A Condensed History of North East I - 3rd Part : C

Part III: North’s Revolution - Segment C


One morning, Sherlock Holmes brought him to a café in Broad Street for a luncheon of seafood. The great detective was not known to fancy foods, but a nice meal was the least he can do to thank North for the young lad had just saved his life that morning. They finished at one, after noon according to the clocks, but the sky and lights seemed to argue that it was still seven after dawn. The cold was unwelcoming. The mist and the grayness of everything could have been either real or manifestations of North’s perspective according to the arguments in his mind. Nothing was bright despite the streetlamps, and even the shadows lack their contrasting darkness. Nothing was clear. There was a storm nearing.

The not quite father and son took a stroll, and Holmes gave North a fatherly advice to not overdo with gifted skills.



Two weeks before, North went missing. Aunt Irene used all the strings she could pull but all she got were loose ends. Even Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes had no leads. Nobody in the whole of London claimed to see him. North East just disappeared. He committed no crime (the Holmes brothers guaranteed), he was not in any trouble, and he was not running away from anyone.

What happened was North simply walked away one night with no particular direction or reason in mind. Or he might have a thought and reason in mind, but he left the part of his mind that had it somewhere in the beginning of his inexplicable journey. Thirteen days passed and there were no news still, not even about a dead body being found and matching North’s features.

On the morning of the fifteenth day after his disappearance, North appeared. Holmes was tinkering with some devices to be used shortly for some inhalation exercises. He had just placed a bottle over a lit Bunsen burner when North barged in and slapped the glass tubes from the detective’s hands. Without a word, North pulled him up by the arms and dragged him to his front door. In confusion and by natural reflex, the great detective wrestled him off and pinned him down barely past the threshold, which was not unusual to his practice prior to questioning. But the questioning was not needed, as the answer automatically came unexpectedly and with a blast: Holmes paraphernalia exploded like thirty camera bulbs flashed at once. North pulled Sherlock Holmes’ head down.

The room was deadly white for a few less than ten seconds, but the two of them kept their eyes shut tight until well after a minute. They were mostly safe from the explosion since both their backs were toward the room and both their faces were almost flat on the floor. With eyes half-closed due to faint after-images of the sudden flare, they talked. It was totally easy for Sherlock Holmes to see, figuratively, that his life was not really in danger but somebody planned to do away with his sight. When North was asked what he knew, the young lad could not answer. Once, he even asked if the detective was referring to him when he said the name North.
He did not know anything was what he said, and that if he knew anything, there was no reason not to tell Sherlock. How he knew about the flaring powder was beyond him. He knew that someone had spiked Holmes’ powder with some other chemicals—maybe magnesium or potassium or something more powerful—but he could not say who and how he might have known. He could not even explain why he came in at the right moment as the detective placed the glass on the burner. He thought hard—harder than he ever did all his life—but it was like dealing with amnesia when you know something but you cannot figure out why or how you know it, and it was futile.

Sherlock Holmes checked him for pulse inconsistencies and proved he was not lying. He pulled himself up, dusted his knees, and then held a hand to this young confused rescuer. There were small fires in the room to be extinguished and shards to be cleared, but that was the least of their problems then. North slumped on the seat, which was formerly Dr. Watson’s and started to berate himself for being useless, for being not in control of his own mind. Holmes offered him a cigar to relax, and reminded him that he just saved two of the most important pair of eyes in Europe, and probably in the whole world. North had just displayed a level of deduction and inference yet to be mastered by anyone, and that that was far superior to Holmes’ own, which was the best and the keenest in the entire Kingdom. But it was troubling that someone with that faculty would have to belong to someone who forgets his own name. After a few puffs, he took him out to lunch to eat and to talk, and to help him pull himself together.

North told Sherlock Holmes that he knew he was roaming across the southeast of Britain for two weeks but he could not remember any detail. He saw many things but everything seemed blurry now that he tries to recollect, and he could not remember why he did it. There was at the start something about knowing a war was about to happen and then he just started to walk because he felt he needed to go somewhere. He remembered, when he tried his best to, that he wanted to visit his father and then go to France to see Nurse Victoire’s hometown and the young man she used to talk about when he asked her to tell him a story when he was small. He also remembered searching for a man—a penniless poet or a struggling painter—and that somehow, he knew that that man would be able to help shift the world’s history. One day, he became conscious that when he was speaking to himself, he never called himself by name. Then he realized he forgot his own name or who he was in general. He was in the middle of nowhere and a disturbing revelation just came to him. He did not think of it as a realization then, but he knew it was going to happen and that he had to rush back. What followed was what happened that morning at Baker Street.



Holmes advised North to not be too hard on himself, that he needs to relax for a couple of weeks to keep his mind in order. What North displayed was incredible, but it was believable when one thinks of it scientifically, and everything settles down to science, Sherlock said. It was a new level of genius. The skill to foresee future events and reading people’s actions before they were done as if it was pure impulse or reflex should mature gradually and should not be forced to perfect. Else, Holmes added as a closing remark before they parted as he just had a realization as to the suspects for that morning’s episode, even the most capable brain would break down. North had the power of clairvoyance, but it would cost him much of his brain if he lets it. It was either North learns to control it or give it up. North’s mind in its normal state, Sherlock pressed, was already great, and it would not be wise to upgrade it at the cost of his own sanity. Of course, they both acknowledged that it was what saved Holmes that morning, but aside from that it would not be worth the price North would have to pay.

North would remember this lesson and the events of this day eighteen years later, before his fall.



North East I got home at around three and he went straight to bed. He was not sleepy at all, but his body was weary and he wanted to rest his head. He was on the verge of incoherence most of the time for the past weeks. His mind was appearing to act on its own and without his assent, and who knows what it might be doing beyond his knowledge. His mind needs to slow down, to unwind, and to realign its fragments, or it might just break some of its gears. Enough thinking, he thought; no more philosophies, no esoterics, no more plans, no more schemes, no more problems. But the more he tried not to think, the more he did. He fell asleep thinking.

At seven in the evening, he was awakened by a cry of horror from the street. He could not decide between getting up to go out and staying in bed for much needed rest. If he went out, he might be able to save somebody, but the tension might snap the last fiber of the string that was holding his sanity together.

After four minutes, there was a second cry, but there was no sound of anyone else. Nobody was responding. Or maybe, he thought, it was just him who could hear. Maybe the cries were all in his head. Great thought. Now he needs more to check if the cries were real, or maybe he needs more to rest. He had to choose, but he knew no choice could be good.

Third cry. North pulled himself up. As he did, a sharp, deep, and bitter paroxysm shot all over his body as if he was being turned inside out. It felt as if the room was taking a different shape: Something two dimensional, or one: How many sides does a line segment have? It mattered not. He was being driven mad, uncontrolled, frenetic, bizarre… no, the word for this hasn’t been coined yet. He felt like every particle of his body was being ripped to a million pieces, like his cells turned to blades slicing each other up, like his blood turned to countless arrows, not being shot into but being pulled from everywhere it was suppose to flow. He swallowed his voice, and when he tried to scream, he drowned in air. His vision turned to black, but the kind of black that burns the eyes more than the brightest light. He could not tell which part of his body was which. He clawed, gnashed, punched, kicked, and squirmed, and he tore his clothes off until the suffering suddenly ceased. It was over. He did not even wheeze. He opened his eyes, or maybe his eyesight just came back, and it was all right.

There was not a trace of pain; he could not even remember how the pain felt when he tried to imagine it. It could not have been a dream, he discerned. It was too physical. In fact, the sensations were purely physical, although there was no way to be sure. He found it hard to trust his mind.

When North was sure he was fully normal again, he stood up and went to the water basin in a corner to wash his face. As he was splashing on his hair, however, something caught his peripherals. He turned his head and saw that there was another lad lying naked on his bed. Carefully, confusedly, and very nervously he walked towards the person to see his face. He discovered exactly what he feared, which was exactly what happened some years ago: The other man was him.

Another cry echoed outside. North did not hesitate that time to get to the source of the scream. He left dealing with the other North East for later. He put on the first clothes he found and grabbed the first thing that may be used as a weapon.

At the same time, the other North got up, and as this North did so, this North diffused like smoke into air, and then this North was completely gone, without any trace. The original North (or at least he was the original in his own point of view) saw it happen but he was not in the luxury to mind it at that instance. He rushed out of their apartment, ran across the street, and got into the place of the cries’ origin just in time to see a band of cops hauling three corpses into a carriage. Whatever it was that had happened, North was sure of only one thing: He was too late.



North kept that strange incident to himself, afraid that Nurse Victoire or Aunt Irene might send him to the asylum or, worse, that Sherlock Holmes would ban him from the medicine stash. He searched for a scientific or any remotely reasonable explanation for those episodes of Two Norths. The easiest and most logical conclusion he accepted was that it was all psychological, that the experience he already twice had was a morbid form of sleep-walking. That’s it. He would not force his mind to go any farther, or at least he would just look for a ready-made answer.

Sigmund Freud and his works were enjoying popularity in those times, and North did not let pass having a copy of The Interpretation of Dreams. North also made sure he knew about the background of the Austrian physician and psychologist. North was all intent in reading about the theories of the unconscious mind and the topology of the psyche, but he became outraged when he discovered the parts about the necessity of psychoanalysis and Freud’s recollection of sexual attraction towards his own mother Amalia.

To North, his mind was only his own to observe. He judged psychotherapy as only for the weak-minded and that a man with proper will and self-awareness—such as him—should be able to manage his own psychopathology with introspection alone. Letting his rational appetite go and letting his primal impulsive will take over, he sent a graphically disgusted letter to Freud in which he called the doctor a quack and the world’s most significant preconscious motherfucker. He also wrote that not everybody gets the privilege to have parents—some of us have mothers who had been brutally mutilated and fathers who have been forsaken by their own minds—and that repression is as much a part of life as thinking or breathing. He accused Freud of promoting a worse mental sickness than the ones he claimed to treat: a sickness called deinhibition.

Incidentally, deinhibition is one of two characteristics of Frontotemporal Dementia, a mental disorder being suffered from in those days by a man named Friedrich Nietzsche. Of the hundred readings that had been under North’s scrutiny, Nietzsche’s works were kept in the in the least-resented shelf along with Prince and The Leviathan.

As a form of respect, probably since North thought it would be among the last the German would receive, he tried to correspond with the diseased author about his own version of perspectivism. North’s was about an individual’s perspective on anything if that individual truly affirms the existence of God. He also wrote his thoughts on nihilism and piety, plus the abstract of his ideas about starting a war to unite all races. He described his views as internationalist and his ambition to shift the world’s polarity of superpower nations to end colonialism and bring about a world where every region and country coexists in equality and mutual respect. He included in the letter a draft of his plans on how to forward his cause.

After a month, North received a letter from Freud’s sister Elizabeth stating that Friedrich had been mentally ill, withdrawn, and virtually helpless for years. North knew about this but did not anticipate the German’s condition to be that dire. However, he was more taken aback when Elizabeth mentioned their surprise when Friedrich actually got to read North’s papers despite his condition. Elizabeth also queried about the contents of his letter because after reading, Friedrich stood up and by himself went to the hearth to burn the papers. The clincher was, after it, Friedrich sunk lower than his previous state and, after a few days, died of a stroke. North never wrote back.



Nietzsche was the first and last person to read North’s own handwritten synthesis of human nature and societies. Yet, sociologists and political scientists would not find it a loss to let pass North’s philosophies because North himself acknowledged the reality that his writings could only work if it was carried out by him and him alone.

To others, especially the learned individuals, North’s views are nothing but patches of insights pulled from various existing sources. Psychologists would agree unanimously that North just happened to be on a thinking frenzy affected by some popular ideologies of his time, with the help of both written and ingested stimuli.
Other ideologists and followers of famous political theorists would most probably spit on North’s ideas as these ideas were so simple-minded yet snobbish. How dare he, they would say, collect the papers of great thinkers and then shun them all out and then judge their supporters? Members of clashing ideologies would set their differences aside and proclaim that this North practically knows nothing and yet he declares that he knows everything! Then, they would laugh at the fifteen-year old lad for he was pitiful. And they would laugh some more because he was despicable. And then, when they could laugh no more, they will sigh and go back to their respective bases and prepare once more for their never-ending intellectual warfare.
What they did not know was North actually calculated and expected these kinds of reviews. It was all for the best of humanity, he judged, that nobody should pay attention to his written works because the demonstration which was to follow was in no way to be hindered or corrupted.

So it was good for North that all these reactions and criticisms were imaginary.

North smirked when he thought about it. Still, if they were real, it means they were threatened and scared. It only went to show that his views were at worst as valid as all of theirs. He supposed with much pondering that everybody thinks that way about everybody else because Man is pompous and self-righteous by nature, that man could not help it without being hypocritical.

Even though there were no written accounts of North’s ideology, the author, for the sake of the reader, tried to evaluate North’s recorded actions and very briefly summarize some of it on the following paragraphs. The views presented below are not necessarily that of the author, and the author gives no assurance that the succeeding statements match North’s ideas one hundred percent.

North East I believed individual philosophy is important. But all ways of thinking are valid yet petty, absolutely right from one side and totally wrong from another, with two far ends causing debates that lead nowhere and gray areas all along its span promoting fatigue and apathy. They are double edged daggers that cut both ways always, and people tend to abuse it for personal gains. Sometimes even, they have more than two points: a lot of loose ends running the length of its thread tangles and frizz. In relation to this, individualism in style is a mask and an illusion.

In addition, North East I was particularly amused by philosopher who betrays his own teachings, or by any follower who acts against his or her supposed cause.

As for his own points of view, one main thing is that, for him, the essence of being human is to aim for godliness and be above being just another man. To use one’s own brain instead of centering all praise and blame on a preferred type of supreme being. The goal is to put all responsibility on oneself like there is no higher being to turn to as a last resort, but to be always searching for a way to follow the path towards God. All lies in self-regulation and resolve. Any person can be stopped or bested by another; it is up to anyone to be either the latter or the former. Introspection must be learned. It can be done thoroughly and effectively when one uses his or her brain seriously.

Society should be a system where people do not just work for others but their own lives’ fulfillment as well. This is important so that man can realize himself and work towards the betterment of himself instead of the ruin of others, and instead of wasting time and resources blaming their superiors or the societal structure. Everybody wants to be rich and proud. When people shout for social equality, it is because they are on the disadvantaged side (although some well-off ones also utilize riding the issues of the plight of those on the disadvantaged side). North’s dream society is not a Utopia of all-equals. But it is a place where even blue collars are able to enjoy what the black suits can. It is an untried status quo where the places are maintained but the divisions are demolished. It is where everyone can be someone to aspire to be, and everyone can dream and be responsible for his advancement. Individuals should be responsible for their own fate and standing in society. As far as whole nations and races are concerned, North is for internationalism and world citizenship. But of course, he made his own tweaks so his ideas never exactly match the descriptions of any popular philosophy we learn from books.

So his thoughts are as good as any other in the textbooks or in some random person’s mind. If his was not the best, even he thought, it is at least equally valid. What makes his better is his chosen ways to promote it. What makes it superior is his conviction as much as his unusual qualifications. If he’d have to commit crimes, he would, and he did.

North’s War is nearing; but not as almost-here as the Crimes of the Easts.



Continued on Part 4: Crimes of the Easts
Previous: Part 3: North's revolution - Segment B