16 August 2025
Saturday. Three assistants arrived this morning without a booking and asked to be locked in. On a Saturday. I admired their nerve.
The arithmetic of my experiment is simple. One pair of hands for the journals, one for the organs, one for the machinery. Three, at the very least. On Saturdays, when the whole of Northbridge wants to help me, the online bookings ask for four; but three who telephone on the day, or simply walk in, may have any session nobody has taken. Today, somebody had cancelled. The storm was theirs.
At the other end of the arithmetic, six. The laboratory on Lake Street holds six assistants and not one elbow more. I tried seven once, in my imagination, and somebody knocked over the brain.
The three did well. One of them said “it’s alive!” every time anything moved, including the clock. I did not have the heart to stop him. Neither, it seems, did anyone else.
In the margin, in pencil: THREE IS GOOD. FOUR IS GOOD. SIX IS LOUD. I LIKE LOUD.
— V. Frankenstein
