Rigby's Requiem

Posted on Thu 26th Oct, 2017 @ 1:13am by

372 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: Unity Week
Location: CMO's Office

Having finished ensuring the bone samples Dr. Dhuro secured from Lieutenant Commander Breaux were correctly transferred to micrology lab nine for Dr. Anjohl, Chlamydia Addams stood and approached the shelf she kept for momento mori. On the top were the shrunken head (doubly fake -- it was replicated, for one, and the original the pattern was taken from had been a Panamanian counterfeit, rather than an actual Shuar tsantsa) and the opaloid Pavonir skull (genuine; she had found it amongst a collection of anatomical specimens of unknown provenance, and felt it too lovely to languish in a supply cabinet).

On the next shelf down, her most recent favorite object: the infamous Red Viola of Lupescu. Anica Lupescu had been the last scion of a family of luthiers resident in Clausenburg, capital of the Principality of Transylvania. When, late in the seventeenth century, her lover was diagnosed with the Bubonic Plague, Anica insisted on being walled up within her workshop along with the sick woman. According to folklore, when the walls were broken down months later, no trace of the two women was found, but a viola -- this viola, with its odd reddish varnish (scans had confirmed that the red color did in fact come from Human haemoglobin) and its bone tuning pegs (human bone) which never seemed to need replacement -- had been found, complete, sitting on Anica's workbench.

The viola had a fractured history, and had been believed to have been destroyed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, only to have been discovered twenty-five years ago in the city of Landing, on Vega III, the planet the Besm population named Home. When she came across the story, Addams had at once contacted the University of Newer York for the replicator pattern, and realized a molecular-level replica here aboard Vanguard. Reading that the bow had originally been strung with Human hair, she restrung it with her own, appropriately rosined.

Now, gently, respectfully, she took the viola and tucked it under her chin. Almost unconsciously, the notes of Rigby's Requiem began to pour from her fingers. She closed her eyes, and gave herself to the music. Eleanor Rigby died in a church and was buried along with her name....

 

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