Benjamin Franklin

Declaration: Gibberish Mire (Finale)

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(estimated reading time: 53 minutes)

Where!?

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Declaration: Gibberish Mire (Part Four)

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(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 13 minutes)

Eviction Declaration

The coerced accord was signed, and in it a plan of attack. What none of them were prepared for was the degree to which mobilization of their military machine would make it clear that the experiment of Pilgrim’s Anchor was coming to an end. Should they succeed, in erasing the Bickyplots’ claims on Pursuitia and its inhabitants, the remaining Founders would then be free to attempt their Second Declaration, intended to return them not only to the American colonies, but to the exact moment they had left so they could resume their plans for a true revolution in a world they at least thought they understood.

If that happened, nothing needed left behind. So it could all come down, apart, and then alight on the wheels of war if it would be of any help in this singular assault. Everyone began to strip the stores, the walls, the cabinets and cupboards. They entered a kind of mania where they couldn’t stand to see anything with hinges closed. Anchor needed to spit up its contents, disgorge its secrets, and splinter inside out to make sure no rusty nail bent away from Bickering Hall. Continue reading →

Declaration: Gibberish Mire (Part Three)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 36 minutes)

Squatters’ Bill of Claim

Just as Hart’s message to her had begun to unfold into fresh shoots thanks to the magic of its green ink, so too did the political situation in Pilgrim’s Anchor find itself ripped open by growing pains. In a single encounter much of what had been settled fact for decades was upended. Now waterlogged powers desperately patched leaks. Curious stowaway rats searched for new unintentional passages.

To the Founders Pursuitia never looked smaller. Their first instinct was to retract into the tortoise shell of Independence Hall. Papering over the exterior to a mad degree, the building now looked as if wagons had literally circled it with their canvas. No doubt they were furiously at work, perched over writing desks, forcing themselves to vomit up new corkscrew legal clauses that would extricate them from this perplexing bottleneck bind. Continue reading →

Franklin’s Monster

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

Many know the tale of Frankenstein, but few remember its alternate title ‘The Modern Prometheus’.  Long before its penning someone else was called the ‘Prometheus of modern times’, and it was none other than the American founding father Benjamin Franklin.  This tale supposes that he was the one to engage in the doctor’s dread experiments, and success came through his most famous effort with the key and the kite…

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 17 minutes)

Franklin’s Monster

by

Blaine Arcade

1749

It was said that the birds ate uncommonly tender, but only by the man who had prepared them. In truth most of the preparation was performed by cooks, and they treated the turkeys the same as they would animals killed and handed to them any other way. Roasted. Salted. Anointed with thin golden gravy.

All the while they warily eyed the Leyden jars set out behind their cooking utensils as if they might explode. They looked like bottles from which the infants of molten giants might be fed, the glass lined with metal foil inside and out. There was no lightning hopping between them, but it had to be in there, invisible, for it had been brought forth to instantly end the lives of the seven birds that were to be served to the crowd of thirty that evening.

By this time Mr. Benjamin Franklin was already well-respected as a printing and publishing magnate, and currently served as the postmaster of Philadelphia alongside his joint appointee. Perhaps the job could’ve been handled by one man, but two helped avoid political squabbles, also having the effect of giving Benjamin the spare time needed to indulge his scientific fantasies, which, as the guests of his dinner party were now learning, were frighteningly close to reality. Continue reading →