Monday, January the 30th, 2006

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Some Notes on Compartments

Dear Mr Key, writes the ever-curious Tim Thurn, In last Thursday's piece entitled Google News (26 January, see below) you make passing mention of the Blötzmann Compartments controversy of 1934. I confess that I have no idea what a Blötzmann Compartment is, or was, and would be extremely grateful if you could enlighten me.

Well, Tim, I will do my best, but I warn you that getting to grips with Blötzmann Compartments is no easy matter. Have you ever looked into the fathomless black pools of an owl's eyes? If you have, you will know that eerie sense of confronting an unutterably alien, cold, unyielding energy. It was this sense of otherness that motivated Blötzmann when he built the first of the notorious Compartments.

We still have some of his working notes, but they help us little, couched as they are in a dense academic (or pseudoacademic) language which may have made no sense even to Blötzmann. Phrases such as “by extension, most advanced peristomal border plating is noted for an unusual hydropore/gonopore in the axismal interray and the position of juvenile, summit-mounted proximal tegmens and theca” flummox the best of brains. We do know that whenever Blötzmann constructed a Compartment, he made sure a fully functioning Thanatophore was primed and ready in the corner of his workshop.

As he learned to manipulate the Compartments, Blötzmann became more open about his intentions. He introduced a swivelling panel on the top of each Compartment, allowing viewers the opportunity for a fleeting glimpse of activity within. The panels were attached to a small motor fixed to the side of the Compartment, powered from a source which Blötzmann always refused to divulge, though it is likely to have been a simple dry cell battery. It may even have been a wet cell battery, if such a thing exists. Knowing nothing of batteries and their workings, I am reluctant to say any more about this for the time being.

Arriving at the optimal size of the Compartments was a hit and miss affair, which usually found Blötzmann gritting his teeth. A study by Howl and Flapper determined that the smallest Compartment could fit inside a standard pastry carton, while the largest one known to exist blotted out the moon and the stars. This reminds us of Blötzmann's insistence that his Compartments were never exposed to daylight, leading to absurd accusations in the gutter press that there was vampiric intent behind the entire project.

Fire and flood destroyed all the Blötzmann Compartments one by one, over a period of seventeen years. Blötzmann was sanguine. He himself had the black eyes of an owl, and hair that resembled feathers. Make of that what you will. You would not be the first to posit a madcap theory.