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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. Complicating things are a transdimensional race of intelligent komodos wreaking chaos throughout the worlds. 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. A full-on 34,000 recap is compiled in one place, here with the two entries since here and here.

Such a thin line Pavlov showed me, a kind of fatal smile, that line of the Volga River with the winter city hunched up against it, and against that the pressure of the German assault.

What did Pavlov want me to do for him on my way into exile in the Far East? He wanted me to spoil a general’s breakfast. Specifically, General Alexander Edler von Daniels, leader of infantry, just that week placed in charge also of General Hermann Hoth’s much-depleted panzer army. A divergence in this reality from the norm. It was von Daniels’ infantry that had most pressed Pavlov in his not-so-luxurious fortified house, and “now the man will be bringing some additional ferocity to bear.”

So I stole from Pavlov’s house into the dull gray almost-daylight, tiny and reptilian, and found my way to the Other Side, there to adhere to a soldier’s dirty pack and then to the diesel-stinking metal carapace of a tank and then from there to the side of a smoldering building, skittering my way to a certain courtyard full of dead plants and cracked tiles, through to the private breakfast room of General Alexander Edler von Daniels. (It took much longer than my description, but I am tired of delivering wartime travelogues.)

Pavlov’s intelligence had not been faulty. Not only did the General eat alone, with guards stationed outside the room, but the extent and detail of the food staggered me—flowing as it did down the length of a long, dark-wood table. The General sat on one end of the cornucopia to receive it, as if the medals on his uniform were for excellence in growing crops and taking care of livestock. Hams and plates of eggs. Herring. Caviar. Sausage. What looked like some form of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Piles of strawberries. Chicken. Fried and poached eggs. Fresh mushrooms. Delicate pastries. The savory smell of it made all of my komodo senses quiver. If he ate all of this then clearly he was preternatural in some way. But I thought rather that he must give the leavings to his staff…while outside his infantry survived on half-rations and the city’s populace ate their shoes. Was it flown in on the few surviving supply planes, or somehow ransacked from the countryside?

Regardless, I had no patience for it, and I expanded to my full size, came at him from across the table to swat the gun from his hand as he cursed, and broke his wrist in the process. Then, as he watched, I gobbled up as much as I could in a few bites, bones and all.

Strange, how he sat there petrified, almost as if I had turned him to stone, once I’d taken his gun away. He didn’t even attend to his wrist, just let it dangle loosely on his thigh. His eyes never left me, but it was as he was trapped within a prison of his own flesh.

I leaned down until my open jaws were just inches from the General’s face. “Sergeant Pavlov, from Pavlov’s House, says hello. He says that while you are our guest in the Soviet Union you should eat what the people eat. Nothing more and nothing less. That you should behave in a much more friendly fashion. And if you don’t, he will send me to visit you every morning and every night until you do…”

Nothing. No reaction at all.

Well, then. It would stick or it wouldn’t. Either way, my belly was full and my obligation to Pavlov fulfilled. I shrunk and made myself invisible, and even that didn’t register with the General. I began to wonder whether if I returned that night he would still be staring off into space.

“He will heed the warning for awhile,” Pavlov had told me. “And then it will fade as if it was all a dream and he will forget or he will rationalize as we all do. And then one day, if he is still alive, he will resume eating his ridiculous breakfast, and if we are still at war in this city he will lose his fear of me and he will press me even harder. And perhaps after the war, if he is still alive, while eating some other ridiculous breakfast he will tell his grandchildren a silly story about a giant talking reptile…and you will become a completely different kind of monster.”

“Is that what will happen between us, Pavlov?” I had asked.

A wide smile had animated his face. “Yes, it is true. This may happen between us. I will wake up one morning with a shriek and I will ask myself ‘Why did you ever talk to that impossible lizard. That is the first, the very first, sign of insanity. You must never talk to that lizard again. You must not respond to any guarded letter he might send you. If he sends you a postcard pretend it came from your aunt near the Caspian Sea instead.’”

Would I ever send him a postcard from the Far East? I didn’t know. Part of me understood he would be better off never hearing from me again. Part of me as I left the General’s quarters wondered why Pavlov hadn’t asked me to kill the General, but another part knew exactly why.

On my way out of Stalingrad, against a horizon cut through with spirals of black smoke and the whine of aircraft and mortar fire, I saw an angel. I was a tiny, invisible komodo glued to the side of yet another rumbling Soviet tank belching its way East. The angel stood atop a building torn apart over time by artillery shells until now the roof was gone and the supporting wall of the top floor formed a gaping U. He stood in the embrace of the U like pale statuary or a sentry. But the angel didn’t fool me. Its features were too predatory, even from that distance, its gaze too telescopic. Ever vigilant, it was looking for something—perhaps even me.

When we were several kilometers away, bumping up and down on a dirty, rutted road with stripped trees to either side, I realized there were worse things than angels. For it was then that I discovered I had not just a Remnant inside of me, but a demon, too.

Hiding there like the thin, sour-tasting inner lining of a walnut.

When we were several kilometers away, bumping up and down on a dirty, rutted road with stripped trees to either side, I realized that I’d misjudged the Remnant inside of me.

Cowering there supposedly frail. Bitter as the thin, sour-tasting inner lining of a walnut.