Flames of Revenge

The Workshop

March 8th 1872

FRANKIE DEVEREAUX

Five days before the fire.

I say this without any trance of irony; what I have created, and what I am creating, could truly alter the course of history.

People have called me crazy before, and I am used to that. It is fine. Crazy is just a word people use for a kind of intelligence that they themselves cannot quite grasp. When I tell people what I am attempting, they call me crazy, they call me delusional. That is fine by me.

Nothing will stop me in my pursuit of knowledge. It is as if there is just this drive within me, this insane urge to make the impossible possible. And I know I will not stop until I have achieved what I set out to do, until I have completed my purpose, until I have finished the device.

I have already had to use the device, once, but what I used was the incomplete product. It was in a moment of desperation, when I had no other option, and as a result the only prototype I had of the device was destroyed. Now, I am trying once again desperately to rebuild the device, but for a very different reason this time. When I invented the device, it was purely for science and science alone, but now, the device could be the key to saving my son's life.

Pushing my hair out of my eyes, I sighed. At the present moment I was staring at some of the most complex mathematical equations that I had ever seen. It is frustratingly difficult, yes, but I enjoy a challenge. Many people disagree when I say that mathematics can be beautiful, but it can. Numbers and patterns are in everything around us, in nature, in music. Mathematics and science are truly art forms.

I tucked my notepad under my arm and headed up to the small attic apartment that my family was given to house all four of us. Charles Chapworth's personal quarters are easily four times the size of the tiny rooms we share, but I don't mind so much. As long as I am with my family, with my wife and children that I love so dearly, then I don't mind.

But I know that it gets to my wife, the injustice of our situation eats away at her. Elizabeth is an extremely proud woman, maybe that just comes from being a Chapworth, but it tears her apart that we have sunk so low as to be living in these tiny rooms that are just a fraction of the house that she should have equal claim to.

Clara and Joshua are both asleep when I arrive back at our apartment. It is quite late, after all. Elizabeth wasn't though, she was waiting up for me to arrive, and I braced myself for what I would find when I entered. My wife, when she was angry, was a hurricane.

She was chopping vegetables at the main table in the centre of the room. Even though the manor had a fully functioning kitchen that was more than capable of producing enough food for us, we were expected to make our own. Chapworth wouldn't waste a single penny on us. As she chopped vegetables, the sound of the knife hitting the wooden cutting board as I approached betrayed her anger. I was late coming home, again. I failed to bring home any money or food, again. And once again, I had failed today to provide for my family. I deserved every bit of her anger.

She didn't understand. I loved my wife, Elizabeth. She was my all, my reason for living. She gave up everything to be with me, and I would give anything for her. But for all that I loved her, she didn't understand what I did or why I did it. For her, the pursuit of scientific knowledge was no more than a pastime, something to be indulged in of one has the money and resources. She does not comprehend that it is so much more than that to me, it is my life. Without it, I would cease to be. It runs through my veins. And she does not understand that the reason I am doing this is for Joshua, for our family. I would tell her, but I can't without telling her the truth about where I am from.