letters
Letter I
To Count Victor von Doom, Latveria
New York, August 13th, 1888
Esteemed colleague,
May this letter find you in good spirits and with much speed. I’ve no doubt it must be an unsettling experience to receive a letter from a stranger overseas but I would like you to understand that you are no stranger to me at all—for some time ago I'd suddenly come into possession of what I now understand is an old journal of yours from your time at State. Suddenly consumed by an unquenchable curiosity I looked inside and found that the entries were from the same year I attended. It saddens me to know now that we might've crossed paths and never exchanged so much as a word, I think the two of us would've gotten along quite well. I myself had few friends and none with whom I could exchange ideas with, I can only assume you would understand. From the looks of your work in this journal I do believe we would have had much to discuss, perhaps made mockery of the scientific world. I retraced your steps and followed the same pathways I assumed you took to get around campus and in this journey saw to it that I understood you from a distance. For a while you were almost like a ghost to me, a memory of a friend to keep me company. While the journal remained in my possession I read through it religiously, so much so that I’m most positive that I could recite it by heart. What started as a nostalgic endeavor transformed into a detailed and thorough investigation once I came upon the entries written in November. Like lightning striking the earth, the floor which I stood on came alight and I could not sleep for several nights on end as I had witnessed a ghost previously silent, now regard me with familiarity I’d not felt before. Here before me were those subjects which I had ardently pursued to the dismay of others, treaded by a fellow years before me; transmogrification, reanimation, the reworking of biological material and the like.
Most of this is written in Latverian and though I've begun fervently studying the language since acquiring this journal I still fall short of the level of fluency required to understand most of what you've written here. I hope my curiosity does not offend however from what I've gathered we seem to be after similar exploits. Mine have all been fruitless paired with the difficulty of carrying out outlandish, almost medieval experiments in such modern times, but the data in your entries seemed to be enough for me to continue—and not only have I seen success, my friend, I have tasted the fruits of my labor. Most of it is unpublished and I intend for it to remain so in hopes that you might join me in unleashing these marvels onto the world. Seeing as I was only able to complete my formulas with your work it would be the most honorable thing to publish with your cooperation. I send with this letter some of my most recent and relative work that I built on the foundations of the formulas from your youth. Hopefully it brings you some comfort to know that your work did not go unfinished nor unappreciated. Please consider my previous offer with great severity.
Sincerely, Dr. Reed Richards.
Letter II
To Doctor Reed Richards, New York
Latveria, September 5th, 1888
Doctor Richards,
It would be in your best interests to forfeit the journal when most convenient. I find it not only exceptionally rude of you to read something that does not belong to you in any way shape or form, but to then assume that I would somehow find it flattering–this your flagrantly offensive nature–is disturbing. I urge you to henceforth proceed with caution, Doctor Richards. Please have the decency to seal it properly when you leave it with the post and cease any and all contact to this estate. I do not expect nor will I entertain any new pursuits on this matter.
Good Day, Doctor Victor von Doom
Chapter I
Warmth feels scarce as The Mercy makes voyage from port to further port. Weeks have gone by with little else but brutal storms—ferocious winds beat against the side of the ship that shake the hull and in turn it seems to shiver against the cold. With every brash wave crashing over the deck, thunder roars ruthlessly in the blackened sky above. A doctor nestled within one of the cabins wipes away at the rain and seawater collecting over his writing desk—a makeshift piece of furniture made up of an upturned stool and a leatherbound and severely waterlogged briefcase. Around him several papers and journals cling to bed sheets woven around each other like plaited rope. Though the wet fibers slip away from their binding, the ink remains legible and crisp bereft of the fate befallen to the parchment they resided on. The ink had been developed in preparation for the voyage as the doctor to whom they belonged to was nothing if not a prepared man. The ink was made of two parts; one consisting of a combination of ordinary pigments to give it a signature and rich hue and another of complex minerals that, once activated by heat, resisted the ink’s natural inclination to dissolve in water. The process took many tries and required at first for Doctor Richards to construct a blend of paper that would resist the flames of a candle in order for the latter half of his sea-faring ink to operate. What had slipped his mind, however, was the additional invention of paper that resisted the terrible effects of heavy rain and seawater. He curses himself silently and pulls himself tighter against the consecrated space of dry wood in his cabin.
Though the cold and dank air of the cabin does little to soothe his weak constitution, the doctor occupies himself with gentler things as he writes an account of his journey to be addressed to a loving wife in New York and ignores the helpless state of his life’s work over the improvisational washline. She’s allowed him this abrupt and untimely absence in exchange for constant and timely correspondence and though the promise was made with his own tendency to forget in mind—he seeks to hold his end of the bargain and thus, he writes.
A droplet of rain slips from his forehead and onto the tenderly written “S” that begins his letter.
October 23rd 1890
Dearest Susan,
Were I not the man I am, were I not the man you married, I’d have abandoned all hope for safe passage as this voyage has been replete with the blackest of omens. Were I a spiritual man and a man of God who heeded cautions of the ether I would be swiftly home, dry and content, in your arms away from the evil that clouds my path. But my soul cannot be torn away from the work at hand for I am an entirely different man. Instead I am folded away in darkness, clinging to granular pieces of hope in an effort to survive these terrible nights. One of which is you; My Susan, and all the glittering heat of the sun that accompanies thoughts of your gentle self, granular hope though you may be yet resplendent through the yellow of its rays. Another takes the harrowing shape of a locked door, the key to which I came into possession of only weeks before I began this accursed journey. As you recall my time at the university was often forlorn and through reflection I understand now I had much need for friendship but so greatly occupied with my own research and studies was I that I possessed rarely the want. I desired none else but to uncover the secrets of the physical world and buried myself in solitude. When I did on chance mingle with my peers I found an uncrossable canyon between us that stretched further than my mind could grasp. While the substance of my knowledge—made up of Harvey, Descartes, Magnus at this point in time— left favorable impressions and granted me the respect I cherish now, I found that it simultaneously transformed me into something else entirely. All my passions were turned towards less poetic pursuits; sentimentality and humor evaded me. I was indifferent to the subjects that flourished among my schoolfellows and much too ardent for the scientific crowd who deemed me too argumentative and opinionated to collaborate with frictionlessly. Consequently I fell somewhere between wherein I found few with whom I could share myself with but who grew to be of my strongest friendships. Benjamin Grim being one I wish to never take for granted. Much like you he understood me and my curious nature and held no contempt for it—a rare trait that I did not take lightly. Around this time I had made a sort of bond with another, one with whom I engaged briefly yet who’s fleeting appearance in my life would plant the seeds for why I now write from this current and most desolate state.
He was no older than I and thus younger than the others at the university. He was a boy of tanned complexion and auburn curls—and he had, from what I remember, a frown affixed to his angular face at all times and rarely showed anything softhearted. Victor von Doom, from the first time I heard him speak, had me transfixed by the enigma he presented. He was hardheaded and curt and his temperament left him similarly alone. Although to my knowledge, it appeared the solitude was welcomed on his part. I saw no companion at his side while he studied there, instead in his hand a journal in which he wrote constantly and furiously. His mind was like no other and the skills he possessed were innumerous. He donned a musical soul that accompanied his ingenious mind. I made the decision then to forfeit all shame in an effort to bring us together and fan the flames of what I thought could have been an advantageous collaboration. I introduced myself with a smile and he quieted all notions that a friendship could blossom immediately.
‘Reed Richards.’ He’d said, ‘It should bring you some depraved pleasure to know that I’ve taken notice of you around campus for a while now. Whatever your intentions however, let it be known I do not humor them. Leave me be. I am more than your superior and crave not a thing from an incessant wasp such as yourself.'
He spoke so brusquely that I found no response within me. From then on he rejected the very sight of me and I grew to understand him as someone who could never be reached for what bottomless canyon that stood between me and Victor von Doom was most undoubtedly forged there by the natures that bended to his will. You know me to be an inexorable being—more than perhaps even he— and yet my persistence grew fainter and I eventually did as he asked and let him be. It was perhaps, some time after this inherent meeting that he eventually left State and America all together. Then, there was news of an incident involving him and some other poor soul wherein there was fire, a colossal explosion and several injuries ranging in a multitude of severities–with Victor being the most severe from all accounts. His expulsion followed soon after and he returned to his home country of Latveria without much protest. My ever curious self was drawn to the scene in his old dorm room days following his expulsion and what I found was astonishing; intricately designed mechanisms powered by sources too unpredictable to have ever safely stripped power from, machinery the size of man still hot to the touch despite the events that led to its use having occurred days before. At this time the floor was hitherto lined with papers ridden with formulas using symbols I’d never seen before. It was then that I acted fairly uncharacteristically and swiped from the room a singular journal and kept it hidden in my coat pocket until I arrived home. The guilt of my theft kept me from ever reading it. Until now.
The rest of this year you may recall in great detail. Benjamin left New York for the summer and I stayed at the university with little else pulling me home. Situated beneath an oak tree for most of my lonesome afternoons, I tended to my studies, my nose buried in books. My gaze one day lifted to the sound of a woman’s voice coming from the bench to my right and it was then that you introduced yourself to me. For the longest while we never spoke—you watched the birds above us while I read and tended to my notations. Then you asked what I wrote, I explained in restrained detail and you hounded me for more. Even though I was bewitched by your beauty and could not quiet myself for even a breath of air, I could see you found no sustenance in the subject of my blathering but rather the very plain and simple act of listening to me speak. Our wedding came soon after Benjamin’s return in the fall. Perhaps it was a few weeks after our wedding in the Appalachians that I first felt the sudden urge to revisit my time at the university and in turn finally open the journal I had kept with me all these years.
I’ve no right to relay this information, as I have previously made a covenant to keep the contents of the journal between me and the man I go to speak to forthwith. Regardless, it would do him no harm to relay this to my lovely Susan, whom I hold no secrets from and, until death part us and my body and all its matter become mulch, my dearest Susan, is the keeper of all of my secrets. And so I relay what I can in this letter. Though the language proves its own hurdle to understanding his work in its entirety, I can, with some certainty, decode half of his work and in turn simplify it into less arduous terms. I’ve long since studied several archaic works in the world of transmogrification, though more specifically the idea that biological matter can be transformed while maintaining its core materials; I could, in simpler terms, reduce my visibility and still function—live and breathe with complete ease. This would be nothing short of a magic trick. However, I pay little attention to the impossibility of theories and tried for years to attain some provable, observable truth in this particular realm. It wasn’t until I encountered the work of Victor von Doom that I found success. The formulas were riddled with simple mistakes, missing numbers or forgotten decimals, all of which I rectified before reworking what remained into my own material. With his help I carried out the first successful experiment and at once dignified the study of transmogrification. In my laboratory you will find an empty case, I bid you to examine it carefully and you will find the fibers in the bedding placed inside shift towards the light.
Do not open the case nor place else in there except what is in the bag situated to the right of it. Watch it closely when it feeds, Susan, and you will understand exactly what I’ve come here to do.
All my love, Your Reed
P.S. I must ask that you keep my laboratory locked while I am away. If not to feed my little creature I ask that all be left exactly as it was before, completely untouched. I leave the naming to you.
P.P.S. Relay none of this to Jonathan.
Letter III
To Doctor Reed Richards, New York
Latveria, October 3rd 1890
After much consideration and a thorough re-investigation of your work, you have been cordially invited to the Latverian estate of Count Victor von Doom on the grounds of scientific collaboration. The work itself must remain private until your correspondence and eventual visit. All trip expenses, food, and board will be accounted for as well as anything else you may deem necessary to continue any and all work while you reside in the estate.
A reply before winter is expected.
There will be no following requests.
Graciously, Doctor Victor von Doom