Note: This is the reworking of a project I started long ago. Plot ideas, concepts, and actions have changed constantly, and yet for some reason this single thought has remained in my head despite everything else I've toyed with. I hope everyone enjoys this, and I always appreciate comments and criticism.
There is No Confusion like the Confusion of a Simple Mind
From his window at the William J. LePetomaine Asylum for the Mentally Disturbed Dr. Luther Manning quietly watched the seas as the rain battered away at his window. It was another wet November morning, the rain and the cold combining to set a thick fog across the coastline. Tired eyes supported by coffee and cigarettes strained to just barely see the distant lights of a lighthouse, that one lone sentinel keeping lost ships from running aground. He was a tall man, even with a crooked back from a fall as a child. His blonde hair was fading away, leaving only slight wisps to cover his head.
Much like his work here. His office was like a museum dedicated to his profession: books and journals lined his walls with the latest knowledge of the world; his desk held a mountain of files dedicated to his patients. Dr. Manning was renowned for his tireless work ethic, his skills in manipulating the mind, and his ability to reintegrate his patients into normal society. While there were those who argued that his efforts were … extreme the numbers continually showed himself to be one of the top exports in the nation in the regard. Judges and even the elite of New England society sent their troublesome issues to him, and Dr. Manning always ensured they returned a happy and functional member of society.
But this particular case now…
"Excuse me, doctor? The patient is ready." A nurse said, ducking her head inside his office door. With a heave and a sigh, Dr. Manning followed her out of his office down the cold corridors of the Asylum.
"He's a peculiar one, isn't he Nurse Jennings?" He asked the woman in front of him, an older woman of about forty with a large mole beside her nose and heavy build. She had always been one of Manning's chief supporters here at the Asylum. He willingness to actually proceed with his procedures didn't hurt at all either...
"I suppose so, doctor. He's been amazingly resistant to our efforts so far. I honestly think the man's convinced he's not sick. Nothing some work can't fix, but it isn't going to be easy…" She said before lighting a cigarette. Down the hallway several orderlies were wheeling a half-broken man away.
"I'm sure in due time our boy will be fine and dandy. We'll set him right on up, we just have to make him fit in first." The nurse opened the door first, allowing the doctor to enter before following him. Across the room at a small hardwood table sat another man, dressed in the white coat of the facility with his identification number stamped across his chest.
He was a younger man, probably in his late twenties but life had aged him a few years extra. His reddish-brown hair was already graying, and the lines of wrinkles were already forming on a face which stared helplessly out the window. Deep blue eyes simply stared across the fog, as if he was trying to pull himself towards the lighthouse.
"Dr. Thomson? Dr. Thomson, how are you today?" Manning asked, taking a seat across from the man. He lit a cigarette and laid the pack down upon the table. No reply came as the other still stared blankly away.
"That is your name, isn't it? Come now, there's no reason we can't behave as one professional to another. You should know better that we're here to help you Dr. Thomson. We aren't going to hurt you." The Psychiatrist probed. Again no response came, leading the man to begin jotting things down into his notes.
"You know, if you don't cooperate with us it's only going to make things more painful and difficult for yourself…" His little threat seemed to hit a nerve, as the patient actually mouthed something, hardly above a whisper as he kept his focus towards the sea.
"So he speaks! Can you speak up, doctor?" Manning asked.
"Don't call me Doctor." The patient said, more firmly this time. "I don't like to stand on ceremony. I prefer to let people decide who I am by actions, not by titles."
"Very interesting, Mr. Thomson. Or should I call you James? Nurse Jennings tells me you are quite the fascinating man. From one of the finest families of New England, a war hero, Oxford educated! A man one rarely imagines to see in a place like this, yet you claim to have "hopped between realities" and travelling to a "city on the moon." Why don't you tell us about these things" Manning watched his patient as he listed these things, the man's face slowly turning to look him directly in the eyes. It was a cold and intensive look, a stare the doctor had seen many times from those who had returned from the battlefields of France.
"Horresco referens." The patient said, suddenly producing a cigarette from the doctor's pack. Manning hadn't even noticed he'd taken it. Still, he offered the man a light and sat back, as the empty stare regained some light as a smirk.
"Cup of coffee would be nice too…" The doctor exchanged a look with Jennings beofre the nurse grunted as her fat legs lifted her up. She left the room with a the old wooden floor creaking before door the quietly closed behind her.
"So, Mr. Thomson, why don't we start from the beginning, yes? Why don't you describe to me this world you are from, yes? I'm very interested in hearing about it now." The scrape of his pen on paper seemed to echo throughout the room as the younger man turned silent again. The younger man simply stared around the room, cigarette dangling from two limp fingers as he seemed to search for the words he wanted.
"Tell me doctor, what do you associate with the word infinite?"
"I believe I'm the one giving the interview here, Mr. Thomson." Manning replied, not looking up from his papers. The patient laughed before inhaling some more of his cigarette.
"Humor me."
"It's an abstract concept for the highest of all possible numbers, then."
"Then perhaps I should start there," the patient, as he looked out again to the sea. "There are two different mindsets of just what infinity is Doctor. Aristotle explained it as a potentiality, you see. Something that exists, but one will always be able to find a number that is larger. The other, however, states that infinity simply is: every continuum that has ever existed, does exist, and will ever exist. But that there is not so many that there isn't a larger one. Unending…."
"I suppose that's fascinating, Mr. Thomson. Is this what physicists ponder in our age, or are you perhaps the kind of man more interested in the Stoa?" Manning asked as he stamped out his own cigarette.
"Metaphysics. That was, until the war. Because, you see doctor there's the concept of Infinity, yes. But like anything else in this world there has to be an opposite. And what would you image the opposite of infinite? Zero? Emptiness?" As he spoke Nurse Jennings returned with the requested coffee, placing two cups in between the two men. The doctor placed two cubes of sugar and some of the cream which had been provided, as the patient took his without dilution.
"I would suppose so, yes." The doctor said, scribbling yet more notes onto his pad.
"No, doctor. The opposite of infinity is totality. A limit in the scope of the unlimited. An absolute. Inevitability. The perfect machine."
"So you are suggesting some kind of predestination then?"
"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." Thomson repeated, taking his cup of coffee.
"Ecclesiastes?" Nurse Jennings interrupted before silencing at a single look of Dr. Manning.
"A man of letters, the mind, faith, and the sciences … How fascinating you are. But you still have dodged what I want from you, Mr. Thomson. And I always get what I want from my patients." Manning said bluntly as Jennings smiled behind him.
"And I suppose you consider yourself to be Christ? Laying hands to cure the sick and judging those not worthy?" The patient responded. The Doctor smiled.
"No, Mr. Thomson. In this facility I am God himself."
"And then am I to confess my sins to you then, doctor?" He asked, arching an eyebrow. Manning smiled cruelly and nodded his head.
"Are you really sure you want to hear my sad little story, doctor?" He asked. The physician nodded eagerly.
"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi
in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:Σιβυλλα
τι θελεις; respondebat illa:αποθανειν θελω."