Behind a cluttered desk in a cramped but otherwise spotless office, a thin young man in a dapper suit sat staring at a blueprint as if his life depended on it. His fixation displayed no awareness that I'd entered. I stood politely for a full minute yet he seemed determined to ignore me.
               "Professor Evermost ...?" I asked.
               "Speak quickly," Professor Evermost snapped; his eyes never rose off his blueprint. "My time is valuable."
               "My name's Corporal Thomas James ..."
               Professor Evermost seized a ruler, aligned it carefully, and connected two points upon his blueprint with a very short pencil.
               "Professor, I've waited six weeks for this appointment and would appreciate your full attention for at least six minutes."
               "Sir, if you were dying, what would you pay for six more minutes of life?" Professor Evermost asked. "When you ask for my time you request my most-precious commodity. Therefore, before you attempt to beg money or sell me something, I ask you: what concern of yours is worth six minutes of my life?"
               I deepened my voice. "My concern ... is about your death."
               Eyes so dark blue they seemed almost purple rose from the blueprint to glare at me. His deepening frown and narrowed brows exuded displeasure.
               "Sir, are you threatening me ...?"
               In response, I handed him eight photographs I'd taken in South Africa, right before the end of the war, and another ten from Southern Germany almost a year afterwards. Each photo portrayed one badly-wounded soldier or sick person, and each had a smudged or blurry spot rising from their chest and running to the white edge of the photo. Professor Evermost quickly flipped through them.
               "Identical distortions," Professor Evermost acknowledged. "Water on the lens ... or a smudge?"
               "No."
               "Bad photographic paper?"
               "I'm a professional photographer. These are eighteen of hundreds of photos I took. These few are the only ones that showed that mysterious defect."
               "I see nothing here to interest me ..."
               "The only difference between these photos and all the others is that these men were photographed ... as they died."
               Eyebrows rose and the dark blue eyes flashed at me.
               "If this is some improper jest ...!" he warned.
               "The first of these photos I developed in a cave beside my army camp," I said. "I didn't know it at the time but the cave's walls were rich with phosphorous, and had been used as a hideout by our retreating enemy; after a fierce firefight, the British forces smoked them out of the cavern with a deadly combination of chlorine bleach and ammonia ..."
               "Chlorine gas."
               "Precisely. I brought back samples of the chemicals on those cavern walls. In Southern Germany I spent weeks experimenting with mixtures until I'd duplicated the effect of developing photographs in that cave."
               Professor Evermost's frown deepened again, his thin nose wrinkling as if assaulted by the vilest stench.
               "Sir, what you're asking me to believe is utter nonsense," Professor Evermost said. "I've dedicated my life to the investigation of science and the firm conviction that all reality is substantial and quantifiable. This is impossible."
               He looked like he wanted to hurl my photographs back at me yet his fingers clung to them.
               "Professor, those exact thoughts have disturbed my sleep for over a year," I replied. "My military superiors scoffed at it. Newspapers refused to print it. A bishop threatened to excommunicate me."
               With visible effort, Professor Evermost stood up to face me. His gaze had a startlingly riveting fixation. His face still looked youthful, in his late twenties, yet he had deep, somber eyes shadowed under prominent brows, although his black eyebrows seemed thin and unusually long. Slowly, as if reluctantly, he thrust out his palm.
               "Forgive my impropriety, Corporal Thomas James," he said, and we shook hands. "I am Professor Thaddeus Alexander Albert Evermost, and I'm honored to make your acquaintance. Please describe to me the locations where these photographs were taken."
               "The photos of the soldiers were taken in South Africa, and the civilians were photographed in Southern Germany ..."
               "Ah, yes: the cholera outbreak," Professor Evermost said.
               "Where better to photograph people dying?" I asked.
               "Yes, but I meant: what are the coordinates of these photographs?" Professor Evermost asked. "North, south, east ...? These poor soldiers, for example, all have the same background."
               "Yes, those photos were taken in the critical care ward," I said. "It was originally an abandoned schoolhouse, I believe. I'm not sure which compass-point the walls faced."
               "We may have to go there," Professor Evermost said.
               Professor Evermost rolled up his blueprint, placed it aside, and then sorted my photographs upon his desk in four rows, setting the forest and trench shots in a separate stack.
               "See the matching backgrounds?" Professor Evermost asked, pointing with one finger. "Here's one wall of the military hospital, and here's the wall opposite it, or so I assume from these angles of sunlight. These photos in the civilian ward are the same. What does that tell you?"
               I stared at the photos I knew so well. Suddenly something that had always been there became obvious.
               "The mists all go in one direction!" I exclaimed.
               "Opposite directions," Professor Evermost corrected. "Against these two walls, the mists go to the patient's left, and on their opposite sides the mists go to the patient's right. In both rooms, these lines travel in the same direction."
               "What does it mean?" I asked.
               "I'm sorry, Corporal Thomas James, but I'm too fixed in my philosophy to name what you appear to have photographed," Professor Evermost said.
               "Then I'll say it," I said. "This photographic solution is capable of capturing images of the human soul rising from its dying body."
               Our eyes met ... expressions firmly resolved.
               "Corporal, the implications of this are staggering," Professor Evermost said. "I don't believe in souls, but as a man of science I can't refuse an opportunity to investigate."
               "That's where I'm stumped, Professor," I said. "I can prove my process works, but I can't prove these misty smudges are souls."
               "That is not my purpose, corporal," Professor Evermost said. "As souls are supernatural, I assume these aren't souls, which requires me to discover what they are. If these are souls rising from their bodies then why wouldn't they continue to rise, which would direct these smudges straight up? All the smudges rise from their chests like smoke, then travel sideways. As all appear to go in the same direction, the only logical conclusion is that, wherever they're going, these smudges are pointing to the same destination."
               "But ... where would a soul go after its body has died?" I asked.
               "That, corporal, is what we must investigate," Professor Evermost said.

               For three days Professor Evermost and I haunted the city hospital, him assisting with no less skill than any of its doctors. Always nearby, I carried a compass and two of his cameras, each with its flash primed to shoot, since he didn't trust my camera. I found this insulting but said nothing; while I was poor and unknown, every newspaper delighted in printing his name. If my discovery was ever going to see daylight then I needed someone like him. If he accepted my discovery and announced it then everyone would listen to me.
               Yet I waited nervously. Since developing the first smudged photo in South Africa, while I was still healing from my combat wounds, I'd feared I was going mad. No one would look at it. No one would take my claim seriously.
               Professor Evermost was my last hope of financial reward.
               Unfortunately, new nightmares assailed my sleep. In South Africa I'd been horrified by my discovery. In Southern Germany I'd dreamed of selling my formula for unequaled riches. I'd never considered attempting to follow the mists to see where they led ... and wasn't sure I wanted to.
               Could decent men survive learning such secrets?
               My attempts at conversation were politely spurned; in the few times he wasn't occupied with patients, Professor Evermost pulled out his leather-bound journal and wrote in it.
               On the third night an elderly woman who'd collapsed in the street was brought in barely able to breathe, and when we developed our photos of her demise, using my chemicals, her smudge was clearly visible. With an exasperated sigh, Professor Evermost accepted that my solution worked exactly as I'd claimed.
               "Southeast, I'd say," Professor Evermost said. "Wherever this unexplained effect leads, if we would follow it, then we must travel southeast."
               "How?" I asked, trying to subdue my unrepentant smile.
               "West is our first destination," Professor Evermost said. "We must visit my generous benefactress and see if this investigation interests her."
               "Her ...?" I asked.

               Mrs. Marcia Jane Courtenay was a tall, wasp-shaped woman approaching advanced years. Her slim, hourglass figure might've been the ribbing of her tight corset. Her hair was white with age but full and attractively styled. Her modest and immaculate day dress was olive green corded silk patterned in cut velvet and matching satin, with a fitted bodice, bustled skirt, and small train; her gown looked more expensive than my parents' house.
               She walked slowly, almost a glide, into her extravagant parlor with a poise that startled me in its mesmeric perfection. Her every movement flowed like gentle water. She blinked more than nodded at the professor. Yet her light blue eyes swept across me with a direct steadiness, as if she were my old commanding officer, surveying me as an unthinking tool suited only for her purposes.
               Her mansion was the most ostentatious palace I'd ever seen; on the way to her parlor we'd passed through magnificent galleries with immense stairways sided by polished banisters, antique furnishings, and portraits, all under high ceilings painted with pastel murals as imposing as the Royal Museum. Her grandiose parlor was breathtaking. I stared disbelieving, wondering if my discovery could ever afford such wondrous splendor.
               The wealth of this woman could feed every homeless child in England.
               "Mrs. Courtenay," Professor Evermost effused as he bowed deeply.
               Professor Evermost seemed a different man in her presence. He'd always been tall, slight, and energetic, but stiffly controlled, as if his own will were chains he locked about himself. He was at the peak of his prime with no trace of the heaviness or weariness that consumes older men. His head was draped with oiled black hair and his complexion glowed of good skin, but he was of an age equal to any son of hers, if progeny she had. He bowed before her formally yet with a looseness I'd never seen, as if relaxed only in her company.
               Her gaze affixed upon him with a smile greater than intellectual interest.
               His manners were perfectly proper and totally unknown to me; Professor Evermost displayed the etiquettes, airs, and dignity of a perfect English gentleman. He waited patiently to insure she was done speaking before he replied, always with exemplary courtesy and deference to her station. If he'd addressed her as Your Excellency I wouldn't have been surprised; she bore herself as regally as a queen.
               By contrast I was a child; at twenty-two I'd lived nowhere but in my parents' ratty house, a South African battlefield, and a tiny, splintery apartment in Germany. My pockets were empty and my limited education offered small hope of financial security. My plain tweed coat and faded trousers looked out of place in her mansion. I stood a few inches taller than Professor Evermost yet I was far more muscular, clearly a laborer, capped with blonde hair and a fair complexion like most Scandinavians. I said nothing for fear of speaking wrong; my penniless, larcenous upbringing hadn't prepared me for the environs of wealth and breeding.
               Introductions were pleasantly brief; with manners as stiff and formal as a military court, slowly she offered her hand, tracing it through the air as if dancing, or under deep water, and I kissed it, at which her eyes widened.
               That seemed to conclude the entirety of my participation.
               She performed a meticulous study of my photographs in silence, and then contradicted the professor over his skepticism that the photographic distortions could be anything but human souls.
               "Do you think the trace sulfates reacted to the nitrates?" Mrs. Courtenay asked.
               "I did, but the differing acidic levels of oxidation would imply the catalyst was sulfurous acid, not sulfuric acid," Professor Evermost said.
               "Upon observation, I believe this is red, not white phosphorus."
               "Thomas' chemist may have been mistaken," Mrs. Courtenay said. "We should reexamine the components."
               "I ordered all the chemicals we'll need." Professor Evermost said.
               "Introducing silver sulfates could help measure the exposure of the divine light," Mrs. Courtenay said.
               "Your analysis assumes the possibility of souls," Professor Evermost said, shaking his head. "Your pioneering work in Spiritual Mathematics is entirely theoretical."
               "These photographs prove Spiritual Mathematics is more than theory," Mrs. Courtenay said.
               I slunk down onto the thick pillows of a wingchair, embarrassed by my lack of education, completely left out of their conversation.
               "Dr. Glackenheimer will be returning to England in three months, on the twenty-second of December," Mrs. Courtenay finally announced. "Our expedition begins the next day."
               Professor Evermost bowed again and thanked her most profusely, using words like nitid and palladian, which I later looked up in a dictionary to understand. Although never giving me a second look, Mrs. Courtenay thanked both of us for coming and slowly glided from her parlor, leaving her servants to fetch our hats and overcoats and show us out.
               "Corporal Thomas James, never do that again!" Professor Evermost chastised me as soon as we were out on the street. "Your behavior was abominable!"
               "I barely said a word ...!" I argued.
               "Corporal, when a lady offers her hand you do not kiss it!"
               "You kissed her hand ...!"
               "How dare you?" Professor Evermost snapped with a pedantic mien. "I most certainly did not! Sir, a true lady is always assumed to be wearing spotless white gloves, even when her hand is bare. A lady's gloves are her honor; to besmirch them even in the slightest way is unthinkable. To hold her hand toward your lips and kiss at it is the highest compliment a gentleman may make to a lady above his station ... unless she is his fiancée. To actually touch her hand with your lips is an inexcusable offence!"
               "Oh, my ...! I didn't know ...! Please, how can I apologize?"
               "Say nothing; the event never occurred," Professor Evermost said. "You have three months to make a gentleman of yourself ... or your presence in her company will not endure an hour. I shall expect you, refined and reserved, with your sparse luggage, in my office at 6:00 AM on December the twenty-third."
               Without another word, Professor Evermost abandoned me on the street, striding away briskly. Too ashamed to follow, I stood feeling like an untamed baboon; how could a former street urchin learn to be a gentleman ... in only three months?

               Looking like an impeccable popinjay, at exactly 6:00 AM on December the 23rd, I reentered the tiny office of Professor Evermost and presented myself. Two burly laborers stood just outside his door, each with a handcart, one of which held a large trunk such as one might take on an ocean liner, and both looked askance at my pretentious attire.
               A second door opened onto a large but very cramped and humid laboratory from which loud bubblings, hisses, and crackles emerged. The laboratory was filled with intricate, complex iron machines spewing steam, most with copper or brass moving parts, and Professor Evermost seemed to be turning them off.
               Despite the cold of December I was wearing a new suit almost identical to the one Professor Evermost had worn in the hospital, and I carried a small but heavy suitcase packed as tightly as I could manage. My father had thought my suit a wasteful extravagance when I explained why I needed the money, yet my mother was thrilled. Likewise, only she was delighted by my purchase of "The Proper Manners of Formal Society" by Walter Oran Bowman, Jr.; I hated the book yet I'd studiously memorized every line.
               The meticulousness of British ‘proper manners' reminded me of my best friend, Basil Bevan Bonar Balfour. Basil was unusually short with sandy hair like coarse gruel, a taste I could never stomach but which he thought made a delightful meal. As a young boy, Basil had a round face ... which he never outgrew. Basil was skinny as a walking stick, probably because he was an orphan and ate infrequently; usually whatever he could steal. He wore fancy clothes which he stole off unwatched clotheslines in the Hardgrow district; mothers quickly learned to bring their wash in before dusk when Basil was around.
               Basil had the basest morals and manners I'd ever known; more than once I spied him kneeling among a pack of dogs and drinking from the same puddle. Our childhood antics together were of the most agreeable unsavoriness; after walking through a crowd he'd suddenly display a stolen pocket watch or several ladies' handkerchiefs. More than once he and I had to flee from outraged victims, not that I often stole, but Basil was such a good friend that his company made up for any dangers.
               Basil would share whatever he had; even if he hadn't eaten in a day, he'd hand me half of a hot loaf swiped from a windowsill before he ate a bite. In winter, he helped other kids pinch blankets from clotheslines and insisted the younger orphans bundle down with him to keep warm. Yet he also liked to play in the sewers and look up at the ladies walking over the grates. He'd whistle when he spied their undergarments; to this day, whenever I hear the word ‘scamp', I can't help but think of Basil.
               Forcing my memories of Basil away for fear that Professor Evermost might suspect my humble beginnings, I stepped into his laboratory and announced my presence with a polite cough; I'd learned to do that from my book.
               "Ah, Corporal Thomas James!" Professor Evermost said. "Excellent punctuality! Allow me a moment; don't want any gaskets blowing while I'm away."
               Brass knobs, twisted by Professor Evermost, snuffed tiny flames under intricate machines lit by gas. Caps were set atop oil lamps, and water was poured into stoves, causing loud hisses. Several bursts of steam rose. I had no idea what any of these fantastic inventions did, but the machine beside me was spewing mist from three different nozzles; one was obviously hot steam, wafting straight up, another translucent to the point of invisibility, at room temperature, and the other icy-white like breath on a frozen morning. Professor Evermost extinguished this machine last, and then he hurried me into his office and locked his laboratory door behind him. Finally his eyes fell upon my suitcase.
               "Are you certain ... you packed the essentials?" Professor Evermost asked.
               "Nothing but!" I assured him.
               With a gesture, he had me hand my bag to one of the burly men, who chuckled and put it on his stout dolly; the man with the heavy traveling trunk didn't seem amused. They followed as we descended to the chilly morning street where a strange carriage was waiting.
               "Evermost ...!" shouted a jubilant voice.
               With several soft, metallic creaks, what looked like a mechanical man stepped up to Professor Evermost and bowed as stiffly as the mostly-metal suit he wore allowed. Everyone on the street was staring at him; he looked like an aged knight in an immaculate brown suit covered with sections of brass and copper armor with small tin plates. Devices of all sorts were affixed to it, making the thickly-built man look virtually mechanical. Red light from a fire escaped through vents about his stomach and steam whistled softly through a tube that rose from his left shoulder. Still, his brass suit looked stylish, fashioned as close to his elegant cloth under-suit as metal could be.
               "Glack!" Professor Evermost exclaimed, and he clicked his heels and sharply bowed. "I didn't expect you to pick us up."
               "Got back early; fair winds all the way home," the stranger said with a deep voice, heavy with a brogue accent. "South America: I've some wondrous tales to tell!"
               "First, allow me to introduce the discoverer and inventor of our next enterprise," Professor Evermost motioned to me. "Dr. Glackenheimer, Princeton and Oxford, founding member of the British Society of Natural Scientists, author of Steaming the Future, may I present Corporal Thomas James, soldier and photographer."
               Following the professor's example, I clicked my heels and bowed deeply.
               "Cheechako!" Dr. Glackenheimer shouted at me, his wide smile showing every tooth. "New blood for the Brotherhood of Thinkers, eh? A pleasure to meet you, son! Glack's the name; everyone calls me Glack."
               "A most-esteemed privilege," I bowed again.
               "Aha! A baby Evermost?" Dr. Glackenheimer asked. "You're a bad influence, professor! Be careful, boy, or he'll have you trading sherry for tea!"
               "Alcohol is a cerebral-depressor," Professor Evermost retorted. "I never touch the stuff ... except for a glass of brandy every evening; you can't smoke without brandy."
               Dr. Glackenheimer roared with laughter so loudly nearby frosted windows opened and faces peered down. He continued to guffaw while our luggage was tied to the snowy top of his carriage, which had a smoking furnace on its back and a strange, bulky machine with what looked like a giant boot or padded hammer hanging beneath its stove. We were ushered inside the carriage into its plush and warm interior. Dr. Glackenheimer moved jerkily as he climbed in last, as if his metal suit were trying to help him walk; each step seemed haphazard, almost comical. A brass pipe lowered from the ceiling as Dr. Glackenheimer sat down, and he spoke orders through it to the coachman. Suddenly we lunged forward as if the giant boot had kicked us in the rear.
               "An ingenious conveyance," Professor Evermost calmly observed. "Your invention?"
               "Not entirely," Dr. Glack said. "Ancient Egyptians gave me the idea with their pneumatic devices. I just expanded on their inventions; it helps the horses get started."
               "Surely its weight strains the horses more than it relieves their burden," Professor Evermost noted.
               "I hope to make it continuous," Dr. Glack said.
               At Dr. Glackenheimer's insistence I showed him my photographs. As we rode uphill into a rugged countryside we discussed alternatives to the smudges being caused by anything other than escaping human souls. To my amazement, he took out two small metal cups and filled both from a tap on his suit, which discharged sherry. I accepted a cup and asked about his suit, which was highly polished and curiously-made.
               According to Dr. Glack, or Glack as he repeatedly insisted on being called, his suit contained digital readouts of a clock and calendar, formed of flipping tin plates with numbers embossed on them, a signal flare launcher, which could also fire a grappling hook on a cable, a train whistle for signaling, an overflow valve and emergency depressurizer, in case of malfunction, a telescope on his left arm, a microscope on his right, storage bags that hung from his waist, a net launcher for capturing small game, an oil lamp, and a hat in which was set a tiny cage encasing a live messenger pigeon, and, of course, his tap for pouring sherry. The furnace which fueled his suit hung from his middle, like the belly of a pregnant woman; it warmed the interior of our carriage until it was sweltering.
               "My whole suit weighs less than four stones," Dr. Glack boasted. "Yet it expands human abilities beyond normalcy, and I'm not finished adding features. Its movement-assistance offsets its weight."
               "You still haven't told me how you acquire exponential force from tiny pressures," Professor Evermost said.
               "Are you ready to reveal your discoveries of chemically-welding brass?" Dr. Glack asked.
               "I'm ... still working on it," Professor Evermost smiled.
               We arrived at a tall, snow-covered cliff surmounted by a lonely lighthouse dwarfed by a behemoth of dark gray silk. At first glance I thought it was a storm cloud but it was unmistakably a zeppelin. It had two unique features which stood out at once; the bottom of the gondola was shaped like the hull of a marine vessel and, rather than a single huge bag, the hydrogen sacks of this monstrous flying machine were cylindrical: a great hole, larger than any man, opened in its front.
               "The Brobdingnagian!" Dr. Glack grinned proudly, raising his glass.
               "Why the open cylinder?" I asked, looking up at the zeppelin.
               "Speed," Dr. Glack said. "The Brobdingnagian doesn't hover as long as most, so it has to land when it stops for long periods, but it sails the skies faster than any airship its size. Its propellers are on the inside, so it shoots through the air, and the shape of its hydrogen bags form a cylindrical airfoil. My design, of course."
               I stared up at the massive Brobdingnagian and smiled; my journey, which could finally help me escape from endless poverty, had finally begun. I'd always dreamed of embarking upon a real adventure and this wondrous escapade was starting in style.