The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum (The Magnetron Chronicles) (6 page)

“
I began to grow restless... It was some other bit of unfinished business that irritated like a splinter embedded in one’s dermis, the stub protruding from the tiny wound at times and yet evading a tweezers’ grasp.”

Enfeebled by
the sustained exertion and sleep deprivation I had just endured, I took to bed at my earliest opportunity and slept nearly twenty continuous hours. I awoke in the evening to find that the Hogalum Society members had taken their leave and gone their individual ways. Mrs. Mackenzie prepared a late supper and explained that they had departed in some haste shortly after I had retired in the wee hours of the morning. They had left considerable business unattended to in order to investigate why I had not returned their telegrams and, having resolved the matter, were obliged to depart forthwith.  Before leaving, Valkusian had advised Mrs. Mackenzie he intended to muster the group again shortly pursuant to a forthcoming mission, the details of which he was not at liberty to discuss.

Setting aright my laboratory
kept me well-occupied over the following fortnight, as my exquisite Masterstroke Mill was in frightful disarray.  I also devoted an extravagant portion of my time to more slumber, a luxury I had not enjoyed for the preceding three weeks.

Pung was distraught over the apparent disappearance of Mozi, the most recent addition to his feline
omnium gatherum
. He displayed an anthropomorphic indignance toward the other cats for not joining the search, reserving his most denunciatory reprimands for Confucius, the haughty white Persian mix tom. “Why you not help Pung, you lazy good-for-nothing!” he exhorted. Confucius steadfastly ignored Pung, devoting each day his two or three waking hours to eating, cleaning, and other inoffensive diversions. I resolved to emulate this creature. But it was not to be.

Mrs.
Mackenzie was also distraught, but not by the wayward Mozi. She was consumed by worry at Anders’ continued absence. He had estimated he would return early in October, but near the middle of that month the big Swede had not yet returned.  Unable to duplicate the profound disinterest displayed by Confucius, I tried unsuccessfully to calm Mrs. Mackenzie. I reminded her that Anders had the strength of three ordinary men and that—at nearly seven feet tall—he was unsuitable prey for robbers and other scurvy rogues. She remained inconsolably querulous, demanding that I launch a search, despite the fact that none of us had the least hint where his family resided. It was nettlesome, yes, but I hadn’t the mistiest notion how to effect his return. Several days passed during which I received not the most fleeting respite from her vigorous appeals, and in the end I consented to allow her to rifle my personal household records for any of Anders’ documentation, a task which she undertook with great gusto.

I began to grow restless.
I was unconcerned about Anders, for the reasons stated above. It was some other bit of unfinished business that irritated like a splinter embedded in one’s dermis, the stub protruding from the tiny wound at times and yet evading a tweezers’ grasp. I became convinced that there was more to Dr. Hogalum’s death than perhaps even he knew. How could I reconcile Petión’s compelling intuition that Hogalum had been murdered with the doctor’s own perfunctory account of an accidental fatality?

The answer was that I could not.
There was more to this mystery, and I determined then to unravel it. I promptly arranged to meet Dr. Hogalum’s personal physician, Dr. Glockenholz, one of two men who were the last to see him before his death.

At that time I apprehended not the most infinitesimal fraction of the bizarre mysteries then just beginning to unfold,
nor the depth and breadth of treachery I would soon encounter.  Looking back, I can say with utmost certainty that but for my stalwart companions in the Hogalum Society I would have gone completely mad, as indeed, I nearly did.  As I was then blissfully ignorant of the perils yet to come, I felt not trepidation, but rather the invigorating discomposure of a new mystery, a new journey, a new adventure.

But
that
is a story for another time…

Magnetron’s secret emprise has both surmounted probability and surpassed the limits of previously known science, but he is now being drawn into compelling new mysteries:  Was Dr. Hogalum’s death truly an accident, or was he the unwitting victim of foul play?  What has become of Anders, Magnetron’s faithful servant?  And what is the nature of the next mission of the fabled Hogalum Society?

Find out
in the next exciting installment of
The Magnetron Chronicles
!

The Magnetron Chronicles, Volume 1, The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum contains a variety of historical and scientific references, abstruse jargon, and intentional anachronisms.  To enhance the reader’s appreciation of the aforementioned story elements, a more or less scholarly examination of them is presented below.  It should be noted that these remarks do not necessarily present in the same order in which the respective topics appear in the manuscript, and that they have been written predominantly in passive voice so as to appear more scholarly than they really are.

The “corpse-littered battlefield” to which Phineas Magnetron refers in Chapter 2 is one of several such American Civil War battlefields of the Battle of Chancellorsville, fought in early May of 1863.  This prolonged, bloody engagement was a decisive victory for Robert E. Lee’s Northern Virginia Army over Hooker’s much larger infantry and cavalry forces.  Unfortunately for the South, storied general Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded in the battle as well.

The
Lasiodora parahybana
tarantula used in Magnetron’s initiation ritual is an exceptionally large spider also known as the Brazilian Salmon Pink Bird-eating Tarantula. 
L. parahybana
have been known to sport one-inch fangs and reach leg spans in excess of eleven inches.  As a point of historical fact, the
L. parahybana
was not discovered by zoologists until 1917, but the spiny creature proved too compelling to be edited from the final manuscript, a rare literary instance of an anachronistic arachnid.

The Thrale’s Russian Imperial Stout mention may also be an anachronism, as Henry Thrale’s Anchor Brewery was sold after his death to Barclay’s, of banking fame, and the author’s research failed to determine when the name of this historic brewery was changed, as eventually came to pass.  Also, some beer historians are skeptical that the designation “Russian Imperial Stout” was used before 1900.  In the end, the lyrical quality of “Thrale’s Russian Imperial Stout” was deemed too alluring to resist and survived an otherwise ruthless editing session.

On the other hand, the 1825 Perrier-Jouët champagne Mrs. Mackenzie retrieves from the wine cellar in Chapter 14 is historically accurate, and would have been a very fine sixty-two-year-old bottle of champagne when Magnetron smashed it across the bow of the
Caelestis
.  Indeed, one of the last remaining bottles of this vintage was uncorked in 2009 for a “liquid history” tasting by wine experts, one of whom described the still-bubbly libation as “generous with an intense nose.”

The character
General Southwick was inspired by resolute Confederates Pendleton Murrah, General Joseph Shelby, and others who similarly refused to acknowledge defeat; also by Japanese Lt. Hiroo Onoda, who was never informed that World War II had ended and fought the good fight for twenty-nine years after his comrades had called it quits.

The quotation on Dr. Hogalum’s headstone was indeed uttered by Henry David Thoreau, who died at the age of 44 of tuberculosis.  Although quite ill, he continued to write extensively and take visitors, including the Quaker abolitionist Parker Pillsbury, who reportedly
prompted him for theories on the afterlife.  Thoreau died a few days later, uttering his final words: “Moose… Indian.”

Petión’s
voodou
(voodoo) lingo in Chapters 8 and 9 represents reasonably accurate usage of such terms and “reasoning” on such topics.  A
houngan
is a
voodou
priest, whereas a
bokor
delves into the darker aspects, including the reanimation of the dead.  The
lwa
(also called
loa
), or spirit, is not analogous to a person’s “soul,” as in major religions, but is closer to an angel, an intermediary entity between humans and
Bondye
, the Creator. 
Lwa
are summoned by a
voodou
priest, whereupon they “mount” a nearby participant, in this case, the disembodied head of Dr. Hogalum.

Coburn’s revolver is a Belgian-made
LeFaucheux with twenty chambers and two over-and-under barrels firing 7mm pinfire cartridges.  Fully loaded, it weighed almost three pounds.  This model saw some limited usage in the final year of the American Civil War, far less than the earlier LeFaucheux .44 caliber six-shot revolver which was imported by the tens of thousands by both the Union and Confederate armies.

Magnetron’s remarks in Chapter 10 regarding “the brain’s ability to direct the body with small electrical discharges” have a historical context dating back to Luigi Galvani’s 18th Century frog-leg experiments in “animal electricity,” which in turn spurred Alessandro Volta to invent the first battery.  In Magnetron’s time,
Liverpool physician Richard Caton had observed electrical activity in animal brains, although the first electroencephalogram was not recorded until 1912.

Magnetron was also well ahead of his contemporaries with his wireless telegraph, which improved on existing telegraphy by replacing transmission wires with electromagnetic waves.  He accomplished this notable feat fifteen years before Nikola Tesla’s public demonstration of such a device.
  The historical record is deafeningly silent with regard to any collaboration between the two men.

The Magnetron Chronicles is a trilogy in fifteen parts, a multi-volume series of steampunk tales.  It would be wise to read every last one of them, in the correct sequence of course!  Please note that
Book 1: Rise of the Hogalum Society
contains all of the first five individual volumes as listed below.

Book 1: Rise of the Hogalum Society

 
Vol. 1: The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum

 
Vol. 2: Spring-heeled Jack and the President’s Ring

 
Vol. 3: Escape from Xanadu

 
Vol. 4: High Crimes and Miscreants

 
Vol. 5: Luftigel and Doppelgänger

Book 2: The Quest for Ultima Thule

  Vol. 6: The Kraken of
Cape Farewell (
Coming 2013
)

  Vol. 7: The Flying Trains of
Oaxaca (
TBA
)

  Vol. 8: The Curse of Al-Andalus (
TBA
)

  Vol. 9:
The Black Colonel’s Labyrinth (
TBA
)

  Vol. 10:
Summit at Nazca (
TBA
)

Book 3: Apogee and Perigee

  Vol. 13: The Affine Connection (
TBA
)

  Vol. 1
1: The Dragons of Takamatsu (
TBA
)

  Vol. 1
2: The Flower Warriors (
TBA
)

  Vol. 14:
The Universal Germ (
TBA
)

  Vol. 15:
The Möbius Transformation (
TBA
)

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You are cordially invited to visit the
official Magnetron Chronicles website
to get advance notice of new installments in the series, and gain trivial insights into the apocryphal life and times of Phineas J. Magnetron and his larger-than-life contemporaries.

D. L. Mackenzie
pounds on a computer somewhere in the desiccated cultural wilderness of
Phoenix, Arizona.  When he’s not writing or more gainfully employed elsewhere, he enjoys hiking the valley’s surrounding mountains, traveling, listening to obscure music, and performing unremarkable household chores with his hyperactive wife.  He has a love/hate relationship with American politics and is known to bore and annoy anyone within earshot with his radically sensible political ideas.  He has written scads of scandalously intemperate opinion pieces and a short story or two, but remains smitten with classic fiction by such authors as Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells.

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