In a Clean White Room

Okay Kids,

There is no pity in a Category Five Mako Mori hug.

Hwi rolls down a window.

  “Hashtag, ‘accuracy’,” Newton whispers, like a secret shared.

He’s committed casual, causal, quantum-mechanical calumnies.

“Evariste.” Newton provocatively snaps a sterile glove as he pulls it on. “Galois.”

The kids hiss with polite, venomous interest.

“Do not ignore my questions with science fiction tangents, Newton; I am in no mood to be compared to Princess Leia.”

  If you want to destroy my sweater…

“When Tiffany designs and builds an underwater Turing Machine, please be sure to inform me,” Hermann says.

  Is this the real life?

Hermann is personally offended that, as he’s brushing his teeth in an immaculate, white-tiled bathroom, Is this it? by The Strokes begins to play on repeat in his head.

Absolut failure.

Somewhere in his mind, a man significantly braver and less organized than he waits in mental wings, offstage and in the dark.

“You really could not be a better Spider Man villain if you tried,” Newt mutters at himself.

His shoe. The sea.

Delicious pancakes are delicious.

  Hermann is no stranger to sleepless nights.

Geiszler victorious, Newt tags this moment.

They make it out of Hong Kong.

  Extreme Post-drift Induced Cognitive Rapport.

Mathematicians do not hedge.

Lie in a magnet, Dr. Geiszler, just lie there . Get your brain scanned.

Ugh. Biologists.

Who sits down one day and says, “I could really use a coordinate system right about now?” René De-epic-intellectual-badass-cartes, that’s who.

The problem with Newton is, and always has been, everything.

“I feel weird,” Newt decides.

The question of what one should do immediately post an averted apocalypse does not have an intuitive answer.

Key change, people; brace yourselves.

“Like,” Newton says, in helpless appeal, “wave functions, man.”

“Tell me, in absolute honesty, what is the state of your living quarters?” Hermann says.

THE WALL OF LIFE. All caps, to better match the shouting.

“I can’t believe it,” everyone says, in voices that are not surprised.

I like to think of you winning every lottery. All of the time. For all time.

“I can’t believe I drove a metacognitive car into your brain like a total badass,” Lightcap says.

The love child of Eris and Aphrodite, skating on a shell, playing only Chell…

Happy Quantum Field Tuesday; you have been science charm’d.

I say call a spade a spade, and call a transdimensional rift a transdimensional rift, am I right?

Together, they look out at the sky, over the land, as if from the cockpit of a Jaeger.

“He’s working his magic on you.” Mako wipes her eyes, returns to her scones. “You were a tough customer.”

He flings the flowers along the vector of the wind. They fall, end over end, toward the sea.

“Were you thinking about math ,” Newton breathes suggestively.

Here, and everywhere. Now and everywhen.

Something out of dreams he’d had a dozen years ago: Dr. Geiszler, world-weary and sad, carrying a terrible equanimity.

Spontaneously, Mako throws her arms around him, hugs him hard.

Hermann, low on willpower, high on misery, decides to watch Newton’s talk. It’s a terrible idea.

Hermann thinks, with compassion, of Gottfried Leibniz, fallen out of favor in November of 1716.

To her profound credit, Mako retreats from nothing.

Hermann believes himself to be prepared. Alas, he is not.

“You think you started yesterday with your word differences?” Newton says. “You’ve been doing word differences for a long time.”