The Red Dimension
A party of Russian engineers surveying a desolate part of Siberia came one day upon the body of a man. He had evidently been dead for quite some time and, from the wasted face and limbs, it was concluded he had died from starvation. He carried in his pocket among other things a small pouch in which were found some dirty sheafs of paper on which was scrawled what follows. The thing had little interest for the surveyors and it was my good fortune in being an invited member of the party that gave me possession of the papers. Subsequently, I tried to verify the statements made in the manuscript and failed. Though I hunted through countless volumes of the records of Russian courts, I ran across no mention of a Doctor Ivan Korsakoff, or the trial of Arnoldi Kherkoff. Whether this story was only the raving of the poor wretch who was found dead, or whether it had a basis in fact far beyond my ability to discover, I cannot say. I must present the manuscript intact as I translated it, and leave it to my readers to judge.
How I hope to succeed in getting the following narrative to the world is a secret which I never will reveal. Should the channels through which it may reach you be disclosed, then the hands of my jailers would forever seal the lips of those who aided me in giving to the world the true facts of the strange case of my life-long friend and benefactor, Dr. Ivan Korsakoff.
Few people will remember the case. It was given some prominence at the time that the events occurred; but the details were soon forgotten in the frenzied excitement of war and the dethroning of the Romanoffs.
In brief, let me say that I was convicted on circumstantial evidence of having done away with the famous scientist. The evidence I brought in my favor had no effect and I was forthwith sentenced to life imprisonment in a pest-hole in Siberia.
For years I lived in the hope that the truth of Dr. Korsakoff's case might become known. But the passing of years have made me an old man—although I'm only forty—and have caused me to wish that I had received a death penalty. For life has been unbearable! Even now, I lie in a bed of filth praying a humane hand to relieve me of the burden of life.
Perhaps you will be inclined to doubt me when I say I am still confined in a filthy prison camp. You probably believe that such confinement for criminals has been abandoned by every civilized nation in the world. Let me destroy that belief.
In the wastes of Siberia, forgotten by the world, I am destined to remain for the rest of my natural life! Siberian prison camps were the pets of Russian monarchy in the early days. Mine was the most accursed of all, being visited only on rare occasions to receive prisoners and scant supplies. If civilization has actually abolished these places of lingering death, then mine must have been overlooked and forgotten when the Romanoffs met their fate and the monarchy was overthrown!
But the place still exists. Where, I do not know—nor does any other of my pestilence-stricken fellow prisoners.