In a Clean White Room

Hermann, low on willpower, high on misery, decides to watch Newton’s talk. It’s a terrible idea.

Hermann thinks, with compassion, of Gottfried Leibniz, fallen out of favor in November of 1716.

To her profound credit, Mako retreats from nothing.

Hermann believes himself to be prepared. Alas, he is not.

“You think you started yesterday with your word differences?” Newton says. “You’ve been doing word differences for a long time.”

“Oooh Demonic Hold. Sounds like a really fun thing to do to a library book.”

Maybe they’re dead, standing in an infinite cold wind, waiting for Lightcap.

“I’ll buy you beer for the rest of my life,” Lightcap promises him.

NEWTON IS NOT THE CALM ONE.

“Bitch Prince of the Xenome!!” Lightcap announces.

The pieces come like shards, stay like shards.

Newton takes a pointed bite of his graham cracker.

“For all I know,” Newton says, “you’re mapping our salvation in the quantum foam.”

Bach himself is reaching through three hundred years of spacetime to press down on every cognitive circuit Newt has in his repertoire.

Newton types: Supererogatory Quantum Cartography <3 in a text box.

The xenoepilepsy thing feels, at times, like a process that must go to completion.

Radishes. Honestly.

The arguments feel like a natural evolution of their correspondence.

He can’t stop the tears that come for Leibniz, for the kids, for all the unknown things that will ever fade with grace before their day and after their time.

“I see you’re conscious again,” Hermann says. “Felicitations.”

Newt holds out his hand because in for a penny, in for imperious-dick mode.

The reality of death and destruction is fading. How terribly nice that should seem.  

Curse the arrow of time, anyway.

“You think you’re so charming,” Hermann says testily.

Meridians and mermaids. Field lines and fairies. Lively little ghosts and loop quantum gravity. String theory and song.

Overhead, Queen plays.

Newt loooooooves discovering design flaws in the field.

::Kiss!::

These are no tears of joy, despite the way the world won’t end.

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

In some D-brane of the multiverse, there’s a non-zero chance that Newton Geiszler, totally out of his pretty little mind, is reopening a transdimensional portal that should remain shut.

Hermann needs to reinvent his life; he needs to do it tomorrow.

So. He wants to meet. This seems significant.

“Newt,” Lightcap says, commanding, stony, an immortal being, a goddess of old. “Stop coughing.”

He doesn’t understand what he doesn’t understand.

He’s learned his duty. He’s learned nothing but.

These kids are so great.

Rain beats against the windshield. Hwi navigates by infrared.

He can feel his spectral company.

Where is Newton when you need him?

“Someone’s had a productive morning,” Hermann observes archly.

If Lightcap could speak, Hermann knows what she would say.

Don’t think of the war.

“I saw the Pax Prometheana fail and fall.” Dr. Levant rasps.

“‘Nightmarish’ can mean many things.”

Sure hadn’t taken long for everything to go sideways.

The city’s joy twines into him: current, stone, and blown cloud.

“The term ‘Planetary Asset’ is dehumanizing and we object to it.” Eli stepped to Rush’s shoulder in solidarity.

Hope in the evening hour.

“Human, Serpentis, Promethean, Gray, Galactic Sprite, or Ghoul. CHOOSE. You have to choose. Just say one. I’m begging you.”