The Muscovite Crystal
The Muscovite Crystal is the name of a project on which I'm working since 1987 if not a bit longer. Until now, it bears no financial fruit, but it's fun!
Originally, it was a very short story about a girl who stole a most precious wine-set from an old batchelor, who inherited it from his uncle, not being aware of its value. The girl then sold it to the Grand Duke of Transsyldavia. His ancestors had spent generations chasing this wine-set, because the Russian Czar, as the last-known owner, had shaven off their ancestor's beard and moustache after the wine-set mysteriously disappeard during the celebration of the czarevich's birthday. This insult had to be revenged, of course, and what was a better revenge than to lay your hands on a wine-set you never stole, but for which your beard had been shaven off anyway?
After I had written this story, the history of the Muscovite Crystal which I had invented, started to puzzle me. Where did this Muscovite Crystal come from? What was the relation to the beautiful Anne-Christine? Who else knew about its magic? A large number of questions came up, as did the same number of possible explanations. At the end I figured out that the Muscovite Crystal had been made somewhere in a silver & gold mine in Upper-Mongolia and taken to Western Europe by the Mongol Hordes. It disappeared partially during the battle on the Catalaunic Fields, where Attilla the Hun was defeated by a combined army of Visigoths and Romans.
Anne-Cristine (or one of her eternal ancestors, bearing her name) attended this battle, which fact is known because the Crystal can store all the images it has ever been exposed to. The Crystal works like a never ending movie-camera and can reproduce the images when being placed into sunlight which is split by a prism or by a Crystal Sphere which was added to the Muscovite Glasswork and dug up on the battlefield where it was lost by Attilla. By reproducing all the stored images, it also became clear that Attilla had his decendants, in the form of a certain Baron de Gosselingue. Throughout the centuries Anne-Christines and Baron de Gosselingues had tried to steal the Muscovite Glasswork from one-another. Why? From the de Gosselings' point of view: They are only capable of having sex when the Crystal is their's. And the same goes for Anne-Christine. She is highly aroused when she sees the Crystal images fill the entire room. It is her way to make a Time-Travel. Baron de Gosselingue Time-Travels too, but prefers to do so by deep-concentrated thoughts. Lisabeth, the girl Anne-Christine meets, doesn't believe a word of this Time-Travel-Things and prefers plain old science to reach her goals: becoming Grand Duches of Transsyldavia, Czarina of Russia and having a rolling Crystal Castle on 25 railroad tracks, movable between Moscow, The Black Sea and Transsyldavia.
At this moment of writing, three parts of ten chapters each, which makes a total of 30 chapters exist and I'm working on many more. At the end of chapter 30 the Muscovite Glasswork disappeared in the same gold & silver mine where it once saw the light. Unfortunately I made it disappear very definitively as the entire mine tumbled down. The Glasswork was in shatters already, long before that catastrophe. But although in pieces, it was buried deep down under the Upper Mongolian soil in order to be certain that it would never ever reappear. Now it's my duty to find a way to make it come alive in a plausable way. I may trick with the time, but not too much. It may never be certain that Time-Travelling is possible. There always must be an escape and another possible explanation for the mysterious phenomenons.
A first step has been taken. Part 4 already has some chapters, but I still don't know how the Glasswork will revive.
Don't worry! There is plenty work to do as the story had been written in the dutch language first. It has to be translated and corrected.
Steps to follow are a translation into the french language, for which I propose to change the style. Now the book is written in the past: Anne-Cristine gave someone a cup of tea. In french she most probably will give someone a cup of tea as I hate the way the french describe the past in their books.
Another step is Internet, of course. Next months new chapters will be placed on the Net, first without, then with illustrations. In the coming few months, a lot of Under Construction pages will be placed, but all those pages will be replaced by real chapters in due course.
La Rode, J.GESTMAN GERADTS
