2 To create life

Chapter 2 To create life From his window, Victor Frankenstein had a fine view over the tiled roofs of Ingolstadt University. But he was too absorbed in his books to notice. Victor was studying science, hoping to uncover the secrets of the human body. He had always dreamed of making great discoveries. "The world is full of mysteries," he would say. "Who knows what powers we could master, if we only knew how?"

For two years, Victor devoted himself to his work. He went to every class, read every book, and spent hours in the university laboratories. He learned everything his tutors could teach, from how the blood circulates to the nature of the air we breathe. But there was one question they could not answer, and it tormented Victor. "What is the secret of life itself?" he demanded. And he began to take extra classes in anatomy, and to visit the dead and dying, to try to understand what separates life from death.

One day, Victor came across an article by Galvani, an Italian scientist who had managed to animate a lifeless frog and make it jump, using the power of electricity. "Could I do the same?" he mused. "Galvani only triggered a brief spark of life and movement; but if I had enough power -say a lightning strike- could I actually create life? Could I make a living being?" And he began to plan a new experiment. Victor spent months making calculations, building equipment, mixing chemicals, doing tests... He set up a workshop in one of his rooms and barely left it, working feverishly, late into the night. He was so busy, he hardly wrote home or noticed the changing seasons. Letters piled up, unread, from his family and friends back home in Geneva- his father, his little brother, his best friend Henry and his sweetheart Elizabeth...

From time to time, Victor caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Wild-eyed and pale, he was an alarming sight, but he shrugged it off. "I'll take a break as soon as this is over," he promised himself. "I can't stop now."

Completely obsessed, Victor allowed nothing to stand in his way- not even respect for the dead. For his experiment, he needed to build a body. So, by night, he secretly visited dark dissecting rooms and damp graveyards, stealing bones and fragments of flesh. Out of these horrors, he meant to create a completely new creature. At last, one stormy November night, everything was ready. A flickering lamp sent menacing shadows dancing over the finished body lying on the table. It was a hideous sight, with sunken eyes and shrunken lips. Patches of wrinkled greenish skin barely covered its flabby flesh.

A flash of lightning seared the sky directly overhead, hitting wires Victor had set up on the roof. A vast jolt of energy poured into his equipment, and sent a spark of life into the misshapen creature before him. Its oversized limbs twitched. Then, it took a hoarse, rattling breath, and its dull yellowy eyes flickered open...