Victor Hoeness, when told of these events by his kin, did not believe.
When they insisted that this was the word being whispered down the Cronus Club, he merely demanded better notes so that he could attempt to fix the problems at inception.
But there was, for the Cronus Club, a far bigger problem to fix. Victor Hoeness had, to their mind, committed mass murder. Not exactly of the human race–that was merely one temporal outcome, one life in which all had withered and all had died and that was that. His sin was far greater for, by his deeds, whole generations of kalachakra had simply not been born.
“Not so much a rule, Harry darling,” Virginia had explained, “as good advice. Don’t tell anyone where or when you’re from.”
I watched her, that night in London, rolling the brandy glass between her fingers, her gaze fixed on nothing much as the sun faded and the city turned black. “Death,” she explained, “can be achieved in one of two ways. I don’t mean the rather tedious death that our bodies force us to endure every life; not at all. I mean a death that remains, a death that matters. The first death is the Forgetting. The Forgetting can be chemical, or surgical, or electrical, and is used to achieve a complete wipe of the mind. Not name, nor place of birth, nor the first boy you ever kissed will remain after the Forgetting, and for us what is this if not a true death? A clean slate, a chance to be pure and innocent again. Naturally we kill everyone who’s been through a Forgetting as soon as we can perceive that their minds are gone, so that they don’t start their next childhood with even the slightest hint of what they are. And when they die and begin again, we can be immediately there in their second life to help and assist them, teach them to grow accustomed to what they are without any of that tedious madness-suicide-rejection business. A lot of us have done at least one Forgetting, although, given the difficulty of the task, it doesn’t always take. They tell me–” brandy ran up the side of the glass, then slowly seeped back down “–that I have Forgotten before. Though everyone seems embarrassed to say so.”
A moment, a second when the ripples went out of the drink in her hand, perfect stillness as Virginia tried to remember a thing she had chosen to forget.
“There is no loss, if you cannot remember what you have lost,” she explained at last. “Personally, I feel a great sense of relief. You wipe away the scars of your former life as well as the memories. You wipe away the guilt. I do not say that I have lived a guilty life, of course; merely that the silence of my peers when I ask about the subject does not bode well for the things I cannot remember.”
A tick tick tick of the grandfather clock in the hall. Soon sirens would sound, and stop, and the city would listen for the low drone of the bombers, the deep clearing of death’s throat as he prepared to sing.
“The second death,” she went on, “is the death of not being born. It is really rather controversial among us, for it throws into doubt all the scientific theories currently extant about our very natures. It has been observed that if a kalachakra is aborted before consciousness in one life, then in the next the child will not be born at all. It is the true death, the destruction of both mind and body, and, unlike the Forgetting, there is no coming back from it, no healing of mental pathways. It is simply the end. So you see, dearest Harry, there is nothing so prized by our kind as this–who you truly are, who your parents were, and your place and time of birth. This information can destroy you utterly. And one day you might want to be destroyed, of course. Or to forget. The mind struggles to re-create the joy of a first kiss, but somehow manages to recall the terror of pain, the flush of humiliation and the burden of guilt with a startling clarity.”
Franklin Phearson.
I’m a good guy, Harry. I’m a fucking good guy.