I Hope the Eldritch Horror Learns My Name (And Other Good Ideas): Monstrous Pastiche

An unfashioned creature, but half made up.

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

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: Stitched-together cuttings and leavings, minimally edited, deserving of life. This should include everything; if there’s something you remember from tumblr back in the day that you don’t see here, put it in the comments and I’ll try and dig it up. 

Monstrous Pastiche

Potentiometer (Never Found a Home)

Hermann can’t not think of the summer when he wasn’t nineteen, surrounded by a mess he hadn’t made in a garage open to the night, a lamp glaring off the reflective surface of his unwired black guitar. A scaled-down screw is held delicately between teeth that don’t belong to him as hands that aren’t his hands lay out an array of electronics.

Potentiometer.

Capacitor.

Selector switch.

An astral grounded circuit.

He torques a set of blue-trimmed pliers in the careful winding of a double-coil that will buck the hum of interference. The night is dark, the light is bright. His hair is damp with sweat, his glasses are slipping, there’s dust in the air, and Kraftwerk on the radio he’s unbuilt and rebuilt in endless variations. Hands that aren’t his work magnets into antiparallel alignment with the slow slide and the quiet click of a tight fit.

Some Day This War's Gonna End (Neither of These Guys Smoke)

The sky is blue and the water is blue and the sun is bright.

In Newt’s head, Judy is a Punk begins to play.

He watches Hermann make the long walk from the shatterdome to the end of the deployment dock.

“Hey,” Newt says.

Hermann raises his eyebrows.

Newt pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

Hermann extends an expectant hand.

“But you don’t smoke,” Newt says.

“I didn’t smoke.”

“Sorry.”

“You should be,” Hermann informs him.

Newt lights two cigarettes. “It’s bad for you.”

“I know,” Hermann replies.

“Later,” Newt says, “we’ll quit.”

“Yes,” Hermann agrees. “Later.”

Under Pressure (Cut for Continuity Issues)

When Hermann arrives home after an interminable departmental meeting that bores him more than it should—no one is dying and the main issue of the day is that undergraduates consider the Linear Algebra course taught by the resident volatile Fields Medalist to be “too difficult”—he’s taken aback by the disaster Newton has made of their kitchen. He’s considerably more taken aback by Newton himself, who stands in the midst of all he’s wrought, looking at Hermann in overt aggravation, eyebrows contracted, arms open in an impressive display of sarcastic expansiveness, saying, “What am I doing? What does this look like to you?”

Hermann decides against saying, “Making a mess I doubt you will remedy,” or “Converting your external environment into a reflection of your internal state,” partially out of sympathy and partially because Newton is holding a wooden spoon covered with something viscous and unappetizing and Hermann has recently purchased the outfit he’s wearing and isn’t inclined to invite its imminent bespatterment with food or with a sloppy materials science experiment.

Ideally it will not be the latter. Newton has more good sense than that. He hopes.

Hermann deposits his keys and reading material on the table. “I’m certain that if you don’t know, I don’t know.”

“What is this?” Newton demands.

“A terrible idea?” Hermann suggests.

“Yeah dude,” Newton replies. “Why are you living with me?”

Newton is difficult.

This is axiomatic and has been evident from approximately three seconds into their initial encounter, when Newton shook his hand saying, “Obscure mathematics gets its day in the sun,” as if verbally annotating Hermann, before continuing with, “I hope you’re more than just a theoretical face, because I can’t code for crap—well I mean I can, but someone’s going to have to really be up on the dynamic semantics of this new international standard coding language, it’s got a dumb acronym but around here we just call it Computational Esperanto, aka ‘CE,’ pronounced ‘che,’ like you’d say if you were speaking Italian or if, alternatively, you were referring to a Marxist revolutionary. Has someone told you this already? You’re giving me a weird look. Anyway, my point is that, while I could be in charge of this? The oxymoronic ‘mobile stereotactic’ drift interfaces aren’t maintaining themselves all that well. So, y’know. What are you going to do? Nice to meet you, man, I’ll see you at the coffee machine.” This monologue was punctuated by a slap on Hermann’s shoulder as Dr. Geiszler had walked away.

Hermann had looked at Marshal Pentecost and immediately but politely inquired, “Will I be required to report to that man?”

Pentecost had returned with a pointed, “No,” and so Hermann had not immediately resigned.

So.

Newton is difficult.

Over the years, his difficulty has only increased in a linear, decade-long climb of obnoxious volatility that pulls more and more of Hermann’s attention into the event horizon of his existence until, weeks ago, Hermann consented to his own gravitational redshift and now separation is no longer possible.

“You’re not saying anything,” Newton remarks.

“I’m mentally comparing you to a tear in the fabric of spacetime,” Hermann informs him.

“I prefer being ‘singular’ to being a ‘singularity’.” Newton crosses his arms in a variant of one of Hermann’s own defense mechanisms, stiff and prim and miraculously avoiding getting any of the material that covers the spoon onto his shirt.

For the moment.

It’s an uncomfortable experience to view one’s self through one’s formerly polar opposite.

“You’re both.” Hermann drops his eyes, clips his words. “Are you making dinner?”

“No,” Newton replies.

Hermann arches a brow.

“No,” Newton continues, “I’m not making dinner. I’m making a dinner, one time, for both of us, because I felt like it, in the moment, not because ‘making dinner’ is a thing I’ve decided to take on in perpetuity.”

“Point taken,” Hermann says. “I’ll be certain to never allow myself to expect you might be inclined to make me dinner at any point in the future. Frankly, I doubt I’m likely to receive the dinner you profess to be making but have abandoned in favor of harassing me. Furthermore, as I’ve never known you to cook, even if you do finish constructing it, I’m unclear on whether it will be edible. It’s not looking promising, if you want an outside opinion.”

“Not promising,” Newton echoes, as if he’s spreading the words into places in his life they don’t belong. He turns back to the stove.

Hermann is having no difficulty, absolutely none, in leaving Newton to his own devices. The man is deeply, viscerally terrifying and Hermann prefers to think of him sitting at a kitchen table reinventing the underpinnings of formal logic and drinking tea, wearing jeans and bare feet and a sweater, using a writing implement he chews on, with perpetually unkempt hair, and possibly just doing that for the rest of his life—just calmly sitting there, escaping his own torment with Descartes or with whomever might strike his fancy on a given day because there should be limits to what is asked of people, there should be boundaries beyond which they are not pushed. By themselves or by others.

 

This is a difficult sentiment to communicate. It is, in fact, so complicated that he can’t attempt to parse it into something reasonable. There’s no comprehensible way to answer the question that Newton has posed now in several variations. There’s no way to say, “I’m living with you because I can’t bear so much as to see you tired, and I find the thought of you struggling with anything right now intolerable.” There’s no way to say, “I can’t imagine existing without you, you appealing idiot,” or, “I’m content to curate what remains of your life and ensure you don’t throw it away in pursuit of whatever enormities haunt you, because such debts will never be paid down, not for a person like you, with your depthless, savage inquiry and your already damaged mind.”

Hermann has spent a decade critiquing the spangled trappings of Newton’s brain, distracted by them, vexed and half-enthralled by the constant running glaze of detail, but he’d missed most of what had underlain it. Now he tries not to do that.

It is no effort, really.

And he does NOT intend to find out ex post facto that Newton has cloned a kaiju.

But that means he discovers other things as well. Things less easy for him to gloss over.

What are you doing, dude?

What are you getting out of this?

Have you examined your life choices recently?

Why are you living with me?

Hermann hasn’t answered, not any of these variants, and he wishes Newton would have the good sense not to ask. Unfortunately, it’s a vain and fruitless wish, because Newton will always ask—that propensity is the foundation atop which Newton is built and it will be the last thing burned out of him before he’s dead.

Hermann knows because he feels the same way.

That is science—the gut-wrenching, inescapable pressure of infinite inquiry.

Hermann separates it from his personal life, or at least makes a continuing attempt.

Newton draws no such line and never has, which is, of course, why he’s always been more of an unqualified mess than Hermann will ever be.

“You can’t treat yourself like a hypothesis,” Hermann says, an answer so oblique, delayed, and safe that Newton doesn’t take it for what it is and couldn’t possibly.

Newton rolls his eyes. “I treat myself as a data set, trending in a non-optimal direction. Duh.”

Hermann sighs. “You could give a job talk. To UC Berkeley’s Neuroscience Department. I’m certain they’d allow you to do so at any time.”

Newton sighs. “Do you honestly see that going well?”

“I honestly think you could stand there, saying nothing, clicking through text slides, and be hired,” Hermann says. “I honestly think you could get through half the talk, upend a table, walk out, and still be hired. I honestly think you could bleed through the entire thing and—”

“Thanks,” Newton says dully.

 

“You’re the one who doesn’t like the trending of his data set,” Hermann replies, realizing he’s being a little too reactive, realizing that Newton has control of this conversational trajectory and that might be a dangerous thing, so he makes a play and says, “I on the other hand, am perfectly content to enjoy your reinvention of calculus.”

“You have a problem with devotion.” Newton wrenches back conversational control. “You have a pathological fixation on duty. I don’t fall within your purview, and given the intellectual deadweight I’m turning out to be, I don’t think financially supporting my nervous breakdown is a thing that you should do.”

“Will you be financially supporting it?” Hermann skirts swaths of Newton’s observations in a manner that’s not at all helpful and is, in fact, possibly damaging, but he can’t help it, he does it anyway.

“Yes,” Newton says.

“No,” Hermann replies. “I’m certain you’d die in the street.”

“Probably,” Newton agrees, as if such a thing is a benefit he’d not previously considered. 

“Do NOT leave,” Hermann gives a command so inappropriate that it sounds like begging. “I forbid you to leave.”

“Why?” Newton, clipped and merciless, leaves the word in the air like the Sword of Damocles it is.

Hermann’s certain there must be a correct answer, because Newton has the intent gaze of a man bent on finding something out, but Hermann can’t say what and his own justifications for all he’s done all seem dangerous to him, a set of things that won’t withstand a raking over the coals of Newton’s savage, smoldering interest.

He doesn’t know what to do, and recently when that happens, his brain has been, unfortunately, defaulting to a course of action that isn’t truly his.

“Because I want to watch you reinvent calculus, you idiot. Because I want to be there when you move on to something more interesting. Because I don’t want you to destroy civilization unsupervised. Because I can’t imagine how boring I’d find my existence without you upsetting it at least once a day. Because I’ve gotten used to existing in a constant state of vexation, because I enjoy buying you sweaters, you stupid man, because without you, I’ll never allow myself to listen to modern musical masterpieces out of principle, because I prefer your insights to anyone else’s, because I think you deserve to do whatever you’d like for the remainder of your natural life, and if that’s sitting in an apartment reading Descartes, fine.”

Newton smirks.

“What?” Hermann demands.

“The part of me that’s you finds the part of you that’s me adorable,” Newton says. “The part of me that’s me, though, is pretty sure I’m stressing you out.”

“You are, indeed, a constant source of stress.” Hermann recovers himself. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

There is nothing unusual about the look that they share, except for its silence, its length, and the way it seems to be burdened with a terrifying momentum towards something Hermann can’t define but that feels romantic.

And why not.

Newton has colonized every other sphere of Hermann’s life.

But Hermann is prepared to draw the line somewhere.

And that line is here.

He’s drawn it.

And here it will remain until Newton decides to step over it like it doesn’t exist, which might happen anytime in the interval bounded from the current moment until the hour one of them dies.

If they’re to do this, it shouldn’t be now, only weeks after drifting, when they’re still completing each other’s thoughts and using one another’s defense mechanisms and accidentally triggering episodes of cognitive dissonance. Not now, before Newton has told him what happened in the four days he was in that lab, not now, while Hermann still jolts awake from nightmares of destruction, not now, when Newton is so unstable that he’s threatening to leave and tearing through Descartes and looking lost at windows and bleeding once a day.

So Hermann says, “Your soup is burning,” because it is.

Newton whirls, pulls it off the stove, predictably burns his dominant hand, gives the conglomeration a half-hearted stir, and then sticks his fingers beneath cold running water while Hermann searches for a takeout menu.

Whatever was and is between them hasn’t vanished, though, because later, when Hermann is sitting on the couch, Newton slides the most recent issue of Neuron down over the screen of Hermann’s tablet with an apologetic look that effectively undercuts the inherent obnoxiousness of the act.

Hermann rolls his eyes even as he’s opening the thing, while Newton sits down next to him, swapping out his glasses for Hermann’s shades. When he lies down, his head ends up in Hermann’s lap.

This is new.

Hermann says nothing about it.

Instead he rearranges Newton’s hair while reading him a review article on GABA with an atrocious pun as its title.

Double-Declutch (Could Never Find a Home)

The sun is bright and the day is glorious and Dr. Newton Geiszler, of the thick glasses and the baddest of asses, is having a terrible time.

“No.” Newt shuts his eyes and presses his fingers into smooth, gray, and flawless upholstery—where do they even get this stuff? It’s gotta be synthetic, grown in a lab somewhere; maybe it’s made out of kaiju eyelid, god, ew, why does he do this to himself? His last thoughts on this earth are going to be of kaiju conjunctiva.

Myeah, that’s on brand.

Hermann, splendidly sanctimonious and beshaded in, yup, unambiguously kickass sunglasses, is going to literally drive them both to an early death in a failure of double-declutching.

Newt is kind of okay with this in the abstract. He’d be willing to risk death to see unmitigated kickassishness from Hermann except for the part where Newt doesn’t like flashy changes in acceleration on a superhighway.

They have a word for da/dt and that word is jerk.

Anyway, Newt doesn’t like acceleration change, his viscera don’t like it, his inner ears don’t like it, his visual cortex doesn’t like it, and while he appreciates Hermann’s affinity for jerking around in the abstract, Newt finds it akin to the appreciation of questionable taste experiences for the sophisticated palate, meaning it’s just not enjoyable for him—he’s not going to spend an afternoon eating a molded cylinder of mango puree encased in pâté derived from a defenseless hypothetical duck, when he can, instead, just eat a serviceable, potato-derived food, kind of like—

For the love of god that was an aggressive lane change.

“What are you doing and can you please not? How is this a thing? This is out of character—who are you even? I feel like we’ve never met before, let alone had a mental threeway, this is the worst and I’m never doing it again. I am the badass one, okay? Me. Not you. Everyone knows that, I have body art. I have, like, a track record of badassery. My H-index is higher than yours. I’ve been in a bar fight. I’ve been in jail, or rather, community lock-up one time. I play the guitar. I’m a front man. I was. Of a band. A real one.”

“Are you attempting to compensate for something with this loosely organized concatenation?” Hermann asks with pointed aridity.

“No,” Newt says, zero percent defensive and one hundred percent suave. “Are you?”

“I,” Hermann says, with a smooth upshift and a terrifying return to his original lane, “am simply enjoying the sunshine, the lack of traffic congestion, and the erudite observations of a professional colleague.” He pauses then adds, “One of those statements was more a wish than an actuality.”

“You don’t like the sun?” Newt asks with calculated innocence, looking out the window, where he gets occasional glimpses of the Pacific when the coastal highway becomes distant enough and high enough that it provides a view beyond the ugly edifice of the Wall, that sucker of resources. Newt tries not to think of all the money and energy thrown into the dark and expansive abyss of human denial because it is deep and endless and depressing. “You want an observation? We should leave that thing up.” He taps the car window. “A monument to stupidity.”

“The world has quite enough of those already,” Hermann says, using the road as a venue for a man/car combination that’s precise enough to turn a perfectly nice day into a terrifying showcase for the bleeding edge of aggressive driving.

“Next time I’m driving,” Newt says. “Like a normal person. With a normal car.”

“Do you possess a normal car?” Hermann asks with impolite politeness, considering the man already knows the answer. “Do you, in fact, possess any car?”

“Well,” Newt says, “it’s a long story.”

“No,” Hermann replies. “It’s not. The essence of it could be conveyed in a single word. That word is ‘no.’ Were you feeling particularly verbose, you might say, ‘No, Dr. Gottlieb, I do not possess a car, because I spent my income on dispensable, epicurean pleasures rather than—”

“If a silver Porsche,” Newt snaps, because he’s not going to just lie back and take this sort of thing while thinking of England (or Boston), “isn’t an ‘epicurean pleasure,’ then I’ve never seen one. And I have seen one. I’ve seen lots of them. Don’t be envious. But even if I hadn’t, I—”

Newt pauses, struck by a new thought.

Hermann glances at him in sharp, unmistakable concern, which Newt finds endearing and annoying at the same time. To be fair, he’s had about nineteen nosebleeds at this point, not that anyone’s colleague is tracking them, plotting their frequency versus time or anything, so he supposes it makes sense, but this time no one is bleeding and no one’s having a seizure, there’s just some insight happening here, yup, rock it, prefrontal cortex, sometimes it’s late to the party but it arrives in style.

“How much did the PPDC pay you?” Newt narrows his eyes in justified outrage and/or squints as the road creates an unpropitious alignment of photons and retinas.

“I have no plans to discuss my remuneration with you,” Hermann replies, resplendent in sunglassed stateliness, which is great, which is approved, because, hi, even classy jerks need to watch the road; thank the hypothetical lord that most of the surrounding cars are probably self-driving and so maybe this automotive ordeal Newt’s having only looks terrifying.

“Typical,” Newton mutters. “Discrimination on the basis of aesthetic self-modification should be illegal.”

“If I was compensated more than you were,” Hermann says, “if I was, have you considered it might have been less because of your questionable taste in ‘body art’ and more because you consistently disparaged the intelligence of everyone in the command hierarchy employing you?”

“No,” Newt says, not thinking about the time he might have stood up in the middle of a meeting, slammed both hands on the tabletop, and arguably “shouted” versus arguably “said,” “The K-science division cannot do work without using the energy resources of the PPDC. Call me when you’ve demonstrated, discovered, or effected a practical violation of the first law of thermodynamics. Until then, stop cutting my budget while expecting the same volume of work. It’s logically insupportable, and, let me paraphrase for you in case it’s unclear, what I mean by that is: you are collectively a room full of idiots!”

After that meeting, he’d stopped receiving annual raises in what was definitely for sure a coincidence.

“Nope,” Newt says, “I’m pretty sure it was the tattoos.”

Hermann angles his head in agreeably understated disbelief.

“Would you mind watching the road?” Newt asks politely.

“I am watching the road, Newton,” Hermann says. “Please relax.”

“Did you just advise me to ‘relax’? Tell me you’re still capable of appreciating the irony,” Newt says. “I need to know. For sanity. My sanity, to be clear.”

“You are the high-strung party in this relationship, Newton,” Hermann says. “I am the calm one.”

“What? No. You’re confused,” Newt replies, in no way confused himself, because he for sure knows which one of them can proceed for hours in a masterful silent display of logic in chalk and which of them is the overlord of the lateral mental step and the inappropriate brilliance of disparate association—

Well crap.

“I don’t think so,” Hermann says.

“Double-declutched.” Newt tips his head back, one hand at his temple. “This day is the worst.”

“Demonstrably false.” Hermann upshifts in a silver Porsche beneath a cloudless sky.  

Read Receipt (Too Distracting)

To: Hercules Hansen

From: Hermann Gottlieb

Subject: Clarification

Dear Marshal Hansen,

Could you please clarify the precise nature of the project that the team from Vladivostok has proposed? Could you please clarify why this project requires Dr. Geiszler’s continued presence in the medical bay? Could you also clarify why general access to the medical bay has been restricted? I spoke with Dr. Geiszler this evening and it was his opinion that the visiting team is ill-equipped to investigate their own hypotheses, though he didn’t articulate what those hypotheses were.

Thank you,

Hermann Gottlieb, Ph.D.

K-science Division Chief

Hong Kong Shatterdome

To: Hermann Gottlieb

From: Hercules Hansen

Subject: re: Clarification

Dr. Gottlieb,

I can’t provide you with any details regarding the ongoing Drift studies by the Vladivostok team because I don’t know them myself. Let me assure you that Dr. Geiszler has been informed of all possible risks and has consented to be a part of answering an important research question.

Hercules Hansen

Acting Marshal

Hong Kong Shatterdome

To: Hercules Hansen

From: Hermann Gottlieb

Subject: re: Clarification Dear Marshal Hansen,

You’ll forgive me if I don’t feel reassured. I went to see Dr. Geiszler again this evening and he appears unwell. His comments indicate that his current status would best be described as experimental subject rather than investigator. I would appreciate your personal attention to this matter.  

Sincerely,

Hermann Gottlieb, Ph.D.

K-science Division Chief

Hong Kong Shatterdome

To: Hermann Gottlieb

From: Hercules Hansen

Subject: re: Clarification

Dr. Gottlieb,

I’m following the progress of this particular research project to the extent that my current security clearance allows. The medical personnel assure me Dr. Geiszler is fine.

Hercules Hansen

Acting Marshal

Hong Kong Shatterdome

To: Hercules Hansen

From: Hermann Gottlieb

Subject: Letter of Resignation

Dear Marshal Hansen,

Please accept my resignation from the PPDC, effective immediately. You’ll find my PPDC equipment stacked on the desk in the laboratory I shared with Dr. Geiszler. I trust you’ve already received Dr. Geiszler’s letter of resignation, which was signed by hand and delivered to the physician on call several hours ago. Please inform me if this is not the case.

It has been a pleasure.

With regrets,

Hermann Gottlieb, Ph.D.

To: Hermann Gottlieb

From: Hercules Hansen

Subject: re: Letter of Resignation

Dr. Gottlieb,

I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but there’s no way that letter was from Geiszler. Pick up your damn phone.

Hercules Hansen

Acting Marshal

Hong Kong Shatterdome

To: Hercules Hansen

BCC: Lars Gottlieb

From: Hermann Gottlieb

Subject: re: Letter of Resignation

Dear Marshal Hansen,

I regret I’m unable to call you at the moment; I am traveling. I infer from the tone of your email that you are unhappy with my recent actions? However, if, as you say, Dr. Geiszler was participating in an ongoing project with full and voluntary consent, there should be no repercussions to his recent withdrawal of said consent. If you’ll clarify the nature of your concerns, I will, of course, respond at my earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Hermann Gottlieb, Ph.D

To: Hermann Gottlieb

From: Hercules Hansen

Subject: re: Letter of Resignation

Dr. Gottlieb,

There is no way that Geiszler withdrew consent, typed that letter of resignation, and booked a flight out of Hong Kong. You’re about to be criminally charged with his abduction. If you don’t contact me immediately and take steps to return Dr. Geiszler to Hong Kong, there’s no way to keep this entire thing from coming down on your shoulders.

Hercules Hansen

Acting Marshal

Hong Kong Shatterdome

To: Hercules Hansen

BCC: Lars Gottlieb

From: Hermann Gottlieb

Subject: re: Letter of Resignation

Dear Marshal Hansen,

My only choice is to infer that you assume Dr. Geiszler’s current status to be so incapacitated that he is unable to type a two-sentence letter of resignation. Allow me to assure you that this is not the case. Please contact the medical personnel at the Hong Kong Shatterdome, who will confirm that he clearly communicated his wish to leave. I’m sure we can clear up this misunderstanding shortly.

Sincerely,

Hermann Gottlieb, Ph.D.

To: Hermann Gottlieb

CC: Hercules Hansen

From: Lars Gottlieb

Subject: re: Letter of Resignation

Dear Marshal Hansen and Dr. Gottlieb,

Please stand by while this issue is brought before the internal review board of the PPDC. Dr. Gottlieb, I would appreciate a phone call at your earliest opportunity.

Sincerely,

Lars Gottlieb, Ph.D.

Pan Pacific Defense Corps

Defense Cabinet Member

Senior Scientific Advisor to the General

To: Hermann Gottlieb

CC: Newton Geiszler

From: Hercules Hansen

Subject: Apologies

Drs. Gottlieb and Geiszler,

Allow me to extend an apology on behalf of the PPDC regarding the recent misunderstanding surrounding your joint resignations. We will, of course, honor your wishes. We’ve inspected your labs and recovered all government property. This accounts for the delay you likely experienced when attempting to enter the United States. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused. Please provide us with forwarding addresses.

Thank you,

Hercules Hansen

Acting Marshal

Hong Kong Shatterdome

To: Hercules Hansen

From: Newton Geiszler

BCC: Hermann Gottlieb

Subject: Medical Records

Dear Marshal Hansen,

Thanks for your email. Please instruct the PPDC Medical Division to release the entirety of my medical records to Dr. Coral McClure, who will be contacting you shortly. Please also be advised that I am seeking legal counsel at this time, and I would like to have copies of all consent forms signed within the past week.

Kind regards,

Newton Geiszler, Ph.D.

To: Hermann Gottlieb

From: Hercules Hansen

Subject: re: Medical Records

Dr. Gottlieb,

Please inform your colleague that we will release all non-classified information to his physician within ninety days. Please also bear in mind that accessing a PPDC email account that is not your own is a federal offense, even if your lab partner gives you his password. You will lose access to our server, including access to your email accounts after forty-eight hours. Please make all necessary arrangements and provide us with alternate contact information before this window closes.

For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about this. 

Sincerely,

Hercules Hansen

Acting Marshal

Hong Kong Shatterdome 

To: Hercules Hansen

From: Hermann Gottlieb

Subject: Request

Marshal Hansen,

If you are “sorry about this,” as you claim, then I would very much appreciate learning precisely what was done to Dr. Geiszler in a more expeditious manner than a redacted release of his medical records, in hard copy, after ninety days. This is absolutely absurd and unacceptable.

Sincerely,

Hermann Gottlieb, Ph.D.

Professor of Mathematics

UC Berkeley

To: Hermann Gottlieb

From: Hercules Hansen

Subject: re: Request

Dr. Gottlieb,

Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do in an official capacity. The PPDC awaits communication from your external legal counsel.

Apologies,

Hercules Hansen

Acting Marshal
Hong Kong Shatterdome

To: Hermann Gottlieb

From: Undisclosed Recipient

Subject:

Dr. Gottlieb,

A mutual friend set this up for me. Click the link for an encryption key exchange. -HH

To: Undisclosed Recipient

From: Undisclosed Recipient

Subject: 

Finally. What in God’s name took you so long? It’s been weeks. I was beginning to believe that you were wholeheartedly toeing the party line.

-HG

To: Undisclosed Recipient

From: Undisclosed Recipient

Subject:

Excuse me while I choke on the irony in my coffee. You know there’s a mess of people on the PPDC Internal Review Committee who think you were in on Geiszler’s second Drift. That would explain some things.

-HH

To: Undisclosed Recipient

From: Undisclosed Recipient

Subject:

This is hardly relevant at present. What happened to him? 

-HG

To: Undisclosed Recipient

From: Undisclosed Recipient

Subject:

I’m unofficially expediting his record release—Dr. McClure should already have his files.

-HH

To: Undisclosed Recipient

From: Undisclosed Recipient

Subject:

I assume at this point you’ve gone over what I sent you? I confirmed that Dr. McClure received what was left of your medical records after the legal department had at them. I’ll tell you what I know about what was redacted, which pretty much amounts to the following:

Immediately after I reported Geiszler’s role in gaining intel on the Breach, the idea was floated that a two-way exchange had taken place and that Geiszler, and anyone else known to have drifted should be assessed for ongoing mental continuity with the kaiju anteverse. It took them three days to scramble a team—they brought in people from Vladivostok, where they had been working to weaponize drift tech.

After the team arrived, they gave him an EEG, which looked something like my dog’s breakfast, if I understand correctly. This caused concern. I believe it was Geiszler himself who proposed a third drift with a brain fragment the Vladivostok team had brought with them to establish that his abnormal EEG represented his new baseline and not ongoing outside influence.

He spent two days helping the Vladivostok team alter their rig to match the specs on the one he built. No one seems to be sure what went wrong—whether it was Geiszler or the rig—but as soon as they started adjusting his membrane potentials (I hope this makes sense to you, it’s not my area) in preparation for the Drift he had a focal seizure that generalized. Our medical personnel broke it after less than sixty seconds by pulling him out of the rig and giving him an anti-epileptic.

On the morning of the third day, Geiszler advocated a switch back to his rig with a pharmacologic assist so he could give it another shot. Unfortunately, it was never established how clearly Geiszler was thinking at this point. He should have been independently assessed, but that never happened.  The team managed to get him through the voltage adjustment and initiated a third Drift. His EEG readings distorted from his baseline, which gave the team the data they needed to grant him some kind of preliminary clearance. Geiszler had a second seizure thirty seconds after they initiated the Drift, despite the precautions of the team. This one lasted for several minutes after they’d managed to get him out of the rig.

Twelve hours later we’ve got you on the security camera dragging him out the front gate.

To my knowledge, no one assessed his functional status following his third Drift. How’s he doing? I haven’t seen so much as a whisper of him on the news, and the pictures out there don’t look good. If the guy can pick up a phone, have him call Mako, will you? The kid saw the report that I just described.

-HH

To: Undisclosed Recipient

From: Undisclosed Recipient

Subject:

Could you please confirm that you received my last message?

-HH

To: Undisclosed Recipient

From: Undisclosed Recipient

Subject:

I received it.

-HG

To: Undisclosed Recipient

From: Undisclosed Recipient

Subject:

I think the team genuinely wanted to help Dr. Geiszler. I think Dr. Geiszler genuinely wanted a shot at life outside a lab. I think that no one wanted to look too closely at what you did in that alley. We needed some kind of assurance that we hadn’t slammed a door but left a window open.

-HH

To: Undisclosed Recipient

From: Undisclosed Recipient

Subject:

What assurance? All you accomplished was the creation of a needless connection between an already damaged human mind and dead fragments of alien tissue so you could document a predictable deviation from baseline that would then allow you to check a box on a form. You’ll excuse me if I don’t congratulate you.

-HG

To: Undisclosed Recipient

From: Undisclosed Recipient

Subject:

I think I’ve had about all the congratulating I can take. Let me help. What can I do?

-HH

To: Undisclosed Recipient

From: Undisclosed Recipient

Subject:

If you could keep the pair of us off the PPDC’s institutional radar, that would be more than sufficient.

-HG

To: Undisclosed Recipient

From: Undisclosed Recipient

Subject:

Shouldn’t be a problem, as long as you can keep Geiszler out of trouble.

-HH

To: Undisclosed Recipient

From: Undisclosed Recipient

Subject:

No promises.

-HG

That Old Familiar Feeling (Wrong POV, Underdeveloped)

Hermann is absorbed in the intricacies of the newest programming language he’s adding to his repertoire, a variant of R that’s become increasingly popular in academic circles—when Mako calls. He frowns at his phone, checks the time, does some simple arithmetic, and realizes that if she’s calling him from Tokyo, where last she was stationed, it must be very late there indeed.

He answers. They exchange a few pleasantries. Mako asks about Newton, how his first graduate student is shaping up. Hermann answers her, perplexed by this change in routine. Mako generally communicates by text, and though she will call Newton on a regular basis, she rarely calls Hermann spontaneously.

After ten minutes of wandering conversation, Mako says, “I have some good news. The last remaining kaiju tissue samples are due to be destroyed.”

There is a long silence, during which he and Ms. Mori pen an epic novel apiece and attempt to transmit it psychically to the other party. 

“Ah,” Hermann says. “That is good news. When?”

“One week,” Mako says. “Raleigh will be there—he wanted to see it. I was invited too, but I told them I already had travel plans. I’ll be visiting then, remember? What good luck. We’ll have to drink some champagne.”

Hermann, thoughts in a racing disorder, cannot recall a planned visit—and then, of course. This is a surreptitious warning and an offer of help. Scratch that, not an offer. It’s help. Unadorned. He clears his throat.

“Yes,” he says, “Of course I recall. Send your flight information, when you get the chance.”

“I will,” Mako says. “See you soon!”

They say their goodbyes. 

Mako arrives on Sunday afternoon. She says nothing about the kaiju tissue on the drive home, nor does she say anything about it over dinner. She watches Newton carefully, likely trying to discern without asking whether Hermann has told him anything. Hermann has not.

“Mako.” Newton smirks as he catches her staring at him while he neatly dices vegetables. “What?”

“Nothing,” Mako says, too quickly and looking away. 

Newton immediately picks up on this, of course he does, that blasted man. He would.

“Nobody’s dying, right?” Newton asks, his eyebrows raised. 

“No.” Mako pales. 

Newton tries to suss her out. Failing that, he turns to Hermann. Newton is very difficult to handle when he is like this; he has a self-destructive tenacity that will not allow him to let things like this slide.

But Hermann, like Mako, is possessed of equal tenacity. They hold the line so hard against him that he makes no progress.

“What the hell is going on?” Newton demands, when he finds Hermann and Mako in whispered conversation after his shower.

“Nothing,” they say simultaneously.

Newton stands, trying to remain composed, but they’re rattling him. They’re turning a perfectly average week into something likely to go bad for reasons independent of any tissue sample destruction.

“You know what? You guys do your thing.” He turns. “I’m going to bed.”

“Newt,” Mako reaches after him.

“No.” He waves her off. “Have fun. Don’t drink all the whiskey.” 

He shuts the bedroom door firmly behind him.

Mako and Hermann turn to one another, anxiety and relief ricocheting between them.

“When?” Hermann asks.

“Wednesday,” Mako answers.

“What time?” Hermann asks.

“10 AM. You’d better go after him—I think we upset him.”

Hermann nods. When he enters the bedroom, he finds Newton unsurprisingly awake. He stands before the window, shirt sleeves pulled down and held in clenched hands. “Am I—doing something?” he asks. 

“Doing something?” Hermann repeats, neutral. 

Newton has exchanged his clothes for black sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt that Hermann has come to find wrenchingly attractive when coupled with his glasses, his hair. He’s turning striking in his thirties, the way some people do. Newton pushes his glasses up and looks at Hermann with a guarded caution he only displays when he’s feeling particularly hurt. “To annoy you, maybe?”

Hermann feels an acute spike of misery and knows, even as he experiences it, he won’t be able to successfully keep it from his face. “No, Newton,” he says, with too much feeling. “You are in no way annoying me.”

Newton’s demeanor goes from guarded to braced. He’s normally so expressive—now almost nothing comes through. Terrible, Hermann thinks. This is terrible. I’m terrible. I’m profoundly sorry. This will be the last thing I keep from you.

“Myeah.” Newton looks at the Coastal Wall, invisible in the darkness. “I didn’t think so.” He sounds deeply unhappy. “So what is it?”

“What do you mean?” Hermann asks, knowing exactly what he means.

Newton withdraws further. “Why is Mako here?”

“She wanted to come,” Hermann says casually, carefully.

“It just seems like you two are waiting for something,” Newton whispers. “Like, I don’t know, maybe you’re going to spring something on me and you’re trying to figure out the right time.” He glances at Hermann, drops his eyes. “No one’s dying, right?” he asks, the words clipped. “Like, Mako doesn’t have some weird cancer from the time she hung out inside Striker Eureka next to an unshielded radioactive source when she was eight or whatever?”

“No.” Hermann thinks furiously. Something. He’ll have to tell the man something reasonable.

“Yeah,” Newton says. “So, then, is she here because—” he shrugs, opens a hand, not looking at Hermann. Unusually inarticulate, dangerously close to tears. 

Hermann understands then what the man is most likely thinking—what he’s been dreading, possibly for some time now—unwilling to articulate it except in ironic asides when he’s feeling particularly secure. He’s terrified Hermann will leave. Much as Newton tries to approach this rationally—he can’t. It’s impossible. There is a part of him that deeply believes this is an inevitability. So when Mako comes, when they can’t quite hide the intensity with which they watch him, well, this is what six PhDs and a distorted farce of a childhood have to show for themselves.

Hermann crosses the room. He shuts the blinds on the Coastal Wall and wraps his arms around Newton, who immediately dissolves into tears, probably because he’s pushed himself to such a state of vulnerability that he has no idea if he’s terrified or relieved.

Wonderful. Perfect. In less than twenty-four hours the last remaining kaiju tissue on this planet is about to be demolecularized, and Newton is as defenseless as he’s ever likely to be. 

It almost certainly doesn’t matter.

There’s almost certainly no connection.

“Shh,” Hermann says, and then, his voice uneven, “what’s wrong?” How terribly disingenuous the question is.

Newton, perhaps, understands as much. He doesn’t answer, his face buried in Hermann’s shoulder. 

Hermann strokes his hair, still damp from his shower, and wishes, a little pragmatically, that he’d managed to get the man in bed before this happened. “It’s all right,” he repeats.

And certainly, Hermann can reassure the man all he likes, but Newton won’t be convinced until he gets a reasonable explanation for why Hermann and Mako have been watching his every move that does NOT involve Hermann putting an end to their relationship.

What am I going to tell you? He wonders. Some variant of the truth. That he and Mako had been discussing Newton’s physical and mental recovery in great detail shortly before this purely spontaneous trip of Mako’s, and their behavior was an outgrowth of that. Overly zealous psychological record keeping, essentially. It’s not a strong explanation, but if coupled with a renewed declaration of Hermann’s regard and commitment, which can then be discussed in excruciating detail—maybe it will be sufficient.

Maybe.

As Newton continues to cry, Hermann becomes less sure. 

“This seems somewhat extreme?” Hermann offers gently.

There’s no possibility that Newton is so emotionally fragile because those things in vats know what’s coming. Is there?

Ridiculous.

One thing is clear. Hermann will need to speak with the man in greater detail about—so much. He has no doubt that Newton would feel more secure if he knew Hermann had been unambiguously in love with him since 2015. But Hermann spent the better part of a decade pushing him away, and all of this is too much to drop on the man in the relative near term.

What was it his mother had said? He’s not quite sure of something.

He’s not quite sure of you. She hadn’t said it, but it’s what she’d meant.

And how could you be? He thinks, stroking Newton’s hair. It will take time. Maybe another decade. 

The crying runs its course and stops. Newton says nothing, his head resting against Hermann’s shoulder. What he initially takes for an increased need for physical contact soon reveals itself as exhaustion.

“Did you do this often? Before everything, I mean?” Hermann asks. “Or is this new?” It’s only been six months since they fled Hong Kong, but this is the third time that Newton has irrecoverably broken down in that time period. 

“New,” Newton says. “Sorry. I realize—”

“You realize nothing, you ridiculous thing,” Hermann says, fondly, kissing his temple. “Get in bed.”

For once, the man doesn’t argue. Hermann follows suit a few minutes later, pulling the man into an embrace. “I love you,” he tells Newton, fighting through the uncertainty, the vulnerability, the self-doubt. He hopes it sounds convincing.

“I know,” the man says, voice wavering.

“Do you?” Hermann asks gently. “I have the impression that’s what you’re worrying about, even though you haven’t said as much.”

Instead of replying, Newton begins weeping again, albeit with less intensity this time. Hermann holds him until he falls asleep. 

Halfway through the night, the man has a nightmare. One of the worst he’s had since the days shortly after the Drift. He wakes Hermann, screaming, covered in a cold sweat, bleeding from the nose, inarticulate, and shivering.

Hermann knows from experience that if he puts the man back to bed right away, he’ll be in for a repeat performance, so he gets him up, helps him shower. Mako, also awake (unsurprisingly, given the screaming), makes an herbal tea.

The next day, Newton stays home from work, uncharacteristically withdrawn. At ten in the morning, Mako receives a text from Raleigh, and nods at Hermann. They both look at Newton, who is curled on the couch, annotating a Nature Neuroscience article. They breathe a simultaneous sigh of relief.

And yet. 

Newton has nightmares every night that week. He spends hours each day doing nothing but lying with his head in Hermann’s lap, listening to German poetry. He speaks very little, he’s overly sensitive to light, to noise, to crowds, to comments, to temperature. He loses enough blood from repeated episodes of epistaxis that Hermann takes him in to see Dr. McClure, who tells them if he drops his hematocrit any lower he’s “cruisin’ for a transfusin’.”

Mako extends her visit by a week. By the time she goes, Newton is back to his vivacious baseline. 

For years to come, Hermann and Mako will debate.

Spice of Life (Overworked, Underpowered)

Dear Hermann, I’m sorry to write you now. Like this. I just wanted to make sure, I’m dictating so, I’m sorry. Sorry. I’ve attached some file correct that files. Just keep them. I’m about to be quarantined, so. Have to keep things short I guess. Probably I. Good luck. Tell me about Alaska. Cold there, right? Sounds nice. I could be. Into that. Newt.

Dear Hermann, again dictating. Sorry. Lots of corrosion damage to my phone. And lungs. Living at. O2 sats in the 80s. Wish I could make a heroic blog! No I don’t. As you guessed, things? Not going well. The air here, well, I’m sure you’ve seen. Do they talk about it? On the news? Very gold. Very pretty. Very loathe Lauren. Correct that. Very Delorian. Correct that. Very sloth Laurie and. I give up. The place the elves. Where they live. Fuck you phone. Sorry. Sorry. You probably don’t say fuck? I can see the city outside. Half crushed. Not sure about the Jaeger thing. This Drift. It sounds like. Literally. The stupidest idea. I’ve ever heard. Who proposed this. What. Just what. Names. Give them to me. Editorialize more. I will too. Spice of life. Here’s my first opinion piece. Not sure how I’m going to get out of here. –Newt

Dear Hermann, yet again dictating. Calm down. That was NOT the kind of editorializing. I meant. My phone. It’s damaged. Very temperamental. I pray. Every day. To the altar of Sarcasm. Sorry. To the altar of Stochasticity. That it will not die. Live phone comma live. I can’t get a new one. In quarantine. That’s how quarantine works.

You are correct in your punctuation conjecture. I have no control. Where the server. In the sky. Puts. Full stops. Sorry it looks alarming. I’ll try to save up air for longer phrases. Like that one. Or not. Maybe later. I don’t see. What. Like. Karate. Has to do. I don’t see what karate has to do. With neuromechanical. Interfacing. If you’re going to. Explain something. Explain that maybe. Isn’t that going to be a problem? For you? New paragraph. I wish. Ha. Re: your concerns. Shorter list next time how about. I will choose a nonrandom sample. Question 3:  No and no. Question 5:  short version. The respirators. Have a very small filter size. They have to because. Never mind. This makes them prone to clogging. So. Ran out of time. Ran out of usable filter. Have not yet figured out how to breathe. Without air. Working on it. Will keep you posted. Question 14:  Because even when they lift the quarantine I’m not going to be able to go outside. I don’t think. Please don’t get kicked in the head by some jock bro asshole. I will be. So upset. –Newt.

Dear Hermann, yes. Still alive. Not yet entirely out of usable. Pulmonary. Parenchyma. However. They tell me. Never mind. Long story. Working a lot. And fast. Trying at least. Walking zero. Anderson is trying. To get me out. Red tape though. Attaching more files. In case. You know. Sorry. –Newt 

Dear Hermann, some ground to cover. Most important is my. Personal server access. Attached please find instructions. I don’t distrust Anderson. I just don’t. Not distrust question mark. Second. Please continue to pursue. Quantum Cartography. Your idea. It’s good. Very few people. Do what you can. So, just. Do that. Instead. Or consider it. Almost time to go. It’s been great. Weird. But great. Never did get around. To the Rilke. But it always. Would have been something. Light it up. Burn it down. Love forever, Newt

A World of Glass (Wrong Vibe)

We won’t hurt you. Hermann walks a circle in the room. Interface suit. No cane. We would never hurt you, despite all you’ve done. Spiraling toward the center. Burning eyes. We want you to understand that. This is very good, Newton. Hermann says, lips right next to his ear. Around his leg, and Hermann’s, snakes a sensory projectile, glowing blue, winding tight. Binding them together. Three. Look at all we’ve learned from one another. So many useful skills. The ceiling cracks. Newt shudders. Don’t worry, baby. I’m fine. Lightning in Alaska. Everything is touching him. Everything. Math and music. Color. The cognition of others. The past in all its iterations, the present in all its possibilities. Lightcap drops a wrench that hits him in the chest. You seem anxious; we can fix that. Blue glow. Something leeches into him. So strange you call it the Pacific, your wildest, widest sea. Calm, it means, yes? Placid? The hallway where Newt stands is a watercolor of bleeding pastels, pale wood, fluorescence.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and the haptic signal resonates through his entire nervous system, in concert with the static in his head. He clamps his teeth down on the sound his voice box is trying to make. He nearly drops to his knees with the sheer double-distilled pleasure of it. He staggers, pressing himself against the wall, kilopascals of sensory overload, but stays upright. Perhaps a little much? Hermann murmurs. Obvious sympathy. 

Newt answers the text then holds his phone in his hand, against his chest, bracing. Waiting.

The vibration, when it comes, echoes through all he is. Easier, this time, to take, now he knows it’s coming. It washes over him, a wave. He swallows, breathing shallowly, leaning against the wall, legs trembling, staring at his phone beneath crystal windows, beneath a sky like the sea.

Newt’s sexuality, a hot and hopeless mess, is full of weird botanicals Hermann hasn’t yet begun to explore, because he doesn’t know that sometimes, on a weekday morning, Newt will get his brain sexed up by the anteverse and metaphorically come all over his skull base. He swallows, gets his phone back in his pocket, nearly sending himself to the floor again as it slides over the curve of his ass.

He’d go back to his office, go home, but it’s so clear he’s unimpaired. He’s the opposite of impaired. He needs to use this time, it’s a gift, he shouldn’t let it pass him by. 

Charu shoots him a skeptical look as he walks by, but doesn’t say anything. Otherwise there’s no commentary on Newt’s appearance, which is for the best. He gets them started, tells them what to do, but once things reach a certain point, he takes over, he has to, he can’t help himself. He steps in, places his hands on Ping’s shoulders, guides her gently away, reaches in, takes the calipers from Daniel, and begins. Jake is there. Jake understands Newt’s intent. He always does and always has. There’s no talking.

How do I know? Lightcap breathes into his ear. It’s the way he watches you work, baby. Like he’d give anything to be under those capable hands of yours.

Repairing the FPLC machine is one of the most pleasurable acts of Newton Geiszler’s adult life. 

All parts fit perfectly. Every time he touches something, anything, it touches him back. Deeply, like it’s worked its way inside. Prying his consciousness open. Hermann pressing on his face, that nematocyst forcing the bones in his arm apart, the kids exert a heavy, calming pressure. The waves of sensation smooth every edge, sand him down. The constant stimulation is exhausting. It’s meant to be, Hermann murmurs. Newt is wrapped against him. Green room, blue fronds, several now, fusing them together. Hong Kong that could have been. Hermann looks at Newt, searching, sincere. Understand. Energy. You need to spend it. 

And he does. He is. He will. Contentment spreads in a warm glow, overpowering everything else. He’s doing exactly what he’s supposed to be doing in exactly the way he’s supposed to be doing it. He will continue until he has nothing left to offer. 

His mind is clear, his hands couldn’t be steadier, he loses track of time. Handling the driver is intensely rewarding, the curves of metal beneath his hands, those delicate moving parts. He can feel it reaching into him, well past his defenses, forcing his mind open. Every part of him aches with psychic strain. What he’s asking of this FPLC machine, what it asks of him in return. Go slow, Hermann warns, as Newt slides the last part home. Pastels. Electric blue and greens. Otachi’s fronds are moving underneath his clothes. Slowly now.

Jake, crouching on the bench, gives Newt a clear line of sight. Carefully Newt presses past dynamic opposition, feeling the pressure double back in his own mind. He strobes through light and dark, English and German, past and present. Hermann keeps him still. Blue fronds knead at areas of resistance until they turn receptive, and—

When the driver clicks into place, the release is so overpowering that it blows out every conscious thought he has. Approval and approbation come in a warm gush, pulsing in his mind and body. Biologic. Is that so surprising? You are. We are. Biologic entities. The quantum frost turns thicker, the light brighter, the dark darker. All the time. In seeing everything, he can see almost nothing. Very good, Hermann murmurs. Relax. You’re doing so well.

“Amy,” Charu says, her arm coming around Newt’s waist, an excruciating wave that takes so much of what he has left. “Amy!” And again, when Amy takes his arm, lifts it, when Lightcap presses herself against him.

“Get him down. On the floor.”

Uh oh. 

I worry about you, baby. Lightcap says out of the past. Cait-Science, I miss you, Newt thinks, from the future. As much as I knew I always would. The glassy world, this languid perspicacity, the extreme, innervating/enervating pleasure of literally everything right now, sounds, pressures, colors, the floor beneath his back—they’re torturing him. 

“Daniel,” Jake unfolds from his perch on the lab bench. “Back up. Charu, call.”

Newt has a moment of clarity. Far-reaching sight. Hermann, on the rooftop of that Alaskan Shatterdome. Ugh, Hermann, I’m sorry.

The urge to be alone is overpowering. 

“On your side,” Amy says, matter of fact, helping him turn. 

Newt is breathing hard, the palm of one hand pressed against the floor. The world is ending in gorgeous conflagrations of crystal and light. Time dissolves and stops passing. He feels so spectacularly good he doesn’t feel human anymore. The pressure in his head is slowing his thoughts, ready to crack through a world of glass.

“Sorry Ames,” Newt says. “Tell Jake I’m sorry.”

“Right here, boss,” Jake says. 

The kids hiss, a rising static. Caitlin Lightcap sings, high and clear. The pressure in his head turns unbearable, orgasmic. His clothes on his skin, the floor beneath him, everything feeds into the crushing weight of hedonism. Shhh, the kids hiss, soothing his distress. You can take it, Hermann murmurs. Accept what’s being offered. 

There’s a warm rush of blood in his sinuses; he’s never felt anything so good. His vision explodes into the full spectrum, all colors and more. He can’t hold it. It’s not a thing that can be held. Don’t try so hard, Hermann murmurs. The kids are licking his brain again, unbearable stimulation and its afterglow. Relax, they hiss. Be receptive, Hermann murmurs. Yielding. Compliant. Tractable. Flexible. Persuadable. Malleable. Obedient. A barrier Newt can’t see gives way and the kids flood in, victorious, but not without a certain velvet solicitude as they paralyze him. Come back to us. The idea is there always; they remind him when they can. 

“Newt?” Amy says, voice tight with anxiety.

“Happens every time,” Jake says, calm. “Any second now. We should time it. Charu, are they—”

His thoughts slow to nothing. He can’t move, not physically, not mentally. He’s defenseless. Do they understand what they’re doing, when they do this to him? When he does this to himself? Shhh, they say, filling him with a restful lassitude, an azure lethargy. Very good, Hermann says, just like that. The world glitters, multifaceted. Lightcap, bleeding on the ice. Mako, crying in the rain. Hermann, staring out at the Alaskan tundra. He is standing on the brink, almost undone. Hold still, Hermann whispers, kissing the shell of Newt’s ear. Very still. The kids pry his mind apart. His thoughts shimmer, barely hanging on to their own integrity. 

Open now.

His head snaps back. Every muscle contracts. And—finally. 

Finally. 

Blue Planet (Couldn’t Find a Home)

Newt wakes, strange glaze. It’s dark, but there are small sources of light. Monitors with silent waveforms. Mako is curled next to him, and there’s a laptop balanced between them. Blue Planet is playing. Mako whispers the words along with the narrator. Deeper in the darkness, other people are talking, familiar voices he can’t yet parse. 

Newt shifts.

Mako looks up, startled, eyes wide. It’s hard to focus on her. She’s blurry. Mako sits, looks away, says something urgent in Japanese.

“Maks?” Newt asks in a cracked whisper.

“Newt,” Mako says, and drops her head to his shoulder, wrapping both arms around him. 

“Hi baby.” Lightcap steps into the radius of the laptop’s glow. “Need these?” She picks something up off the table. Glasses, he realizes, as she slides them into place. 

She and Pentecost look down at him, solemn, in the dark. Newt does his best to hug Mako back. It’s kind of a pitiful effort, really. 

“Geiszler.” Pentecost nods, like they’re passing on the street, but slightly more friendly.

This is weird.

“We knew Blue Planet would wake you up,” Lightcap says. “Didn’t we, Mako?”

Mako nods into his shoulder but does not lift her head. Newt can feel a hot tear or several through his thin hospital gown.

Lightcap somehow finds room to perch on his narrow bed. 

“You scared the ever-living shit out of everyone, Geiszler, you dollar-store hell gremlin.” Lightcap strokes his hair. “I don’t think Gottlieb will ever recover. We had to pry him out of here with a crowbar.”

“Hermann?” Newt asks, the word a rasp. His throat hurts, like maybe at some point, someone had shoved a tube down it.

“No, the other Gottlieb,” Lightcap says, smiling.

Vow (A Little Too Far)

“I told you,” Hermann hisses, livid. “Did I not tell you this would happen?”  

“Yes.” Pentecost watches Newton struggle shallowly for air as though the man is a tactical problem. “You did.” His phone is already pressed to his ear.

“Kid’s in bad shape,” Hansen says, lightly slapping Newton’s right cheek, first gently, then harder. “Not sure we should wait for medical to come to us—he’s turning a bit blue here, Stacker.” 

Hermann steps forward, touches the man’s forehead. Newton’s skin is clammy, his glasses are askew.

I will never forgive you this, Hermann vows, full of vicious anger as he looks at Newton, lax upon the table. If you allow your grief for her to kill you, I will curse you all the days of my life and you will deserve it. No one has ever deserved it more. Except for her, whom I will also curse.

Leverage (A Little Too Much)

“No!” The man shouts, bodily dragging him away from the music, which would, Hermann is certain, be far more effective if he weren’t laughing so hard. “You have to leave it!”

Hermann cedes a few feet of ground strategically, then turns, steps in, hooks a foot behind one of Newton’s ankles, drops his cane, and then presses him backward. 

“Hermann!” Newton, still laughing, indignant, just a touch anxious, tries to readjust his grip into something more advantageous.

Before he can do it, Hermann gives him a final tiny shove, pushing him wholly off balance.

The man nearly falls, but Hermann catches him, one hand beneath his shoulders, before it comes to that. With the man’s weight-bearing foot trapped, Newton’s back arcs into an approximation of an Argentine dip. Even better? Hermann has a free hand, which he uses to make a few quick structural adjustments—pulling Newton closer, shifting the hand under the man’s back—before prying Newton’s fingers from their tenuous grip on his shoulder. This removes the last of the man’s leverage.

Newton stops struggling.

Hermann softens his hold and interlaces their fingers.

They look at one another, breathing hard. Hermann feels the man’s heart pounding. Bohemian Rhapsody continues to play.

“Three things,” Newton says, adopting an impudently didactic tone from his position of extreme disadvantage.

“Three, is it?” Hermann deepens the dip slightly.

Newton, unperturbed, begins with, “One—for years I was convinced they’d taught you nothing useful at the ‘Jaeger Academy’.”

“Hmmm,” Hermann says, unimpressed.

“But I stand corrected. Your understanding of bodily mechanics is better than I’d given you credit for.”

“Newton, you realize that in addition to the mathematical modeling I did in my spare time, I headed J-Tech for several years?” Hermann drops him another several centimeters. “J-Tech is nothing but body mechanics.”

“Good point. Convincingly made. Two—you’d make a great dancer, anyone ever tell you that?”

“No,” Hermann says dryly.

“Three—you may think you have the upper hand, Dr. Gottlieb, but I’d like to point out that you haven’t succeeded in changing the music.”

“Only a matter of time, I assure you,” Hermann tells him.

“I don’t know—maybe you should stay here,” Newton says, deliberately breathy, fluttering his lashes. It’s a flagrant ploy that is no less effective for its shameless appeal. The man is wretchedly fetching. Hermann can barely tolerate it. He pulls Newton’s hand to his mouth and kisses his fingers.

Newton rolls an r into a provocative purr. 

Hermann pulls him most of the way up, straight into a thorough kiss. Newton, possessed of a bit more leverage, uses it to press himself against Hermann.

“You be careful,” Hermann advises, kissing the shell of his ear.

Newton shivers. “Of what?”

“If you keep proceeding as you are, I doubt we’ll be eating your dinner.”

As if on cue, they hear the unmistakable hiss of something on the stove boiling over. 

Newton’s eyes widen. Hermann sets him on his feet and gives him a gentle shove in the direction of the kitchen. The man sprints for the stove, slides into position skidding on socks, and rescues the offending pot. 

Though presented with every opportunity, Hermann leaves the music as it is.

Graduation (Cut for Flow)

Newton makes it through the winter without a single seizure. 

Jacob defends his PhD in February, but drags his feet in finding a post-doctoral position. Newton takes him out for lunch three times. Tells him he’ll stop paying his salary. Still, Jacob will not go. 

Hermann, independent of Newton, invites Jacob out for coffee.

“Dr. Patel,” he greets him when he sees him.

Jacob blushes, grins, but otherwise looks thoroughly miserable. “Newt put you up to this,” he says. “Didn’t he?”

“He did not,” Hermann replies, “and I would appreciate it if you would keep this between us.”

“Oh, um, sure?”

“Jacob,” Hermann says, when they are settled with their drinks, “tell me why you want to stay.”

“Oh, um, yeah, why I want to stay? Well, I don’t really, I’m just—”

“Not what you told him,” Hermann says. “The real reason.”

Jacob gives him a wide-eyed stare. 

Hermann takes pity on the young man. “I suspect I can guess. Shall I?”

“Er, sure,” Jacob replies. He hasn’t touched his cappuccino. 

“There is no one, anywhere, like him. He’s an outstanding scientist, preternaturally gifted. He’s inspiring. He’s kind. He’s an excellent mentor. And he will not do as well without you. It makes it difficult to leave. In the extreme.”

Jacob relaxes, all the tension leaving him. 

“During the war,” Hermann begins, speaking of it as if it’s over, because it is. He clears his throat. “He had techs who worked for him for years near the end. Without pay. The funding was cut to build the Coastal Wall. They worked until they became destitute, or until they had to return to their families. In many cases, they worked until they died.”

Jacob says nothing. 

“He wants you to go,” Hermann says, “in part because of that particular collection of young scientists he mentored during the years of the war. They’re lost. Almost to a one, they are lost. And the handful who aren’t—their field, their expertise—all of it is thankfully obsolete.” Hermann sips his coffee. Around them, people come and go.

“It’s different,” Jacob says.

“I know it is,” Hermann replies. “I am not disagreeing with you. It’s very different.”

“So,” Jacob says. “Whose side are you on?”

Hermann quirks an eyebrow. “Wrong question, I think,” he says. “I’m always on his side. The question is, is he on his side? It may be that I’m on his side, you’re on his side, and he’s on your side.”

Jacob smiles faintly.

“But I still haven’t heard you speak about why you want to stay.”

“Everything you said is true,” Jacob says. “I haven’t learned everything I can from him; I can’t imagine being happy in another place; he’s one of the greatest living scientists of our time; it will always be more exciting to work with him than not.” Jacob looks away. “I know there were others. I get that to you guys, I’m just the latest in a long line of people—”

Hermann shakes his head, but does not interrupt.

“But it’s not—ugh, I don’t know if I’m helping myself or shooting myself in the foot here—but Dr. Gottlieb. There’s something different about this time. There has to be. Post-apocalypse. In 2026, when I joined his lab, he didn’t have a lab to join. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I figured it out, I figured him out, and I don’t want to overstep, or sound arrogant about this but—” Jacob shrugs.

“It would not have gone so smoothly without you,” Hermann says. “It might not have gone at all. I’m aware.”

“He still can get—” Jacob leans forward. “He still can get very anxious when people ask him certain things about the Drift, about the war, about you. He is so much better now, so much. But it will be easier if I stay. I help him more than he knows I help him. And I get it. I shouldn’t make career decisions based on, I don’t know, my admiration for, and gratitude to one of the guys who helped save our species. I get that. But I find I don’t really care. I didn’t care when I joined his lab. It was a huge risk. Huge. Did you know our Department Chair tried to talk me out of it?”

“Is that so?” Hermann says, betraying nothing.

“Yes. He wasn’t even organized enough to set up a real rotation for me. I spent my first six months doing zero science. Best decision of my life.”

Hermann nods, but Jacob isn’t finished.

“But I can’t tell Newt this. Right? I haven’t. I can’t. He’d kick me to the curb for SURE if he heard what I just told you. But, like, what? I’m supposed to go interview at Harvard for post-doc positions I don’t want?”

“It doesn’t seem to make much sense,” Hermann agrees.

“Are you trying to talk me into or out of staying?” Jacob asks. “Because you seem pretty neutral.”

“I am not neutral,” Hermann says. “That is, in fact, a state in which I almost never find myself. I very much want you to stay, and I have for some time now.”

Jacob’s face is the picture of relief. “Really? I thought for sure you were going to try to talk me out of it.” 

“I might have done, had you said something different,” Hermann replies. 

“So how are we going to convince Newt?” Jacob asks. 

Hermann smiles. “If I interfere I think it will hurt your chances of success.”

“Any tips? Talking to him hasn’t been going so well.”

“Yes,” Hermann says, smiling faintly. “So I hear. But, abstracting from what he’s told me, you seem to be trying an intellectual approach. I would say jettison that. Make an emotional appeal.”

“Kind of like, ‘please don’t send me away’?” 

“Yes,” Hermann says. “Consider weeping.”

Three days later, Newton confides to Hermann, horrified, that he’d “made Jake cry.” 

“Torturing yourself is one thing,” Hermann says sternly, when Newton tells him about the encounter. “Torturing poor Jacob is quite another.”

Jacob stays in the lab for his post-doc.