Listen Full Story:
Read Full Story:
Richard MacDuff, a young software engineer, arrived at his old college, St. Cedd’s, for the annual Professor Chronotis dinner. He was there to attend a lecture on time by his old tutor, Professor Urban “Reg” Chronotis, an eccentric man who seemed to live surrounded by old teapots, forgotten books, and unexplained mysteries. Reg appeared to have a knack for making impossible things happen casually — like pulling a working antique from a thousand years ago out of nowhere. Richard couldn’t quite tell if Reg was mad or brilliant, but there was always something otherworldly about him.
After the dinner, Richard found himself distracted. His boss, Gordon Way, was dead — apparently shot in his car — and the police were investigating the strange circumstances surrounding it. Gordon was a rich computer magnate who had built an empire around electronic accounting systems. He was also Richard’s friend, and his sudden death left Richard disturbed. He had been at Gordon’s house the night before, where something peculiar had occurred. Gordon’s phone line had rung after his death, and Richard thought he’d heard Gordon’s voice on the answering machine.
Meanwhile, a strange, electric blue ghost-like figure had been wandering through the modern world. This ghost belonged to an ancient monk named Svlad Cjelli, who once lived on a distant planet many millennia ago. He was the “Electric Monk,” a kind of machine built to believe things for people who didn’t have the time to believe them themselves. However, the Monk had malfunctioned, started believing everything it saw, and eventually wound up on Earth, carrying his horse across the English countryside. The Monk’s strange presence and his tendency to believe absurdities would soon tie into the fates of Reg, Richard, and Gordon in unexpected ways.
Dirk Gently, a peculiar and self-proclaimed “holistic detective,” believed in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. His real name was Svlad Cjelli — the same as the Monk’s — though he was human and had no idea about the connection. Dirk ran his detective agency with bizarre methods, often appearing to do nothing related to the case but somehow arriving at the truth through inexplicable means. His logic was chaotic, his manner irritating, and his bills outrageous. Yet somehow, his methods always led him to the right answers — or at least to some grand revelation that made sense only in hindsight.
When Gordon Way’s death hit the news, Dirk sensed there was something unusual about it. The police dismissed it as a simple shooting, but Dirk knew better. His “holistic” instincts told him this was connected to larger forces — perhaps even cosmic ones. At the same time, Richard was struggling to explain his bizarre behavior on the night of Gordon’s death, when he had been seen breaking into Gordon’s apartment and acting strangely. He was innocent, but his guilt-ridden, nervous demeanor made him a suspect. Dirk, sensing a paying opportunity, decided to help him — whether Richard wanted it or not.
Dirk appeared at Richard’s flat, uninvited as usual, and immediately began deducing random facts from the state of Richard’s kitchen. He seemed to know far too much about everything. He explained that to understand Gordon’s death, they must understand everything. Richard was skeptical, but Dirk’s absurd logic somehow began to line up with the strange events around them. Gordon’s car had driven itself after his death, a mysterious call had been made to Richard’s phone, and an ancient manuscript was missing from Reg’s rooms at the college.
Dirk convinced Richard to accompany him to St. Cedd’s, where Reg lived. When they arrived, Reg was his usual absent-minded self, fumbling with tea and reminiscing about long-dead acquaintances. But then Dirk did something that startled both Richard and Reg — he deduced that Reg’s apartment contained something impossible. The building was centuries old, yet Reg’s rooms were far larger inside than the entire structure could physically allow. It was as if space itself had bent around his sitting room. Dirk pressed Reg to explain, but the old man deflected with jokes and tea. Richard, overwhelmed, tried to make sense of it all.
Later that night, Richard recalled seeing Reg perform an impossible trick at a college dinner years ago — he had made a salt cellar disappear and reappear in the past. At the time, everyone thought it was a joke or a hallucination from the wine, but Richard remembered it too vividly. Dirk realized the truth: Reg Chronotis owned a time machine. Reg, embarrassed, finally admitted it. He had once been a time traveler, having borrowed the machine — disguised as his rooms — from a time-ship relic. He used it casually for minor conveniences, such as returning library books late but appearing on time, or attending lectures centuries apart. However, he had recently noticed something was wrong — time itself felt disturbed.
As Dirk pieced together the clues, the Electric Monk’s story intertwined with theirs. The Monk, having wandered across the countryside, had come upon Gordon Way’s car and, in confusion, had shot him with Gordon’s own gun, believing Gordon was an evil spirit. The Monk’s horse had been following him faithfully, bewildered but loyal. Gordon’s ghost, still connected to his mobile phone network through the energy of his death, had been trying to communicate with the living world. He was angry, trapped, and confused, his presence causing interference in the electrical systems around Richard and Dirk.
Meanwhile, an ancient force was reawakening. Dirk discovered that the missing manuscript from Reg’s study was related to an ancient poem written by a man named Coleridge. The poem, “Kubla Khan,” was incomplete, but legend said it had been dictated to Coleridge in a dream — a dream interrupted by a visitor from Porlock. Dirk realized that this “visitor” was no ordinary person but something far greater. The fragment of poetry contained encoded information from an alien civilization — a civilization that had once tried to contact Earth but failed. Their last transmission, thousands of years ago, had come from a stranded ghost trapped in the Earth’s timeline.
Dirk’s investigations took them back to Reg, who admitted that the time machine had once brought him face-to-face with the destruction of that alien world. He had tried to rescue a fragment of their technology, but in doing so, had disrupted the natural flow of events. The Electric Monk was part of that technology — a leftover piece of the alien civilization’s attempt to create self-believing machines that could sustain their faith in their gods. When the alien world collapsed, the Monk’s program had continued to function endlessly, believing and believing until it found its way to Earth.
Dirk, Richard, and Reg tracked the Monk to a deserted chapel where the final confrontation took place. The Monk, still confused, was threatening to destroy the world by fulfilling a belief command it had misinterpreted — to “bring back the Great Master.” The Master was a dead alien spirit trapped in the energy currents of the Earth, seeking to reenter reality. Gordon’s ghost was being used as a conduit for the energy needed to open the portal. Dirk realized that everything — the time machine, the poem, the ghost, and even Gordon’s death — was connected through a delicate chain of cause and effect.
Reg, with his time machine, offered one desperate solution. He would go back and prevent the chain of events from starting, carefully resetting the flow of time so that the Monk would never have arrived on Earth. Dirk protested, warning about the dangers of altering the past, but Reg was resolute. Using the machine, he traveled back and adjusted history ever so slightly, sealing the crack between the alien dimension and their world. The Electric Monk vanished, its belief systems erased from reality. Gordon’s ghost faded peacefully, free at last, and his car’s mysterious journey ended quietly in the police impound.
When Richard awoke the next morning, the world seemed normal again, as if none of it had happened. But Dirk knew. He turned up at Richard’s door with a new bill, charging him for “saving the world through holistic detection.” Richard refused to pay, but Dirk was unbothered — his methods were never appreciated in their time. Meanwhile, at St. Cedd’s, Reg brewed tea, smiled to himself, and looked at the ancient time machine humming gently in the background, its chronometers set back to normal.
The universe, once again, was in balance — or at least as balanced as Dirk Gently’s version of reality could ever be.