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Shadows and Fogg, Part the First

"'Well do it, then!'


'Go around the world in 80 days?'
'Yes!'
'All right then.'
'Starting when?'
'Starting now.'"
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter I

Summer's here, and it's time for a trip. This time, we're not merely going across the country, we're going around the
world. And who better to guide us than the master of the Extraordinary Voyage himself, Jules Verne? This series of
columns takes his great novel Around the World in Eighty Days as its core artifact. (You can get it online if you haven't
read it before.) In addition to the standard secret-historical approach to Verne, his novel, and his character, we'll use
the luxury of vacation stretch to apply the novel to our "Transmission 200" time-war setting.

This will hopefully not only reveal the novel as worthy of our particular brand of eliptonic scrutiny, but also provide a
kind of in-depth case study that GMs and setting builders can use as a model (or itinerary) for their own obsessive
workings. Like Phileas Fogg with his ledger, I'll be marking down a few notions of correspondence where they strike
me, keeping us up to date on our progress through the forest of symbols. And finally, this exercise will also end up
giving some nice little hooks (and, if desired, a largish piece of metaplot or backstory) to link into existing or ongoing
steampunk, Victorian-era, or later games. PCs can replace Fogg and company, aid them, obstruct them, attempt to beat
their time, or merely keep stumbling across Fogg's footprints on their own adventures. So, let's be off, and bon voyage
to us.

" The latter was an enigmatic figure about whom nothing was known, except that he was a thorough gentleman . . .
Although clearly British, Mr Fogg might not have been a Londoner. . . . In sum, he was not a member of any of the
associations that breed so prolifically in the capital of the United Kingdom, from the Harmonic Union to the
Entomological Society, founded chiefly with the aim of exterminating harmful insects."
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter I

There are two surviving (and one suggestively lost) manuscripts of Around the World in Eighty Days, one of which
dates the beginning of the journey as 1858 rather than 1872. Although we should probably continue to assume 1872 as
the target year for the Fogg Working, we'll keep a weather eye on the earlier year. (But that would explain why Fogg
reads The Morning Chronicle, which ceased publication in 1862.) The 1858 mention may have been a shadow or
backlash cast by the successful Fogg operation, or a rehearsal, or even an attempted counter-op remaining faintly
visible in the documentary record. It also might have been the real operation, with Verne's novel a cunningly disguised
bit of disinformation -- in which case, Fogg could not have used conventional terrestrial technology to circle the earth.
An 1858 voyage would have depended rather on secret airships, tunneling machines, or dips into the hollow earth or
hyperspace -- not to mention traveling through the aftermath of the Sepoy Mutiny in India and the ongoing battles in
Kansas, Utah, and elsewhere in an America without a transcontinental railroad. It also becomes far more likely that
Fogg is working against Argus, perhaps to "make straight the way" for the Emperor Norton, who is crowned in 1859.

With that said, the parallels between the series of "eruptions" visible in Orion starting on February 4, 1872 and the
repeated "skyquakes" heard in the skies over Britain in November of 1858 become interesting. Did the sound travel
faster than the light of the irruption, or do we have cause and effect backward? (If the 1858 event is a backlash from
the successful 1872 Working, perhaps that explains it.) Either way, the fiery displays in the northern sky serve as
omens of the upcoming struggle, or perhaps static discharge thrown backward from the energies of the Working.

Verne begins his novel (or his edition of Fogg's report, or his disinformation propaganda, or his forensic reconstruction
of the Working, but we'll stick with "novel" for simplicity's sake) in space-time: "In the year 1872, [at] No. 7 Savile
Row, Burlington Gardens," which is to say, in the West End of London. His hero, Mr. Fogg, "might not have been a
Londoner," but was "clearly British." So who, among our cast of conspirators, does Fogg work for? Verne states

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boldly that he is not a member of the Harmonic Union, which to me would seem to rule out the Lemurians. Nor is he
one of the "Entomological Society, founded chiefly with the aim of exterminating harmful insects," which is as neat a
description of Argus from GURPS Black Ops as I've ever seen. In short, Fogg's membership is probably the obvious,
the occult secret service MI- , the legacy of John Dee. He seeks, for some reason, to "throw a girdle round about the
earth" as Puck does in service to Oberon, though he takes eighty days rather than forty minutes. However, Fogg's
relationship with his club is fraught; they become his adversaries and opponents in the Voyage. This could indicate that
Fogg is another example of the alarming tendency of MI- agents to go rogue, or to develop highly eccentric
individual agendas. Certainly the entire novel is a tale of a man who suddenly goes off the rails (and who literally goes
off them twice).

"In the different phases of his existence, this gentleman gave the impression of being perfectly balanced in all his
parts, weighted and poised, as flawless as a chronometer by Leroy or Earnshaw. The truth was that Phileas Fogg was
precision personified."
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter II

So who -- and what -- is Phileas Fogg? He gets his first name from the obscure St. Phileas, or possibly from a Greek-
French pun philé meaning "lover" and as meaning "ace" in French. (That said, Phileas Fogg and Passepartout are
obviously the Magus and sacred Fool, setting out on their journey through the Tarot.) Thus, the card-loving Phileas
Fogg becomes a "lover of aces." (One researcher claims to have discovered a 5th century B.C. Greek author named
Phileas who wrote a Periplus, or Voyage, but although suggestive, there aren't enough details to say of what.) His last
name most likely stemmed from one W.P. Fogg, of Cleveland, Ohio, who traveled around the world in 1869-1871. Or
did it? The Cleveland Fogg could be another blowback echo, or a precursor, or a rehearsal. Advance scouting or
misdirection laid down by an allied Argus? Or magical ambushes set in place by an Argus less well-disposed to Fogg
and MI- ? We're not really sure who the protagonist is, so we can't really say who the antagonists are, just yet.

Phileas Fogg is a compulsive whist player, a man of strict schedule and no visible emotion. He is described in the
novel as "a genuine piece of machinery," "a real machine," "made of wrought iron," with "the grace and spontaneity of
an automaton," and one who "appeared no more moved than the chronometers on board." This leads one to the
assumption of Fogg as a clockwork or cybernetic automaton, substituting whist perhaps for the Turk's chess as a
decision-making software. In Verne's early story "Master Zacharius," the titular watchmaker puts part of his soul into
his clocks; could Fogg be a final attempt by Zacharius to transmigrate himself into an immortal gear-driven body? We
also note in passing his strong resemblance to Lord Byron, albeit to "one who might have lived a thousand years
without ever growing old." (This kind of thing gives wing to C.J. Beiting's excellent essay "Phileas Fogg --
International Man of Mystery," which identifies Fogg as spy, time traveler, vampire, or robot, and is well worth
perusing not least for comprehensive GURPS stats and for a summary of the novel.)

I also note Fogg's insistence that "the unforeseen does not exist," and his announced intention to "jump --
mathematically" from trains to steamers and so forth. Fogg here seems more familiar with hyperspace than with
normal space -- could he be a Sphinx? He is imperturbable and inscrutable, after all. Fogg might also be an immortal,
with a perspective like that -- a Reptoid, or even a Frankenstein's monster (since he has no known family, and at least
one chronicler has dated The Horror of Frankenstein internally to 1858) or other form of bioroid. While we're on the
subject of automata, it seems that Verne, interestingly, suffered intermediate attacks of facial paralysis. And he wrote
two novels a year for 40 years straight. Do you smell smoke? Do you hear the sound of gears jamming?

"I am the most unknown of men."


-- Jules Verne, letter to Mario Turiello (April 10, 1895)

And we'll never know, because Verne burned all his personal papers in 1898. The author Michel Lamy theorizes that
Jules Verne was a member of a secret artistic collective, Le Brouillard, or the Angelic Society. Per Lamy, Verne left
hints about his membership in this Rosicrucian organization throughout his work (Rose-Croix = Robur the Conqueror,
for example), and many of his novels such as Journey to the Center of the Earth and (of course) Around the World in
Eighty Days can be read as initiatory journeys. The word brouillard also means clouds, or fog. In a 1903 interview,
Verne said "I do attach certain importance to them . . . Yes, there is importance in names." If Lamy is on to something,
then the choice of Fogg is significant. Verne added, "and when I found 'Fogg' I was very pleased and proud. And it

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was very popular. It was considered a real trouvaille. And yet Fogg -- Fogg -- that means nothing but brouillard. But it
was especially Phileas that gave such value to the creation."

We must needs leave the postulated Brouillard society at bay, here, save to note that any of the quantum organizations
in our time war setting might be considered "foggy," since their history (and occasionally their agenda) remains
unsettled, inchoate, and clouded over by constant timeline shifts. Verne himself was a good client of the strangely
esoteric-minded Orleanist line of the French royal family. His own family lineage comes from Provins, the old
Templar stronghold. And he was something of a protégé of Victor Hugo, the Grand Master of the Prieuré de Sion --
and the artist Jean Cocteau, likewise Grand Master of the Prieuré, duplicated Fogg's journey in 1936. Verne's 1896
novel Clovis Dardentor contains not just an echo of the Merovingian king Clovis, but a character (Captain Bugarach)
named after a landscape feature near Rennes-le-Château.

Of course, Verne had a great fondness for geographic names. In the final version, Fogg's valet Passepartout is named
from the French words for "go anywhere" or "skeleton key," a highly significant cryptological clue in its own right.
But in one of the earlier versions, the valet is named "Jean Fernandes," which is an interesting connection to another
Verne obsession, the desert island. The original Robinson Crusoe, Alexander Selkirk, was marooned on the Juan
Ferndandez Islands off the coast of Chile. What's the connection between this mysterious island and the Fogg
Working? We cannot know for sure, but it must be deep. Elsewhere in the draft, Passepartout is named "Jean
Fricaudet," which may come from a French word meaning "plot." And Inspector Fix, of course, is attempting to "fix"
the problem posed by Fogg and Passepartout, whatever it is.

"Do you know, Mr. Passepartout, that this so-called journey in 80 days might easily be the cover for some secret
assignment . . . "
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter IX

One can measure a circle beginning anywhere, but Phileas Fogg begins his circle at the Reform Club. And so Fogg set
out from London, on October 2, 1872 (as the novel has it), at 8:45 p.m., with only Saturn in the sky, but with the Sun,
Moon, and changeable Mercury all together on the other side of the world. This is the cusp between the first and
second decans of Libra. In GURPS Cabal terms, the cusp between Naôth and Marderô, or between communication
and revolution. As a decanic backdrop for a novel of sudden change, it is an interesting choice -- almost as interesting
as Verne's decision to give the novel 37 chapters, one more than the decanic cycle of the year. If we assume that the
first chapter and last chapter both correspond to Naôth, we can build the entire decanic cycle into the novel's structure.
Alternatively, Verne lays out eight legs for Fogg's journey in Chapter III, which would correspond to the eightfold
turning of the year -- again, a complete yearly circle measured in 80 days. Although October 2 falls in the "season" of
Mabon, in the novel, the first leg thematically corresponds more closely to Lugnasadh, the time of preparation. And
Fogg himself breaks his voyage down into 12 legs in his journal -- paralleling the 12 signs of the zodiac, and another
turning of the annual wheel. London to Paris thus becomes Libra, the initial balance -- of Fogg's life, of the magical
order, of conspiratorial power -- prior to upset.

And upset it is. A bare five days after Fogg's October 1872 departure, our old friend Spring-Heeled Jack runs rampant
in the London neighborhood of Peckham, and continues his depredations for two months. (In 1858, rains of insects fall
from Mortagne, France, to Warsaw, Poland. Simultaneously, the Foggishly mechanical savant and chess champion
Paul Morphy toured Europe.) Time begins to fold -- the bank robbery takes place variously on September 28 and
September 29 in different chapters of the novel. And although his schedule reports stops in Paris, Turin, and Brindisi,
Phileas Fogg remains resolutely off stage while a series of intricate nested flashbacks ends with a telegram sent
recursively into an earlier chapter. Verne is opening up the "wide gap of time" in his own way. Fogg has vanished out
of time, space, and the narrative -- he is free to pursue a secret agenda. Although the novel notes Fogg's arrival at Suez
on October 9, it would no doubt be the work of a moment for an MI- agent to double back and intercept a fallen
meteorite in Soko-Banja, Serbia on October 13, 1872 (when Fogg was ostensibly off Mocha in Yemen). This meteorite
was composed, so the local scientific experts discovered, of an unknown mineral they called banjite. A second
meteorite, of the same mineral, hit 17 years later in the nearby town of Jelica -- and after Verne's death, a manuscript
called The Hunt for the Meteor was discovered amongst his effects.

Next: Shadows and Fogg, Part the Second: In Which We Encounter Death And The Maiden

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Shadows and Fogg, Part the Second
"'Have you just arrived from London?'
'Yes.'
'Heading for . . . ?'
'Bombay.'
'Very good, sir. You know that stamping serves no purpose and that we no longer require the presentation of
passports?'
'I do,' answered Phileas Fogg; 'but I wish to use your stamp to prove I have passed through Suez.'"
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter VII

Welcome to the second leg of our voyage around Around the World in Eighty Days. Our postulate is, well, foggy. In
our first leg, we decided that Verne's novel is a record, whether information or disinformation, of a certain Working
performed by an agent of one of several time- and reality-spanning conspiracies, as we established in our 200th
Transmission some time ago. The novel recapitulates three cycles of the year as it spins Fogg around the earth; the
decanic, the seasonal, and the astrological. Each of Fogg's 12 legs (by his own count) is one more sign of the zodiac
passed through. Paris to Brindisi is Scorpio, and Brindisi to Suez is Sagittarius, an auspicious sign (an arrow of
wisdom) if our earlier theory is true that Fogg is somehow connected with anomalous falls of meteorites. Finally,
although Verne's earlier manuscript gave the (impossible) date of 1858 for Fogg's Voyage, we've resolved to stay with
the canonical 1872 for the most part.

"It was obvious, on seeing Mr. Fogg maneuver, that he had been a sailor before."
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter XXXIII

Much of the novel, necessarily, takes place at sea. Verne, like Fogg, was an avid yachtsman, sailing all over the
Mediterranean and up to the British Isles, on his yacht the Saint-Michel. One is immediately reminded, in that junction
between sea and St. Michael, of Mont-Saint-Michel, the so-called ley anchor of the "dragon line" on its rocky fastness
off the coast of Normandy. Is the 37th parallel of Verne's famous Children of Captain Grant (also called In Search of
the Castaways) a similar exercise in magical working? Was Lord Glenarvan's circumnavigation of the earth -- set in
1864 -- another rehearsal for the Fogg Working? Note that the 37th parallel, well, parallels the number of chapters in
Around the World in Eighty Days. Likewise, 37 kabbalistically equates to "HBL," which is to say "vapor," or . . . "fog."
Very interesting. Similarly, Verne's choice of names for his yacht is another indicator that Michel Lamy might be onto
something when he taps Verne as a key Rosicrucian initiate of the "Angelic Society," Le Brouillard. Saint Michael --
Saint-Michel -- is, after all, an archangel. Verne wasn't all angels on the ocean, of course; in a few surviving letters he
refers to a "unique siren" whom he entertained on his yacht -- was he learning secrets from the Lamia, or dickering
with the maidens of the cantosphere for pearls of story?

"Rarely was he seen on deck. He made little effort to observe this Red Sea, so redolent in memories and the theatre of
the opening scenes of human history. He did not come and observe the fascinating towns crowded along its banks,
whose picturesque silhouettes sometimes appeared on the horizon. He did not even dream about the dangers of this
Gulf of Arabia which the Classical historians Strabo, Arrian, Artemidorus, and Idrisi always spoke of with horror. In
the olden days sailors never ventured out on it without first consecrating their journey with propitiatory sacrifices."
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter IX

According to Verne's novel, Fogg departs Suez on time on October 9, 1872. That date is 290 years after Pope Gregory
decreed the Gregorian Calendar, which interestingly eliminated the days October 5 through 14 -- a hole in time through
which Fogg easily slips, whether to gather meteorites for apotheosis or to prepare to enter India Ultraterrestria, the
domain of the Sphinxes. Either way, the trip down the Red Sea is both uneventful and uncanny. Fogg plays whist the
whole way down, reading the flows of magic or the threads of the future, or possibly just running programs in his
external operating system. Response is left to Passepartout, who notes that "I seem to be travelling in a dream." When
they reach Aden, he sees the basins carved by the "engineers of King Solomon" and then they emerge through the Bab
el-Mandab, the "Gate of Tears" into the Indian Ocean. Here Fogg joins Sinbad, taking on psychic juice from the

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previous seven initiatory voyages to "India," the uttermost Otherworld. He has refused to make the "propitiatory
sacrifices," inviting death and the attention of the guardians of the Gate.

"Captain Nemo was an Indian, Prince Dakkar, the son of a rajah of the then independent territory of Bundelkhand and
a nephew of the Indian hero, Tippu-Sahib. His father sent him to Europe when he was ten years old in order that he
receive a complete education with the secret intention that he would fight one day with equal arms against those
whom he considered to be the oppressors of his country."
-- Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island, Chapter XVI

Fogg arrives in India on October 20, 1872, just as he is finishing his 33rd rubber of whist. When Bombay is sighted, all
the planets but the Moon are up -- the virgin is hidden and the Sphinxes are alert. He remains outside of time, having
gained two days on his schedule, and Passepartout once more feels the uncanny nature of the voyage, unable to believe
that he is traveling through India. In India, the novel leaves not only time but geography behind. Fogg's train stops in
Rothal station -- the tracks end, and there is no straight path ahead. Interestingly, there is no Rothal station on any map
of India, nor is there, contra Verne, a Kholby, Pillaji, or Kandallah in the region. That this concentration of fictive
locations comes just when Fogg has left the rails -- literally -- cannot be mere coincidence. No, Fogg is deep inside
India Ultraterrestria, riding an elephant half-mad and half-sane (only half-trained for war, driven by a similarly dualist
Parsee). This entry into the Otherworld was signposted by Verne's references to "hypogaea" and "grottoes" on the way
from Bombay. This leg of the journey is the third of eight: Samhain, the entry into Death; it is the fifth of twelve:
Aquarius, the house of Saturn, master of death and time.

What is Fogg doing here? He is drawing a line behind him, laying down footprints to bind the Sphinxes into the reality
that MI-8 enforces. In the novel, he is aiming for Allahabad, where there was a fall of fish in 1836, and a fall of
"perfectly similar" stones in 1802. Obviously, the local reality is weak, and Fogg again homes in on the anomaly. And
he is trying to lure his foes into revealing his true target. He enters the "uncontrolled" kingdom of Bundelkhand, still in
1872 a no-space in British Imperial cartography. Here, he meets a clutch of Tarot cards -- the Juggernaut Car, or
Chariot, the Emperor (reversed in death), the Empress (Aouda), and of course Death. Aouda, the Parsee heiress, is
trapped in a suttee, a marriage sacrifice, overseen by the goddess Kali and defended by an army of murderous Thugs.
This is the Sphinx court with a vengeance, down to the ceremonial necrolatry seen in their Egyptian kingdom. But
Fogg has been ready for this encounter with the Maiden Aouda and the Mother Kali -- he gave an offering of twenty
guineas to the Crone in London and bought her forebearance. He rescues the Maiden, although interestingly it is
Passepartout (a proxy? a hijacker?) who actually undergoes the shamanic entry into death, masquerading as the dead
rajah of Bundelkhand and rising again with Aouda in his grasp.

Bundelkhand would still have been in mutinous uproar in 1858 -- and at its heart would have been the Rajah Dakkar,
who would later go on to a piratical career as Captain Nemo. Verne presents the identification of Nemo and Dakkar in
The Mysterious Island, but there are some major problems with it. We are told that Captain Nemo is an old man --
nearly 70 -- when he tells his life story on the Mysterious Island. "It has been thirty years" since he left India in 1858,
which would set his present in 1888 -- and "sixteen years" since his encounter with Professor Arronax in 1867, which
would likewise set his present in 1883. And the discovery of Dakkar in The Mysterious Island itself takes place in 1868
-- during the events of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea that it supposedly recalls from sixteen years ago! Nemo and the
Nautilus are unstuck in time -- the Maelstrom that seemingly sank his submarine was a temporal vortex, possibly a
mine set to prevent the Nautilus from circumnavigating the globe in 1867. So who is Nemo? If he is Dakkar, he may
well be a Sphinx, but he has the technological feel of a Reptoid or a Lemurian (the Nautilus draws electricity straight
from seawater) and the manias (for art, Antarctica, and U-boats) of an Ahnenerbe agent. (In The Other Log of Phileas
Fogg, Philip Jose Farmer postulates that Dakkar is not merely Nemo but also Professor Moriarty. This is just silly.) He
might, in fact, be both -- in Verne's original manuscript for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Nemo was a Polish
nobleman. Perhaps the Maelstrom overwrote the Polish Nemo with the Indian (Sphinx?) Nemo, as the Nautilus passed
through the Otherworld.

"At half-past twelve the train halted at Benares Station. The Brahmin legends maintain that this town is built on the
spot where Kasi was situated, suspended in space between the zenith and the nadir, like Mohammed's Tomb."
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter XIV

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Benares is halfway between heaven and Earth. It was the original Sarnath, where the Buddha first preached suspension
from reality. This stop thus reflects another Vernian concern, the city or island or cavern apart from humanity. Verne
has a strong utopian strain running through him, from The Begum's Fortune to The Mysterious Island to The Black
Indies. He was a Saint-Simonian, following that French reactionary socialist who (in another weird parallel to
Merovingian symbolism) saw society in the shape of bees, and vice versa. He was familiar with, and perhaps
influenced by, the utopian Fourier, who helped shape the American Spiritualist movement and who went so far as to
assert that the world was a living electrical organism. Verne was friends with the Saint-Simonian and self-proclaimed
Druid Dr. Ange Guepin, and with the Reclus brothers, two anarchists who proclaimed the "City of Good Will" and
narrowly escaped deportation to Devil's Island as a result. Verne thus becomes a kind of living transmission belt
between the wild dreams of the Lemurians or Sphinxes (complete with aeronefs and moon-cannons -- echoes no doubt
of ancient flying vimana craft) and the human world to be influenced by them. Which perhaps makes it all the stranger
that he should be the conduit for the Fogg Working, if it was indeed an attempt to pinch off (or hijack) the energies of
India Ultraterrestria for the benefit of MI-8 and their Occult Empire.

"The applause was just increasing and the orchestra's instruments bursting like claps of thunder, when the pyramid
suddenly jerked to and fro, the equilibrium was lost . . . and the whole structure came crashing down like a house of
cards."
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter XXIII

Having reached Calcutta, Fogg and Passepartout must face the stern Judge Obadiah -- Justice in our Tarot progress --
and pay ransom to escape the Otherworld, just like Heracles or Orpheus. They then sail on the Rangoon past the
(devil-haunted?) Andaman Islands, past "beings on the lowest rung of the human scale." On October 31, Fogg reaches
Singapore, again playing whist the whole time, manipulating his voyage with the constant interplay of cards.

Fogg reaches Hong Kong on November 6. This is the seventh leg of the twelve, Aries in our symbolic zodiac.
Moreover, it is Yule, the season after Samhain (and as we've seen, directly after Samhain -- October 31 -- in Singapore
according to the text). And during Yule, the King dies and returns to life; and once again Passepartout plays proxy for
Fogg. He is dosed with opium by Fix (possibly working for the Lemurians or the Sphinxes attempting a counter-attack
-- but playing into Fogg's hands all the same), and is placed insensible on a boat of the dead, the Carnatic. The real
S.S. Carnatic, as Verne would surely have known, went down in the Gulf of Suez in 1869, killing 31 people. Is this
why Fogg failed to offer sacrifices at Suez, at the entrance to the Red Sea -- the hope of catching a ride on the ship of
the dead, cutting a wake through the twelve hours of the night and into the bright Pacific?

If so, his plan came true only for Passepartout -- Fogg was forced to fight the tempest between Hong Kong and
Shanghai. While Fogg was delayed by the storm, Passepartout was forced to take a job in a Yokohama circus. He
played a Long Nose clown, "under the special protection of the god Tengu." Tengu is a mischievous bird spirit who
preys on travelers -- not, you'd think, ideal for Passepartout (and therefore Fogg) to venerate by service. (Tengu smells
like a Reptoid to me.) But sure enough, Passepartout and Fogg reunited under Tengu's gaze and at that point
Passepartout broke the human pyramid that Tengu's Hognels had formed on top of a Juggernaut. He had clowned the
clowns, misruled the mummers, and he and Fogg escaped out onto the Pacific on November 14, 1872. During their
Pacific crossing, Verne manages to lose four more days -- at 12 knots, the General Grant crosses the "4,700 miles" of
the Pacific Ocean in only 17 days, not the 21 Verne quotes. The "wide gap of time" stretches open, and more ejecta
fall through it. Cinders fell on the Seven Stones lightship off Cornwall on November 13, 1872, and a swarm of meteors
appeared instead of the predicted Biela's Comet two weeks later, as Fogg and company steam across the Pacific. The
Fogg Working continues its spin, and the earth and the heaven jerk and wobble under it.

Next: Shadows and Fogg, Part the Third: In Which Fogg Discovers the Land Promised to the Saints

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Shadows and Fogg, Part the Third
"Nine days after leaving Yokohama, Phileas Fogg had gone round exactly half the terrestrial globe."
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter XXIV

Here we are on the third stretch of our voyage around Around the World in Eighty Days, and by now, we're far enough
around the world that we can start seeing where we've been. Verne's novel reflects (or records, or disinforms) a
geomantic Working (or meteor-hunting mission, or both) performed in 1872 (or 1858, the date given in Verne's
unpublished first draft) by an agent (or agents) of one (or more) transdimensional conspiracies first interleaved in our
200th Transmission way back when. The novel's 37 chapters mark off the 36 decans (the first and last, of course, take
place in the same scene -- it's a circle), the twelve legs of Fogg's journey (by his own count) mark off the twelve signs
of the zodiac. Verne also divides the journey into eight ports of call (in Chapter III), which match the eight-fold
turnings of the wheel of the year.

For example, per the novel Fogg crosses the 180th meridian in the middle of the Pacific on the cusp date of November
23, 1872. This takes place in Chapter XXIV, the 24th decan around from Naôth in our chapter-map, which is to say
Ouare, the third decan of Taurus and governor of technology. Technology does indeed underpin the book, does indeed
mirror Naôth, communication, as one of Verne's themes. (The actual decan of November 23 is Anatreth, the decan of
movement, yet another theme of the novel. Interesting coincidence, that.) The voyage across the Pacific (Yokohama to
San Francisco) is the ninth leg by Fogg's count, and the ninth house around from Libra (when we set out from Fogg's
balanced life) is Gemini. By Verne's count, it is the voyage from Imbolc to Ostara, from first fire to full spring,
eminently suitable for Fogg's journey to the New World and the young republic of America.

"It now seemed certain that Fogg wouldn't stop at Yokohama, that he would immediately catch the steamship for San
Francisco, since America's vast spaces would guarantee him sanctuary and impunity. Phileas Fogg's plan struck him
as perfectly simple."
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter XXI

As he has throughout, it is Passepartout who takes the mystical heat for Fogg. He is the first to set foot on America, in
classical Fool style by attempting to execute "a perfect somersault." (A tiny circle, an epicycle if you will, of the larger
Working?) But he winds up falling through the wood of the dock, wrong-footing himself, and symbolically absorbing
the magical blowback from Fogg's extension of the Working circuit to a new node.

To Verne, America was a powerful symbol of inexhaustible natural resources, a kind of a capacitor for vast potential
power. In Around the World in Eighty Days, as well as in other novels such as The Begum's Fortune, From the Earth
to the Moon, North against South, and The Master of the World, Verne points up this notion of a vast America as
Arcadian source of almost cosmic energy. As America's genius locus, Abraham Lincoln appears in both 20,000
Leagues Under the Sea (in a portrait on board the Nautilus) and Around the World in Eighty Days (in a flashback
describing the building of the transcontinental railway -- a Working in its own right, perhaps) despite being dead by
the time either novel takes place. Despite being dead, Abraham Lincoln also appeared in the America of 1872 -- his
ghost manifested itself to Mrs. Lincoln on February 4.

"The weather was cold, and the sky grey, but the snow was no longer falling. The disc of the sun, enlarged by the mist,
seemed like an enormous gold coin. Passepartout was in the middle of calculating its value in pounds sterling, when
he was distracted from this useful occupation by the appearance of rather a strange personage."
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter XXVII

And America, and San Francisco in particular, are also seen (by Passepartout, and by Verne) as lands of gold. Verne's
attitude toward gold appears dismissive -- in Five Weeks in a Balloon, Dr. Fergusson uses it as ballast, and the Volcano
of Gold in the end erupts its molten wealth uselessly into the ocean. Likewise, the meteor of pure gold in Verne's
intriguingly named Hunt for the Meteor explodes and drizzles into the sea, and in Hector Servadac, a mighty comet of
golden telluride carries a few men into outer space rather than enriching them. But this is the kind of metaphor, we're
told, that alchemists engage in. Gold is only a symbol -- of its use, or of the heart's desire. The true gold -- in Verne's

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world as well as that of the alchemists and magi -- is knowledge.

"The inauguration of the great railway was thus celebrated, and an instrument of progress and civilization thrown
across the desert, designed to link towns and cities that had not yet come into existence. The whistle of the locomotive,
more powerful than Amphion's Lyre, would soon make them sprout from the American soil."
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter XXVII

And thus Fogg plunges into the American Arcadia, seeking the "gold" of the Philosopher's Stone, the True Knowledge.
All America is one leg of twelve, one house of heaven. By our strict count, it should be oceanic Cancer, but golden
Leo seems more appropriate. (Perhaps the "wide gap of time" in mid-Pacific advances us by one house, or is America
in truth both silver Moon of Cancer and golden Sun of Leo?) Either way, Fogg once more plays whist all the way
across the continent by train, continuously mapping his journey in the flow of chance, or determining his fate by means
of his pasteboard operating system. Is he searching for something, perhaps? Intriguingly, the plot of the Verne novel
An Eccentric's Will concerns a great fortune which can be won only by traveling across the American landscape in
certain paths and patterns determined by the throw of dice.

Here, guided by the fall of cards as in his whist-powered passage into India, Fogg enters a magical no-place, the
America Ultraterrestria perhaps sought and circled by Lewis and Clark on their own Working 67 years before. Verne
describes the "fields and watercourses" of America as disappearing "under a uniform whiteness." (This is also
approximately where the first draft manuscript of Verne's novel ends, with Fogg vanishing into "America's vast
spaces.") In the final version of the novel, Verne clearly parallels America and India. Both have religiously inspired
marriage customs that Fogg's party reject -- suttee in Bundelkhand, polygamy in Utah; both have "Indian troubles"
with the railroad and indeed are attacked with arrows; both feature interrupted rail journeys; both feature a rescue.
Both have Golcondas in them (the one in Nevada is on the rail line, though not mentioned in the novel), and phantom
places in both are noted in Verne's manuscript. Just like the elusive stations of Rothal and Kandallah in India, Fogg
travels through the nonexistent Plum Creek, Junction Station, and Camp Walbah in America.

"Two hours were enough to visit this thoroughly American town, built on the pattern of every city in the Union: huge
chessboards with long cold lines, infused with 'the lugubrious sadness of the right angle', as Victor Hugo says."
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter XXVII

Only the line of the railroad stretches across this vastness, from the nonexistent stations of the West to the "towns with
ancient names, some with streets and trams but no houses built in them as yet" in the East. All America is empty,
waiting for the "fiat urbis" of the train whistle. Or is the train whistle resonating with some hidden frequency,
established along the "huge chessboards" of the American towns? Likewise, the ice-sledge crossing the "deserted"
Nebraska plains summons up the station as the wind in the rigging makes "the fifth and the octave," an invocation
perhaps of Hermes lord of the crossroads -- the "X" that marks the spot for the True City of Cibola.

Verne places Utopian cities -- Saint-Simonian "cities of good will" -- in deserts and trackless spots in his books, such
as Antekirtta in the Sahara in Mathias Sandorf, and Coal City in the depths of a subterranean mine in The Black Indies.
And Franceville, in The Begum's Fortune -- which Verne locates in Oregon, of all places. Is there here a glint of
Mount Shasta, perhaps an MI-8 stake laid down for the Lemurians in their war against Argus for the American West?
Why does Fogg -- the time-obsessed un-tourist -- go two hours out of his way to visit Salt Lake City? Is he examining
the "huge chessboard" at the heart of the Land Promised to the (Latter-Day) Saints? Can he see Brendan's Isle, the
Grail Land, down its "long cold lines"? Fogg enters the empty quarter, and again Passepartout, not Fogg, undergoes the
initiatory captivity and ceremonial death -- his third after India and Hong Kong. Once more, we note the time-twisting
nature of such things; in the novel, Fogg and party (including the restored Passepartout) visit Fort Kearney in 1872,
whereas in reality Fort Kearney was abandoned in 1871. Is this "ghost fort" a guard post on the way into America
Ultraterrestria, a "railroad bull" watching the approaches to the Big Rock Candy Mountain? And if so, what did
Passepartout bring back from that undiscovered country?

"Never was a duel easier to arrange. Mr Fogg and Colonel Proctor, each equipped with two six-shooters, entered the
carriage. Their seconds, remaining outside, shut them in. On the first whistle blast from the locomotive, they were to
open fire. . . . Then, after exactly two minutes, what remained of the gentlemen would be removed from the carriage."

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-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter XXIX

But in order to leave the sacred space, the American Arcadia, with the Grail of golden knowledge, Fogg would have to
fight its champion, perhaps its king. He meets "Colonel Stamp Proctor" in San Francisco, "a great strapping man with
broad shoulders, a red goatee, and a ruddy complexion." Could this Yankee be an avatar of Uncle Sam? A genius
locus of Utah, where "Proctor" is a stop on the Pacific Line? Is he a mere watchman (a "proctor") guarding the
approaches? Or is he something more?

He reappears at the suggestively named Green River Station. When he challenges Fogg to a duel, Fogg attempts to
suggest a date six months in advance, recalling, perhaps, the Green Knight's challenge. Proctor provokes the duel by
criticizing Fogg's whist playing, suggesting a diamond instead of Fogg's ten of spades (a pentacle instead of the
sword). Is Proctor suggesting a magical duel? It seems neither, for all their bluster, really want to test the waters. But
Fogg plays the ten of spades -- the Ten of Swords -- the "stab in the back," the card of desolation, of ruin. (Per
Crowley, the card of "soulless mechanism." Interesting that Fogg would play that.) And so the two prepare to duel, in
the sealed train carriage fifty feet long, recapitulating the dimensions of the burial chamber in the Red Pyramid of
Dashur. And at the end, it is Stamp Proctor who receives the Dolorous Blow -- "a bullet in the groin." Verne blames
the Sioux, not Fogg -- but then Fogg somehow leaves Passepartout to the Sioux for the third ritual death.

And 14 years later, Verne may have suffered his own backlash from the contest. On March 9, 1886, Verne's nephew
Gaston -- "with whom he had maintained the most affectionate relations" -- shot the novelist in his left leg during an
apparent assassination attempt. Eight days later, his publisher Pierre Hetzel died. Desolation. Ruin. The Dolorous
Blow. Verne sold his beloved yacht, and the Extraordinary Voyager never again left France.

Next: Shadows and Fogg, Part the Fourth: In Which We Measure A Circle Ending Anywhere

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Shadows and Fogg, Part the Fourth
"'I am Phileas Fogg of London.'
'And I am Andrew Speedy of Cardiff.'
'You are leaving . . .'
'In an hour's time.'
'Where are you heading?'
'Bordeaux.'
'And your cargo?'
'Stones in the belly. No freight. I'm travelling ballasted.'"
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter XXXII

Just before this eerie ritualistic exchange, Jules Verne describes Captain Speedy as having "a complexion of oxidized
copper," which is to say, green. Is "Andrew Speedy, of Cardiff" a Reptoid? Perhaps it is but a coincidence that the
dinosaur-descended birds, like some reptiles today, swallow "stones in the belly" to aid digestion. Or perhaps the
"stones in the belly" indicate the gods devoured by Saturn, god of time. Is Speedy indicating that he is part of the
temporal conspiracy MI-8, or whichever one it is that Fogg actually belongs to? Or that his allegiance is actually to
Ahnenerbe, or the Sphinxes, who wish to return Earth to its original orbit around the ringed planet? Or perhaps "stones
in the belly" refers to the cargo of anomalous meteorites that Fogg has hypothetically been gathering on his 1872 (or
1858, if we are to believe an early draft of Verne's novel) voyage around the world. Meteorites such as the Marblehead
meteorite of 1858, regarding whose meteoric origins scientific investigators of the time found "negative evidence." Just
our kind of evidence. Very suspicious. Meteors from nowhere, and a Reptoid from Wales, leaving in an hour's time.

Oh, right. For those just joining us, we're journeying around Around the World in Eighty Days in eighty hundred words
or thereabouts, and we're almost done. In our first leg, we decided that, of the time-war conspiracies from the 200th
Transmission, Fogg was most likely an agent of MI-8, and hinted that Verne himself has some shady Rosicrucian
connections, perhaps with the Prieuré Sion themselves. And we realized one can map Fogg's eighty days around the
world to either the 36 decans (matching the 37 chapters of the novel -- the first and last overlap), the twelve signs of
the zodiac (matching the 12 legs of the journey in Fogg's ledger), or the eightfold turning of the year (matching Verne's
own summary of the voyage in eight legs, in Chapter III). In our second leg, we proposed that Fogg was laying some
sort of ley line into the blank and twisty reaches of India Ultraterrestria, and playing rather a dangerous hand of Tarot
whist the while, although it's always his valet Passepartout who winds up dead. On our third leg, we noted a similar
pattern in America Ultraterrestria, and that Fogg has now beaten Death, dueled with the Green Knight, and possibly
retrieved a Grail of some (meteoric?) sort. And we learned all of this by reading Verne's novel very, very closely.
Closely enough to see the patterns that always seem to emerge in these instances.

" Nevertheless, some way of sailing across the Atlantic had to be found -- unless it was to be crossed by balloon --
which would have been highly risky and, in any case, impossible."
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter XXXII

And in the absence of such a close reading, one can be forgiven for believing that Fogg and party at some point travel
by balloon during their voyage. After all, such a balloon appears in all three filmed versions of the novel, and Jules
Verne made his name with Five Weeks in a Balloon, about a trip across Africa in a lighter-than-air craft. Verne's close
friend "Nadar" was a pioneer balloonist, and possibly tied in with the "Angelic Society" -- what, after all could be
more elevating than flight? But there is no balloon in Around the World in Eighty Days, and the absence aches like a
missing tooth. One suspects that Verne is covering something up. 1872 is not a particularly fruitful year for UFO
sightings, although there were two sightings 44 days apart over Grand Island and Muskegon, Michigan -- though in the
summer, before Fogg (allegedly) left London. On December 7, 1872, conversely, while Fogg is in America, a "burning
hayrick" appears over Banbury in England. Distractions? Reflections? Sorcerous static? In Verne's first-draft year of
1858, on the other hand, a "large and wondrously constructed vessel . . . worked by wheels and mechanical
appendages" of extraordinary precision and beauty appeared (according to a contemporary publication, The Illustrated
Silent Friend) over Jay, Ohio. This is the heyday of the strange and enigmatical Sonora Aero Club, with its own eerie

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parallels to Verne's Robur the Conqueror, building secret airships on a hidden American plateau. But Verne, as I say,
keeps silent -- wisely, in retrospect, given that his publishing Robur's story in 1886 led (as we learned last time) to an
assassination attempt carried out by his own nephew.

"I'm collecting notes upon persons supposed to have been struck by lightning. I think that high approximation to
positivism has often been achieved -- instantaneous translation -- residue of negativeness left behind, looking much
like effects of a stroke of lightning. Some day I shall tell the story of the Marie Celeste -- 'properly' . . . mysterious
disappearance of a sea captain, his family, and the crew --"
-- Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned

And that's not even the biggest mystery Verne dances around. While Fogg is traveling across the Pacific on the
General Grant, another ship, the Mary Celeste, is crossing the Atlantic. Some time between November 25, 1872 (while
Fogg is somewhere north of Hawaii) and December 3, 1872 (a day Fogg spends in San Francisco -- convenient to
Sonora and its Aero Club?), the crew of the Mary Celeste vanished into thin air. The good ship Dei Gratia discovered
the derelict on December 4 with her cargo of alcohol (almost) intact, her longboat gone, her hatches open, and three
and a half feet of water in the hold. Perhaps most significantly for the temporally focused nature of the Fogg Working,
the Mary Celeste was missing both her sextant and her chronometer.

The opposite fate occurs on Fogg's transatlantic passage, on board the steamer Henrietta, which is burned to the hull
plate as the passengers (and time) are relentlessly tracked across the ocean, even carved into the global cantosphere.
The Henrietta is paid for "twice over" despite being burnt, a kind of phoenix ritual (during the fiery Leo leg of the
voyage) in the empty Atlantic. The Mary Celeste becomes a kind of photo-negative proxy for Fogg's passage, an
Opener of the Way across the Atlantic, its crew a sacrificial scapegoat given over to whoever -- or Whatever --
opposes the implacable, machine-like Englishman.

" These are dangerous waters. In the winter especially, there are very frequent fogs, and the storms are formidable.
The day before the barometer had gone down abruptly, and it was now giving warning of an impending change in the
atmosphere. And indeed the temperature changed during the night, the cold became sharper, and at the same time the
wind veered to the south-east."
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter XXXIII

And in the novel, as he crosses the Atlantic Fogg finds himself opposed by -- fog. The way across the water turns
cloudy and cold, congealing like the sea encountered by Brendan the Blest when he crossed the other direction 13
centuries before. The fog recalls the "uniform whiteness" of America Ultraterrestria, a "uniform whiteness" of blank
spots on the map and the charnel houses of the Sphinx that Fogg had thought left behind in Indian country. In the
novel, Fogg merely bulls ahead through sheer English stubbornness, but Verne left plenty of hints in his other works.
In his 1897 novel The Sphinx of the Ice, Verne wrote a sequel to Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, in which his
heroes travel through a curtain of fog to discover Pym impaled on a gigantic magnetic Sphinx. Of course the novel, set
in 1839, directly contradicts Poe's story, which is narrated by a surviving Pym in 1836. Again, Verne hints at a time-
nexus, a vortex similar to the one that swallowed, and perhaps over-wrote, or duplicated, Captain Nemo in 1868.
Clearly, to get across the Atlantic, to get through the barrier of uniform whiteness that carries his own name, Fogg
must sacrifice himself; he must die and be reborn. Is the ritual sacrifice (beginning on December 19, the Opalia, the
feast of Ops, a Roman aspect of Cybele) of the Henrietta (and of the crew of the Mary Celeste) enough? Apparently it
is, at least enough to put off the confrontation with himself (or his vortex-spawned double) until he lands in Liverpool.

"The honourable gentleman vanished and his place was taken by the thief of the banknotes. His photograph, available
at the Reform Club with those of all his colleagues, was duly studied. Every single feature in it appeared identical to
those of the description produced by the enquiries."
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter V

In Liverpool, Fogg is clapped in jail as a bank robber, imprisoned for the actions of his evil twin. This is the eighth
station, the turning of Litha, Midsummer, and the sacrificial contest between the Oak King and Holly King, between
aspects of the Dying and Reborn God, celebrated in midwinter in the novel as Fogg twists and stretches time. But
fortunately, a solution presents itself -- the next day, Fogg is told that his double, "Slater," was arrested in Edinburgh.

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Why Edinburgh? Well, it was the home of the original "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Deacon William Brodie, giving it a
powerful aura of duplicity. Verne may have been alluding, Rosicrucian-style, to the lost Stuart heir (a Scot, of course)
and the "shadow court" of his Prieur?patrons. It may be significant in this connection that (the royal) Aouda's disguise,
in which she escapes from Death and Justice in India, is "of Scottish material." Verne himself was of Scots descent,
and in The Children of Captain Grant (also, significantly, about the circumnavigation of the earth) mentions Grant's
resolve to found a Scottish colony "in one of the vast continents of Oceania," thus echoing, among other things,
Bacon's New Atlantis. But back to Fogg, released from prison on the news of Slater's arrest. When was Slater arrested
in mystically significant Edinburgh? "Three days previously." That is, on the day that Fogg had purchased the
Henrietta to burn her. His sacrifice is accepted, his doppelganger is appeased. He can travel on from Liverpool to
London, through the house of Virgo, reborn young and intact.

"'What's the matter, Passepartout?'


'The matter, sir! The matter is that I've just learned a second ago . . .'
'What, then?'
'That we could have done the trip around the world in only 78 days.'
'Undoubtedly,' answered Mr Fogg, 'by not passing through India.'"
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter XXXVII

There are 78 tarot cards; Fogg has taken 80 days to circle the world, but as Passepartout points out above, he could
have taken 78. Fogg the whist-player deliberately adds two more hidden cards to the deck -- perhaps the Maiden
Aouda and the Drowned Sailor from the Mary Celeste -- in order to "pass through India." Having been released from
Judgement in Liverpool, Fogg is free to claim the last trump in the Tarot cycle, the World. The number 80
kabbalistically equals not merely kes, the Throne, but Yesod, the ninth sphere of the Sephiroth, the sphere of
Foundation. This Working allows, essentially, root access to the interface between the material world and the world of
Forms -- just the kind of thing that Verne himself was channeling for forty years.

On December 21, 1872 at 8:45 p.m. in London, all five classical planets (plus the Moon and, obviously, the Sun) are
below the horizon -- on the other side of the world. No ancient eyes in the sky are watching Fogg when he arrives at
the Reform Club. He has dodged the rulers of the calendar from Sun to Saturn, arriving on the extra day "gained
unconsciously" (or superconsciously) by travelling around the world from west to east, against the sun. Between
Verne's gaps and overlaps (the novel confuses at least four dates badly), and Fogg's sorceries, the timestream is
completely tangled and twisted, its energies bunched up like water in a knotted garden hose. No wonder, for the first
and only time in history, on the day before Fogg completes the Working "all the clocks in London were striking ten
minutes before nine." Only Passepartout's watch, carried through three deaths without setting or alteration, shows the
True Time.

"In all this the eccentric gentleman had displayed his marvellous qualities of composure and precision. But what was
the point? What had he gained from all this commotion? What had he got out of his journey?"
-- Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapter XXXVII

Fogg has lapped the decans, the zodiac, and the year of the god, shaved from the Foundation, and palmed from the
Tarot. What does he gain? His Working has created, or pinched off, a free day in London, a day when MI-8 (for the
sake of argument) can do anything, a day of perfect freedom of operation and total control. Perhaps this day becomes
an unbreachable Refuge, or a place to store archives against temporal disruption and decay. Perhaps it is shaved out
and subdivided, or invested across the worlds to bear dividends, so that every MI-8 operative is given a few minutes to
spend doing anything from violating the laws of gravity to dodging bullets to pushing "restart" on an ambush or a
ritual. (One day is 86,400 seconds -- that's a lot of combat rounds, even if MI-8 can't refresh them.) Or perhaps the
goal is more local, merely to tie the world of 1872 firmly into the British cartographic framework and choke off the
irrational Sphinxes in India and Lemurians in America alike.

World GDP in 1872 was roughly £10 billion, or $844 billion in today's money, give or take. One day's worth of that is
£27.6 million, around $2.31 billion now -- pocket change as global conspiracies go, but a pretty good score if Fogg
was, in fact, the thief that Fix so passionately believed him to be. Could the Fogg Working have been just a giant
sorcerous caper, an Ocean's 8 thumb in the eye to his pinchpenny Rosicrucian masters? And finally, the Working may

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explain Fogg's apparent immortality -- he has retroactively made himself, as Verne put it in the first chapter, "one who
might have lived a thousand years without ever growing old." Well worth it in and of itself. Jules Verne, sadly, died in
1905 at the age of 77, three years short of the miraculous 80. But perhaps all was not lost. His works would live
forever, and his mastery of Rosicrucian lore may have given him one last scientific -- or alchemical -- miracle. He
died on March 24, 1905, the day before the festival of the resurrected of Attis. His tomb in the Madeleine graveyard at
Amiens bears a sculpture, featuring a resurrected Verne. The sculpture is entitled "Onward to immortality, and the
eternal youth." Onward to the east, and the rising sun.

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