Chapitre 26: Inbreeding
Author's notes: As of now, I'll start posting a new chapter every single day, the time will be the same.
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Austria, December 20th 1791
6:43 PM
Olivia finally opened the door of the storage. It was a dusty, old place. 'Looks like nobody's opened this place for a while,' Lukas thought.
"There you go, Lukas," Olivia said, smiling.
"Thank you," Lukas said with a slight nod.
Lukas slowly entered the storage. 'Okay, this isn't gonna be easy. I have to look for both the medical records and the family tree while I find a book suitable for my age, and on top of that, Olivia can't see it.'
Lukas spent quite a lot of time there. Just as he thought, the family tree was pretty easy to find, however, the medical records were a bit more of a challenge.
'Okay, here is the family tree,' Lukas carefully hid it underneath his coat. 'Hope this doesn't call her attention.'
Olivia raised her brow. "Do you want help, Lukas?" she asked.
"No, thank you, Olivia!" Lukas said. Not long after that, he looked upwards and saw a few books and documents on a few shelves high up on the wall. 'Welp, it's worth checking it out.'
Lukas pointed at the books while he turned his head to Olivia. "Olivia, could you bring me a ladder so I can check the books up there?"
Olivia sighed. "Fine. I will be right back."
Olivia walked away and left Lukas alone in the storage. 'Wow, this was easier than I thought! Okay, Lukas, hurry up!'
Lukas quickly started to go through all the parts of the storage that he could reach. Soon, as he checked some small wardrobes, he found a diary.
When Lukas read the cover of the book, he felt a relief. "Medical cases of the Von Neumann house, by Dr. Willem Von Neumann?" he murmured. "This is perfect! Just hope that this has the names of the patients," Lukas hid them underneath his coat and trapped it inside his pants, so the documents wouldn't fall.
Soon, Olivia came back with the ladder and placed it against the wall. "Do you want me to go there instead, Lukas?" she asked.
Lukas waved his hand in front of his face as he shook his head. "Oh, no, thank you, Olivia. I'm going myself."
Olivia sighed as she rolled her eyes. 'Why do I even bother asking?'
Lukas at first struggled a bit to climb up the ladder, but he soon got used to it. As Olivia saw that, she truly regretted letting Lukas climb up the ladder alone. 'Stopping to think about it... this is a bit too dangerous for a three years old.'
As soon as Lukas reached the shelf, he crawled onto it. Olivia could only watch it with a dumbfounded expression. 'This boy's truly gone mad! Isn't he aware of how dangerous it is?'
Lukas quickly checked the books there. Since he already had everything he wanted, he was just pretending that he was paying attention to the books. 'I guess I still will have to pick one, though, or else, Olivia will kill me.'
Soon, Lukas saw a book that called his attention. It was a book about biology. Something that could help him in this matter.
Lukas picked the book and smiled. 'Great!'
Lukas looked down at Olivia. "I already found a book that I like, Olivia!" Lukas said.
"O-Okay. J-Just get down here, quick," Olivia said, with a pale face.
Lukas calmly nodded his head and put the book under his arm. After that, he started climbing down the ladder.
However, as Lukas was climbing down the ladder, his right foot slid, which made him lose balance and hold himself onto the ladder. 'Shit!'
The ladder couldn't support Lukas's weight, which made it slowly start falling sideways. Olivia, meanwhile, was even paler than before. "L-Lukas!" she yelled.
Olivia was already holding the ladder, however, Lukas still didn't have his total balance. Soon, his coat, which was completely stuffed with the documents, opened, dropping the documents on the floor.
'Fuck... I'm screwed,' Lukas thought before Olivia quickly glanced at the books and then looked back at Lukas with a mad expression.
"Huh... I'm fine, Olivia," Lukas said.
"Get down here... now!" Olivia said with an expression that always scared Lukas.
Soon, Lukas climbed down the ladder and glanced down at the floor. 'Shit. I guess I screwed up. If only I had told Olivia that I wanted these documents for sheer curiosity, she probably would have let me have them. But now that she found out I was hiding them, I guess that will no longer be possible,' the blonde boy concluded.
"Come on, Lukas. Please, tell me! What did you want these for?! The real family tree of the Von Neumann house?!" Olivia asked with indignation. She was crouching down, so she could be at Lukas's height.
Lukas rubbed his arm as he bit his lower lip. "Huh... look, Olivia, it's not what it looks like," he said.
"Tell me what you wanted these for, Lukas!" Olivia said.
Lukas sighed. 'I guess it'll be better to tell her the truth. Shit, I truly screwed up this time. There were so many ways to make it out of this situation
without screwing up like this!' he sighed once again. 'It's useless to complain now.'
Then, Lukas told Olivia the truth. Everything about his suspects that inbreeding could bring problems to the offsprings, and also the fact that Violett was a bit too similar to his mother, which weirded him out.
When Lukas finished explaining, Olivia was showing a dumbfounded face. "Wh-What? But... if you..." she sighed as she placed both her index finger and her thumb on her forehead. "Okay, what if you find out that such problems may truly happen? What will you do?"
Lukas shrugged his shoulders. "Nothing. Like that I'll be aware that something may happen and I will be prepared for-"
"Lukas..."
Lukas grunted in frustration. "Somehow I'll make my marriage be canceled!" he revealed as he made a kick gesture in order to vent out his frustration.
"There you go!" after that, he puffed his cheeks, as if sulking.
If Olivia was dumbfounded before, now she truly was shocked. 'Oh, God! We are raising a monster!' "H-How do you plan to do it?!" she asked.
"I don't know! I'll figure something out! I have time after all!" Lukas said.
Olivia sighed. "So, can I have these documents?" Lukas asked.
"No."
"Olivia!" Lukas said in frustration. "Come on! You know that if you don't let me take them right now I'll not give up! I will eventually figure something out in order to get these documents."
Olivia sighed. 'Of course you will!'
"Besides, if I conclude that nothing bad comes from inbreeding, I'll stop and everything will go back to normal," Lukas said.
Olivia sighed. "Fine. You can have them. But I won't, ever again, take you to this storage! Did you get me?!"
Lukas smiled. "Yes! Yes! Thank you!" he quickly approached Olivia and kissed her on the cheek. "Thank you, Olivia! You're the best!"
Lukas started picking the documents back from the floor as he hummed a song in glee. 'This boy is so persuasive,' Olivia thought.
While Lukas was picking up the documents, he saw another thing that caught his curiosity, so, when Olivia was not looking, he quickly took it and hid it in his pants. 'I'm pretty sure nobody will find it here!'
"You already have everything you need, right, Lukas? Come on, then," Olivia said as she stood up.
Lukas nodded his head with a happy smile and walked out of the storage with Olivia.
When the both of them walked out of the storage, Olivia locked the door of the storage. "Once you are done, please call me so I can put the documents back in their place, fine?"
"Yes!" Lukas said as she nodded his head in glee.
Olivia sighed. 'Like that he even looks like a regular three-year-old child,' she thought.
Soon, Olivia walked out of the library and Lukas was finally alone in there. 'Okay, let's get this over with,' he looked down at the diary and he sighed. "I really hope this dude wrote about enough patients for me to get a conclusion over this," Lukas murmured.
Soon, Lukas put the three things that he had picked on the table and started focusing on them.
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Lukas had the two books open and the real family tree of the Von Neumann House was spread on the table. Besides, he had two sheets of paper on the table, one had some kind of calculus, the other had a peculiar family tree drawn.
The family tree that Lukas was drawing was both very simple and very useful. There were squares, which symbolized the members of the Von Neumann house and circles, which symbolized everyone else. There were also a lot of squares with a cross, those were the people who were born with some health problem or died in early childhood, and, funnily enough, almost all of them had blood-related parents.
The other sheet of paper was just the calculus of the percentage of people who had health problems or died in early childhood and had blood-related parents and those who did have health problems or died in early childhood but didn't have blood-related parents.
Lukas had learned to calculate the percentage of something in a maths book he had found in the library. The final result was: 72% of the people who had blood-related parents had some kind of disease or died in early childhood, while only 28% of the people who didn't have blood-related parents had such things.
Soon, Lukas closed all the books he had and organized the documents. When he finished, he sighed loudly. 'Yep, something's up with inbreeding. What it is? No idea! But I know something's up!' he sighed once again. 'I only know
one thing: the marriage between me and Violett isn't going to happen! No matter what!'
Lukas cleared his throat. 'I'd better call Olivia first. I already have what I wanted in these documents.'
So, Lukas called Olivia and she put all the documents back in the storage.
"So, Lukas. Did you find anything?"
Lukas nodded his head. "Yep. Confirmed," he answered. 'It's better not to lie to her in this case. Even if I told her that I hadn't found anything, she would eventually figure it out once my marriage with Violett was canceled. It's better to tell her the truth now,' the blonde boy concluded.
Olivia sighed. "So... what are you going to do now?"
Lukas shrugged his shoulders. "Nothing for now. I need to give it some thought first," he answered.
Olivia nodded her head. "I see..." she looked down. "Look, Lukas. I really understand your situation here, but can't you think about another way to solve this?" she asked.
"Actually, I do have another option here," Lukas said.
"Really? What?"
"Celibate," Lukas answered with a smirk.
Olivia sighed as she rolled her eyes. "Whatever, Lukas," she said as she walked out of the library.
'My bad, Olivia, couldn't help it,' Lukas thought.
He chuckled lightly and headed towards the table once again. He sat on the chair with a lot of thick books on it and took the document he had previously picked out of his pants.
'Okay, this document is fairly recent. It was written in this year. It's about the most powerful noble families in Europe and their heirs. If I want to cancel my engagement with Violett, I'll have to make an even more alluring offer to the head of the Von Neumann house for him to accept it. This is a bold move, but it's all I got.'
Lukas opened the document and was truly overjoyed by the details it had. 'This is awesome! It even says whether or not the heirs are already engaged!'
As Lukas was going through all the documents, he saw something that made him gape. "What the... no way! The Von Neumann house... is here? How? We are just a house of counts. There should be only dukes here or, at the very least, marquises!" he murmured.
Soon, he heard Olivia's voice coming from the corridor. "Young Master! Come to have dinner!"
Lukas sighed. 'Okay, I guess this is enough for today. I'll keep this stuff in my room. I'm pretty sure I will need it a lot in the future,' he thought.
Cadeaux
-- Cadeau
reçu État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone