In a Clean White Room

“I am NOT,” Volker said, “a cosmic SQUIRE. I’m an astrophysicist. And a pretty fine one, at that.”

The God of Flame and War flicked open his burgundy-lined coat with showy melodrama.

  And if I die, I was a scientist in these times.

An unfashioned creature, but half made up.

The only show in town.

Not actually a plot twist, just like one.

“You are lovers?” Karla asks, point blank.

“ Stop handing  your business card to passing monstrosities,” Hermann says.

In the face of cataclysm, one likes to be reminded of what one knows.

For a week, John Sheppard is almost happy.

“Yup.” McKay appeared, a platter of miniature churros and melted chocolate in hand. “No one needs Wraith nightmares. But you will get them. We all do.”

“It’s not a party.” Woolsey compressed his lips, full of disapproval. “It’s an evening of elite gaming.”

“Is Colonel Sheppard wearing your sleepwear?” Rush asked Young.

Am I for this? Luke asks the darkness. Yes , it answers.

This was Sheppard’s ground: night-girded architectures and alien trade winds blowing strong over water that couldn’t stay dark.

“Courtship reliably distracts me, you know that.” Vala’s smile glittered with mischief, and she lifted a hand from Young’s hip to gesture at McKay and Keller, as though bidding up their price at auction.

Into Young’s mind came the image of John Sheppard as the Duke of Marlborough, bold and deceptive, marching his army 250 miles to the Danube, the 1704 wind lifting his red officer’s coat.

There is no pity in a Category Five Mako Mori hug.

Hwi rolls down a window.

“Hashtag ‘accuracy’,” Newton whispers, like a secret shared.

Newt’s committed casual, causal, quantum-mechanical calumnies.

“Évariste.” Newton provocatively snaps a sterile glove as he pulls it on. “Galois.”

All the emo Jedi go bad.

“Do not deflect my questions with science fiction tangents, Newton; I am in no mood to be compared to Princess Leia.”

If you want to destroy my sweater, hold this thread as I walk away.

“When Tiffany designs and builds an underwater Turing Machine, please be sure to inform me,” Hermann says.

Resist. Transmit. You must know you’re a machine.

Hermann is personally offended that, as he’s brushing his teeth in an immaculate, white-tiled bathroom, Is this it? by The Strokes begins to play on repeat in his head.

Absolut failure.

Somewhere in his mind, a man significantly braver and less organized than he waits in mental wings, offstage and in the dark.

“You really could not be a better Spider Man villain if you tried,” Newt mutters at himself.

His shoe. The sea.

Delicious pancakes are delicious.

Hermann is no stranger to sleepless nights.

It’s going to be a rough night. This and all the rest.

They make it out of Hong Kong.

Extreme Post-drift Induced Cognitive (EPIC) Rapport.  

Mathematicians do not hedge.

Lie in a magnet, Dr. Geiszler, just lie there. Get your brain scanned.

Ugh. Biologists.

Who sits down one day and says, “I could really use a coordinate system right about now?” René De-epic-intellectual-badass-cartes, that’s who.

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

“I feel weird,” Newt decides.

“I like your brain,” Newton says, a non sequitur that doesn’t feel like one.

Their ships are metaphor but they will literally rock them, guys, come on.

“Like,” Newton says in helpless appeal, “wave functions, man.”

“Tell me, in absolute honesty, what is the state of your living quarters?” Hermann says.

THE WALL OF LIFE. All caps, to better match the shouting.

“I can’t believe it,” everyone says, in voices that are not surprised.

Note to self, or, more probably, note to person who finds my dead body: I’ve discovered something interesting.