Three days slipped by amid a haze of interrogations. Flavio Fergal, confined in a nondescript cell, exemplified calm defiance. He responded to inquiries with incisive questions that disturbed the interrogators more than they clarified matters. The Lethargic Calculus he insisted, was not his creation. Rather his finding—a syntax already present within the fabric of human exhaustion akin, to a fossil archive of defeat.
Devon was seated in a Europol annex office sunlight streaming through the blinds onto documents that seemed pointless. Javier Jeffrey had been put on leave his genius hovering on the edge of a mental collapse. The retrieved acolytes, among them Nathania Nora were kept under evaluation their condition described as "severe dissociative apathy." No one exhibited any indication of improvement. They had in the words of a physician "withdrawn internally."
The win, at the pumping station seemed like dust. All established protocols had been observed,. The heart of the danger had eluded capture, elusive and expanding. This was Flavio's graceful demonstration: the system's frantic reaction only confirmed the necessity of calm.
An envelope showed up at Devon's Geneva residence. No postage, personally delivered. Inside lay a weighty key vintage with a detailed bow. Affixed to it was a note bearing coordinates and a time: 51.2072, 4.3992. 21:00. Request Sari. Employ the key.
The coordinates pointed to Brussels. The Royal Library.
Benjamin. The unidentified source was guiding him towards the start to the concealed archive. It was either a snare or the sole lead remaining to follow. Devon kept Pamela in the dark. The institutional connection seemed like static now. He reserved a ticket, to Brussels.
That night beneath a darkening sky he stood in front of the grand library. Its main doors were shut. He proceeded to a staff entrance on the side the key chilly, in his hand. The directions had brought him here. He rapped.
A tiny grate shifted aside. Tired recognizable eyes glanced out. Sari Samantha, the archivist, for Special Collections. She remained silent merely observing the key he held. Then the door unlocked with a click.
"You are anticipated " she whispered, her tone lost in the marble stillness of a service hallway. She guided him among mazes of pipes and quiet shelves from the realm of common awareness. "He mentioned you would arrive. The one, with eyes."
"Benjamin?"
She remained silent. They went down a wrought-iron staircase that twisted into the bedrock below the library. The atmosphere turned chilly and quiet carrying the scent of paper and moist stone. At the base stood a vault door, from any contemporary bank vault—it was iron riveted, with a lock seeming to be centuries old.
"Here's your key " Sari stated, retreating. Her function was to act as a channel a keeper of procedures not solutions.
Devon slid the key in. It rotated with a well-lubricated snap that resonated within the tight area. The vault door opened inward quietly exposing not a chamber. A portion of maintained history.
It resembled a chamber from a bygone era. Stone walls, one wooden desk and a firm cot.. The walls weren't empty. Instead they were lined, from floor to ceiling with shelves filled not with books but with boxes—files, folders and crates of belongings. A lone contemporary Anglepoise lamp, on the desk emitted a circle of light.
Seated at the desk was a man. He appeared to be seventy, slender with a delicately featured face marked by intense sadness. He glanced up when Devon came in. His eyes resembled Nathania Nora's—calm yet within him that calm bore the weight of a long-standing deep sorrow.
"Analyst Duncan " the man spoke. His tone was gentle refined. "I am Benjamin Baldric. For a period I served as Flavio's instructor."
Devon entered, the vault door closing with a sigh, behind him. The archive resembled a tomb dedicated to a type of failure.
"This isn't a library " Benjamin remarked, indicating the shelves. "It's a report. Focused on momentum." Rising he moved with elegance toward a shelf. He retrieved a file and gave it to Devon. Within were images, annotations and drawings from the 1920s. A circle of Dadaists, in Zurich had lapsed into a shared trance after striving to create ' negation.' Their wall drawings were forerunners of the Lethargic Calculus.
Another case: accounts from a sanatorium in the 1950s where a doctor tested 'therapeutic lethargy' through intricate light sequences. More patient sketches revealed the recognizable spirals.
"Flavio wasn't the originator " Benjamin stated, reclining in his seat. "He perfected it. He added precision. I instructed him in theology the mysticism inherent, in quietism. I revealed these archives to him believing him to be an academic. He interpreted them as… schematics. He recognized the repeated tendency to withdraw not as a disorder but as a wise even ethical reaction. He posed a question I was unable to respond to: 'If numerous perceptive souls, throughout history reach this quiet shore is it an illness or a final place?'"
Devon roamed along the shelves. The cases covered centuries. A Renaissance mapmaker who abandoned charting the globe to sketch flawless circles. A factory proprietor, from the Industrial Revolution who left his workplace and settled beside a river never moving afterward. Every file told a tale of halted activity.
"He named it 'The Archive of Questions '" Benjamin went on. "The inquiries we are too occupied, too driven to articulate. The question underlying every burnout: Why persist? The solution lies in the calculus. A stunning ultimate solution."
"Why are you showing me this?" Devon questioned, his exhaustion echoing through the stone chamber. "Why offer assistance?"
Benjamin fixed him with a stare. "You carry the sickness. Lack the conviction. You sense the lure. Resist it. That renders you perilous to him.. Advantageous to me." He pulled open a drawer taking out a leather-covered notebook. "Flavio's personal diary. From, before he… clarified his beliefs. It reveals the fracture. The instant when doubt turned into certainty for him."
Devon grabbed the journal. He flipped to a bookmarked page. The script was Flavio's. Rough, passionate and not calm yet.
"Spotted a child in Sarajevo today amid the aid delivery. She hadn't shed a tear not once throughout the bombardment. She simply observed. Her eyes weren't lifeless. They were… resolved. She had confronted the dilemma. Reached the answer. In that child's expression I sensed no trauma. I glimpsed the destiny of humanity if we persist. A silent logical end. Is it insanity to hope to protect every child from that path? To offer the peace at the beginning, not the bitter end?"
Benjamin spoke softly. "His anguish was empathy. He cares for the world profoundly that its agony turned into an unbearable mathematical mistake. The Lethargic Calculus serves as his love note. A means to eliminate the pain."
"It wipes out all of it " Devon stated.
"Does it?" Benjamin inquired, genuinely interested. ". Does it simply end the conflict? What lingers, within Nathania within the others? Is it emptiness?. Is it a presence we cannot name?"
Devon found himself without a response. His gaze settled on the shelves a repository of abandoned ambitions. Flavio wasn't a zealot. He represented the most intense manifestation of a persistent human ailment. Detaining him felt akin, to placing a bandage over a bleeding wound of significance.
Devon remarked, "Calculus is becoming widespread, on the internet."
Benjamin agreed with a nod. "Certainly. It's a fact that seeks to be revealed. Much, like fire or the principles of physics. A natural law cannot be unlearned. You simply decide if you want to adhere to it." He leaned closer the light casting shadows across his features. "Flavio's ceremony faltered because it was artificial showy. The genuine alignment won't occur in a pumping station. It will unfold softly across ten thousand rooms as individuals recognize the reasoning and just… concur. The significant pause will be a murmur, not a roar."
He gave Devon one piece of paper. An address located in the Scottish Highlands close to a location known as Glen Lyon. "The final record in his notes. A 'site of terrestrial calm.' He thinks some spots, on Earth naturally correspond with the principle. Amplifiers. If hes searching for a unyielding conjunction he'll travel there.. Dispatch his lieutenants."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because I assisted him in gathering the data " Benjamin said, his calm, at shattering into a wave of old torment. "I am no hero, Analyst. I am a creator. My penance is to provide you the means to tear down the structure I helped build. But keep in mind you are not battling a person. You are battling a solution.. To oppose a solution you need to possess a superior one."
Devon exited the archive the key weighed down in his pocket the journal pressed to his chest. The vault door shut securely behind him trapping the spirits of bygone quiet. He ascended the stairs to a realm of sound and darkness. The stillness of that chamber had taken hold of him. It was no longer something to conquer. It had become a query now completely posed, resonating within his frame.
Flavio loved the world to stillness. Benjamin loved it to sorrow. And Devon? He realized, standing on the Brussels street, he did not know what his love looked like anymore. He only knew he was not finished. Not yet. The case was no longer about solving a crime. It was about solving himself.