Aftermath: 14 - Untangle This (2030)

The monsters we slay come back.

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

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

2030 (Fourteen – Untangle This)

The kaiju that emerges from the Gulf of the Farallones looks familiar, but as it rends its way through the Coastal Wall, Hermann can’t place it. It’s not Trespasser, not Reckoner, not Karloff, not Yamarishi, not any of the forms burned into his mind, needled into Newton’s skin.

It’s new.

Stone rips like paper under enough shear force.

“Huh,” Newton says. “Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my time as a human it’s this: the monsters we slay come back.”

Hermann looks at him, aghast. 

“They always come back,” Newton says kindly. “You have to know that. You’re human. How could you not know?”

The sky is overcast, San Francisco Bay is a Jaeger graveyard, and Caitlin Lightcap’s whistle carries on plutonium-laced wind.

“Do you know what they call themselves?” Newton stands beside Hermann, his hands on the balcony rail. “In their own language? How they classify what they are?”

“No,” Hermann replies.

“‘Catalysts’,” Newton says. “It’s interesting we have a word that translates so well.”

“I suppose.” Hermann watches him uneasily. 

The wind is strong. The clouds are low and full of lightning. Newton grips the balcony rail, his eyes improbably green beneath a sky so gray. He doesn’t look at Hermann. He fixes his gaze on the Coastal Wall, on what’s coming through it. The intensity of his expression contrasts with his didactic tone.

“Translation is tricky,” he continues. “You have to choose what to emphasize. What to pull forward. What to push back. ‘Catalysis’ means ‘dissolution’ in Greek, but even that’s a compound of ‘kata,’ meaning ‘down,’ and ‘lysis,’ meaning ‘loose.’ Biologically, we’ve come to refer to catalytic activity as tearing something apart, as opposed to, say, anabolic activity, which would be the process of building up. But don’t worry, it gets better.”

“Does it?” Hermann is surprised the man hears him at all; his voice is so faint.

“Yeah, because to ‘catalysis,’ you add the suffix ‘-ist.’ Well, the ‘i’ gets swallowed, but it’s a suffix that denotes agency. Like specialist. An agent of the special thing. Catalyst. An agent of catalysis. But you stack additional meaning atop even that, because in our modern culture, especially within the biological and chemical sciences, but elsewhere too—a catalyst is something that helps a reaction along, makes it go faster, renders it energetically favorable. So not only does it do the dissolving, it makes that dissolving faster. More likely. More efficient. It creates the preconditions for its own actions.”

“Ah.”

“They really are biologic agents that pave the way, so to speak, for what comes after. Speed things up, reduce activation energy?” His eyes are on the monster rending down the Wall. “Don’t get me wrong though; I have no intention of calling them ‘catalysts’.”

There’s a crack of thunder. Hermann flinches.

“I like the word ‘kaiju’ just fine.” Newton cocks his head and lifts a brow as the monster hefts its bulk through the gap in the Wall.

“Are you afraid?” Hermann whispers.

Newton looks at him, backlit by destruction, by a spectacular electrical storm. The kaiju roars, angry, but—beneath its anger, Hermann hears a note of mourning.

“I wish I were,” Newton says, with wistful sympathy. “I really do.”

Hermann jolts awake, eyes wet, breath gone.

Slowly, he begins to hear the gentle tap of rain against the window, the cries of gulls, the sounds of distant traffic.

He tries to rise from the bed, but gets nowhere due to the impossible tangle of his sheets. He settles for levering himself up on one elbow to peer at the Coastal Wall. 

It’s reassuringly intact.

Hermann looks down at Newton, who has involved himself in separate knots with every topologically amenable surface he’s encountered, including three layers of blankets and Hermann himself. The man’s hair is in a state of spectacular disarray. At some point, he’d clamped his hand around a good portion of the material of Hermann’s Supercos T-shirt.

Is he dreaming of what happens to a fraction of a hive mind?

He doesn’t look like he’s dreaming. 

“Newton,” Hermann whispers.

No answer.

Newton is soundly asleep. Mostly on top of him and suspiciously warm. His shirt is damp.

Hermann presses a hand to Newton’s forehead and sighs.

“You consistently defy expectations in all areas. Is it too much to ask that you go a winter without pneumonia? Just one.” He strokes Newton’s hair. “We live in California. It barely ever snows here. You have no excuse for this.”

Hermann drops back against his pillow and wipes a faint sheen of sweat off his own forehead. He presses his free hand over his eyes, trying to forget the dream. The Breach is shut. The Breach is not just shut but annihilated. All tissue fragments on this side of the portal have been destroyed. Newton is fine, not welcoming monsters with balcony-scene etymologies.