Chapter Text
“The best is to do injustice without paying the penalty; the worst is to suffer it without being able to take revenge. Justice is a mean between these two extremes. People value it not because it is a good but because they are too weak to do injustice with impunity.”
Plato, The Republic
As Iris touched Clive’s chest, she felt her heart beating wildly and put her gentle hand in the palm of his. The skin of Clive was rough, warm and sweated, as if it was trying to reflect his long years of loneliness and suffering. In his arms, the black-haired girl seemed happy because she was always wearing a naive little smile and her blue eyes were lighting up with enjoyment. To tease him, Iris played a few moments with his unruly locks on the back of his brown hair. Clive’s eyes flickered feebly, and he groaned huskily, making Iris smile. Although he had a dull and tired looks, Clive knew very well how to appeal to women. Iris had immediately been charmed by his self-confidence and his flawless determination. At first glance, he was open to others, but Iris had seen in him a narrow-minded, disoriented and bighearted man. Suddenly, she grazed his naked body and kissed him softly. With a flutter of her lashes, Iris gazed profoundly at Clive — who was waking up — and greeted him.
“Good morning. Did you have a good sleep last night?”
Clive nonchalantly shook his shoulders before sighing deeply.
“You’ve received a letter from a man named Pharrell,” she added. “As far as I remember, you dislike when people interfere in things that concern you… You see… I don’t read it.”
Clive trembled fearfully when hearing her tell the name of his colleague. He vaguely thanked Iris and seized abruptly the letter she gave to him. Lost in thought, Iris yearned after Clive. She had a strong desire to live as a couple with him, but she knew he had a lot of sexual relations with other girls. Completely sad about that, Iris whispered.
“It occurred to me that we could become more than friends or sexual partners, couldn’t we?”
Busy reading the paper, Clive ignored the smile on Iris’ face whereas she continued to speak in a low and quavering voice.
“Actually, I really don’t know what we are,” she murmured, with a little nervous laugh.
Absent-mindedly, Clive did not answer to Iris.
“Clive? What are you thinking of?” She asked him directly.
“Ten years ago, my parents were killed in an explosion which was caused by some thoughtless scientists,” Clive suddenly interrupted. “I’ve decided to ask one of my colleagues in high places to look at the files, and he has just found the ones responsible for destroying my life.”
“I don’t know what to think of it… I mean… It’s really sad.”
In his dark sharp-eyes, there was a glint of rage. Clive frowned as he stared at her scornfully. Medias were all misleading information with an ominous interest… According to Clive, they are controlled by corrupted politicians and caused the worsening of society with all the technical advances they had brought in the world. Progress will always negatively affect the lives of people as well as Clive had noticed it a few years ago. Before the experiment which killed his parents, he had lived peacefully in a little quarter full of workers and hadn’t been sad. Clive had always made the effort to smile without any hesitation even if the living conditions of his family had been uncomfortable and very poor… Suddenly, Clive stopped thinking about his old memories and swallowed when he remembered the names of his parents’ killers.
“Thanks to a careful, thorough examination of the incident, he has discovered the truth behind my parents’ death. It is beyond all question. The first one is a man we all know… Bill Hawks.”
“The First Minister? Are you serious? Would it be possible for a man with a such fine presence, who planned on helping destitute children, to be an awful guy who killed your parents?”
“He’s not the only one. There’s a scientist who lives in a seedy flat. Dimitri Allen.”
“You might have told me you never wanted to live with me!”
Iris desperately shouted at Clive with tears in her voice. The boy hastened to take out his lighter and his cigarette pack in order to light one of them. Under the stunned gaze of Iris, he inhaled a breath of nicotine and flippantly looked at her.
“I hoped for a miracle, but you’ll always play the fool! Clive! I really like you,” she boomed before falling to the ground. “And I know you’re definitely clever. I’m afraid... Don’t do that to me…”
“I’ve always wanted to be alone. If you had sufficiently paid attention to my expectations, we wouldn’t be in a such mess.”
Iris affectionately called out to Clive.
“We can be happy. All the time, you tell me you’ve no feelings, but it’s an absurdity. You deserve a better life, and I can be helpful.”
Loudly sighing though as he remembered the night he had lived with Iris, Clive marked an untrue smile on his face and quietly approached her.
“Do you know how you may help me?” He demanded with a seductive gaze and a captivating smile, which always made her cheerful. “Lay down on the head of the table and close your attractive eyes, my dear.”
Iris had been using to his continual sarcastic remarks. She was now upset about Clive’s behaviour, frowned and stepped back to see him better.
“I need more than a single sexual relation with you… Clive.”
Clive nodded his head before indicating the front door of the house he had inherited from his adoptive mother, Lady Constance. Suddenly, he pushed Iris outside and grumbled.
“Get out of my home, Iris. I’m busy.”
After that, he shut his door in Iris’ face and returned on the couch where he began to cry.
For such a long time, Clive Dove was obsessed by his desire for revenge. Obsessed with his resentment, he felt angry in a world of insecurity. Pharrell had told him that Dimitri Allen, a recluse scientist, was working in research for a time machine project. Thinking about the death of his parents, Clive attached importance to Dimitri’s pastime. Travel through time was the perfect scenario to take the law into his own hands. He quickly glanced at a picture frame representing a brown-haired man and a purple-haired woman with round glasses. Employed by the Dove family a few years back, Cogg and Spring were the owners of a little clock shop on Midland Road in Baldwin. As they had been there for Clive after the unfair death of Constance, he liked them very much. Clive knew it was his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and decided to dial their number on his black telephone.
“I’ll make my dream come true.” He suddenly broke in, with an air of inflexible calmness. “I’ve formulated a plan to rebuild London into something more solid and I really need you.”
Spring was tired of seeing how Clive was able to destroy himself. Looking uneasily at her husband, she sighed and answered in a sad voice.
“You have a wild imagination, but you should face up to reality and abandon your idea of revenge.”
“Don’t call my project like that! I prefer thinking about it as justice.”
“Truth will out, son.” Cogg added. “Don’t forget you’re responsible for your actions. However, we are going to help you, no matter what you’re doing.”
“Thank you. This is very important to me.”
In one of the famous quarters of London — Chinatown —, Clive rapidly crossed over the pagoda-shaped arches and found the blue front window that Pharrell had described to him. Without hesitation in front of the carved dragons of the golden facade, Clive entered the china store and smiled at an elderly person who was tidying dessert plates in a a cardboard box.
“Well hello!” He said, a bit stressed by the oppressive atmosphere of the room. “Is Dimitri Allen here?”
The quiet lady did not answer to Clive. She simply gave a faint scowl and indicated a spiral staircase before ignoring him again. Clive rolled his eyes, directly climbed and found a dilapidated blue door in a small aisle. At that moment, he hesitated, but finally decided to knock at the door. In response, a clearly gray-haired blue-eyed man came. He was wearing a white lab coat with a red rose on the left side, a black shirt under it and as a complement to that, he was equipped with a stylish white hat and a large gray scarf.
“Hello. Are you Dimitri Allen?”
The doubtful and piercing look of Dimitri did not really reassure Clive. Indeed, he was worried to confront his parents’ killer and swallowed when he saw the scientist folding his arms.
“That's it. What do you want from me?”
It was him. With a strong desire for murder, Clive anxiously gived a pinched smile and scratched his nose before desperately snapped at Dimitri.
“I’m a newspaper journalist. I have to write an interesting article for my boss. Thanks to one of my police friends, I found Bill Hawks’ name and yours in a file. You have to know that I really want him to go in jail. Of course I have job prospects but this article is very precious to me. I hate him. He despised my social class with no regard for our needs.”
Amazed because he had never before spoken so much in his life, Clive suddenly stopped talking. Dimitri was overcome by tiredness and offered him to enter in his one-room apartment. Apparently, it was rather a small laboratory in disorder with scientific researches on the walls, some white kitchen units and a spring mattress on the floor. Dimitri had a lot of books, blank sheets and typewriter ribbons close to a plunger coffee pot. Full of cigarette butts, an ashtray still smoking was at the centre of a drop-leaf table. A sudden impulse to smoke, Clive asked him.
“Hey, do you have a light?”
Dimitri nodded his head and quickly gave him a lighter. Clive sat on a chair, as if it was his home and introduced the subject first.
“Let’s see… Ten years before some people were killed in an explosion…”
“Don’t write your article.” Dimitri simply interrupted. “Do whatever you want, but Bill will not accept that passively.”
“Bill? He was close to you, wasn’t he?”
The tired-looking-eyes man breathed in deeply before looking straight at Clive.
“You said you hated the Prime Minister… But I hate him more than everyone else.”
To his great surprise, Clive gaped at Dimitri. He was intrigued to learn the truth behind his parents’ death and stopped pretending to write notes on his spiral-bound notebook.
“The file mentions an explosion, which was caused by a time machine that me, Claire, and Bill, had worked on. There were a lot of errors in the calculations we made but Bill wanted to go ahead with the experiment. Claire was chosen to be the first human subject for the test and just after all of that, she died.”
A feeling of sadness came over him. Dimitri had seen Claire dying in his arms, unable to do anything… Every day he lived with his regrets and suffered alone.
“You love her, don’t you?”
With tears in his voice, Dimitri nodded.
“I just want to go back to the day of the accident to save Claire.”
“I can’t understand what you feel,” Clive scornfully lied. “Losing your true love certainly was a terrible thing. I’m really sorry.”
Clive maliciously put a kind hand on his shoulder.
“We have a common hatred for the Prime Minister, don’t we? Well, er… Maybe it’s completely dumb, but please… Be my co-worker!”
Biting his lower lip because he hated himself for saying that, Clive hesitantly raised his right arm to shake hands with him.
“An idea just crossed my mind! I want him to lose his sense of reality. He had no regrets, so I think we could convince him to take part in a time machine demonstration in order to bring him back memories of the incident.”
According to Dimitri, Clive was full of ideas, a bold and determined young man. With a nostalgic air, Dimitri envied and compared him to the obstinate boy he had been before the incident. He remembered he had anticipated so many projects, had wanted a peaceable life with Claire hoping she would abandoned Hershel… Lost in his thoughts, Dimitri reminded the current lives of his old classmates.
Hershel Layton — also called Professor Layton because he taught archaeology lessons to his students — had a solid reputation thanks to his puzzle-solving skills.
He succeeded in life.
In spite of himself, Don Paolo was renowned as a scientist of the highest order, becoming Hershel’s arch-enemy.
He succeeded.
And Bill Hawks was now the corrupted Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Succeeded.
On the contrary, Dimitri stayed away from them, was an unknown scientist with a few wrinkles, which probably came from stress… But it wasn’t important enough. Claire was still dead.
She failed in death.
“Everything is okay?” Clive tried to get some information about Dimitri’s mental balance.
The young man got a broad smile out of him when he gasped in surprise. Dimitri was coming nearer to his new partner in order to shook his hands with him.
“I’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain by getting this done. We’ll kidnap and get him desperate of his cowardice.”
Giving free rein to his imagination, Dimitri wasn’t suspicious of Clive and began to show a will motivation.
“I’ll play the part of Alain Stahngun, a scientist who has decided to present a failed Time Machine.”
“Alain Stahngun?” Clive demanded before raising an eyebrow.
“Before devoting myself to science, I used to write short stories. Alain Stahngun was my pen name.”
Clive suddenly laughed at Dimitri. The scientist aroused a strong feeling of contempt in him. He was just so stupid and annoying.
After all, Dimitri had killed his parents ten years ago.