The Tale of the Casual English Intellectuals Who Became the Sussex Wraiths (Episode 3 of 3)

Previously:

Episode 1: The Pipe-Smoking Casual English Intellectuals Fight for Seven Sinecures
Episode 2: The Night of the Strangulation Nightmares and the Infestation of the Sussex Wraiths

Episode 3: ‘My writing will eclipse your writing, and my snakes will eat up your snakes’

‘“The stars, moon, and sun have been darkening for six nights and five days, but the rate of decrease of light declined slightly last night. The decrease might have crested, but that doesn’t guarantee that the trend will be reversed.”

‘“How would you go about increasing the light of the stars and the moon and the sun?” Laughter-Lynn Casement asked.

‘“Easy,” said Jane Chantal. “I’d get New Giants installed and get them to writing brighter stars and moon and sun.”

‘“The New Giants in my Manor in Sussex give me no satisfaction at all this morning,” Drusilla said. “They tell me that they have rejected my nominal suzerainty. They say that they may write the stars out of existence completely in the interest of simplicity, and they may write out our present moon and write in seven smaller moons to be named for each of them. I don’t know who their seventh giant is now, since Roderick Outreach is dead. They say they will write in a thermostat for the sun so it will lighten or darken or heat or cool instantly as desired. And they are writing out the nine minute or so delay that has been elapsing while the heat and light comes from the sun.”

‘“There will always be trouble when professionals are able to take over jobs like that,” Laughter-Lynn said.’

The Tale of the Casual English Intellectuals Who Became the Sussex Wraiths (Episode 2 of 3)

Previously:

Episode 1: The Pipe-Smoking Casual English Intellectuals Fight for Seven Sinecures

Episode 2: The Night of the Strangulation Nightmares and the Infestation of the Sussex Wraiths

‘Father Joseph Kirkpatrick (he came originally from the nearby Scottish Coast) drank brandy with Mary Brandy and the rest of them at dusk, after the burial of John Barkley Towntower.

‘“These Apprehensions, which are sometimes known as the Nine Day Wonders, are frequent in history or at least in shadow-history,” he said. “Scarcely a century has been so poor that it has not had one or several of them. They are characterized by Pnigmophobia, both for the individual person and the world. I suppose that it’s really the contagion of a viral sickness. That being so, it will pass, and its dead will be buried, and the world will continue on its way. The fifth night of the sickness (that will be tonight, Friday night) is usually the worst, or that was the case in the epidemics of 1017, 1126, 1344, 1453, 1562, 1671, 1780, and 1889.”

‘“What happened to 1235?” Jane Hunting-Horn Chantal Ardri asked.

‘“The Thirteenth, the Holiest of Centuries, was spared the apprehensive sickness,” Father said. “But Friday night, the fifth night, is usually the worst for the victims. That is the night of the nightmares, of the deliriums, and of the deaths. The people have nightmares that they are choking to death, and so they do choke to death, a few millions of them, in their violent sleep. On the Friday night of the Strangle-Death of the year 1344, thirteen million died in Europe alone. The failure of the worldwide input is only the failure of grace. But you people here, being intellectually active, do not sleep much at night anyhow. Oh, one or two or three of you may die tonight (after you make your midnight jump I believe), but the rest of you should survive with minimal impairment. Bonfires are good to keep off the nightmares. And yes, young girl, hunting-horns. I see that you have yours about your neck.”

‘“Do you believing in Giants?” Jane Hunting-Horn Chantal asked.

The Tale of the Casual English Intellectuals Who Became the Sussex Wraiths (Episode 1 of 3)

Episode 1: The Pipe-Smoking Casual English Intellectuals Fight for Seven Sinecures

‘The casual English Intellectuals had begun to gather. Each of them had just happened to be strolling on the hills of East Sussex in the dawn hours, and each of them just thought that he might drop by the Evenrood Manor House. Each of them knocked the fire out of his-or-her pipe and then filled it again with aromatic shag. The men and the lady casual English Intellectuals used a slightly different set of gestures in knocking out and refilling their pipes, but that is a job for the sociological-behaviorists, not for ourselves.

‘Myrtle Mobley was a simple woman easily impressed by casual English Intellectuals, so she quickly set forty-two more places at breakfast and said that the people need not wait till seven o’clock to begin their breakfasts, that the seven o’clock rule was a silly one anyhow. She served them all hock, or perhaps some cheaper Rhine wine, and asked them how they wanted their eggs.

‘These casual English Intellectuals came from the Royal Observatory at Edinburgh, Dunsink Observatory in Dublin, the University Observatory at Oxford, the Cambridge University Observatory, the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, from Peterhouse and Corpus Christi and Magdalene of Cambridge, from Balliol and Merton and All Souls and Somerville of Oxford, and from Manchester University of the Arts. They came from all the literary circles and from all the technology circles, and from the all-powerful Futuristic Institute.