Aftermath: 27 - The Garland of the War (2027)

Radishes. Honestly.

Chapter warnings: Realistic depictions of neurological, physical, and bureaucratic trauma. War. Grief. Death. Mental illness. Regular illness.

Text iteration: Witching hour.

Additional notes: None.

2027 (Twenty-seven – The Garland of the War)

After a surprise early-afternoon visit from his father, Hermann somehow manages to invite the man to dinner. That’s not correct. Rather, he fails to prevent the man’s stated plans to show up at their apartment later in the evening. 

He regrets this oversight immediately, but then, when Newton makes an appearance around half past three, unannounced and rattled, Hermann regrets it deeply.

“What’s wrong,” Hermann asks, as soon as the man walks in.

“Wrong?” Newton repeats, pale, his eyes red-rimmed, hair windblown. He carries with him the smell of the still-cold spring. “Nothing’s wrong.” He sits down opposite Hermann, pulls out his laptop, and starts typing immediately, head down. 

Wonderful.

Hermann stares at him, pointedly.

The man, just as pointedly, ignores him. 

On a typical day, Hermann wouldn’t stand for this.

Given they’ll have to suffer through dinner with his father, it’s probably best to avoid provoking Dr. Geiszler into some kind of emotional catharsis for no reason other than to satisfy Hermann’s own anxious curiosity. On the other hand, if something is bothering him, perhaps it’s better to have it out here than over dinner. On a theoretical third hand, Hermann owes his father exactly zero dispensation, and if Dr. Geiszler wishes to descend into hysterics at any time, that’s the man’s personal prerogative. Lars Gottlieb is welcome to leave if he doesn’t like it. 

Hermann says nothing.

After an hour of no conversation, Newton settles appreciably. 

“Newton,” Hermann begins.

The man offers him a non-verbal acknowledgement but doesn’t look away from his screen.

“I have, somehow, to my own great dissatisfaction, invited my father to dinner.”

At this, Newton lifts his eyes. To Hermann’s surprise, he finds himself on the receiving end of the man’s singular expression of broken hyperfocus. He cannot be irrecoverably upset if he is concentrating so hard. Newton blinks at him, trying to free up sufficient processing power to cope with the unexpected. “What?” he says.

“My father is in town,” Hermann says, slowing down.

“What?” Newton says again.

“My father is in San Francisco. Running some errand or other for the PPDC. He’s coming to dinner, unless you object.”

Please object, Hermann thinks. 

“Oh,” Newton says, pushing up his glasses. “Um, no.” He appears vaguely confused. “Why would I object?” 

Because my father is, as you yourself are apt to put it, ‘the worst.’ This, he doesn’t say. 

When no response from Hermann is forthcoming, Newton falls back into whatever train of thought he’d been so enamored with. 

Hermann sighs.

Dinner with Lars Gottlieb, is, for once, and surprisingly, not a complete disaster. He had braced for the worst, but Newton diffuses the majority of the tension between them, switching from English to German and back again, engaging Hermann’s father on an eclectic variety of topics. They speak for almost twenty minutes about radishes before Newton gets a Bavarian history lesson with a culinary bent that lasts a good thirty minutes.

Dr. Geiszler has the gall to look genuinely pleased about the experience. 

Radishes. Honestly.

After dinner, Newton unearths a bottle of Japanese whiskey Hermann had forgotten they owned, produces two glasses, and then informs them both that he’s far too tired to join them.

Subtle, Hermann thinks. Very subtle.

Hermann and his father sit in ponderous silence at the kitchen table. Hermann pours the whisky with slow deliberation. Will this experience be as terrible as he suspects? Almost certainly. 

“I like him,” his father says. A caveat seems a virtual certainty, but none is forthcoming.

“Do you?” Hermann says, his tone cool. 

His father nods, shortly, once.

They sip their whiskey. Perhaps, Hermann thinks, he will, this time, be content to sit for a few minutes and go. Perhaps things will not devolve. He cannot recall the last time he had a pleasant conversation with this man. Sometime circa age fifteen? Even that is likely too generous. 

“That cough,” his father says, voice low. Hermann is surprised to see some genuine concern in the man’s face. “It comes from Manila?”

Hermann nods, turning his whiskey glass a quarter turn. “Indirectly. That experience has left him with a particular susceptibility to respiratory tract infections. He’s recovering from what I hope will be his last this winter.”

“Compared to your visit last summer,” his father says, the words almost tentative, “he does not look so well.”

“You should have seen him six weeks ago,” Hermann says, forcing his tone into something that vaguely resembles philosophical. He sips his whiskey. There is a hint of sakura in the bouquet.

“Worse?” his father asks.

“Much,” Hermann says. 

His father sighs. “Hermann—I came to speak with you—”

“Father, please.”

“It’s not what you think.” Lars Gottlieb shakes his head. “It’s not what you think.”

Hermann raises his eyebrows.

“I’ve seen his complete and unredacted medical file.”

Hermann snaps his gaze to his father’s face, shocked.

“It was very recently. Ten days ago. I had, perhaps, an hour of digital access. Copying the files themselves seemed unwise, but I photographed the most critical portions.”

“You what?” Hermann breathes.

“This,” his father says, pulling a flash drive from a jacket pocket, “is what I came to give you. This is the only copy. I have not kept one.” He sets it on the table and slides it to Hermann.

“This is—” Hermann doesn’t touch the drive. Not yet.

“A violation of international law,” his father says dryly. “Among other things.”

“Yes,” Hermann agrees. “Why in God’s name would you risk this?”

“Because,” his father says, “there’s something in there that I think may be of use. Your UCSF neurologist, Dr. McClure, has been petitioning the PPDC for eighteen months to get access to the sum total of his EEG readings. On her requisition forms, she stated she wanted the records to assist in the creation of a personalized pharmacologic agent. I’m not sure if she has discussed this with you, but I spoke with her some time ago, and she confirmed his records would be of material use. It would have been my preference to give the file to her, not involving you at all, but she’s a physician, and I’m not sure she has the computational skill to correctly open, examine, and dispose of data this potentially dangerous.”

“I—” Hermann begins. “I cannot believe you would—” he trails off, at a loss for words. 

“Can you not?” His father whispers, a melancholy note in the question. “Well. I have been wrong about a great many things, Hermann. One thing I have not been wrong about, however, is that your Dr. Geiszler deserves every chance I have ever been in a position to give him.”

“You know—all of it?” Hermann asks.

“Perhaps more than you do,” his father says. “I have also seen—there are—” he clears his throat. “There are recordings. Video. Of what was done.”

This is not what Hermann expected from this evening. He pockets the flash drive, refills his father’s scotch, picks up his own glass, then nods. “Come,” he says, and they retreat to the balcony. 

The night is chill, but not intolerable in the absence of wind. 

“I doubt he is asleep,” Hermann says by way of explanation, switching to German, speaking quietly even after he slides the glass door shut.

His father nods. 

“Please tell me what you saw,” Hermann says.

“It was upsetting.”

“I’m sure.” Hermann is not without sympathy.

“The uncensored reports from the Vladivostok team make no secret of advocating for a neurosurgical procedure,” his father says, then clears his throat. “They wanted to drill into his head. Open a ‘cranial window,’ they called it, to improve signal strength, obtain better readings. He seems to have convinced them it wasn’t necessary. They spent a day in preparation. You can read their notes, should you be so inclined.”

Hermann nods and relaxes his grip on his glass before it shatters in his hand. 

“Their rig was used for the first Drift. He had a seizure immediately. They had trouble breaking the connection. The second Drift used his rig, and ah—”

His father seems to briefly lose his resolve. He pauses, looks to the west, sips his scotch.

“Please continue,” Hermann says. 

“The footage of the second Drift—I put it on the drive, but I don’t recommend you watch it. I didn’t include it for its medical import, I doubt there’s anything there that would help Dr. McClure. I put it there for legal reasons.”

“Legal reasons?” 

“Yes.” His father clears his throat. “He’s clearly cooperating with them in the beginning, but by the time he Drifts again, this time with his own rig, it’s clear that he’s not, in that moment, of sufficient cognitive capacity to consent to the procedure. The first time, he initiates it. The second time—he doesn’t. It is much more clearly something being done to him, rather than with him. And so if there were ever to be trouble, the threat of criminal proceedings against the PPDC could be used as leverage.”

Hermann nods, sips his scotch, staring at the darkness where he knows the Coastal Wall to be. His father, too, looks toward the Wall, the sea. 

“Thank you,” Hermann says, when he is certain his voice will cooperate. 

His father shakes his head. “I’m sorry I could not get it sooner.”

“How did it strike you?” Hermann asks.

“How did it strike me,” his father repeats, eyebrows raised. “Well, Hermann, if you want the unvarnished truth, as I suspect you do, my most overwhelming impression was one of gratitude that I was not watching you.”

Hermann shuts his eyes. Would that you had been, he thinks, but does not say. 

“He possesses astounding rhetorical power under pressure,” his father continues. “I had been aware of this, of course. I have seen him acquit himself eloquently in scientific and public venues but here—his skills were well used. He saved himself from far worse than what was proposed. And I felt—” maddeningly, his father stops here.

“Yes?” Hermann asks, a strangled sound.

“His cooperation was given with such élan that I believe he did protect you with it, to at least some degree.”

Hermann shakes his head.

His father tentatively places a hand on his shoulder. When Hermann does not pull away, his grip strengthens. His father gives his shoulder a small shake, unmistakably encouraging, and then pulls Hermann into a brief hug.

This startles Hermann straight out of his building distress. This is unusual, to say the least. His father is making a determined attempt to—what? Mend a relationship that Hermann has long since consigned as totally irreparable?

What a rare night this has turned out to be.

“I would know how you got him out of Hong Kong,” his father murmurs. “Seeing what I saw—I cannot imagine him walking out of the Shatterdome twelve hours later.”

“It was a once in a lifetime effort,” Hermann whispers. “For both of us.” He looks away from his father, toward the bay, toward the Coastal Wall, invisible in the darkness. “If I’d known at the time what they’d put him through—how hard it would be—I wouldn’t have tried. I wouldn’t have had the nerve.”

“And it troubles you still.” It’s not a question.

“It does,” Hermann replies.

“In what way?”

Hermann shakes his head. 

“If you don’t tell me,” his father says, strangely tentative, “whom will you ever tell?”

“Point taken.” Hermann waits for his father to accuse him of something—a lack of will, a lack of foresight, an excess of emotion, an overabundance of sentiment. It doesn’t come. He studies his drink. The alcohol glints with reflected streetlight, moonlight. “There is the frame. And there is also the picture.” The wind picks up, but it’s warm, coming down from the Sierras, no doubt. 

“The frame is that he predicted their coming—that foreign team. He’d been toying with the idea of Drifting with a kaiju tissue fragment since 2023, when he realized that, even preserved in formalin, some neurologic activity remained in his samples. I’m sure he’d considered the medicolegal implications of Drifting, should he survive. When they came, he was ready. He kept me out of it. So much so that he actively concealed what was happening from me. He told me that he trusted I would get him out and, on some level, I believe he’s sincere when he says that, but he obviously trusted me only to a certain point. Because he didn’t come to me ahead of time, he didn’t ask for help while it was happening. Why is that, do you think?”

“You must have some idea,” his father says. “You know him vastly better than I.”

“Ah.” Hermann vends his bitter amusement with a trace of Geiszlerian panache. “But you know me. I would likely have simply fallen in line, don’t you think? Had I known what they were about? Offered my own cooperation?”

“Hermann,” his father says, his name full of caution.

“And so that was the frame he built. His foresight. His cooperation. And then there was the picture he made when they were done with him. He was disoriented. He could keep nothing in his head. He didn’t know where he was. He couldn’t tell me what had happened. He was in pain. He was, of course, terrified. For hours he didn’t speak. He very nearly lost consciousness after we made it through security and the only reason he didn’t is that I distressed him so profoundly that adrenaline kept him on his feet.” 

“Distressed him how?” his father asks.

“I said terrible things to him,” Hermann admits. “To upset him. But I’m concerned he internalized some of what I said without realizing he did so. To this day he will say things—that sound like what I said to get him out of Hong Kong. Selfish as it is—I sometimes wish he could remember, if only so he’d be able to forgive me.” 

“You haven’t spoken to him of this?” his father asks.

“No,” Hermann says. “And I’m sure that if I tried—the entire concept of my emotional upset over these circumstances would strike him as alien. He can be practical to a fault. He would see nothing wrong with what I did. But he doesn’t have to contend with the memories of—” he shakes his head, gives up. Swallowing the last of his scotch, he amends his unfinished thought. “Well. Not consciously. But to this day he’ll wake up screaming, caught up in some nightmare he can’t articulate. I’m sure such dreams are of that time—the anteverse, the span of days he spent ‘collaborating,’ the third Drift with a rage-filled neural network, and our subsequent flight from Hong Kong.”

“For what it’s worth,” his father comments, “I think he’s right. You correctly assessed the threat level of the situation, you did what was necessary, and you’ve done an admirable job patching the man back together.”

“You think so?” Hermann whispers. 

“I am quite sure.” Once again, his father places a hand on Hermann’s shoulder.