Too long have I languished in my station. The fires of my youth quenched by the sinister poison of contentment and cruel grinding teeth of daily toil. Whatever hunger once drove me fell dormant years ago, and it was only in the spurning of my latest endeavors by the academic board that the beast of ambition was roused from its slumber.
It has been a poorly kept secret that in his later years the once respected Albrecht Entrati became pitifully insane. Paranoia gripped the poor man and robbed him of any grace he once possessed. His rejection of continuity is the most commonly blamed culprit. He kept his reasons to himself, but remained stalwart in his refusal to assume new form. In his defiance he fell victim to the frailties of flesh the continuity was designed to usurp. For all the advancements of our technologies, we are still beholden to the erosion of the ages, and Albrecht was no different.
His later theorems were fevered, rambling, and largely disregarded for any serious academic study by those who managed to push through the often inscrutable texts. Euleria was clearly upset by the lack of regard for his final works, but it was not as if she could seriously petition
otherwise. She was well aware of the impression they left. Thus, they were quietly struck from most archives and kept solely for posterity by the Entrati and their close adherents.
Fortunately, during a recent low-illuminant symposium, I just so happened to have made acquaintance with a clerical aide on one of the Entrati satellite stations near Gian Point. I was able to ply him with empty promises of re-stationing closer to the Inner Terminus (and a hearty portion of vintage reserve Tellruii wine) and quieted his protests with assurances that my inquiry was solely personal, and such a minor archival leak would not be traced back to him.
Satisfied, (and thoroughly intoxicated), he transferred the works to me and we parted ways in the night.
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Albrecht's final works were indeed choked with the nonsensical, circuitous writing of a man who had lost his touch. His arguments and formulas continuously avoiding any finite point to latch onto, as if he were a collegiate initiate describing concepts beyond his ken. But it was in that lack I began to see the connections between his half-finished proofs. A concept so absurd that I dare not even commit it to word, and yet, I must.
A life within The Void.
Or, more aptly, an intelligence. Or an order? Even now I admit I struggle with deciphering his twilight gestalt.
I call myself an Archimedean, or at least an aspirant of the unordained order, but it is here I cast off that title. I am possessed with a sudden mad streak of my own. An adolescent's fearless mockery of study. Just as Albrecht revolutionized how we view the universe with a desperate, reckless mistake, I too shall do something completely beyond convention.
I will attempt communion with The Void.
I have leveraged whatever favors I had amongst my peers and secured the tools for my experiment. Diagnostic somatics, and a stabilized sample of locum formam no larger than a child's palm.
I know not what to expect from such a foolish idea. Most likely nothing. Or, perhaps what I deserve for such reckless abandon, complete somatic severance. But where the world saw a void, Albrecht saw something greater, and here too I see the grander scheme within his works, begging to be revealed.
If I am to die, let this journal serve as a permanent mockery of my disregard for the procedures I have studied and sworn to uphold. I consider spirits to calm my nerves, but would sooner have my epitaph read a foolish scientist than a mad drunk.
No lab, no assistant, no recourse. I place the sample on my bedside table and join myself to the gnarled stone with gossamer thread.
I lie upon my bed.
I clutch the small golden activation disk within my right palm, and coil the innervation conduits around my left.
I activate the somatic link
The Somatic Link [https://imgur.com/fH6w5jO.jpg]