A Night at the Neues Museum

The Neues Museum.

 

Freitag, November 5, 1926

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Fire at the Neues Museum

The Berlin Fire Brigade reports that a significant fire has devastated at least two rooms of the Neues Museum, but the efforts of the firefighters as well as the raging storm hindered the conflagration to spread further into the museum. The fire was in all likelihood caused by an electrical fire in one of the elevator shafts. Professor von Kleist of the Aegyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung is reported to have attempted to fight the fire single-handedly before the arrival of the Fire Brigade, and he has taken sick after his valiant efforts, apparently suffering from exhaustion. 

"Well, that was a cute description, wouldn't you say?" Jules Pollack had translated the article for his non-German speaking fellow investigators after the traumatic evening before. It had been a touch and go, and despite meticulous, or at least somewhat thought-through, planning, the trans-dimensional entity had almost avoided the trap created by the investigators in the domed room of the museum ("not domed, doomed!" was heard from Lake). However, they were now all hoping that the weird Egyptian machine actually had worked, and that the entity had been transported back to its own plane of existence, or, even better, been eliminated all together.

"You know, dear Professor von Kleist has offered me the use of his office, and I plan on taking him up on his offer." Mackie was lighting a cigarette after breakfast, and she even manged a weary smile. "We might as well stay here for a bit and recuperate. Besides, it seems as if Jules really wants to become a good fencer, and Howard, I am certain that your German will improve. Oral presentations, was that your focus?" Lake smiled and thought of the basement of the house, while Franz Alter squirmed at Mackie's comment. Now, he had matters of his own to take care of. There was still paperwork to deal with regarding the estate, and he didn't mind being in Old Germany, especially now that the Kaiser was gone and Germany had become a modern democracy with a bright future. 

Moira had barely managed to make it to the Institut fuer Sexualwissenschaft, and she had yet to meet  Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, since she had been dragged into the bizarre dealings of her friends. She was torn between her ambitious academic program and discovering Berlin in company of the intrepid investigators, but somehow she felt that she could both have this cake and eat it. November in Berlin may be gloomy, but Moira felt both confident and optimistic in the German metropole.

Mackie spoke again. "So, let me tell you what I think happened. It is, obviously, a dreadful mess, and I am not sure how the Solution of Liao actually fits into all of this. The entities we have struggled with have been encountered in antiquity, and perhaps later throughout history. They are referred to as 'Hounds of Tindalos' in a manuscript that may be attributed to the mathematician Pythagoras, and they supposedly delve in spaces between planes of existence, or dimensions." The fellow investigators were listening intently, and even Felix Jeremiah stopped shooting rubber bands at Mackie. 

"The period after the Great War has seen many artifacts emerge from Egypt. In late July of 1923, an expedition from the Humboldt University led by the late Dr. Opitz. presented some of its findings to Professor von Kleist. The findings included several mummies, some art, and six different manuscripts on plaques. Five of them are fantastically interesting, although conventional, while a sixth one defied translation. The young Egyptologist Phineas Finley - who we met under the dramatic circumstances of the last 48 hours - had been working on the sixth plaque, but I had to complete the translation, as fucking usual."

 

"The plaque comes from a temple of Akhenaten, and it included the manufacturing process for an apparatus that would enhance the power of prayer to Akhenaten as written down by a priest called Atmen. If manufactured and forged into coils of a specific length and then fed an electrical current, the coil will have a significant chance of opening or closing a portal to an interdimensional realm. However, unless a coil with the reverse orientation is built, the rift in the dimensions will attract a Hound of Tindalos. It is was difficult to figure out that two coils actually were needed, namely an 'activator' and an 'evictor'.  The manufacturing process was shown on the plaque."

Monday, November 29. Several weeks had passed since the, well, "incident" at the Neues Museum. The Intrepid Investigators has spent these weeks at a moderate pace. Howard Lake's German was coming along nicely with the help of Adele Christo. Besides studying German, Lake and Christo were often seen strolling together, both being quite happy and chatting about a great range of subjects besides grammar and syntax. Jules Pollack was spending quite a bit of time with fencing master Willifred Haber, and he had even lost quite a bit of weight. replacing gut with muscle. Felix Jeremiah had been exploring the city, and despite many quite strange offers to participate in various shows (why did Herr Kaunitz want me to participate in a monkey show? Was he a friend of Mackie's?), Felix settled for engaging in the odder sides of Berlin on his own terms. Franz Alter had been dealing with the estate, but he was on the home stretch, although he was interrupted every now and then by kind but nosey distant relatives who wanted to know how the Alters were doing so far away from the Old Country. Moira Baker actually got to spend a great deal of her time on studies way beyond conventional genitalia, id, ego, and super-ego,  while Mackie MacNamara had started writing a paper about the mythical pharaoh Ki-Oskh.

Moira Baker was on her way to the Neues Museum to have lunch with Mackie- when she ran into Werner Haupt, a graduate student at the  Institut fuer Sexualwissenschaft, just outside the museum. "What a surprise! I did not realize that you have an interest in Ancient Egypt, Herr Haupt." Werner Haupt looked like a child caught stealing.