Aftermath: 11 - Chimes at Midnight (2015)

So. He wants to meet. This seems significant.

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

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

2015 (Eleven – Chimes at Midnight)

Hermann looks out over the Alaskan tundra, frozen gold. Snowcapped mountains rise against an eggshell sky. What a beautiful planet it is, really. The sun is beginning to set, even though the hour is late. He’s perched in the upper reaches of the Shatterdome, near a gap in the exposed metalwork. The wind whistles quietly around rusted corners as he reads, again, Dr. Geiszler’s most recent letter.

Dear Hermann, 

Hi! I have a computer now. Also, great news: I’m alive. I was as surprised as anyone to, y’know, regain consciousness, because I was ninety-five percent sure my stay in Manila would end with a terminal extubation. I could not be more thrilled to be wrong! As you know, I hate to hypothesize in the absence of adequate data (I’m SUCH a liar; I live for it), but…it seems the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps has taken a sudden interest in me, to the point they were willing to navigate all kinds of logistical difficulties to get me back to the States while still alive, then keep me that way. This is great for me. I have the feeling that you were involved? Via your family connections? If so, “thanks” doesn’t cover it. To be explicit, and just so you know I know: your direct intervention saved me from drowning in my own necrotizing lung tissue. So, even though thanks is inadequate: thank you; you saved my life. You’ll want to know all kinds of things, I assume. So here’s a non-ordinal list I’ve been saving up to tell you: 

One. We should meet. What do you think? Maybe Geneva? There’s a cross-disciplinary Breach Symposium happening in a few months. I’ll send you the meeting invite. Send in an abstract. Who knows, maybe one of the organizers will take a shine to your work and give you an oral presentation. Maybe the person writing this email can put in a good word for you.

Two. Re: your last email, yeah, I know. I wasn’t clear on the timeline. I can clarify now, though. I was stuck in quarantine along with a few hundred other people who had inhaled enough Blue they were coughing it back up. I was trying to get my notes out ASAP. I was also helping a team from Japan with their personal protective equipment (advising from behind glass, of course). Hooked up to oxygen, but totally functional. For a few days, it seemed like things were looking okay. But I didn’t really improve. I slowly got worse, then precipitously got worse. [Editorial note: turns out Kaiju Blue has some delayed proteolytic activity—very interesting. Don’t worry, I’m already outlining the paper, but I digress.] After my pulmonary function took a hardcore downturn on the morning of day six, I was intubated in Manila, with the understanding there was little hope of reversing my clinical trajectory. They did offer me the option slash sorta suggest that, given limited resources, I might want to consider foregoing intubation and straight up dying. I successfully argued my case though: my lung function was good going in, I was young, and my exposure was potentially survivable. They agreed, thank god. 

From what I’ve pieced together, someone in the upper echelons of the PPDC (your father?) decided to make a financial investment in the future productivity of Dr. Newton Geiszler and facilitated a full-throttle, Biosafety Level Five, maximal-tech-maximally-deployed extraction from Manila. I have vague and vaguely disturbing dreams/memories of the past week—turns out they try and get you to wake up when they’re weaning you from the ventilator, which explains a lot of pseudo-dreaming. I guess it makes sense they don’t just rip the tube out and hope for the best; they leave it in and see if you try on your own when the machine isn’t doing all the work for you. Which, apparently, I did. Suffice it to say that yesterday was my first fully compos mentis day. Like whoa. Hello, world! Not sure I could’ve managed my usual level of discourse though. Hence, a twenty-four-hour waiting period prior to this email. 

Three. How am I doing now. You’ve been metaphorically sharpening your pencils on this one I’m sure, and I know it was frustrating I didn’t provide details previously. But in my defense, the outlook was pretty dark; no need to torture you by telling you as much. As for now…well, full disclosure, even though this is a more reassuring email by far when compared to prior examples, I’m not back to baseline. I feel better than prior (“prior” being well on my way to dead) but still not great. My lungs may be torched for life. The jury’s out on that one. I’m on about 6 liters of humidified oxygen per minute by mask, IV steroids, and requiring nebulized albuterol something like every two hours just to, y’know, keep breathing. If I were dictating this—it would be shorter; let’s put it that way. The very nice pulmonology team tells me recovery is a slow process of taking medications away as my lungs recover, until the point that everything is taken away (hopefully) and I’m breathing room air again, like a normal person. I guess first on the docket is transitioning from IV steroids to oral steroids, which is supposed to happen this afternoon. I argued for spacing out the albuterol first, so maybe I can sleep more than two hours at a time, but I was outvoted and informed that multiple PhDs do not an MD make.

Four. Thanks for the detailed Alaska descriptions, they definitely weren’t messages I read multiple times in a row while watching the poisonous, yellow miasma of 40-degree centigrade air outside my hospital window as I stood on the precipice of clinical demise. [Editorial note: that’s a lie; I did exactly that.] But I’m not the only one who leaves things out of letters. What’s going on? Are you doing quantum mechanics? You really need to get back to the quantum. I wrote you a letter about that, LITERALLY ON MY DEATH BED, HERMANN. I hope you took it to heart. I know you’ll twist this around on me somehow, which I probably deserve, and say, “Excuse me, Newton, but I seem to recall you throwing over your own theoretical work in the interest of preserving human civilization; are you so surprised I would do likewise?” At which point I’ll say, “No, I guess not, but there’s an important caveat, which is: your theoretical work has the potential to do more to preserve our species than killing one kaiju at a time.” And then you say, “Excellent point, yes, on further consideration, I agree. I will take your advice, withdraw from the Jaeger Academy, and return to the math.” Just know…I’m waiting for that day.

-Newt

So. He wants to meet. This seems significant.

Hermann has, naturally, searched out pictures of the man. To a one, they’re out of date, obviously taken when he was much younger. This makes sense to Hermann. Of late, Dr. Geiszler has mostly been photographed in enough biohazard gear to obscure his features. His direct superior is the one who interfaces with the media. Hermann suspects that for Dr. Geiszler the science always comes first. If publicity came to him, he wouldn’t hide from it, that doesn’t seem his way. But he wouldn’t seek it out. Nothing so crass.

In Hermann’s heart there’s still an echo of that satisfaction he’d first felt at being sought out by a scientist of such stature. For a graduate student to engage directly in intellectual correspondence with an American PI about events of world-ending import—well, it felt uncommon, to say the least. There’d been an illicit joy in circumventing his own PI to speak directly with Dr. Geiszler as an equal. Even now, he feels the ghostly imprint of that first intellectual thrill.

And the man’s mind is exceptional.

Newton is unlike anyone Hermann has ever encountered. It’s an exquisite pleasure to converse with him. His grasp of quantum mechanics is accompanied by an artistic flair and a propensity for self-deprecation. Hermann thinks the man must be possessed of a unique strength of character to reveal the workings of his thoughts the way he does. The world is not kind to such people. Dr. Geiszler must have seen that unkindness; he must have withstood it. That alone tells Hermann how he’d be in person. Steady. Kind. Full of confidence sans arrogance. 

Hermann pours himself a small cup of tea from his thermos. He offers up a silent prayer of thanks that Dr. Geiszler had not died in Manila.

And now, the man wants to meet. In Geneva. The conference is weeks away. 

Hermann does not flatter himself so far as to truly believe Dr. Geiszler would look for anything beyond friendship with someone such as himself, a recently minted PhD with no independent science funding to his name. But even that, even a friendship with such a person would be enough to satisfy him. He tries not to daydream or waste time on fantasies. He tries, in fact, to minimize fantasizing altogether. Soon he will drift with one of his classmates; they say that, in the interface, concealment is impossible. 

But still—it’s difficult to avoid imagining Newton joining the PPDC. 

Based on the man’s career trajectory (Hermann has looked up his publication record, timed things out), he must be somewhere in his early fifties. Being of German ancestry, he’s likely to be tall. Square shoulders, certainly. His hair, perhaps, just starting to gray at the temples. He has a youthful face—that he will retain. His voice, like his words, powerful, insightful, laced with a dry sense of humor. The perfect foil to Dr. Lightcap: calm where she is wild, steady where she lacks direction. He could head the new K-science Division. He would keep her in line. Technically she’d outrank him, but not by much, and not for long, Hermann suspects.

Perhaps if he comes, when he comes, he will occasionally, if he’s not too busy, seek Hermann out. Perhaps he’ll wish to discuss particularities of quantum mechanical interdimensional transit. He has a strong interest in quantum theory; clearly he does. That alone should provide the basis for a lasting friendship. And then, there had been this most recent letter. Thank you, he’d said, you saved my life. 

He does not seem the type to forget such a thing.

Hermann sighs.

The lake blazes with the light of the setting sun. A flock of white birds takes flight. Dr. Geiszler had mentioned Hermann’s landscape descriptions. He would enjoy a view such as this, surely. Perhaps in the future, it will be here they meet to escape the noise below, here they talk and theorize. He can almost see it now—Newton’s hands on the rail, the quiet surety in his voice, the strength in his bearing, the self-possession in his demeanor. A pillar of sanity, a safe harbor in an unpredictable sea.