Роберт Грант - The Quanderhorn Xperimentations

During the current restoration of the Palace of Westminster certain documents and artefacts were discovered, hidden in a bricked-up alcove behind the mechanisms in the clock tower popularly known as ‘Big Ben’.

They were quickly dismissed as a hoax, and a rather pointless and unconvincing one at that. For reasons far too circuitous to elaborate, the material eventually found its way to us. There were dozens of volumes of badly scrawled personal journals and various sketch pads and notebooks crammed with strange inventions and astonishing designs, together with some extraordinarily curious devices, the purpose of which has yet to be established.

Intrigued, we ploughed through everything, and the results of that research are here in these pages.

If it is a hoax, it’s a very elaborate and clever one, in that it’s impossible to disprove.

Where there are multiple accounts of the same incident, we have chosen what appears to be the most credible. Since the journals are personal, they tend to present their author in a most favourable light. When this understandable foible is in danger of distorting the truth, we have used aggregates of the accounts and our best guesses to arrive at a more likely accurate version. Where facts are disputed, we have pointed out the alternatives in our footnotes.

For reasons that will quickly become apparent, it was painfully difficult to establish a sequential chronology to these events. Hence, we present this account in the way it was revealed to us, and leave readers to make up their own minds.

RG & AM, London 2018. Probably.

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 31st December, 1952

I clawed my way out of a swirling vortex of strangling black velvet. I was either unconscious, or trapped under one of the Beverley Sisters’ show dresses. Mercifully for Joy, Teddie or Babs, it was the former.

Slowly, painfully, a distant pinprick of light coalesced, dazzled and finally settled into a nauseating corona around the head of the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She was looking down at me and gently slapping my face very hard.

I had no idea who she was. And worse than that: I had no idea who I was, either.

I noticed I was uncomfortable. I was lying on some rather scratchy hessian sacking on a cold, hard metal floor. We were juddering, in motion. A manual gearbox protested loudly. I raised my head. We were in the back of a van of some kind. A series of makeshift shelves held stacks of bizarre machinery and tools. A sign pasted over the back window read WARNING: THIS DOOR LEADS TO OUTSIDE.

The exquisite goddess leaning over me said: ‘Brian’. It seemed a strange name for a woman.

‘Hello, Brian,’ I said. But this only made Aphrodite slap me harder.

‘ You’re Brian, you mutton-head.’

‘Am I? Who are you?’

‘Oh no. You’ve lost your memory, haven’t you? It’s me , Dr. Janussen.’

‘Dr. Janussen?’

‘Gemini? Gemma? Good grief, it’s really wiped this time.’

I was suddenly gripped by a very exciting thought: ‘Are you my wife?’

This produced a fleeting snort of cruel laughter in the divine creature, yet she neglected to answer.

‘Where are we?’ I tried.

‘There’s no time to explain right now.’

Just then a masculine voice called from the front cabin: ‘Is it left here?’

I raised my head further and espied a handsome young brute in the driving seat: artfully tousled blue-black hair, a steely jaw and a fierce intelligence in his eyes.

‘Is it left here?’ he repeated louder.

The lovely woman, who may or may not have been my wife, blinked with the merest hint of exasperation. ‘No, Troy.’

‘Is it right then?’

‘No, Troy. There are no turnings. We’re on Lambeth Bridge.’

‘So – straight on, is it?’

‘Yes, I think that’s best.’ She sighed and turned back to me. ‘You see? We’ve had to put Troy in the driving seat. Can you please concentrate? We need you right now.’

‘Yes, yes, I’m… I’m trying.’

Outside, I began to make out sounds – crowds of people in the distance, shouting, panicking, screaming.

The lovely woman gripped my face and hauled it towards her.

‘Listen, your name is Brian Nylon . You’re twenty-four years old, and you work with me in Professor Quanderhorn’s research team. The very fabric of Reality depends entirely on our actions in the next ten minutes. Don’t be alarmed. No, actually be very alarmed. Am I getting through to you?’

Her fragrant breath enveloped me like a cloud of jasmine and honeysuckle. ‘You figgy nails are diggy indo by cheeeeks,’ I mumbled through involuntarily gritted teeth.

‘We’ve run out of “straight on”,’ Troy called from the front.

‘Head right, and aim for the big clock.’

‘Okey-doos. Got you. Big clock. No problem.’ Troy chewed on his lower lip for a second. ‘What’s a clock?’

‘That thing with the white face and two hands.’

‘I thought that was Brian.’

‘There! There! That huge round thing! There!’ My possible wife Dr. Janussen pointed urgently, mercifully releasing her grip on my cheeks. ‘And quickly!’

The sounds of the panicking crowd grew louder. Through the rear window, I glimpsed them as we zipped past: hordes of misted faces haloed by street lamps, contorted in fear and horror. What on earth were we getting into? And what had Dr. Janussen meant by ‘the fabric of Reality’?

The van stopped suddenly, but I didn’t. My head crashed through a cardboard box and when I retracted it, I found a small glass valve had jammed itself up my nose. Whilst I was gingerly teasing it out, Dr. Janussen had already leapt out of the rear door. Troy seemed to be struggling to open his.

‘We have to go, now !’ Dr. Janussen yelled, rummaging through a haversack.

Troy yelled back, ‘I can’t get out!’

‘We’ve been through this before, Troy: it’s the handle , remember?’

‘Of course I remember about handles! I’m not an… an— Brian, what are those really stupid people called?’

‘Idiots?’ I offered.

‘Yes, I’m not an idiots.’

I was beginning to revise my initial impression of the ferocity of Troy’s intelligence. He grabbed the handle and to my astonishment, ripped the door entirely from its housing, tumbling with it out onto the pavement with a metallic clatter and a faint yelp of surprise. Who were these people?

Before I’d managed to entirely remove the CV6094 Induction Diode from my nasal canal, Dr. Janussen grabbed my arm and yanked me out of the van.

We were standing in Parliament Square. Silhouetted in the moonlight, Big Ben frowned down upon the panicking multitudes, its face displaying seven minutes to midnight. A struggling line of mounted police barely held back the sea of jabbering humanity, who were torn between fascination and fear. Many of them, rather curiously, were wearing small, cone-shaped cardboard hats and carrying paper trumpets.

I had no idea what was happening. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked the beautiful doctor.

‘There’s no time to explain right now.’ She passed me a large, heavy tube. ‘Here’s your bazooka.’