The Map of Chaos Read Online Free PDF Page B

dragon, too. Wells had no idea how long he remained in that state, creating and demolishing stories, with only the logic of delirium as his guide. He assumed Charles was doing the same at his side, but when it began to grow cold and he opened his eyes, he discovered his professor gazing at him with a wry smile.
    â€œWhat you’ve been doing is imagining, my dear George, and although there are many who believe it has no use, I can assure you it does. We are what we imagine,” he declared, rephrasing the old motto. “You’ll find out for yourself soon enough.”
    And so he had. That very night, while Jane was asleep, Wells had shut himself in his study and donned his writing glove. Only this time not with the intention of penning any essays or articles that might help advance mankind’s understanding of the world. This time he was going to write down the tales inspired by the images he had glimpsed under the influence of the fairy dust. He took a deep breath and tried to conjure them, but it was as though his mind, having reverted to its natural state of rigidity, refused all attempts. After hours spent trying to regurgitate them, he gave up and went outside onto the patio. The night sky was swarming with dirigibles, but Wells had no difficulty making out the Albatross, the airship bristling with propellers commissioned from Verne Industries by one of the richest men on the planet: Gilliam Murray, known as the Master of Imagination, because, while his business card described him as an antiques dealer, everyone knew he was involved in the manufacture and sale of fairy dust. That rotund braggart controlled his increasingly vast empire from his flying fortress, without the ecclesiastical police ever having succeeded in infiltrating his impenetrable web of bribery, threats, and extortion. And so, immune to the world’s highest authority, the omnipresent Albatross cast a tainted shadow over the London evenings, reminding men that if they wished to explore the limits of their imagination, all they needed to do was take a pinch of Gilliam Murray’s golden dust.
    Wells had never imagined he would one day go in search of the substance manufactured by that despicable individual, and yet, not without a sense of shame, this was precisely what he found himself doing the following day. Not wishing to importune his professor, he made his way to Limehouse, an area of the city inhabited by so-called Ignorants, those who had decided to turn their backs on Knowledge. Wells had been told it was easy to get the dust there, and he was not mistaken: he came away with a full pillbox. During the night, he locked himself in his study, snuffed a pinch of the powder, put on his writing glove, and waited. His mind soon began to reel, as it had on that golden afternoon he had spent with Charles. Three hours later, with only a vague memory of his fingers flickering incessantly over the paper, Wells discovered that he had managed to fashion a story. He repeated the ritual the following night, and the night after, and so on, until he had a pile of stories invented on a playful whim. He had no idea why he wrote them, only to let them molder in his desk drawer because he dared not show them to anyone, not even to Jane. He didn’t consider them worthy examples of a craft capable of producing useful insights. The protagonists of his tales were scientists caught up in strange, unwholesome experiments that contributed nothing to society, ambitious men who used science for their own ends, who sought invisibility or turned animals into humans, and he doubted the Church would give them its blessing. Perhaps that was why he enjoyed writing them.
    However, the guilty knowledge that he was deliberately and regularly producing something sinful began to plague him during his waking hours, especially when he encountered an ecclesiastical policeman in the street. Indeed, his anxiety reached such a fever pitch that one night he gathered up