Designations Congruent with Things: Chapter 4

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

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

Text iteration: Witching hour.

Additional notes: None

Chapter 4

The corridors are nearly empty.

The majority of the base population is, Hermann supposes, in one of two places—either the main hangar, awaiting the eventual arrival of the choppers carrying Mr. Becket and Ms. Mori, or in search of alcohol.

Now that Hermann has had time to consider it, a search for alcohol was almost certainly the reason Newton had proceeded to the laboratory in the first place. Fortunately, before retrieving or distilling anything, the man had been distracted by the statistical nature of the universe, segued into vague speculations regarding philosophical implications of the post-drift state, nearly fainted, and then been amenable to redirection.

Thank god.

Hermann wonders how much drinkable alcohol Newton has in the lab.

Ideally—none.

Practically—more than “none.” Of that much, he’s certain.

Whatever quantity of alcohol Dr. Geiszler might possess, or be able to acquire within the span of several hours, is immaterial.

Post drift drinking is simply out of the question.

For both of them.

But mostly for Newton.

The events of the past fifteen minutes interpreted through the lens of the past twenty-four hours lead Hermann to place the odds of Newton losing consciousness between the lab and the medical bay and ending the day in an indecorous sprawl across the corridor floor at somewhere around the fifty percent mark.

This is the reason why Hermann still has one hand clamped around Newton’s disturbingly sticky jacket.

“So the drift, I’m pretty sure,” Newton says, “is an empirical rejection of perspectivism. It’s an epistemological absolute of the subjective experience, consisting of the Other and the Look in an infinite loop where information transfer approaches whatever its maximum is while time approaches zero, so yeah, suck it, solipsism.  Neuroscience validates intersubjectivity. That’s a great title, man.  We should write a paper.”

This is excessively unfair, Hermann decides.

Wading through Newton’s baffling insistence upon the obfuscation of his own intellectual merits in daily discourse and curbing the man’s irritatingly brash and deeply flawed propensity to disdain the predictive power of computational and mathematical modeling in favor of ill-advised experimentation, occasionally on himself, have defined the past decade of Hermann’s social and professional life.

And now, after ten years, the man decides he’s going to convert his conversational style into something rational and creative and appealing and openly intellectual to the point that Herman no longer feels he’s performing the discourse equivalent of excavating a buried city with a teaspoon?

Yes.

Naturally.

Of course Newton decides that.

Newfound eloquence aside, resistance remains the cornerstone of their conversation, so Hermann says, “science informs philosophy,” with all the aridity he can muster.  “How original.  And you propose to prove the validity of your subjective experience of our briefly homogenized perspective in what way, exactly?”

“Ugh,” Newton says, in gratifying exasperation. “Hermann. Come on man, you are killing me here. You experienced it. It’s a reproducible phenomenon, it—”

“Is, and will always remain, firmly outside the realm of ‘science’,” Hermann says. “Feel free to write a speculative treatise regarding the implications of the drift on existentialism as a discipline.  I will read it with interest.”

“You are the worst,” Newton declares. “Admit it though, you thought most of what we’d heard from the flyboys and flyladies about the drift was about as objectively valid as an interpretation of abstract art, which is to say not objectively valid. For example, take—who’s that guy you like? Kandinsky? It's nice how I don't actually have to wait for you to answer questions because I already know what you're going to say; it streamlines things, have you noticed this? I'm sure you have. I’m totally with you, by the way, just chuck the whole post-van-Gogh-post-impressionism period right out the window, anything between 1890 and the founding of the Bauhaus is aesthtically tedious with the possible exception of—waaaiit.” Newton finishes his stream of consciouness in an apparently unwelcome revelation. He narrows his eyes at Hermann.

Hermann shoots Newton a pointed look, meant to convey that the realization that Newton is likely currently having regarding the suspect nature of his own opinion and at least a portion of the implications thereof is a realization that Hermann has already had.

Several minutes ago, thank you.

Newton, not in possession of adequate mental resources to simultaneously support walking and critical thought, trips on the perfectly planar floor and nearly falls over.

Again.

“Prioritize walking over thinking,” Hermann snaps.

“Boring,” Newton opines, before he says, “quick: Riot Grrrl or Skate Punk and why?”

“Riot Grrrl,” Herman says, with an assurance so instinctive he finds the question nearly offensive, “because—” He stops and glares at Newton.

“My life is complete,” Newton announces to the empty corridor.

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

“Your life and mine are now a tangle of inextricable cognitive bias,” Hermann says crisply, “for which you are entirely to blame.”

“If you’re going to saddle me with all the blame you’re also going to have to allocate the credit in the same manner, man,” Newton replies. “And then the headline becomes 'Geiszler saves world', not 'Geiszler and Gottlieb save world’.”

“Most likely,” Hermann says, “the headlines will read ‘Becket and Mori save world’.”

“Probably,” Newton agrees, looking offended in an exhausted sort of way. “Maybe we’ll get interviewed by Nature Neuroscience. I think Neuron has a podcast? Now there’s a rockstar subgenre more our speed. Whatevs man, we are legit. Kaiju mindmelding like pros. Let’s do an experiment though. Bach or Beethoven.”

The cognitive dissonance induced by that particular binary choice is so nauseating that Hermann cannot evenrespond. He looses track of his feet and his cane in the intense effort not to vomit for the second time in one day and stumbles, a bolt of pain shooting up his leg, as he tries and fails to reconcile two diametrically opposed, strongpreferences held in confusing simultaneity.

So it is, somewhat, justifiable that when Newton reaches over to steady him, out of an instinct for self-preservation, Hermann snaps, “Descartes or Nietzsche.”

“Oh god,” Newton says, staggering, one hand coming to his temple, the other braced against his knee.

Hermann is fairly certain that if either one of them goes down, neither one of them is going to make it to medical.

“Cognitive dissonance’d,” Newton says faintly, “why would you—”

“You,” Hermann snarls, but can’t get anything else out past the Baroque vs. Romantic internecine musical warfare that is currently being waged in his head.  He does his best to keep a grip on Newton’s revolting jacket, not throw up, and stay standing in the face of a doubled but conflicting opinion.

“It’s not resolving,” Newton gasps. “I had no idea that you loved Descartes so much you boring rationalist. This is not normal.”

Hermann grits his teeth and tries to focus on something that they have a matching preference for, but unfortunately all he is managing to do is compound his own sense of dissonance as he comes up with increasing numbers of divergent opinions that he simultaneously holds.

“You like what,” Newton slurs, the words nonsensical and nearly unrecognizable, but a testament to the fact that the man can verbally navigate himself through anything.

“Turing,” Hermann says, eyes shut tight with the effort of excavating a safe juxtaposition from the treacherous unfamiliarity of his own mind.

“Yeah, good, always Turing,” Newton interrupts. “Hands down. Dude is a baller. Kandinsky or Cézanne?”

“Kandinsky,” Hermann replies. “Obviously. Kierkegaard or Heidegger.”

“Ugh. Gross. Kierkegaard.” Newton says.

Yes, Hermann mentally agrees, always Kierkegaard.

He opens his eyes, feeling marginally less lost in the unfamiliar topographies of his own remodeled bias as he makes his way onto firmer cognitive footing. 

“I despise you,” he informs Newton, “you asinine, self-experimentation-obsessed, cad.”

“It’s mutual, man,” Newton says weakly, hands on knees, head still down. “Oh is it ever. Descartes. Get out of my life with your dualism and your visions of symbolic logic and your methodological doubt, god I freaking love it except I think maybe I didn’t? Don’t? Whatever.”

Hermann has no idea if Newton is addressing him, or some mental vision of René Descartes.

He’s not sure it matters.

“Say nothing,” Hermann says, “until you are lying down.  Until we are both lying down.”

“Yeah,” Newton says, looking at him with glasses marginally and maddeningly askew. “Brilliance. In the abstract. That’s an annotation. For you. And for your comment. Let’s just do that right now, actually. Say nothing and lie down.”

Hermann manages to drag Newton up by his jacket before the man can make good on his poorly articulated threat to collapse on the floor of the corridor. He pushes him back, steadying Newton against the wall and steadying himself against Newton.

“Aw,” a passing technician calls over her shoulder. “I knew it. Live it up, guys. You deserve it.”

“What?” Hermann hisses, distracted.

“Oh we will,” Newton says, disorganized and emphatic, sloppily pointing two fingers in the woman's general direction. “K-science for life. Life preservation. For humans. And for kaiju. Small ones. Cloned. In captivity. For science.”

The technician's expression morphs, quite appropriately, from approval to disapproval as she vanishes around a corner.

“Newton,” Hermann snaps. “Please try and hold yourself together for three minutes.”

“Hold myself together,” Newton says, affronted. “My brain is the cognitive equivalent of epoxy, dude. Freaking tight. Cross-linked all over the place. As you should know, since we merged. Do you think we’re actually drift compatible or do you think we bypassed neural affinity requirements because of the nature of my setup and the nature of handshaking it up in a three-way with a kaiju hive mind? I could see there being some unusual side effects and/or after effects of drifting in the absence of true compatibility and maybe that’s why I feel like I have to throw up when I try to compare—”

“Do not,” Hermann says, “say it. Ideally, do not say anything. Can you walk?”

“Yeah, obviously I can walk. Can you walk? Because you look horrible, dude, and you probably haven’t noticed this and I legit hate to break it to you, but you’ve kinda been using me as a budget secondary cane this entire time. Also, I think you almost passed out and/or threw up when I accidentally experimented with cognitive dissonance.”

Hermann exhales in short, sharp irritation, rolls his eyes, and pulls Newton away from the wall and towards the medical bay.