(Pavlov’s House)

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Living on a far-distant planet, Doctor Mormeck works for strange beings that might or might not be angels by conducting surveillance across a hundred thousand alt-Earths. When an avatar of Mormeck is sent to a war-torn winter city to investigate a mysterious Presence, the doctor will become embroiled an ever-widening conflict.

Archive is here, Journals of Mormeck, and first entry is here.

It has been five or six days. I have had no time to write, and no inclination.

The days and nights have blurred together here, in the winter city by the river. My missions for Pavlov have blurred with my drinking sessions. My Komodo and Mormeck natures have become blurred, too. Something in the maintenance of that body—of becoming a wingless dragon—has changed me. I started out wanting to be gone from this place…but now I find that I enjoy reconnaissance—the rush of it, the terror, the element of the unknown. Even more, my Komodo body responds to it: the stealthy stalking and shadowing, my body invisible or camouflaged to match the surfaces I cling to, scuttle across, or bound through.

I have stood up silent and unmoving, a broken wall against my scaly back and listened to two German sentries discuss the weather and then certain sexual proclivities of their superior officer, which proved useful to Pavlov. I was looming over them, keeping my mouth shut so my hot breath would not wash over them, so close I could have reached out and knocked them over. But they didn’t see me. They saw only the wall.

I have, in a burst and release of energy that is pure Komodo, scrambled across the snow at midnight under a yellow moon—well past the rival German and Russian lines, to frolic in cold dark forest and bring down a deer. Komodos have an urge to eat that I cannot control, and if I don’t feed on something every few days, I am not myself. And all the while: an exhilaration I never felt as pure Mormeck, a kind of freedom that comes with motion that a mountain cannot fathom, even in avatar form.

As Pavlov has tried harder and harder to follow my own orders, I have tried to follow his, even when this has meant direct action, in part because I believe he is a good person. When the Germans began to bring a “super cannon” into position to fire upon what has now officially become known as “Pavlov’s House,” I, invisible, smashed into it from the side and sent the soldiers guarding it running off, only for them to later claim, according to my eavesdropping, that there had been a sudden wind. A secret force of white-clad commandoes attempting a nighttime raid found themselves confronted by a translucent raging monster and fled in terror. No one likes to talk about that incident: not a rumor or a breath of it uncovered in my skulking.

I have justified turning from surveillance to intervention because I know that in this alt-world Pavlov’s House is never breached, never burned to the ground, and that the German obsession with eliminating his position cost them bitterly on a strategic level. I am merely the personification—the Komodo-ification—of history. I am doing nothing that would not be done by someone.

Yet, as I pad invisible and small along the walls of Pavlov’s House on my way to report to Pavlov, I have heard his men talking more and about serendipity and luck in uncertain tones that indicate they don’t believe in these things, that although they cannot see me, they can feel my presence, know something is happening that should not be happening..

Meanwhile, Pavlov has had little for me, despite ample proof he has spent quite a bit of political capital getting patrols to be on the look-out for the Presence I seek. We sit across the table in Pavlov’s underground office, and I am sure neither of us knows what the other really thinks.

“My friend, we are getting closer to finding your ‘Presence’,” Pavlov says to me as he downs a shot.

“My friend, we have done good work today,” Pavlov says.

“My friend, the Germans are terrified of you,” Pavlov says.

But what does he really think? What’s going on inside of his head? Does Pavlov secretly believe he is going mad? Does he stay awake at night trying to figure out what I am, where I came from?

I try to see it from his perspective. I try to imagine, for instance, what it would be like if I knew nothing of angels and an angel suddenly appeared before me. What would I have done? Would I have been as calm as Pavlov that first time, and how long would it take for me to start questioning—why this need to search for a Presence, why the willingness to help, why, even, why an enormous dragon would drink with me night after night.

“I believe you,” I reply to Pavlov, noncommittally.

“If you say so,” I say.

“They are terrified of me,” I say, wanting to ask instead, “Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know? Or is it just easier not to?”

***

On what they dare not call Christmas—a holy day for a popular god-cult in this reality—Pavlov’s men secretly exchanged presents. If the political officer found out in this, Trotsky’s Soviet Union, they could be sent to a work camp. The presents were sad things—loose, frozen tea that one had been saved, given to another who gifted a cufflink found in the snow to yet a third who gave a slice of sausage—and what wasn’t drinkable or edible would be gifted back on the next occasion, if they were still here.

Pavlov gave me a delicate gold watch on a chain that displayed the time in several time zones, no doubt taken off the German dead after the latest repulsed assault. I held it in my Komodo claws, feeling suddenly rough and bulky, and a surge of emotion came over me that was straight from Mormeck Mountain. It was a ridiculous present to give a dragon. It displayed a complete misunderstanding of what I had become, but at the same time resonated deeply with Mormeck Avatar. Time was at the heart of everything. No time. Too much time. Divergent time lines.

“I hope you like it, my friend,” Pavlov said.

Was I his friend? I had always thought those words just a reflexive quirk of his speech. How could it be otherwise? I was terrifying and inexplicable—even more so if he had met me as Mormeck Mountain.

“Thank you, I do like it…but I am afraid I have nothing for you.” Ridiculously, I felt bad and yet even as I uttered those words I realized that I had just revealed to Pavlov more than I had in any previous conversation.

This is Pavlov’s House.

Am I becoming Pavlov’s Komodo?