The Last Will and Testament of Alturus Portwick Aug 21, 2020
Julliber 35, 7110 PTd
Dear beloved reader,
On my Death:
It is most likely that I have succumbed to the liverworm which has made its home in my right leg for the last thirteen years. I do not begrudge it its hastening my demise; the stimulants are worth the trouble. Assuming it was not the cause of my death, I advise you to be on the lookout for an angry liverworm on the hunt for a new home.
To those who want Things from me:
I have already given them to you, while I was alive or in the statements which follow: My estate is donated to the public domain where applicable, that humanity at large may benefit from my toil, and to my closest friends and relatives otherwise, in payment toward the debt of their experience of my existence. My work and my burden are done, and I leave it to you all to shoulder what corner of the world the strength of my body and mind do no longer.
To the One I hurt deepest in this Life:
I often thought about you, and dreamed of what might have been. I wondered frequently if you thought about me. I suppose if you are reading this, we never did speak again. Or perhaps in the very last days. I hope you are at peace, one way or another. I have found some measure of it for myself, but I fear that I may never truly let go while I am alive, not while there is doubt about you in my mind. I feel that we were wronged by the world, but there was nothing for it. Some tragedies are unavoidable. What I knew then is as an acorn to the oak tree of what I know today. But here we are. This is being human. I wish the best for you.
On my Work:
A record of all of my thoughts most important to me, and many of my less important ones, with the exception of those presented in this document, is kept in the side-room at my workshop. It is a massively cross-referenced unordered document which, in my estimation, is as close to a permanent preservation of the mind as one can fix within the bounds of current writing technology. I have taken some care to encode ideas in particular ways. Do not worry, it is all in plain language. I cannot say more. Good luck.
Hopefully I will have completed the Thousand Piece Poem before anyone reads this document, but in the event that this is the first anyone is hearing of it, you will find my latest draft buried at coordinates given by the following formula, substituting the year and month of my death:
(Editor's note: The formula is not written in a known language or mathematical system, and remains undeciphered. See attached for a facsimile of the formula.)
Paintings No. 37 and No. 38 are forgeries I had commissioned by blind artisans who were taught painstakingly to imitate my style before their executions. You will never find their bodies, nor proof that they ever lived or died.
(signed)
A.P., Q.N.S. First L.R., III Xenet
The Last Will and Testament of Alturus Portwick
links to:
- Dearest Octavius,
- Fox Mulder stares wistfully at the poster on the wall
- The Apocalypse of Porturus Alwick
- corner of the world
- judge a captain not by his shipwrecks, but by whether or not he blames the sea
- paintings found in the home of Portuous Altwick
- the house at the end of Allport Way
linked from: When I woke up this morning, I thought I was a parallelogram. I still have a sneaking suspicion.
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