Oh, c.r.a.p!!
Today"s Events
1: Paris Liberation Strategy Meeting #7
I call it a meeting, but it was only Old "Blue-Eyes" and me. Still, he seemed in a really good mood today. He boasted that he could remove the power limiters on all the Lourd de Marionnettes in Paris by the end of July. All of the ones in Paris have a few of their cylinders removed, but his grandson is in the German army and can apparently get his hands on some of the spare parts.
His grandson will apparently be using the family Lourd de Marionnette at the Sorbonne Lourd de Marionnette battle, but they"re probably plotting something there as well. According to Rosetta, that girl and Heinz Berge will be partic.i.p.ating too. Who knows how that will turn out.
2: Cleanup after the High Priestess
The things the High Priestess had been preparing to send out were discovered in the neighboring room. The neighbors are a 4-person family with no connection to the Resistance, but when Old "Blue-Eyes" was nonchalantly pa.s.sing by the High Priestess"s room (which is now empty), they called out to him. He is quite well known in Paris after all.
"We didn"t want this to fall into German hands, so we hid it away."
The old man"s grandson is in the German army, but it seems everyone in Paris a.s.sumes it"s some kind of plan. They are correct in that a.s.sumption, but I hope it doesn"t put that grandson in danger.
That family handed him the letters and packages given to the High Priestess between March 20 and 23 for delivery out of the country.
We are taking responsibility by sending them out ourselves.
3: The Germans have begun pursuing the Attesor Project.
And the head of their research team is Heinz Berge. If he still had his memories, he would remember a certain incident almost immediately. He would remember our sole point of contact. And if he did remember, I couldn"t stay here in Pairs. I would have to go to Bourgogne.
But it also seems his memories were not fully removed by the Psyche Outer surgery. He was promised the position of the strongest with the Panzer Ritter Project and yet he is pursuing that abominable project from the past. The past is not yet dead.
4: Proof of Rose Francisca"s prophecies
On the way to the meeting with Old "Blue-Eyes" today, I saw an old man sitting drunk in front of a bakery. That bakery was. .h.i.t by a robbery about a month ago and the entire family was killed.
I was curious, so I asked the old man what he was doing there. He spoke on and on in what I would normally have written off as the ravings of a drunk. He said the baker"s son had fled the country in June of last year. He also claimed to be that son. He said he had lived outside of France until he returned last year. He said everything about our France is a lie. He said he had tried to stop his family from being killed but they had not believed him. He said he had tried to stop the robbery and gotten shot. He said it had all been over by the time he woke in the hospital.
And he said he wanted to liberate this France that he called a lie.
"Please don"t let my family to be killed again."
The way he said that told me he was not lying.
That is all that happened today.
I will now continue where I left off. Lady Beretta visited before lunch today. She leaned her bicyclette against the mansion"s door with her bag on the luggage rack. She took my hand and said the following.
"Can I ask you one thing? I want you to run a stand at the school festival. There are going to be several different stands set up in the university yard and we"ll all be eating and singing and dancing there. Just think of it as doing a bunch of unproductive things at the end of the month."
"I see. So it is like the Witch"s Sabbath. That was in one of the picture books you gave me."
"Not quite. But I guess it"s close enough."
"What do I need to do at this Sabbath? Chop up a sacrifice?"
"Unfortunately there won"t be any sacrifices or sacramental bread there. Our department is managing a stand and this one girl who knows how to cook...how should I put this? There were some issues related to filial piety and she"s had to drop out."
I do not know what filial piety means. But I asked if I would really be a sufficient replacement for that person.
"Of course. Mallette has been bragging about you. She keeps telling people that a girl who really knows how to cook has been visiting our appartement."
Is knowing how to cook really something worth bragging about?
The two of us then entered the kitchen and made lunch. Lady Beretta said she would be visiting the library that afternoon. I have learned a lot about her after speaking with her over the past month. In America, she piloted Lourd de Marionnettes and helped a vigilante group in Image City - San Francisco. Her family runs a Belle de Marionnette maintenance factory. She came to France in order to give someone a letter.
But there are some things she will not tell me when I ask about them. Like why she cannot get along with Sir Phillip. Or why she looks after me so much.
There is a lot I do not know about her. But there is also a lot I do not know about myself. Who is my father? Why was I made? I simply do not know.
I think there are just some things that will never be known.
But I asked about Sir Phillip during our conversation today.
"Do you fight with Sir Phillip because he is important to you?"
She smiled a little without saying anything. It was not what I would normally describe as a small smile. I am not quite sure how to describe it.
Seeing that smile made me feel like something was caught in my chest.
It was a strange feeling. It was like I had stopped breathing. It was like something could not pa.s.s through my chest properly. I thought about the logical reason behind it and asked a question.
"Do you not fight with me or my master because we are not important to you?"
My thoughts here were much like a profit-and-loss calculation. I am not sure how to explain it. But it was like when I choose the best of the vegetables brought by the deliveryman and cook them first. It felt like she had made a decision like that.
It was a strange feeling. It was the feeling of being not chosen. I felt it when I thought Lady Beretta had chosen Sir Phillip over me. Happiness made my chest feel like it was opening up and this was the opposite. It felt like my chest was tightening up.
I realized that the opposite of happiness was not a good thing.
Lady Beretta stopped smiling when she saw my face. And she placed her hand on my head with a look of relief that was different from a smile.
"Unfortunately I can"t exactly say I"ve acted like you or that old man are important to me. And it"s all because I jumped into this mansion that one night. Rosetta. I have already gotten you and that old man caught up in all this and I have to take responsibility for that."
"Responsibility?"
"By not getting you involved in any more danger. By protecting you."
She smiled again there.
"That"s the duty of a Lourd de Écrivain. But I can"t protect everything."
"There are things not even you can protect?"
"It was because I was injured that I got you two involved. I can barely even protect myself in this war."
The word "war" stuck in my mind. Yes. The master had mentioned that France was about 70% occupied by a country called Germany. We are apparently being given some limited prosperity at their mercy.
I do not know what that means. But Lady Beretta is involved in it. She even bled. I doubt she wants to bleed for people like us who do not know what is happening.
Realizing that removed what was caught in my chest.
I apologized to Lady Beretta. She said nothing and simply rubbed my head.
It was a familiar feeling. Perhaps the father buried somewhere in my memories did the same thing to me before I became self-aware.
We then prepared a light meal in the kitchen.
I decided to chop up and fry the pommes de terre. I noticed how they were all shaped differently.
And I realized something strange.
I am a machine. I can grow and evolve to become more human. But I am not completely human.
I am inferior to a human.
So why did I feel that emotion when I thought Lady Beretta was comparing me to Sir Phillip? I questioned the result of that comparison despite knowing that I am inferior. Why was that? I do not know.
Do the differently-shaped pommes de terre think things along those lines?
I felt like I would not be able to chop them up if I kept thinking about that. So I peeled them all and steamed them and crushed them. I then rolled them all into the same shape before adding bread crumbs and making them into small croquettes.
I finished frying them and sprinkled salt on them. That made them all the same shape.
I lined them up on a plate while telling Lady Beretta what had happened in the garden. She was very interested in the Fantasmé Renard story. She said that such things appear a lot in France. She told me a strange story about the Beast of Gévaudan.
Then I heard three sounds from Boulogne Forest. They sounded like stone being struck.
Lady Beretta did not even turn around and said they were gunshots. She said some of the Germans mistook the forest park for a hunting ground and hunted the animals there.
"That must seem horribly savage to the French."
She sounded exasperated. But there was also disapproval in the way she stated it. She is a partic.i.p.ant in the war. I do not really understand what that means. But will I also be involved in the war if I begin to feel some kind of emotion in response to those gunshots?
Lady Beretta had a gunshot wound to her leg when she first visited the mansion. I had no emotional reaction to it then. But would I now?
I do not know.
That is what happened today.
My friend. I am glad to have so many opportunities to write you of late.
A lot has happened recently. It seems things are becoming more difficult.
Here is what Old "Blue-Eyes" told me today:
"The Germans are apparently investigating that weird Attesor Project."
Can you believe it!? And I doubt that old man has realized I was involved in that project!
As far as he knows, I was a "nameless" Lourd de Écrivain who ran around France. And the Attesor Project has been effectively erased from existence. Almost no one involved still lives. And most of the doc.u.ments and research reports were burned, so it shouldn"t be possible to Signe them here in Paris either. My military records are missing for that time period, so when the Germans took me prisoner, they a.s.sumed an unofficial unit like mine would not leave any records. But they were mistaken about that. I was actually involved in the Attesor Project which was even more unofficial than the unofficial unit.
Come to think of it, that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Heinz was the one and only German who came in contact with the Attesor Project. Because I met him and was defeated by him during a test.
But I never thought he would pursue that project after all this time. Are the Germans feeling the pressure and want to gather all the Perdus Artifice? Are those Gard-cla.s.s aerial warships not enough for them?
Today, we finally established a new route to get things in and out of the country. We will be using that to make deals with the Allies. I need some specialized parts to fully repair the Lourd de Marionnette that has ended up at my home.
Also, Old "Blue-Eyes" seems to have settled on gathering parts to repair the Lourd de Marionnettes within France. He was very excited about it.
My task there is to create a list of the Lourd de Marionnettes in Paris. Since we have no tanks or airplanes, we must use those as our weapon. With my old connections and Old "Blue-Eyes"" connections, we should find a fair number of them. If we are to hold an operation to liberate Paris, it will probably happen in August. I predict the Allies" western front will go on the offensive sometime around June. We must keep careful watch so we can take action of our own once they arrive near Paris.
I am going to be busy.
That about sums it up for me. Rosetta is, well, cheerful. She didn"t used to be this way, but now I can tell the difference between her cheerful days and her non-cheerful day.
I guess that"s a good thing?
But she has been making an awful lot of vegetarian dishes lately. She may have come to dislike blood after everything she has learned. I hope that"s something I can change.
Also, I"m starting to feel like I should fully believe what Rose Francisca is saying. I"ve just been Ajouter-ing so many disconcerting things of late. I"m starting to wonder if I really am a lie.
Goodbye for now. Until next time.
Today at 10:00, I led the training at the training grounds. At 12:30, Phillip Missel joined us in Expert de Épée. He fought five mock battles with the others and swiftly won each one. According to him, the new cylinder system was causing issues and he could only fight short battles.
At 18:20, training ended. I predicted Phillip Missel would have earned the others" approval through the mock battles. I did indeed see him at the center of their group as they left.
At 20:31, a direct telegram arrived from HQ.
"You will be a.s.signed leader of the Attesor Project Research Team on June 1. Your wellbeing is very important for another project, so you must make appropriate adjustments before that date arrives."
At 22:18, I discovered a part of my own past while researching the doc.u.ments related to the Attesor Project. I will Lernen the newspaper clipping here:
"The funeral for the family of Captain Heinz Berge, who has returned from Bourgogne, will be held at Grunewald Park Graveyard today at 2 PM. The forecast is for rain, so be careful."
The date was from just after the end of the previous great war. Thanks to my Psyche Outer surgery, I had no memory of or emotion about the revelation that I had a family, that they were dead, and that I had likely attended their funeral.
I was only interested in the fact that the newspaper article mentioned that I had been in Bourgogne. I cannot recall any battle-related memories of that time. Why is that? All my memories of the previous great war exist in the back of my mind, so why are the ones from the Bourgogne Region the only ones missing? Was the article merely mistaken? I have no way of knowing.