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Reuben Lalan

1829104

4 MAECS

Dr Devaleena Kundu

Science Fiction and Fantasy

22 February 2020

In Memory of Benoit Blanc

“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of his and mine are the same.

If all else perished, and he remained. I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he

where annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”

One fine summer morning, while grazing about in the Basque fields in our mid-thirties

did Benoit Blanc receive an anonymous letter from a stranger requesting him to investigate a

very peculiar case at the Borgia household regarding the death of a particular Lucrezia Borgia,

one of the heirs to the ancestry of the legendary household in Italian history. It wasn’t often that

Blanc accepted to take over a case during his holidays. He was one who’d lose himself in books

and thoughts about cultures and people from across the world. It was a certain passion for him

apart from being a renowned criminal detective. This one particular memory of my dear friend

stems from this case also being my first experience with science that was beyond my
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comprehension. This poetic verse still rings in my mind although the memories aren’t very

comforting even today.

I write this memoir as a passion for recording events and spinning the yarn around it

gives me great pleasure and motivation to move forward with the monotonous life that I Iead.

This case was however so very intricate with details and exciting trails that my imaginative

creativity didn’t need the extra shift that It would otherwise require while writing these memoirs.

Memories are of course our own very perceptions of the world and It’s realities.

The case was that of an unidentified death of a woman in quite extraordinarily natural

circumstances. The evidences were quite unimportant or insignificant for the progression of any

form of criminal enquiry. The Castle de Auditore was an iconic work of Roman architecture.

Blanc seemed pretty lost in the case and its details for a week or two before he came up to me

one evening and enquired about the idea of going on a detour through Rome. His curiosity and

anxiousness in the question didn’t prompt any further questions on my behalf.

Only on our way to our residence at the Plaza de la Victoria in an Italian courtyard did

Blanc brief me about the details that he had managed to collect about the case and the letter he

had received. The person who’s life was under question had been of renowned capabilities but of

a shadowed history. The young lady from the Italo-Spanish nobility rose to fame through her

excellence in biochemical sciences after graduating from Spazienza University of Rome. While

her earlier life was well in focus through popular culture she gradually faded away from the

limelight and moved into her ancestral Castle in the city of Borgia in Italy. While her research on

biochemistry and histology were renowned, her focus had shifted further into her private life

after she’d met with her lover and eventual husband Cesare Borgia in 1556 during the rebellion
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of the Auditore nobility against the control over the State of the Roman Empire. While Cesare

died 15 years into the marriage, the family was is said to have moved on from the loss quite

peacefully.

This death of the lady of the house came under quite surprising circumstances for the

nobility. A woman who was of complete health and zeal in her research and her self-imposed

exile into the countryside found dead under no suspicions of foul play seemed to be a very

extravagant story to digest at first hearing. While some of her research was seen as highly potent

and exceptionally brilliant in the field of histology, she wasn’t very open about her research and

never really gave away much information about it. This mysterious nature of her life had begun

to spin tales of scientific discoveries of giving life to tissue cells. While nine of her research was

expected to have found any breakthroughs, the events that broke through a week after her death

was the most mysterious nature.

The Sunday after the funeral of Lady Lucrezia Borgia, her lab caught on fire leaving

everything in waste except for a template that had the beginning lines of this memoir as an

inscription. The peculiarity of this case begins with this turn of events that eventually led to the

letter being delivered to Blanc requesting an investigation into the death. However the real focus

of that case goes further than just a criminal investigation. The scientific breakthrough that was

discovered through this case will probably be the most important scientific formulations that

could change our perception of life and death altogether. While Lucrezia is not projected as the

most important figure in histology sciences, her thesis on regeneration has made regeneration of

life a reality. The importance of the motivation which made Lucrezia dwell into such intense and

dedicated research was one that interested Blanc very much.

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The story unfolded through the decoding of the poetic verse that lead to the discovery of

further evidences that came through the trails put forward by the verse. Decrypting it was a huge

and daunting task for Blanc and myself as we spent more than a month of our 1578 autumn

trying to find a relation and reason behind the verse and the template. The verses pointed to a

probable character or person that the Lucrenzia was addicted to through ways more than just

romantic love. The intimacy that is projected through to the person in those lines tend to a very

direct guess of having Cesare, the love of her life into the picture. The circumstances for his

death was also quite mysterious with him also found dead in his residence in completely

unsuspecting circumstances although it was of visible shock to Lucrenzia.

The discoveries that gave way to further inroads into the case was the visit to their

residence in Rome at the San Miguel de Alfonso in view of the probable reference to Cesare. The

cupboard by the fireplace had a very peculiarly camouflaging demeanour. It held a diary of the

Lady Lucrenzia with a collection of dairy records. They were astonishing in nature as they spoke

about her experiments in being able to bring Cesare back to life through her reconstruction of the

human tissues little more than year before her death. This dairy entry created a lot of exciting

uncertainty around the nature of the discoveries that were yet to be made with respect to the case.

The dairy ended a few weeks before the end of her life and pointed to a certain journey that she

intended to partake of as a failure of her attempts to bring back her love. Her final entries express

disappointment and anger at her inability to bring life and consciousness into the regenerated

body of Cesare and how she eventually had to take the life that she had herself created. Her

disappointment stemmed from her impeded desire to meet and be with her lover.

This dairy held a location and a diagram to a key that lead us to the Castle of the Borgia

in the Roman countryside into the underground inventory for weapons including artillery. The
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key was hidden in a stone casket that held in a trunk of casting tools. The location led us to a

basement storage that had been unused for many years. The highly unanimated and stagnant

atmosphere of the space resonated with one of our expeditions into the Irish valleys to discover a

few cave inscriptions back in ours early twenty’s. the stench of stagnant air and substance fills

the surroundings with a gloom of time and space.

The door lead to the discovery of various manuscripts and papers that lead to the research

and projects that she had undertaken in her period of exile from public life. Her attempts at

bringing back loved one had produced astonishing results as her formulas bore fruit to bring a

being into life. Her biggest failure and disappointment was her inability to bring back his

conscience into his regenerated body. While she is sure to have bypassed her contemporaries

through her breakthrough work on human histology, she is sure to have been limited by the

technology of this age of hers.

This memoir is also being recorded in this collection of mine to prove that my predictions

of Lucrenzia’s potential and work will be pivotal in the future of human life. While this case

seems to have been the more direct of the cases that we have had to attend to over the decades of

travels across the world investigating cases, it can be said to have been the most imposing and

demanding of them all. The science that we were exposed to will forever remain to be the

pioneering success of my life. The ability to lay hands on work that will positively change the

human perception of the notion of life will forever be one of our most memorable ventures.

With love, pride and a content heart,

Antoine Tousart