The Lethal Chamber is a marble building on University Place in the gaslit New York of 1870: officially a place of painless death, in fact a vault for the confiscated ambrosia, where Medea waits.
| Type | Place |
| Chronicle | MYM |
| Spanish entry | La Cámara Letal (Never 9-11) |
Description
Too new for its age, it has six columns outside, twelve inside, and lead-lined walls no stone-piercing gaze can pass. Three statues guard the door: the weavers of past, present and future, three who are one. Inside is a world of spring, vapors and old waters, where visitors find themselves in white Greek tunics; Medea waits in a basilica by a cauldron, beside a dragon-drawn chariot.
History
After the laws against suicide were repealed and suicides rose, the government resolved to install a Lethal Chamber in every city and town. The governor, the mayor, the President of the United States, senators and health and police officials attended the inauguration, among them a beautiful woman and figures moving like vampires. The governor promised a painless death to those who could not bear life; silence followed.
The seekers from another time stood unseen at the center. Only an aircraft designer saw them; he later wrote that time is infinite superimposed levels, so men are immortal.
The weavers say something of the great ones’ scale entered — el don, la madre-reina del apocalipsis (“the gift, the queen-mother of the apocalypse”) — and that one route runs from the Moon to that door. The ambrosia, once spread across many carboys, was fused into one mass and donated to the State, which built the Chamber so no one could use it.
Medea’s plan
Bienvenido a mi universo (“Welcome to my universe”), Medea said. The deserving immortals would mix on the Moon, the only way to resist the coming Terminus. The seekers had put sticks in the wheel but were also its spokes. She warned of someone who thinks a crown can make him like a King in Yellow.
The ribbon was cut, the black stone rolled toward Battery Park and the rocket left. The Chamber stayed open; the first dead were entering. The imperial dynasty of North America (Earth-212) had just been founded. Those who later go to the Hyades, Hastur and Aldebaran will learn: this is Carcosa.
See also
- Carcosa (Never 9-11)
- The King in Yellow
- Hecate — Medea’s aunt and teacher
- Blanqui, the moon worm