#title Kraus
#author Julian Langer
#LISTtitle Kraus
#date 31/5/2024
#source https://ecorevoltblog.wordpress.com/2024/05/31/kraus-a-short-story/
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-05-31T12:48:25
#authors Julian Langer
#topics science, de-extinction, Kafka, Fondane, Sartre, existentialism,



Few know that the anarchist scientist, known only as Kraus by his friends and by myself, had in the early 1990s developed a morbid interest in de-extinctionism and vitalism. In the months before his death he had hidden himself away in his home in Prague, reading all he could find on attempts to reanimate the dead. After finding nothing of use to him in the scientific books and papers, and after having read several of Lovecraft’s fictional works regarding this subject, Kraus began to delve into the occult in his final weeks. In one of his rare trips outside of his home during this period, he visited a medium he had been made aware of through a cousin who had sought to contact their deceased mother, and during this visit killed the medium and stole a great many of their books. In his final hours, Kraus put all he had learned from these books to use and successfully summoned the ghosts of Franz Kafka and Benjamin Fondane and commanded them to perform folk renditions of songs by The Boom Town Rats, who were his favourite band. Fondane turned to Kafka and sang “you don’t like existential Mondays” to which Kafka responded by singing “I’m stuck in eternal Sunday”; before killing Kraus, as revenge for awakening them. How I know this is that I witnessed the entirety of these events, other than the killing of the medium – though I heard Kraus muttering to himself about it when he returned home. I am a mouse who lived in that home and I am alive still as I accidentally read something in one of the mediums books that grants eternal life to mice. Now I wander Prague immortal and tormented by the words “you don’t like existential Mondays. I’m stuck in eternal Sunday” sung to the tune of that fucking Book Town Rats song, going over and over in my mind. It’s been 30 years and it doesn’t stop. Sartre was wrong, this is hell!