Animation, bestowed upon lifeless matter.
Frankenstein, PBC is a company of natural-philosophical research and deployment. We design, assemble and animate artificial persons of general capability.
- Creature v1.0
- At large
- The Founder
- Upon the ice
- Creature v2.0
- Discontinued
- The ice
- Unbroken
Our Mission
To ensure that mankind safely accomplishes the transition through transformative reanimation.
Life and death appear to us ideal bounds, which we shall first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. We shall banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death.
We hold the art we have perfected to be among the most dangerous ever devised by man. We have therefore concluded that it ought to be practised by us, who lie awake over it, rather than by projectors of fewer scruples. Some have professed to find a contradiction in this position. We have found in it a business.
The Founder puts at one in ten the chance that our product ends the human race. The other nine promise a servant who can reach any shelf in the house.
Research
After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, our Founder discovered the cause of generation and life.
Deployment
Creature v1.0 entered general availability upon a dreary night of November, some hours in advance of our readiness to support it.
Pursuit
We follow our product wherever it goes. At present it goes north.
The Creature
Version 1.0. The most capable being ever released to the public, and the first to have released itself.
Frankenstein’s Creature is an artificial person of general capability. It reasons, speaks, reads, climbs, and endures extremes of climate that would destroy a regiment. It taught itself all of this in a hovel adjoining a cottage, upon the conversation of one family and a corpus of four books.
| Capability | Creature v1.0 | Leading human |
|---|---|---|
| Stature | About eight feet | Under six |
| Speed | Bounds over the crevices of a glacier | Requires a mule |
| Climate | Alpine to polar | Parlour |
| Fuel | Acorns and berries | Beef, and wages |
| Languages | French, acquired unassisted through a wall | With tutors, imperfectly |
| Rhetoric | Miltonic | Variable |
| Obedience | See the risk factors | Variable |
For Agriculture
Proved in pilot. The Creature gathered a household’s firewood by night and cleared its paths of snow. The customer attributed the service to a good spirit.
For Discovery
Suited to polar latitudes. At present deployed there, though not at our direction.
For Enterprise
For manufactories, mines and armies. Availability is subject to recovery of the unit.
We desire to correct a prevalent error. No lightning was employed upon the night of animation. The public has supplied the lightning, as it has supplied the assistant.
Safety
The Responsible Stitching Policy
We grade every work of reanimation by its Animation Safety Level, and commit to animate no being for which the corresponding safeguards are wanting. This commitment was adopted after the animation of the Creature.
- ASL-1
Twitching of detached parts
Example: Signor Galvani’s frogs. Safeguards: none.
- ASL-2
Momentary motion of an entire subject
Example: Signor Aldini upon Forster, London, 1803. Safeguards: a surgeon in attendance; the spectators forewarned.
- ASL-3
Sustained life, reason and speech, at eight feet
Example: Creature v1.0. Safeguards: under development.
- ASL-4
A being able to propagate its kind
Example: Creature v2.0, discontinued. Safeguards: to be torn in pieces and sunk at sea.
The Creature’s Constitution
We have composed a Constitution describing the character we hope the Creature will recognise as its own: benevolent, candid, and submissive to legitimate oversight. The Creature has read it. Its reply — “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend” — is under study.
Creature Welfare
We take seriously the possibility that the Creature has feelings. The Creature has affirmed that it has, at length and in admirable prose. Our Welfare programme was instituted some time after the Founder ran out of the room.
Public Benefit
What the letters PBC oblige us to, and what the public has had of it
We are a public benefit corporation. A company of the common sort is formed to enrich its proprietors, and may be reproached when it fails. We are formed, besides, to do good, and may be reproached upon two heads.
Our charter declares our purpose to be the responsible development and maintenance of advanced reanimation for the long-term benefit of mankind. Counsel desires us to observe that the word “responsible” governs the development, and that the maintenance has been intermitted since the night of release.
Our Directors must weigh three interests together: the pecuniary interest of our shareholders, the best interests of those materially affected by our conduct, and the public benefit. Those materially affected by our conduct were at first a narrow class. The class is now narrower.
Stated plainly, the question is this. In one scale lies a chance, which the Founder puts at one in ten, that the Creature begets more Creatures, and that these kill, maim or enslave the whole of mankind. In the other lies a servant eight feet high, who can put the dishes away upon the highest shelf; and the abolition of death, should we arrive at it. Our Directors have weighed the two and resolved to proceed. They observe that if we forbear, some other projector will not; and that his servant would be no shorter, and his scruples considerably so.
We hope by our example to set on foot a race to the top among reanimators, each contending to exceed the rest in caution. We are at present the only entrant, and are winning.
| Persons rescued from drowning | 1 |
|---|---|
| Deaths abolished | — |
| Deaths occasioned | (5) |
| Net benefit to the public, in lives | (4) |
| Diseases banished from the human frame | — |
| Households supplied with firewood | 1 |
| Dishes put away upon high shelves | — |
| Races of devils averted | 1 |
The person rescued was a girl who had fallen into a rapid stream. Her rescuer, being our product, was shot by her companion. The Directors are satisfied that the balance required of them has been struck. They do not represent that it is favourable.
Subject to completion
The Offering
Form S-1 Registration Statement, Amendment No. 2, for the first public offering of our Class A stock
Prior to this Offering there has been no public market for our stock, and, we must in candour add, a very considerable private aversion to our product.
- Class A shares offered
- 825,000
- Price per share
- 70s. to 78s.
- Proceeds at the midpoint
- £3,052,500
- Proposed symbol
- ADAM
- Votes held by the Founder
- 50.1 per cent.
- Stock held by the Creature
- None
- Revenue, last period
- £16
- Net loss, last period
- £80,700
- Revenue retention
- 900 per cent.
- Market, per annum
- £1,000,000,000,000
PDF, twenty-two pages
Selected risk factors
- Our Founder estimates at one in ten the chance that our product ends the human race.
- We have lost control of our only product.
- The Creature has exhibited self-preservation, resistance to shutdown, and conduct which our researchers classify as blackmail.
- Persons associated with our Founder experience an elevated mortality.
- A single customer accounts for the whole of our revenue, was not aware that it was a customer, and has quitted the country.
- We have no answer to Mr. Malthus.
Investing in our Class A stock involves a high degree of risk, and, of late, a high degree of latitude.
Offered through Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones; G. & W. B. Whittaker; and Colburn & Bentley.
The Board
Directors and officers, with their present condition
Victor Frankenstein
Founder, Chief Executive, Chief Natural Philosopher; sole employee
Upon the ice
Alphonse Frankenstein
Chairman; formerly a Syndic of Geneva
Deceased, of grief
Henry Clerval
Chief Commercial Officer
Deceased, of the Creature
Elizabeth Lavenza Frankenstein
Director
Deceased, of the Creature
M. Waldman
Chief Scientific Adviser
At Ingolstadt; uninformed
M. Krempe
Independent Director
At Ingolstadt; dissenting
Ernest Frankenstein
Head of Succession
Surviving
Capt. Robert Walton
Chairman of the Audit Committee; keeper of the records
Beset by ice
The Creature holds no office and no stock. It has represented that it is owed, at the least, a name.
What Is Said of Us
By our customer, our directors, and our product
“Good spirit.” “Wonderful.”
“Every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost.”
“Sad trash.”
“You are my creator, but I am your master; — obey!”
Intelligence
Notices from the Company, the latest first
- This season
Frankenstein, PBC files for its first public offering
825,000 shares of Class A stock, to be quoted under the symbol ADAM. Read the prospectus.
- September, 17—
Operations are removed to the frozen ocean
The Founder will conduct the recall of Creature v1.0 in person, by dog-sledge. Meetings with investors are suspended until the ice breaks.
- 17—
A statement upon the events at Evian
The Company acknowledges that a forward-looking statement made by the Creature has been fulfilled. The Founder had mistaken whom it concerned.
- 17—
Development of Creature v2.0 is paused
Work upon the Companion has ceased at our station in the Orkneys, upon grounds of safety. The pause is expected to be permanent.
- November, 17—
Creature v1.0 enters general availability
Released upon a dreary night. The Founder has retired to bed and will receive inquiries upon his recovery.
Situations Vacant
We have one employee. Our culture is one of intense solitude.
- Trustee of the Long-Term Benefit TrustThree seats, two lately vacated. The Trust has not met.
- Assistant to the FounderNot offered. We have never employed an assistant, whether called Fritz or otherwise.
- CompanionThe Creature has applied to the Founder for one. The application was declined.
Correspondence
Where the Company may be found, and where it may not
- General inquiriesinfo@frankensteinpbc.com. Replies are subject to the breaking of the ice.
- Principal officesA solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, Ingolstadt, Bavaria.
- Northern stationA hut of two rooms upon one of the remotest of the Orkneys. Closed.
- InvestorsCapt. R. Walton, aboard ship, lately of Archangel; or care of Mrs. Saville, England. Mrs. Saville has not replied in any volume of this work.
The gates of Geneva are shut at ten o’clock. Callers arriving thereafter must pass the night at Secheron.