It's been almost a year since I last wrote in here, and I think this may be because I have been too shaken up by what happened.
Whoever would like to relive the Black Heart mystery should be able to do so by following the
clues scattered around town, but the conclusions drawn by those events are that the monks of Malkuth resuscitated to fight the Beast have been destroying all of the Van Creed places around town, and that the Beast itself is at last gone. Well, those are the good points... In truth, I hate having to admit that I have been used by this creepy insane man to "fix" the Beast and call back to life the most dangerous Evil that Babbage has ever known.
I have trouble to sleep at night since Jason Moriarty came back. I wake up from my nightmares and see shadows creeping around me. I do not only fear for myself, but also for all of my friends.
I guess he stayed quiet and hidden during the last months, because there was not more trouble than usual in the city. He had been spotted a few times though, at the Oiling festival, and more recently in the
Port, where he had an apparently courteous conversation with two other gentlemen, although anyone knowing him would get shivers running down their spines listening to what he said.
A few days ago, a
coded message came to the attention of Mr Tenk, and many citizen gathered at the Town Hall yesterday to find out what would be happening.
Gadget thought it was all a trap, but we just were all too curious to stay away.
Suddenly, the vision of a door flickered right in the middle of the meeting room before vanishing. It was like a ghost door, appearing for just a few seconds in our world and then going back to limbo.
I looked up to see if someone was playing a trick on us. I heard you could make a big image appear in the air, with some light and a smaller image. Just like making animal shadows on a wall with your fingers maybe. But there was nobody in the gallery, and soon we heard Tepic screaming outside.
We all ran out of the Hall to see a big shiny twirly sphere of light right up in the sky in front of the City Hall's stairs.
I s'pose it was a kind of a gate because a huge airship came through it and landed at the bottom of the stairs in a roaring noise. A very old looking man got off from the vessel and walked up to us with difficulty. He asked for the Mayor and as Mr Tenk stepped forward, he gave him a little box.
We were all quite puzzled, but we couldn't ask many questions as he seemed to be in a hurry. He just said "Do not believe him." and then went back into his ship, speaking to himself, hoping he would be able to make it.
We just watched him flying back up and disappearing behind the City Hall when suddenly a loud BANG noise resonated in the air. Loki rushed towards the corner of the City Hall and we followed him to see the wreckage pieces of the strange airship cluttering the cobblestones, smoke billowing from the burning metal.
We looked amongst the pieces, but no body was to be found... He must have desintegrated completely, or burnt to ashes...
Back at the bottom of the stairs, Mr Tenk somehow opened the box the old old man gave him, which liberated a kind of
bot. With an open book in front of it.
Mister Tenk transported it into the Hall of exposition, or Hall of Inventions, I don't remember how it's called... There we examined it better, and after the Mayor triggered it, its mechanical arm started to move and write signs on the book in front of it.
Miste Tenk was in awe at the details of the mechanics and I'm afraid he is planning on taking it all apart to see how it works... But we still managed to take a look at
what the bot was writing and I have to say that I didn't really like that story...
In the meantime, a newcomer arrived, and introduced himself as the new supervisor for the Van Creed society. He said he was sent as a replacement for his predescessor. I guess he was talking about Jasper Renfold, who ended burnt by Willard Steamweaver in the middle of the City Hall.
That new Van Creed guy was interested in the Writing Bot and I think he wanted to take it with him, or maybe just to read what it was writing, but we were all around and not looking particularly friendly. He didn't seem to mind though, and said he'd just come back later.
By now, we have learnt not to trust the Van Creed bunch, even though they can be quite informative sometimes. We thought they had all been destroyed by the monks of Malkuth, but I suppose some of them had survived, or maybe they are all over the world anyway and the Malkuth couldn't find every of their little hideout... The presence of that new Van Creed supervisor does mean that they are coming back to Babbage though, so something big is certainly going to happen soon... Big and not actually pleasant.
After he left, we talked about what had happened, and what was written in the book. Zaida said that the very old man who came through the gate smelled like Jimmy, but Jimmy answered he didn't smell (which is true, except when he's been running in the sewers).
Then we started to question what was written in the book. Why was it talking about us? Why was there Mr Tenk, Miss Kaylee, Mister Cleanslate in it? Why Victor Mornington and why Jimmy, Triky and I? How did that old man know about us? And why that story talking about us described such an apocalyptic chaos in Babbage...?
Mister Mornington told us about the time gates... That would be just like the gate between worlds that Moriarty opened with the Professor Eliot's device, but it would link two different times instead of two different worlds... That is quite hard to believe really, but some details are very troubling :
1) The airship the very old man was flying looked a lot like the one Jimmy built for the AetherCorp. Except fancier, with more stuff on it.
2) In the book written by the Bot, Jimmy is sent back by Victor, in a kind of time travel capsule.
3) Zaida thinks the old man smelled like Jimmy.
So could that old man be Jimmy from the future sent back to us? And maybe the time travel makes you grow very older..? Or maybe he travelled a lot towards other times before finding the right one?
The idea of this old man being him upset Jimmy a little I think, but he's tough, he should get over it, and the Professor Kristos Sonnerstein said he could come to see him whenever he wanted if he needed to.
If we believe that time travel can exist, then the future described in the book written by the Bot is not nice at all... All of my friends dead, except Jimmy, who is gone somewhere in his capsule, Piermont Landing in flames, the whole of Babbage covered in crabby things that sound quite nasty, and a man, who appears to have triggered all of that. A man who can flash electrical energy from his fingers.
I know of a man whom I think would be able to generate this future world of chaos. That same man who already once brought Old Gods swirling like Doom over New Babbage with their huge tentacles. This man who was still thought to be dead last year, before being brought back to life in a new body, a new potentially invincible body...
Jason Moriarty.
If this is true, then we need to do something to stop him. The urchins will be having a secret urgent meeting tonight in the hideout, and hopefully, Gadget can tell us about this new society they have been planning with Nat, and the devices he has been working on.
While sitting in the hideout, waiting for the meeting to start, two questions keep circling in my head.
Who is this person that the old man told us not to believe?
And why, in the book, my character regrets not to have listened to Triky?
I guess the time is not yet to come when I will get some nightmare-free sleep...
