Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Kris Alexandros: Revelation

"You say 'game' again," the Master's voice was still without emotion, "It is a long time since I put games behind me, and laughter too. And yet, your innocence, I find there is some cause for amusement here. Something that makes me want to laugh again. It serves no tactical purpose, but I wish you to understand that the Box of Mr Hook is not some crate of smuggled goods, or some game created by a college. It is one of the greatest treasures of ancient science, containing technologies that modern academics can only dream of. Different scholars would have you believe that it contains the greatest weapon that ever lived, or the secrets of the creation of the world, or the preserved heart of an angel. It contains mysteries so deep that merely opening it would advance science more than a hundred years of painstaking research. There are so many legends of this Box, if you know where to look. Ancient hieroglyphs speak of it, on every continent, and the alchemists of the middle ages knew it too. We do not know the nature of the marvels the Box contains, but we know it is older than it could possibly be, and that what it contains cannot help but change the world. And we know that everyone who has access to the secrets of the enlightened has attempted to stake their claim on the Box."

"It's a fairy tale?" I responded. It was a very stupid thing to say. This Master sounded entirely serious, but the things he was saying just didn't match his tone. And when I tried to think of words to describe it – mythic treasure, I should have said, or maybe reliquary – the wrong words came out.

"You don't believe in ancient technologies now lost?" he asked, "Then maybe I should introduce myself. I have studied the hidden arts for as long as I can recall, and I am sure that the secrets I have uncovered dwarf the achievements of modern science, even a century later."

He stood, in a single sudden motion, and reached up with gloved hands. He threw back the hood, and I half expected to see the familiar face of some celebrity under there, someone dabbling in the dark arts in secret, whose identity would be a shock. But all I saw was the face of an old man, paper-white skin stretched tight across the bones of his face. He had a hook nose, and his eyes were piercing blue, impossibly deep. Then his hands moved down and started to unfasten the buttons of his tunic. The soldiers shifted uncomfortably. Maybe they did not wish to see this, whatever it was going to be, or maybe they were angry at the thought of an outsider being let in on the Master's secret.

With the buttons unfastened, I half expected him to take off his shirt. But it turned out this outfit was personally tailored for him. A rectangular panel opened, without dislodging the rest of the garment, to reveal an area on the left side of his chest. Or, where the left side of his chest would normally be. On the right, the shirt was tight enough to reveal normal pectoral muscles, well toned despite his apparent age. But on the left there was a tangled mess of scars, and at the centre a mass of steel, brass, and chrome. It could be some prosthesis, maybe a metal plate replacing a damaged section of muscle and skin. I vaguely remembered reading about a man who had something like that. But this went much deeper than just the skin. The tissue around it was a knot of white scars, as if the metal had been welded directly to living muscle, and the brass plate had a fine grille in the middle to cover what lay beneath. It was like he had the mechanism of a carriage clock grafted into his chest, with a hundred ornate gears and two spinning pendulums. It was incredible, intricate, and when he twitched aside the cape I could see my desk behind him, looking right through the centre of his body.

"My name is Grigori Rasputin," he spoke in English again, "Founder and Grandmaster of the Most Patriotic Order of the Golden Pointer. I was born in the year of our lord 1860, and murdered fifty years later. They called me the mad monk, but they did not understand that in unearthing the secrets of cults and secret orders, I was in fact recovering sciences long forgotten. With this mechanism to replace the function of my heart, I still command the armies of the Tsar. Do you mean to tell me that the people of the modern age know all there is to know? Do you intend to stand against the scientist who has conquered death itself?"

My mouth opened and closed as I stared at the spinning gears. But I couldn't think of anything to say, anything at all.