The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum

Chapter 1 ~ Magnetron Speaks

"Thus released by circumstance from my former vow of silence, I hereby declare myself free to divulge the greatest secrets of my time, most of which are interwoven with a common thread…."

I am called Phineas J. Magnetron, although my unusual surname was not bestowed upon me in the usual fashion by accident of birth, but rather as a byproduct of an altogether different class of happenstance.  As a matter of historical record, I was born Phineas Juchnook Mugglesworth on June 7, 1843 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, the United States of America.  The circumstances and events that led me to change my name are the subject of a lengthy story which I shall save until a later time.

However implausible it may seem, what follows is my true and unembellished account of actual events I have witnessed with my own eyes.  Despite numerous past admonitions against making such recordings, I have set about writing this memoir for the same reason that most men put their thoughts to paper: to unburden my soul.  Indeed, as I anticipate no human being will ever have occasion to read these words, they can serve no other purpose.

For the sake of husbanding my own tenuous sanity, I shall hereinafter presume the exceedingly improbable event that my words will one day find an intelligent audience.  Further, I shall presume that you, dear reader, inhabit my distant future—millennia hence—and that I am long ago dead.  Perchance it is now said of me that I have gone to a better place.  But it is you, the reader, who now occupies the place, or more accurately, the time, which is where and when I most fervently desired to be: the future!  Yes, the future, with all its wondrous devices and yes, its terrible weapons.  Though it is a commonplace for you, the future has beckoned to me since my young adulthood.  Through some inexplicable phenomenon—another matter which I hope to address in future writings—I arise every morning awash in fading visions of a future I shall never see with my eyes.

So, do I write to tell of the future?  No, as the bulk of my direct temporal experience is limited to the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, I must confine myself to the telling of events which are almost certainly historical to you.  But the history I will relate will have no corresponding reportage in your history books.  The history I will relate will be beyond the reach of any historian as it was all but unknown in the very era in which it took place, and those whose station in life made them privy to such knowledge were sworn to secrecy.  Indeed, I have maintained utter silence for decades—once an eternity, now a fleeting nictitation contrasted with the stupendous immensity of time itself.

Despite a sturdy confidence that I will be shielded from any earthly repercussions which might otherwise arise pursuant to the indiscreet revelations to follow—owing to the unfortunate eventuality of my death—I shudder nonetheless at my own temerity in violating my sworn oath of secrecy.  However, my current abject situation is so extraordinary as to render moot any such comparatively quotidian prohibitions.  Thus released by circumstance from my former vow of silence, I hereby declare myself free to divulge the greatest secrets of my time, most of which are interwoven with a common thread: The Hogalum Society.