The Arch-preposterous

“ ‘And then from there,’ he said, ‘Okidanokh flows here into another Krhrrhihirhi or dynamo where it undergoes the process of Djartklom, and each of its separate parts is concentrated there in those other containers’—and this time he pointed to what resembled  ‘accumulators’—‘and only then do I take from the secondary containers, by means of various artificial appliances, each active part of Okidanokh separately for my elucidatory experiments.

“ ‘I shall first demonstrate to you,’ he continued, ‘one of the results which occur when, for some reason or other, one of the active parts of the Omnipresent-Okidanokh is absent during the process of their “striving-to-reblend” into a whole.

“ ‘At the present moment this special construction contains a space which is indeed an absolute vacuum, obtained, it must be said, only owing firstly to the special construction of the suction pump and to the materials of special quality of which the instruments are made, which alone make experiments possible in an absolute vacuum; and secondly, to the properties and the strength of the material of which the walls of this part of my new invention are made.’

“Having said this, he pulled another lever and again continued:

“ ‘Owing to the pulling of this lever, that process has begun in this vacuum whereby in the separate parts of the Omnipresent-Okidanokh there proceeds what is called the “striving-to-reblend-into-a-whole.”

“ ‘But since, intentionally by an “able-Reason”—in the present case myself—the participation of that third part of Okidanokh existing under the name of “Parijrahatnatioose” is artificially excluded from the said process, then this process proceeds there just now between only two of its parts, namely, between those two independent parts which science names “Anodnatious” and “Cathodnatious.” And in consequence, instead of the obligatory law-conformable results of the said process, that non-law-conformable result is now actualized which exists under the denomination of “the-result-of-the-process-of-the-reciprocal-destruction-of-two-opposite-forces,” or as ordinary beings express it, “the-cause-of-artificial-light.”

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