The Secret Story of the Diamond Lens

By Arcadia Berger

SteamPunk fiction invokes the style and sensibilities of Victorian science fiction, and the Secret Stories transform the text of public-domain Victorian fiction into SteamPunk-flavored erotica. In the "Secret Stories" series, Arcadia Berger takes the public-domain texts of classic works of 19th Century fiction and rewrites them as erotic entertainments for a 21st Century audience.
In "The Secret Story of the Diamond Lens", Linley, a man obsessed with perfecting the microcope, kills to possess the giant diamond which he needs to carve a lens for a microscope of unheard-of power. Through his diamond lens, he sees a microscopic woman, and falls in love with her. He names her "Animula", and is entranced by her grace and her transparent beauty as she swims through the endless seas of a drop of water.
He loses interest in the women around him, and sinks even deeper into madness as he gazes upon her, even knowing he can never touch her, nor even speak to her -- that he can watch her frolic among the microscopic forests every day, but is unable to make her aware of his existence.
And then, Animula seems to fall ill -- can Linley save her, or must he watch her die? And can he save his own mind from his descent into madness?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Berger
• Release date: May 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311649157

Arcadia Berger

Arcadia Berger was recently profiled in her hometown newspaper. She finds it extremely flattering, and only slightly scary, seeing her name on the cover, knowing that very few of her neighbors know who "Arcadia Berger" really is....

Book preview

The Secret Story of

The Diamond Lens

The Original Story

by Fitz-James o'brien

Adapted by Arcadia Berger

Cover based on artwork by

Arthur Rackham and anton van Leeuwenhoek

Table of Contents

Part One: I Discover the Microscopic World

Part Two: Medical School

Part Three: The Voice of Leeuwanhoek

Part Four: The Diamond

Part Five: Animula

Part Six: The End of Paradise

About the Author(s)

Also by Arcadia Berger

Prologue

Seeing droplets of ejaculate remaining on my fingers, I ran a tiny wire loop over one spot and came away with a smear of several thousand of my spermatozoa.

I transferred the loop to Animula’s water droplet quickly, before I could hesitate over the wisdom of what I was doing. I peered into the microscope and saw my little swimmers seem to catch scent of Animula, moving in her direction like a flock of birds -- or a pack of wolves.

I trembled in fear that my seed might harm Animula as they swarmed around her. To the mindless spermatozoa, Animula smelled like an ovum, and they sought to conjugate with her immediately. She squirmed as though ticklish, but showed no other signs of distress.

Animula calmly seized one of my wriggling spawn and brought it to her mouth! She suckled the protein from its head with evident relish, draining it until its tail whipped no longer. I could not tell if she had consumed its nucleus, but if it did, it was only as food, not as additional genetic material -- my Animula was surely no Galinthis, to make babies through her mouth.

She continued with her routine of swimming among the forests, now attended by a school of faithful suitors. She swam tirelessly, while my spermatozoa flagged and eventually floated, spent, in the eddying fluid.

Part One: I Discover the Microscopic World

From a very early period of my life the entire bent of my inclinations had been toward microscopic investigations. When I was not more than ten years old, a distant relative of our family drilled a small hole in a disk of copper and filled it with a drop of water. This very primitive apparatus worked up my imagination to a preternatural state of excitement.

Seeing me so interested in this rude instrument, my cousin explained to me all that he knew about the principles of the microscope, related to me a few of the wonders which had been accomplished through its agency, and ended by promising to send me a better one. I counted the days, the hours, the minutes that intervened between that promise and his departure.

Meantime, I was not idle. Every transparent substance I eagerly seized upon, and employed in vain. Window panes, my aunt’s spectacles, even the crystalline humor from the eyes of fishes and animals, I endeavored to press into the microscopic service—in which attempt it is scarcely necessary to say that I totally failed.

At last the promised instrument came. It was