Yesterday, in the delirium of flu-induced fever, I made a mistake in a wireless transmittal. My Grand Gaffe, as it shall now be known, began with idle speculation about a growing fascination with the clockwork world we once knew and loved, with its airship lighthouses, telephonic fog, time levers, Maison tournante aérienne, and steam-powered bidets.

In the midst of my vaporous fugue-state, I said that Mary Russell lived in my revered 19th century. As Master Wells has informed me, a not-yet-famous American canine would have said to this, “Ruh roh!”

There you have it: The first mistake ever made in the aether known as The Twitter.

Mary Russell herself called me out on it, very politely I might add, in order to set the record straight: she was born in 1900 and first met Mister Sherlock Holmes in 1915, well after the Victorian era had concluded.

I then tried again, to no avail, to entice readers the world over to speculate whether we are pining for the clockwork engines of that bygone age.

But my wireless dispatches, sent far and wide, from the Arctic chill of the Romanov Winter Palace, to the sultry climate of distant Siam, have gone but unanswered.

So then, all that this gentleman and scholar can do is simply wait … wait as apologies cover our shrinking globe, and wonder, not for the first time, whether a safari to distant Venus aboard Mister Verne’s projectile (via an space gun, of course) should be in order.

Should my apologies to the astute theologian (and deadly knife-thrower) fall on deaf ears I fear I shall have to take solace on one of these other worlds of our solar system; if not the aforementioned Venus, then perhaps I may find work along the canals of Mars, trading in those hideous eggs, or secluding myself in obtuse Innsmouth on our own globe, a place where no man knows his fate.

Please, Mary Russell, if you see this, forgive my arrogance in the aether.

I am, sincerely, your faithful servant.

Mister K. Parker

Copyright 2012 © Alan Keith Parker.  All Rights Reserved.