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Cobbweb | DruulEmpire | 2

 

Cobb immediately laid back down, woozy from the sudden effort to sit up. He watched as his visitor entered, a well-dressed burly middle-aged gentleman with a kind face and a large mustache.

"He speaks," the man marveled.

"Yes," said Cobb, fighting a rising wave of fatigue, "and ... he asks ... who you are?"

"Dr. Glenholm Jolly, at your service -- and now you know about as much as you did before. And now I'm afraid I must ask you a question. Who are you?"

"Doctor ... Manly ... Aris ... toph ... anes ... Cobb."

"Excellent. I'm glad you included that mouthful of a middle name of yours, as that is not general knowledge. Listen, there's much else to discuss, but I don't know much better a way to start it than to ask -- do you recall freezing to death?"

"Freezing? To death?"

Cobb thought hard. He recalled a clear day in Antarctica, and his body suddenly being covered in wild flashing snakes of lightning. He shook his head. Such a thing was surely impossible, surely just a bad dream. But freezing?

"No. I don't remember ... freezing."

"No matter. You may have been hallucinating warmth towards the end."

Cobb winced as he tried to turn. "Why am I on ... a table?"

"I'm getting to that. It was easiest for us that way, to just lay you out and then steadily drain away the meltwater."

"Meltwater?"

"Sir ... your last journal entry was made back in August 1859. Then you vanished. We found one campsite of yours, where you kept some ancient seeds. By the way ... did you eat any of those seeds?"

"Never." Cobb shook his head vehemently.

"I believe you. They would have been important to proving your Canopican theory. Anyhow ... the Imperial Society finally found you in a great block of ice and brought you back. We've been thawing you out ever since. Frankly, it's a miracle you're alive."

Cobb snickered. "Impossible ... !"

"I absolutely agree, sir -- and yet here we are, holding this conversation."

"Frozen, huh?" Cobb studied Jolly, wondering if he was somehow remembering the stranger's face in some peculiar way. "How long?"

 

Well? How long?


          "an age of wonders"

 
 
 

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