The Rectodus Society ^new^ — Trusted

“The founding axiom is a mis-translation,” Crispin whispered, in the clock tower’s main hall, where every chair faced due north and the chandelier hung from a single vertical chain.

It was a small, choked sound, like a mouse sneezing. But in the Rectodus Society, a laugh was a seismic event. It was jagged. It was asymmetrical. It was beautiful.

Membership was hereditary and rigorous. At age thirteen, every son of a Rectodus member was taken to the “Hall of Angles.” There, he was shown two doors. One was a straight, unadorned rectangle. The other was a perfectly circular portal. To choose the circle was to be cast out, shorn of the family name, and given a small purse of silver to begin a new, crooked life elsewhere. To choose the rectangle was to be anointed. No one had chosen the circle in over a century. The last who had, a boy named Leo Vane, was Aldous’s own younger brother. He had walked through the circle and vanished into the fog of Prague’s old town, never to be mentioned again. the rectodus society

“What do I do now?” he whispered.

“Crispin Wain,” he said, “you have introduced a variable. A bend. A curve.” He walked to a black lever on the wall. “The penalty for deviation is exile. You will choose the circle.” It was jagged

Aldous Vane stood. He was tall, and when he spoke, the room became a tomb.

“The wall has no angle,” Thaddeus said, his voice trembling. “It is neither straight nor curved. It is a surface. A beginning.” Membership was hereditary and rigorous

Aldous’s hand paused on the lever. “The path is binary. Two doors. Two choices.”