One aspect of this history puzzled me dearly: surely Miss Tonguebright's charisma had been too low for a successful image resurrection? Usually, such operations were performed on the very famous, for only they could possibly supply the necessary range of source material. The explanation, when it hit me, caused me to feel a profound affinity with Professor Bringhome: for he too must have been enamoured of the mousy young woman's strangely appealing image. He too must have given her a personal rating far above any effect she may have had in her real life.

However, all my researches had brought me no closer to uncovering the reasons for Lucinda Tonguebright's suicide. Again, an unfathomable despair shadowed my every thought; a despair kept scarcely at bay by a continuous merging of my senses with the woman's collected works. Even when the music fell silent, still it seemed to echo through the empty rooms of my house, as if through the chambers of the heart. You may imagine my surprise therefore, when, a few days later, I received the following unsolicited message over my communicating engine:

The reader may safely be assured that I did reply to the communication, and in the very first instance, and that I made thereby an appointment to meet with Hildegard Bringhome at the earliest possible convenience.

Her house, conveniently enough, was located in the village of West Didsbury, a well-kempt leafy suburb some few miles outside of Manchester, and not very far from where I myself lived. I arrived there charged with a nervousness I had hardly felt since my early youth. It was the winter of the year by now, and a weighted bank of cloud gave a darkened aspect to the large, and very old house that stood before me. No shred of light escaped from its windows, despite the lateness of the hour.

The door was opened by a young man, a servant of some kind, who ushered me into a dismally lit drawing room; a number of candles, set here and there on the antique furniture, created a flickering dance of shadows rather than any significant illumination. One wall was entirely filled with books, and it was with these that I settled my nerves as I awaited Miss Bringhome's arrival. One volume was a handsomely bound copy of Emerson and Scott's Tables of Charisma, the rare 2077 edition. I had opened this at random, and was studying the entries for whatever year it had fallen to, when a voice at my back announced, 'We have similar tastes, I see.'

Startled, I turned around, the book still open in my hands. Seated before me, in a corner of the room not even the candlelight dared approach, was an old woman. She was dressed in a simple off-white shift, above which her lined, wizened face seemed to float in the gloom. 'Miss Bringhome,' I stuttered, 'You surprised me. I did not think-'

'Please, sit down,' the old woman answered. 'We have much to discuss.'

I took the seat proffered, some distance from where she herself was perched. The woman had a face that seemed to shift constantly between aspects - at one moment she would appear old beyond measure; at other times, a glimpse of the strikingly beautiful young woman she must once have been would shine through the furrowed mask. We talked a little of her father, and she revealed that he had died in 2053, at the age of thirty-nine; 'old', as she said, 'well before his time, and dragged down by that wretched Xikon business'.

Upon hearing the company spoken of thus, I immediately asked for details of the scandal. I might well have been more circumspect, had I anticipated her reaction.

'Scandal!' she said, fairly hissing the word. 'I will have no such word mentioned. No such word, do you hear? My father followed the company's orders to the letter. Later, they claimed he had failed them. That could not be further from the truth. If anything, my father was too successful with his workings. Too damned successful!'

The curse shocked me, coming from such an elderly personage. Hoping to conduct the conversation back to gentler ground, I enquired about the proposal mentioned in the letter.

'That is simply stated,' the old woman replied. 'I have prepared my father's various papers for your inspection.' She referred here to several bound notebooks set on a small table beside my chair. 'It would give me great comfort, sir, if you were to look over them.'

'Miss Bringhome… I feel hardly qualified for such-'

'I wish only that you would read my father's notebooks. That is all I ask. And that you write a short report, giving your honest opinion as to the work's commercial viability. I have a great desire, you see, that my father's reputation should be salvaged, and by an academic such as yourself.'

'If I may venture… is it not a little late, for…"

I could hardly finish the sentence.

'Sir! You speak of lateness, to one as old as I? I have waited many years for someone to take an interest in my father's work. I shall not be ungenerous, let me assure you.'

If only to calm the lady down, I quickly agreed to the sum mentioned. In truth, I was already eager to take the papers away with me, the better to study them. Even this was against her wishes, however: 'I cannot allow the papers out of my sight,' she said. 'I will ask you therefore to accept the hospitality of my home while you make your report.'

So began my sojourn in the old woman's house. I moved in the very next day, bringing with me a few simple provisions, clothes and suchlike, along with some of my textbooks. I was given a spacious bedroom of my own; the very same one, I was informed, that her father had slept in. Pausing only to ruminate upon the twisted pathway that had brought me to this most curious task, I opened the first notebook of Professor Bringhome and started to read:

'Some people', he began, 'burn themselves into the film-strip, the photographic plate, the painted portrait, the pixels, the vinyl disc, the video screen. Admitting of their magical presence, we call these people photogenic, audiogenic. Or more simply, and even if they are ugly, we call them beautiful. We say they have "charisma", from the Greek kharis; a religious term, signifying a divinely bestowed power or talent. To say that these favoured few belong not only to their time, but to all times, is a long-held poetic truth. However, I now believe that such transcendence is a physical fact of the universe itself. The great and the good do not die; rather, their base matter transforms into pure, undiluted image, contained alive within the traces of all they have touched. There they await us, scattered in clouds of information, pending only the invention of a suitable gathering device.'

It was a standard text, in all honesty, and typical of the time; only the final statement - that charisma was a physical property of the universe - seemed out of the ordinary. Certainly, in all my readings I had not come across this idea before. I automatically presumed the professor was speaking allegorically. But as my days and nights at the house progressed, I came to see that he had a material, if somewhat delusional, ambition behind the philosophical ramblings. He evidently believed such a machine could be built; a machine that would gather charisma from the ether. He referred to this as the Charisma Engine.