Chapter III Of Value, and Other Misunderstandings

“Private Collector N,” Glen said at last,
“you have probably already understood that money is not the most reliable measure of value.”

He did not say it dismissively. There was no moral judgment in his voice—only practicality.

“In your world,” he continued, “money is easily created. A few digits added to a ledger, a sequence of zeros appearing on a screen. In a reality where value exists as numbers inside a machine, numbers themselves begin to lose meaning.”

So, I thought, I am clearly sitting across from an eccentric millionaire who has finally lost touch with reality.
Not the worst situation for me. If he had money and was willing to part with it so easily, then perhaps our interests aligned.

I said nothing.

“I will not pretend,” Glen added, “that I was not intrigued by the possibilities. There is, within me, something not unlike what I sense in you—a tolerance for risk, an appreciation for shortcuts. Money accelerates comfort. It removes friction. It allows ideas to be realized faster.”

He paused.

“But it has never been the objective.”

Glen continued speaking, and I found myself watching him more than listening. I was trying to understand who sat across from me. A man indifferent to money is either very dangerous—or very tired of the world.

A wealthy heir, perhaps. One of those who spends inherited fortunes on curiosities once pleasure itself grows dull. Judging by his manner, his family had never known scarcity.

Or so I assumed.

“But we are not speaking about money right now,” he continued calmly. “Although I understand it matters to you. I can assure you—if we find common ground—you will no longer need to concern yourself with its quantity.”

I couldn’t help smiling.

“Well,” I said, “I like how this begins. If what you say is true, then we may indeed understand each other.”

“We will return to banks and money later,” Glen replied. “What I intend to propose does not depreciate, does not inflate, and does not lose relevance with time.”

I continued listening without interruption. I had to give him credit—he knew how to intrigue. He had touched my weak spot: curiosity.

“Please,” I said. “Go on. I’m listening.”

But he did not hurry.

“Before we address your… practical concerns,” Glen said, “I would like to speak briefly about history.”

Fine, I thought. I can tolerate a rich man’s eccentricities.

“I will allow myself,” Glen said, “a short excursion into the past.”

He stood and moved toward the shelves, trailing his fingers across the spines of old volumes—not reading titles, merely acknowledging them.

“Your world remembers Jules Verne as a novelist,” he said. “A dreamer. A man of imagination.”

He stopped.

“What it prefers to forget is that Verne was meticulous. He corresponded with engineers, shipbuilders, chemists. He studied patents more carefully than poetry. When he described submarines, pressurized suits, electric propulsion—he was not predicting the future. He was extrapolating from what already existed.”

I shifted in my chair.

“Verne calculated air-recycling systems decades before anyone built them,” Glen continued. “Estimated ocean depths before sonar confirmed them. Described electric submarines before practical batteries made them feasible.”

He turned to face me.

“Naval engineers of his time were unsettled not because his ideas were impossible—but because they were familiar.”

A faint smile crossed his face.

“Verne’s mistake was not imagination,” Glen said. “It was trust. He believed progress would continue in a straight line.”

His gaze drifted forward—through history.

“All of this is very interesting,” I interrupted, a little impatient. “And Jules Verne was a wonderful writer—I adored him as a child. But how does this relate to business? To opportunity? To profit?”

Glen looked at me calmly.

“Do not rush, my friend,” he said mildly. “This is directly relevant. Especially since money, for me, is only a means to an end.”

I sighed.

“Very well,” I said. “But briefly, if possible.”

“Then came Tesla,” Glen continued.

Of course.

“Tesla did not invent devices,” he said. “He demonstrated systems. Alternating current was not theory—it was operational reality. Wireless power transmission was not speculation—it was tested, measured, documented.”

I leaned back.

“And quietly buried,” I said.

“Yes,” Glen replied. “Because abundance is difficult to control.”

He spoke now as if recalling something long studied.

“Tesla illuminated lamps without wires. Transmitted energy through the ground. He spoke openly of planetary-scale power—free at the point of use.”

He turned back toward me.

“What frightened your financiers was not the technology,” he said. “It was the absence of leverage. Energy that could not be metered. Power that could not be denied.”

The room felt smaller.

“In your history,” Glen continued, “Tesla became an eccentric. His laboratories dismantled. His papers seized. His ideas labeled impractical.”

He glanced at the artifact.

“There are environments,” he said carefully, “where those same ideas are treated as infrastructure.”

Another world?
That settled it—I was dealing with a madman.

I said nothing, but made a mental note to be cautious. I wasn’t sure whether my thoughts showed on my face, but Glen gave no sign of noticing my unease.

“That divergence,” he continued, “was not caused by intelligence or imagination. It was caused by preference.”

Scarcity over abundance.

“The underwater civilization you suspect,” he added calmly, “did not emerge because of superior biology. It emerged because its world chose differently at moments like these.”

How the hell does he know about that?
My interest in deep-sea civilizations was a private obsession—one I rarely discussed. I believed, quietly, stubbornly, that such a civilization existed. And now, lying on the table between us, there was perhaps the first physical proof.

He gestured toward the artifact.

“And here,” he said, “is evidence that your intuition was not misplaced.”

The artifact lay silent between us.

“You are not wrong to pursue these objects,” Glen said. “They are not relics. They are echoes—signals that persist when complex systems overlap.”

He returned to his seat.

“Suppose that is true,” I said cautiously. “This is still only one object. I’ve seen no others.”

“That is not entirely accurate,” Glen replied. “You have encountered stories. Rumors. Books. Accounts dismissed as fiction.”

“Of course,” I said. “There are plenty of such stories. None of them prove anything. Jules Verne himself was considered a fantasist.”

“In his time,” Glen said evenly. “Today, many of his ideas are mundane.”

I considered that.

“So,” I said, “which stories do you consider meaningful?”

Glen thought for a moment.

“Lovecraft,” he said.

I frowned.

“Krakatoa? Cthulhu? Ancient gods?” I asked skeptically.

“He recorded myths,” Glen replied. “Not conclusions. Legends of entities and civilizations hidden beneath the ocean—distorted, exaggerated, but persistent.”

The Call of Cthulhu “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.” Remember that?

I smiled thinly.

“My interest in artifacts and underwater treasures,” I said, “is partly historical, partly financial. Collectors pay well for such things. You paid exceptionally well. Why?”

“My interest,” Glen said, “was never financial.”

“Then what?”

“It was corrective.”

“To what?” I asked.

He paused.

“To misinterpretation,” he said. “To escalation.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop.

“There are scenarios,” Glen continued carefully, “where contact becomes dominance. Where curiosity is mistaken for weakness.”

“And this artifact,” I said, touching the table lightly, “prevents that.”

“It clarifies,” Glen replied. “It stabilizes communication.”

“And you need me.”

“Yes.”

“Because I find them.”

“And because,” he added after a moment, “you do not accept comfortable explanations.”

I smiled.

“That may be the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all week.”

Glen stood.

“If we succeed,” he said, “history will never notice how close it came to catastrophe.”

“And if we fail?” I asked.

He considered that.

“Then history,” he said, “will tell the story very differently.”

The artifact remained silent.

But for the first time, I suspected it had been listening long before either of us arrived.