Chapter 5
"It all started with C. M. Kornbluth," I said. "Not only was he a mechanical instructor at the Valley of the Four Drafts headquarters, but he was also the most brilliant physicist in the V.F.D. of his time. He made the most fantastic inventions."
"I wish I could have met him," said Violet.
"He had a dream that one day knowledge from the future could be sent to the past. He wrote a short story for Astounding magazine called 'The Little Black Bag' about a medical kit from the future arriving in the present. Of course, as he warned in his story, he realized that such a thing could be abused.
"He never managed to send back large objects, but he created a small machine, a Vehicle of the Fourth Dimension, that could send messages on specially-treated doily paper of a certain type. A doily might pop onto his desk saying 'This message was sent at 2:00pm' when it was only 1:30. Half an hour later, he would send the message back to himself."
"Excuse me," said Klaus. "I see a possible time paradox. What would happen if he didn't send the message at 2:00pm?"
"He tried that once, but at the given time he had a sort of mental blackout, and when he woke up from it he found he had sent the message after all," I said.
"Interesting," said Klaus.
"Why family wait?" asked Sunny.
"It was a calibration experiment," I said. "He had to know how far back it would go. Kornbluth calculated the maximum range to be 50 years. He got his son Ryan to promise that Ryan's son Dale would send a doily back at the maximum setting when Dale reached the age of 60. It appears the maximum is actually 41 years, so they have been waiting here for nine years. Without such an experiment we had no way to target messages accurately. They had to wait in secret so that no villains would intercept the message."
I picked up the doily Ryan had dropped and read it aloud (In this written account I will obscure the dates for security reasons).
"I, Dale Kornbluth, am sending this message on March 12, 2xxx. I remember our family received it on October 18, 2xxx, the same day the Hotel Denouement burned to the ground and my parents died."
"No wonder they ran," said Violet. "But there's no fire. Do you think his parents ran through the Medusoid Mycelium and they died from that? Maybe his memory played tricks on him."
"Or maybe the fire is just starting," said the Duchess. "We'd better get out of here."
We ran down the stairs to the basement, avoiding the elevator just in case.
Just as we reached the Vernacularly Sealed Door, Sunny stopped.
"Burn down hotel," she said.
"What?" said Violet.
"Burn down hotel," Sunny said again.
"Why?" asked Klaus.
"Destiny. Signal. Mushrooms," said Sunny.
"I see..." said Violet. "The hotel is probably going to burn sometime today, anyway. If we do it now, it will signal the Quagmires not to come -- and it will destroy the Medusoid Mycelium before it can spread."
"Yes," said Sunny.
"I agree, but I'm not any good at starting fires," I said.
Klaus checked his commonplace book. "Behind the Vernacularly Sealed Door, Dewey said there were flammable liquids. The sugar bowl must be there too; we have to get that."
"No," I said. "We already have the sugar bowl. I checked the angles yesterday afternoon. I knew it wouldn't fall into the funnel but into the lake. The locked laundry room was a decoy."
"I deserve some credit, too. I was the one who dove into the lake and got it," Duchess R said.
"You said the doily secret had to do with the sugar bowl," Klaus said.
"Where do you think the Vehicle of the Fourth Dimension is hidden now?" I asked.
"Esmé's bowl?" Sunny asked.
"Esmé' said she would offer her sugar bowl to the V.F.D. to hide the device," the Duchess said. "It was watertight, virtually unbreakable, and the ceramic helped mask it from detectors."
"But once the V.F.D. used it, she claimed the whole bowl and its contents were hers," I said. "She wanted to use it to make piles of money on the stock market. Beatrice had to steal the bowl back, and I helped. Esmé never forgave her. It's another piece of the vengeance that lead to her death. What I am hoping to do is to send a message back in time to save Beatrice. It almost worked once."
"What do you mean?" Violet asked.
"Sixteen years ago, I got a doily message in my own writing warning me that Olaf would try to kill Beatrice. I tried for fifteen years to give her that message, but she refused to see me or read anything I sent her. Finally, I had the chance to deliver it at the Duchess' last masked ball. All I could get out was 'Beatrice, Count Olaf is..' before the palace guards grabbed me and arrested me. It wasn't enough... by the time I escaped it was too late." I began to sob.
"I've got the door open," announced Klaus. "I found the last answer in the book Justice Strauss had, Jerome Squalor's comprehensive book on injustice. We should keep it for evidence."
The Baudelaires piled up dirty sheets and doused them with flammable liquid.
"Here," I said. "Use my cigarette lighter." I tossed it to Klaus, not having the heart to start a fire myself after what happened to Beatrice.
"I haven't seen you smoking since last night when you picked us up, Lemony," Violet said. "You aren't really a smoker, are you?"
"Only when a well-directed puff can make the difference between being recognized and remaining incognito," I said. "Vaporous Fume Disguises. Sir was a master at it, though he was never trained by the V.F.D."
We got back across the lake and stood for a moment watching the flames devour the once-but-no-longer Last Safe Place. Now no place was safe.
"Where do we go from here?" I asked the others.
"To sea, to help the Quagmires," Violet said.
The others nodded.
Little did we know the fate that awaited us, which will be continued in the next volume, "The Distressing Destiny." I beg of you not to read that depressing work.