Martin Kimbell Jr. did begin his life following in his father's footsteps -- he studied ungulates, and the nature and uses of wool, the futures in sheep bellies. He studied British romantic poets and styles of verse. He would stand upon the spanning porch of his father's home, watching lambs skip along the hedgerows and write sestinas of great beauty and wit. He sheared sheep with his father and traded wool at the exchange and published poems in the Jefferson Township Evening Tribune. One evening as he sat, pen in hand, trying to come up with a third You-Ewe pun, he stopped and thought, I am not happy. I want to make a name for myself and learn something about the world.

He got up from his seat, walked inside to where his father was tabulating their fortunes with his right hand and elegizing his late wife with his left and Martin Jr. announced he was going to the University to study Logic. With a heavy heart his father let him go.

At the University, Martin excelled. He became a favorite of students and teachers and an admirable debater. He made discoveries in the nature of language, economics and mathematics, and improved Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine to such a degree that he might have been credited with inventing the computer. He became chair of the Philosophy Department, member of the National Academy, and the most famous logician of his time. One evening, sitting in his regal departmental chair, thumbing through the pages of his latest publication, he realized, Still, I am not happy. He resigned his appointment and returned home to follow his father into politics.

He was elected Lord Mayor of Jefferson township, then junior senator from the state of Illinois. He narrowly lost the Vice Presidential nomination to Millard Filmore when it was discovered Kimbell was too young to serve. He was named Secretary of State, and was part of the delegation sent to Russia to acquire Alaska. While he was there he fell in love for the first time with the Princess Katarina Alexandra Alexandrovna of Poland, and became betrothed. She offered him the titles of Grand Duke of Poland and Admiral of the Polish Navy. For a short time he was happy. On their wedding night she fell ill and died from meningitis before he could consummate their marriage. At the death of his bride, he resigned his post as Secretary of State, abdicated his Polish titles and commands, and returned to Chicago to split his time between his father's house and the University where he hoped to study medicine to find a cure for death.

He completed his medical degree in two years, seeming to have a preternatural gift for both anatomy and the burgeoning science of germs. Dr. Kimbell developed both an experimental anthrax vaccine and a cure for chicken cholera. He saved the Mayor of Chicago's daughter from puerperal sepsis and singlehandedly thwarted a large scale Chlamydia outbreak. At nights while his father composed off-color verse, Dr. Kimbell toiled in the old barn of the old man's now subdivided sheep-farm to see if he could bring back to life stray cats and dogs he killed by various means. He once managed to bring back an electrocuted beagle fifteen minutes after clinical death by injecting a serum extracted from the adrenal glad of a ewe.

This method did not work on Martin Kimbell Sr. when the old man died.

When Dr. Martin Kimbell Jr. found that all his knowledge of art and poetry and philosophy and mathematics and statecraft and medicine could not save his father from death he threw up his hands in despair and called out, "What good is knowledge anyway!" After a night of fitful dreams and keeping vigil near his father's corpse, he walked down the newly paved street that cut across his father's land until he reached the very gates of hell. He called out the devil to offer him his soul if only Lucifer would open to him the world beyond the limits of human knowledge and grant Kimbell Jr. the power to awaken the dead. Lucifer the devil considered the offer, and granted Kimbell his wish on the condition that Kimbell would only live as death's antidote for one year, and then would have to spend an eternity condemned. Dr. Kimbell agreed immediately. He would revive his father, then return to Russia to revive Katarina, give her a child and when the child was born take that small happiness with him to eternal damnation. Upon their agreement, the devil used his pointed tail to burn the details of the pact into Dr. Kimbell's chest. Dr. Kimbell walked home along the same street and went to revive his father.

His father had been dead some twelve hours when Dr. Kimbell revived him. As soon as the doctor entered the laying out chamber, his father stirred. The old man's skin was sallow and gray. His jaw would not close all the way and his dry tongue hung out like a small piece of preserved meat. Dr. Kimbell waited to see if his father's condition would improve. He offered his father water and food, but the old man would take none. He brought his father pen and paper and asked him to compose a poem about his experience in the afterlife but the dead man cracked the pen when he tried to write and smeared the ink across the paper. Martin Kimbell Sr. would not speak, he would not blink, he would not eat and did not seem to breath. Dr. Kimbell spent another night vigil over his father, but the old man only stared at him with such a dull sadness and unblinking despair that the young doctor eventually left the house just to get some peace. The old corpse followed him, shuffling and mechanical. Eventually the two found themselves in the middle of the once vast farm, now plotted and marked out as city blocks and a great avenue. Dr. Kimbell sat. Martin Kimbell Sr. followed slowly, with much effort and the creaking of hardening tendons. He sat next to his son and stared at him with fog-colored eyes, which looked as if they were some how tearing from within the pupil. The old, dead man's shoulders sank and his tongue turned blue at the tip. Only 12 hours after reviving his father and less than twenty-four hours after giving the devil his soul Dr. Kimbell came to the horrifying realization that in bringing his father back to life he might have in fact wrenched the poor man from the very gates of heaven. He imagined his father's heaven was something like the family farm had been when it was flocked with sheep and green and calm. Dr. Kimbell thought of Katarina's cold corpse in a Petersberg crypt, and how foolish his thoughts of lovemaking had been. He thought of a year of living with his father in this pathetic state, apologized to his father, then snapped the old man's neck, killing him again.

He buried his father in a secret place along what is now Kimball Avenue, not too far from the unmarked graves of the animals he killed. Then he walked down the street until he was again at the gates of hell and offered up early his soul to the devil and the devil came and took him away and sealed up these gates to Hell and not only was the famous and illustrious Dr. Kimbell never seen again but his deeds were claimed by other men and the grave of his father was lost and his name was misspelled on the Avenue and after a very short time nobody remembered that he had ever lived in the first place.

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