Locke walked through the cramped aisles of shelves groaning with bound newspapers, towards the clerk’s desk at the rear. “I need a comprehensive article or series about the history of vitalogy, and a biography of Dr. Frankenstein,” he told the tall hoover at the desk. Perched on a stool itself five feet high, the hoover’s boxy head almost brushed the ceiling.
The hoover looked down at Locke from behind his desk (some eight feet from the floor – why so high?), silently climbed down and made his heavy-footed way down one of the aisles, which held not only the five-year print run of the Sun but those of the Evening Register, the Long Island Farmer, indeed every noteworthy newspaper in the city’s history, as far back as the Royal New-York Gazette. Mr. Day had bought the collection at auction when the Commercial Advertiser folded. There was every newspaper, past and present, that Locke could recall having seen, aside from the Negro paper Freedom’s Journal.
The hoover unerringly found the volume he wanted and carried it to a lectern of a more reasonable height where Locke could stand and read it. The hoover opened the book to the correct page without even having to flip through it, and even laid a finger at the top of the right-hand page, headed VICTOR CAROLUS FRANKENSTEIN in old-fashioned newspaper type.
“I can read,” Locke snapped. He might have apologized, even to a hoover, but the creature had already turned away, without the slightest sign of resentment, or even reaction, except to the implied dismissal. He climbed his stool and bent to his desk, his quill pen scratching away.
Locke looked at the wastebasket at the foot of the stool, surrounded by wadded sheets of paper and used quills that had missed it. As a boy, he had learned to write with a quill pen, but in recent years he had only seen hoovers using them. Next to the wastebasket was a cylindrical shape held together with a worn leather strap. Locke realized with a start that it was a bedroll, presumably the clerk’s. Did the creature sleep down here? But then, why not? He was only a hoover. Still, the idea of the hoover living down here, possibly not having seen the light of day since he was brought down here . . . .
Locke shook himself and looked at the article the hoover had found for him.
Six decades before -- in the same year that a terrible fire had destroyed a quarter of the city of New York, Adam Smith had published his essay on The Wealth of Nations, and the United States had declared their independence -- a medical student at Ingolstadt, Bavaria, had discovered the elixir vitae: a transparent golden fluid which could animate dead tissue.
When Frankenstein’s elixir perfused dead tissue, hearts would beat, lungs would respire. A brain invigorated by the elixir would awaken and send signals to nerves. The nerves would command muscles to action. The muscles would respond.
Even a discovery as amazing as that might not have transformed the world as much as it had, or as quickly, if Frankenstein hadn’t also advanced the art of surgery amazingly. Most reanimated bodies would have been little use as they were upon death: torn muscles and broken bones would be unable to function, damaged nerves would not be able to control a limb, disease-ravaged organs would not sustain a reanimated body. Frankenstein learned to graft a healthy limb in place of a ruined one, to splice the severed ends of nerves so they would function, and to give a healthy brain command over a body.
Frankenstein’s genius still might have languished for years. His handful of reanimated animals might have been mere curiosities, and his first disastrous attempt to copy the human form might have led a lonely existence. The final key component was Frankenstein’s invention of conservante, the transparent liquid which allowed him to preserve tissue against decay for months, even years. That allowed Frankenstein and his friend Henry Clerval to quickly begin producing their first ouvriers, a word which entered English as “hoover”.
Much of this was long familiar to Locke, but a good deal was new. As he read, he felt a growing curiosity that he hadn’t had before, and wished he’d taken the time to study vitalogy prior to this assignment.
Locke thought about just how much Frankenstein and vitalogy had changed the world. From the moment Nereus had knocked on his door to now, there had hardly been a moment when he was out of sight of a two-legged hoover or a four-legged kimmer, to say nothing of the street flowers cushioning his feet and the ravens and rocs flying over his head. Even the luminous fungi in the ceiling and walls that provided the very light he was reading by was a product of the Vitalogical Revolution.
It occurred to Locke that he actually did have an “in” to the vitalogist community. Freddy Waldman, two doors down from his own room at the Decatur, was an assistant to Dr. Lavenza, who had a little workshop or surgery or whatever it was called that turned out some kind of fancy servant hoovers for the upscale market. If he could get Waldman to introduce him to Lavenza, he could interview the man, and gain access to other vitalogists. Locke would drop by Lavenza’s place of business and ask if he could interview him – it was unlikely, but there was no harm in asking, and it would give him an excuse to “happen” to run into Waldman as he was leaving for lunch. Locke could then suggest they get something together.
That reminded Locke that he was feeling hungry himself. He must have been reading in the morgue all morning, running on nothing but a spoonful of Blue Mass. He had better be about getting some nuncheon before trying to interview anyone.
//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "There are some things Man was not meant to know...."\\
