days. I remember thirst and
starvation. Oliver slapped me awake, indicating that I'd lost
consciousness. When I was fully aware he spat in my eye.
“She's
mine,” he snarled then. “She's mine, and she'll be mine forever.”
“Why,
Oliver?” I asked.
“Because
I didn't come all this way in my life to come up second. That which
I've received I've deserved; and what I haven't gotten has been taken
from me.”
As
soon as I heard those words, a shift came over my eyes.
Paradoxically, I was almost numb from pain, and it may have been
simple pain that made his shadow dance. In the cave, briefly, it
seemed like he had wings, and long horns, or something akin to such.
Once
more he took out the long knife. I was still bleeding from where he'd
gotten me before, and now parallel to the first cut he made, a
shallow slice down my chest from the shoulder, he cut again. This
time deeper, relishing the pain. I screamed endlessly but it
did nothing. I felt the tickle of the knife's very tip against the
outer layer of my muscle. Warm fluid trickled down my chest as I lost
yet more blood.
Now
I looked to Vivian, but once more, her fearful face paralyzed me. I
knew it was false, but she was so convincing.
And
there it ended. That was when I parted company from them, and from
her. Vivian Gina was lost in the world, wandering, merely a shade at
the corner of my eye. As I write that, I begin to understand—the
locks begin to open, and I see Mr. Kessler's room empty. But I have
to go on. Go on remembering; go on living. These last weeks, I have
lived. Writing has made me live, because it has let me bask in the
scent of my Virginia again...
That
was the day that the Devil Bat began to visit me. Having written it
down I understand that it was the flash of shadows in the cave as
Oliver danced his murderous war-dance before me; but that won't make
it go away. Every night it's come, for years now, grinding on through
time like it's nothing while that same time grinds me down in a cruel
old man. Once I was so kindly. But by the scars I bear on my body, I
also bear on my mind the scars of the Bat's talons.
Yes,
that is what happened—I assure you. Oliver Dran stole my wife from
me. Then, with no warning, he capped off the theft by strapping me to
a chair in a cave and torturing me within an inch of my life.
There
is merely one string of details, however, that I've altered.
The
start of this string begins with the fact that it wasn't I in that
chair, but they.
Do
you understand, now, as I do?
A
single event can cause a cascade of further incidents, and so it was
the rational end of the string that I cut Oliver's throat. Now it
makes sense why I trembled when Kessler told me who his first
psychiatrist was. But I see a sort of sense in it. I see a sense in
everything now. This Monograph
has given me a sort of peace...
There
must be an ending. I will finish Mr. Kessler's story so that I can
publish his case, and obtain the glory I've earned.
