The Templeton Episode

The name of Professor Randolph Edmund Templeton is inextricably tangled with the secret perplexities of time. It was he who, by way of a yet barely comprehended time-anomaly, provided the model for H.P. Lovecraft's Randolph Carter. And yet it was this 'same' R.E. Templeton who - on March 21st 1999, whilst delivering a lecture at Miskatonic devoted to a rigorous critique of H.G. Wells—awoke suddenly as the Thing that lurks behind the mask of Immanuel Kant, coincidentally discovering the transcendental time-machine.

Templeton sits immobile in his attic room, immersed in the deceptively erratic ticking of his old nautical clock, lost in meditation upon J.C. Chapman's hermetic engraving. It now seems that this complex image, long accepted as a portrait of Kant, constitutes a disturbing monogram of his own chronological predicament. As if in mockery of stable framing, the picture is surrounded by strange-loop coilings of Ouraboros, the cosmic snake, who traces a figure of eight—and of moebian eternity—by endlessly swallowing itself. Suspended from its lower jaw is a cryptic device of intricately balanced circles and stars (ancient symbols of the AOE). Above the serpent's head, a fascimile of Kant is etched in profile, the face fixed in an amicable—if distant—expression. What was it though, that hid behind the death-mask, where it cut-off, below and behind the jaw, false ear, and double-hairline? What was this peculiarly formless body, shadowy neck-flesh, and suggestion of a cervical fin? As he stared, and hideously remembered, Templeton felt as though he knew.

Templeton has long asserted the impossibility of empirical time-travel. Since the ego is bound by its own nature to linear-sequentiality (he continues to insist) neither it nor the organism is ever transported through time. Nevertheless, he describes the Critique of Pure Reason as a time-travelling manual, although of 'another kind'. He uses Kant's system as a guide for engineering time-synthesis. The key is the secret of the Schematism, which—although "an art concealed in the depths of the human soul"—concerns only the unutterable Abomenon of the Outside (Nihil Ulterius, Nothing Further). In exteriority, where time works,that part of you which is most yourself has nothing in common with what you are. When Templeton fell into himself that day he found, instead of what he thought himself to be, the Thing (in-itself (at zero-intensity ())). It was, perhaps, or necessarily, that continuous hyperbody—the Lurker at the Threshold—which H.P. Lovecraft names 'Yog Sothoth'.

394 or 406 words, depending on the program they're counted in.

If you've come across this, this is simply a site easter egg. There are no easter eggs here, go away. No I didn't write this.