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place where, God willing, he will redeem the Baron’s creatures.
    After Nonentity 157 departs, Jonathan bears the Wohlmeth Resonator to the center of the circle. Coils of fog sinuate across the ground like phantom serpents. Meticulously he deploys the tuning fork, prongs pointed upwards in a configuration evoking the Devil’s own trident bursting through the crust of the earth. Next he places the voltaic piles a full hundred yards from the resonator, fearing that without this margin the vibrations will shatter not only the bezalelite husks but the battery array itself, thus terminating the golems’ deliverance in medias res.
    At this juncture Countess Nachtstein’s icily beautiful granddaughter appears, dressed in a bright scarlet cloak, so that her emergence from the fog suggests the Red Death exiting a white tent. In the moist but congenial glow of morning, Lotte seems a rather different person from the high-minded moralist who dominated the previous night’s dinner conversation, and she addresses Jonathan in tones that betray genuine contrition.
    “Please accept this lunch along with my apology for scolding you last night,” she says, handing over a sack containing, Jonathan is gratified to see, cold meat, warm bread, two apples, and a flask of burgundy. “My father did monstrous things. I would deny that fact only at my peril.”
    “In most contexts, honoring one’s parents is a laudable endeavor. I cannot blame you for defending Baron Nachtstein, injudicious as his project might have been.”
    “The man who would expiate my father’s sins is not only a great scientist but a paragon of graciousness.”
    When Lotte squeezes Jonathan’s arm and suggests that she help him finish installing the resonator, he can discern no ulterior motive. During the subsequent hour they connect a long rubber-sheathed wire to the positive terminals of the voltaic piles, then attach a second such strand to the negative terminals, subsequently running the insulated copper filaments to the fork and wrapping them around the outer prongs. Returning to the piles, Jonathan fastens the wires to a pair of chronometers, the first enabling him to determine how many minutes will elapse before the blade of the concomitant knife-switch descends, the second allowing him to fix the interval between the initial vibrations and the termination of the circuit.
    “I see no reason not to move quickly,” Lotte says. Suddenly her imperious aspect is ascendant. It seems she has taken command of the experiment, a situation to which Jonathan is expected to acquiesce. “We shall switch on the resonator at three o’clock. Is that acceptable to you?”
    “What if it were unacceptable?”
    Lotte makes no reply but instead points to the rheostat. “I assume that, given bezalelite’s extreme density, we should run the apparatus for at least an hour—and at full power.”
    “I would advise against it. To drive a Wohlmeth Resonator beyond eight hundred amperes would be to create an acoustic cyclone. My preferred parameters would be four hundred amperes for twenty minutes.”
    “We shall compromise,” Lotte informs Jonathan. “Six hundred amperes for forty minutes. After setting the chronometers, we shall retreat to the safety of the castle. We needn’t worry about the golems’ welfare. After all, they’re already dead.”
    3 November 1877
When I embarked on this project, I fully anticipated the delight I would derive from observing the golems prepare our meals, make our beds, brew our beer, plow our fields, and harvest our crops. But I had no inkling of the satisfactions to be had in commanding them to engage in meaningless tasks.
Come to Castle Kralkovnik, ladies and gentlemen. Behold the living dead playing polo in the moonlight using pumpkins instead of balls. Watch the tethered spirits build a tower to heaven on an inviolable order from Yahweh, then tear it down in response to an equally sacrosanct command. Bear witness to my metal phantoms as