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Newt smiles, and Hermann sees something else in it. The drift has given him terrifying insight that is beyond his comprehension. "I don't... What are you?"
"Curious. You're so small, but have such a large impact. You must know better than anyone I've encountered, though maybe not better than anyone, that there's nothing that exists now that didn't-"
"You're not answering my question. You're not human, I know that. So what are you? An alien?"
When Newt laughs, it's the same high-pitched, joyful noise that Hermann is familiar with. It doesn't sound like an alien or anything other than the same Newt he's known for years. "No, I'm not an alien. You're all the aliens to me, every last one of you. Humans, kaiju, precursors... I'm... an explorer of sorts. You all look out on your quest to discover. I look in, or maybe down. Around? You are the bacteria attempting to understand the nature of the beast whose gut you live in. I'm the beast."
Hermann stares, uncomprehending, but whether by choice or true misunderstanding is impossible to say.
"I don't have a name. I don't have a designation. I am a fragment of the universe who is here to learn. There are others out there, like me, but not the same as me. Or maybe we're all we. The notions of individuality are strange, but so clever. When you are one on a planet full of life, it doesn't work to be a we, does it?" When Hermann doesn't respond, Newt takes his hand. "Drift with me again. Drift in me."
Hermann nods faintly.
***
Newton's nature is silence, in complete opposite of his behavior. Still, cold silence that overwhelms the previous falsities of the first drift together. Newton is empty and as far-reaching as existence, as time, beyond the history of man.
Hermann's minor memories are less than specks of dust lost in the vastness of the drift. Somehow it is peace he finds.
When the drift ends, Newt grabs Hermann by the arm to steady him.
Whether the warmth is from cosmic dust and radiation or just a miracle of flesh and blood, Hermann feels it, along with the very mortal strength of the man. It is all too much for Hermann to understand, the ideas far beyond his notions of his numbers and equations. That the person he knows as Newton Geiszler is a construct of the infinite universe, it begins to slowly disintegrate his faith in the purity of numbers.
"But everything is ultimately a construct of the universe, isn't it?"
"How do you know...?"
"The drift. The first was enough. I flow through you like the distance between planets now. It's what you always wanted. Your memories say so much more than tell stories of your past."
Hermann is walking, Newt is leading. Hermann feels lost even through the familiar halls.
Philosophy was never his thing. It was a lot of questioning of the nature of man and things beyond true understanding, and to him that was a pointless endeavor. What is the point of studying something that can never be understood? But he looks at Newt and questions his own fascination with the stars and space, and wonders how such a thing that is both something and nothing, everything and a single man, can ever be understood.
"Don't give up," Newt says. "Trust in yourself. If you find peace in the numbers, then don't abandon them." He opens the door and leads Hermann inside.
***
Hermann lives with those soft whispers of amazement as he turns his life and studies to the sky. That something so large could reduce itself to something so small and find anything worthy of its attention in himself, Hermann thinks he owes it in return.
He sits on the flat roof of his home, no lights for miles, as he looks up at the sky. He's studied it more closely than ever before, and can name everything he sees along with most of what he can't see.
"Hermann?"
He looks back as Newt leans out the dormer window. "Here."
He's had the most knowledgeable of teachers after all.