The Soul Camera

The Soul Camera by Rhianon Jameson October 2008 “Have you ever wondered what your soul looks like, Roland?” With that question, Uncle Roland and I became embroiled in a fantastical adventure. The scene was the Prop Spinner’s pub in Steam Sky City, where the eccentric inventors and mad scientists of Caledon would occasionally gather to discuss their latest triumphs and failures over a pint of ale and, no doubt, conjure up some tall tales and wishful thinking as well. The interlocutor was Professor Diggory Foster, a plump man of about fifty, with long hair in the back compensating for the thinning of the crop up front, whose work in electromechanics had lately been superseded by an interest in metaphysics; and his victim was Dr. Roland Luminos, a somewhat elderly, decidedly eccentric inventor-of-all-trades, notoriously scatterbrained, and a close friend of mine, though no biological relation. “Pish. No such thing, old man. ” Roland did not like to drink; he merely liked the social atmosphere of the pub. Consequently, he looked at his nearly-full pint as though the conversation had never occurred. Several people around him were busy with their drinks, and the bartender was working feverishly to keep up with demands for refills. Foster looked hurt. “Not pish at all! Look here, don’t you believe you have a soul?” “The jury is still out. ” “Well, allow me to assert that you have one, whether you like it or not. If so, why would it not be possible, in principle, to view the soul? Not the way one would view an ordinary object, of course, but if one could develop a mechanism to convert the particular ‘form’ of the soul into light waves in the frequency that the human eye can decipher, one would have what is, to all purposes, a daguerreotype of the soul. ” Roland replied haughtily, “Sounds tautological, old chap. If it exists, you can see it. Possibly see it. True enough. ” Now Foster looked exasperated. “All right, then. See for yourself. ” He reached into his satchel and brought forth a series of daguerreotypes. Roland peered at them. Each had a series of lines that swirled and tapered off, dancing across the print in an apparently random set of sequences. The backgrounds ranged from pale to nearly inky black, with the latter rendering the darker whorls nearly invisible. “These are souls?”