PART TWO: LIFE
(From the ‘Provincial News’ page of The Daily Sans-Culotte, Paris departement edition, 2nd Thermidor, Year 13.)
ANTI-CITIZENS APPREHENDED
Intelligence is received from the village of Vertillac, near Bergerac, that a cell of counter-revolutionaries has been detected red-handed in the practice of its iniquities. Readers can be straightaway reassured that these sub-humans in mortal guise were speedily liquidated according to the enlightened norms of Revolutionary justice.
However, the shocking facts as reported by our Bordeaux Department correspondent merit relating for their instructional value.
Burial
It appears that a citizen by the name of Charles Dubois, a farrier by trade, died of the ague in his nineteenth or twentieth year. His carcass (he being in life a well-made and robust fellow) was duly required by the People in order to rise again and serve as a New-Citizen.
However, mired in rustic backwardness, his parents and young wife conspired to give Dubois wasteful burial, compounding their crimes by commissioning illegal ‘Christian’ rites. Lying words were put about that rapid putrefaction had set in, making Revival impossible.
Grenade
Vigilant village Commissioner for Public Virtue, Victor Guadet, was not deceived. Acting on information, he led a force of Revolutionary Marshals to the secret midnight interment and ventured seizure of the corpse.
Disgusting to relate, force was offered against his lawful acts and injuries inflicted on both sides. Worse still, a grenade had, with evil forethought, been placed atop the coffin for just such an eventuality. When detonated it forever denied the People the continued service of Charles Dubois (deceased) and Commissioner Guadet likewise.
Immortal
Arrests were made of the surviving counter- revolutionaries, including the dead man’s parents and spouse. After swift Tribunal hearings sentence was executed in Bergerac before a large and appreciative audience.
The family Dubois have taken their son’s place and now march as cleansed New-Citizens in the service of our great cause! Their former names shall be blotted out forever from the immortal roll-call of the People!
Therefore harken oh citizens! Read and learn to your education and benefit: the Revolution is not thwarted in this life or beyond the grave!
Chapter 1: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JULIUS FRANKENSTEIN (2).
For symmetry’s sake he started keeping a diary of captivity again. The day the two letters arrived it would have said.
‘Same. Petit déjeuner. Pretend to do research. Drink. Bed.’
The regime at the Grand Mausolée de Compiégne was less liberal than the Heathrow Hecatomb’s—incredible as that might seem. There was no need to send any Gallic equivalent of Sir Percy Blakeney to give Frankenstein a rocket for his lack of discoveries. Every single day he had to interact with Coventionary overseers: rough revolutionaries with no respect, and no manners; and not the slightest delicacy when they bristled their great moustaches and said what they thought of him. Each day he thought of killing one with his bare hands and getting it over with.
What stopped him was sure knowledge of the consequences. There was a guillotine facility in the central yard which saw daily use. After a travesty of a ‘tribunal’ they’d slice his head off. Within the hour both he and the man he killed would be stitched up and in the storage vats waiting to be reborn.
Conventionary Revivalist science was neither neat nor painstaking. They had no time for refinements. Their wars and purges and policy of ‘perpetual terror’ both demanded and supplied a massive flow of ‘New-citizens.’ Accordingly, under that ceaseless pressure Compiegne’s standard products made even the worst Heathrow ‘patchwork job’ looked polished. Frankenstein had seen women’s—even girls’—heads on male bodies, and recycled battle casualties so battered only mummy-style coiled bandages kept them whole. And in his case, if he transgressed they’d be in vengeful mood. God alone knew what freak-show they’d revive him as.
The danger was, that though his gaolers might be coarse as coal-bunkers in their studied way, some had the subtlety of torturers too. They sensed his particular fears and played upon them.
‘If you do go,’ they crowed (and ‘go’ in the Compiegne context meant one thing only: to the meat vats), ‘we’ll make sure you get extra serum. Just so that afterwards you’re aware.’
They really meant it. They laughed about it and chatted about that happy prospect over their evening bottle. They brought him especially botched examples of their handiwork and made them dance for him.
For a sad fact was starting to dawn on the Convention as it had on the English. Frankenstein was not the find they thought they’d made, and all he shared with his genius great-uncle was a surname. He’d been given his own mini Promethean facility but what emerged from it could just as well have rolled off the main production line, and with only half the time and trouble. The daily moustache-bristling grew ever more insolent.
Therefore, the sole promising option Julius had left to consider was escape—and the ball and chain about his ankle forced him to be realistic on that score.
So, he secured extra days with cunning. The bloody-hysteria-as-standard of the Mausoleum meant that his guardians were busy men and liable to distraction. When their attention wavered Frankenstein stole and stored exceptional body parts like robust torsos and thick-hewed limbs. Bribes and threats to lowly carters and ‘Charon-men’ also secured him first pick of any grenadier or guardsman that came in. Accordingly, in moments of crisis he could revive a sturdy New-citizen soldier twice as good as the ramshackle basic product. He’d explain it with mumbo-jumbo about ‘vascular enhancement’ or ‘muscle augmentation,’ (largely made up on the hoof) and the ‘Quality Control’ auditors would be sufficiently intrigued to give him a little while longer. But when stocks failed and he couldn’t directly repeat the trick those same old doubts about him spread. The dreadful day inched nearer.
The Revolution had its own special version of redundancy, notified via a sharp descending blade, and made all the more fearful by surprise. One day a man might be at his desk and the next he was gone and not to be mentioned again.
As motivational regimes went, it worked well. The Convention had long ago observed that fear made far better citizens than love.
Julius was still in good enough grace with the management to receive full rations. Petit déjeuner consisted of bread and sausage and a carafe of wine. Granted, the baguette was gritty pain de guerre, the sausage dubious and wine already dilute, but it counted as haute cuisine in a nation at continual war with itself or others for four decades.
Julius ate it mechanically, without pleasure, merely as a means of strength for another day, whilst trying not to think of the vile rumours circulated about what went into the sausage.