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It was after hours in the engineering department, and Enoch Drebber was considering his life.
This was the easiest time of day to do it, after the completion of his professional duties but before the return home to repetitive habit. The workshop had a welcoming hum about it, hovering slightly above silence from the gentle whirring of dormant machinery. Alone amid glass and plastic and metal, he tinkered with his hand. Memories poured up his arm with it; they always did, prompted by slight motions, readjustments, and every so often bursts of phantom pain.
There were a few subjects that tended to flit through his mind in these hours. His research. His arm. His youth. His old ambitions. His current job. There was no distinction, really. They all melded together in one incident.
It didn't hurt as much anymore. Time had granted perspective. Images that were devastating back then could now be viewed through the stoic lens of detachment, placing his emotions behind glass to be studied and scrutinized. But there was always a rippling sting when returning to the start of it; the memory hovered at the back of his head like a bruise, mostly-faded, painful to the touch.
It was many years ago, his unpracticed smile had never been wider, and around his neck gleamed the medal from the Royal Society.
The frantic clicking of cameras burned the image into several publications. For a while he couldn't avoid seeing it, hoisted back at him in a couple of dozen e-mails by colleagues and co-workers alongside jovial congratulations. It was mostly awkward, slightly appreciated, but overall a shame; he'd rather the stories have been spread for the potential of his research rather than for the novelty of his youth.
...By now, of course, that was hard to imagine. Young and full of promise ― that was always the word, wasn't it? Promise, potential, possibilities. A myriad of spreading branches, each folding and curving, each wide and well-suited for travel. He'd devoted himself to exploring every route he could, ablaze by the dream that loomed of the horizon. The grandest day of his life was behind him, and his career was only just beginning.
The journalist had emerged, collapsing each of those possibilities to a single point.
Interviews had never interested him, even at that age. Accolades weren't awarded for nothing, but fame was a different story entirely―attention seemed a strange and fickle beast, prone to biting the hand that fed it. His refusals were frequent, direct, and polite. The man had writhed around them somehow, deploying a handful of kind words, heartfelt encouragements, and, most prominently, a gentle implication; addressing the question of their budget.
Despite its pure ideals and noble ambitions, the world of professional science was unmistakably human. As such, its currencies were the same as anywhere else: Money and prestige. Brilliant minds and worthy causes scrabbled for attention, desperate to show progress amid limited funds, shortcuts ever-tempting and ever-ready. It was something he'd said, something that had struck his chest with wrecking-ball force at the time, something he couldn't quite recall the exact phrasing of: Not letting funding go to worse researchers with better publicists.
For the first and only time, he'd agreed. The man met him in his own territory and struck him as not only kind and polite, but fairly knowledgeable ― enthusiasm blossomed in his chest back then, and what was first purely pragmatic became entwined with his passions, entranced by the opportunity to spread his knowledge to the world that would soon stand to benefit from it. His proposal for a new means of energy production tumbled from his lips in ornate explanations and an overlapping mass of metaphors; he kept very careful about the detailwork, of course, and at every turn scattered disclaimers about the prototypical nature of it all, still firmly entrenched in the realms of the experimental and speculative. The man took a picture, they shook hands, and he parted with a gleaming smile. His long-held tensions eased, relieved at the fresh discovery that it hadn't been as bad as he feared.
The next day, Enoch Drebber woke up, turned off his phone's morning alarm, and found a five-digit number in his inbox. Puzzled, he tapped across a few ― expressions of profound gratitude from people he didn't know, gentle skepticism from former schoolmates, the occasional outpouring of elaborate abuse. It had taken him a while of tracing to find its source, as the original report had spread across multiple papers like some manner of invasive bacteria.
Of course it had. It was a wonderful story, after all. Prodigal scientist. Groundbreaking discoveries. Saving the world.
Admiration and scrutiny alike poured in from all angles. Groups on social media cloistered around his alleged theories, either as a radiant beacon or as a punching bag. Respected scientists made carefully-structured remarks on the unsubstantiated nature of his research, shifting his categorization from future ally to present threat. The up-until-then withdrawn, studious Drebber found himself in the unblinking scrutiny of the public eye, torn between the labels of genius or fraud.
That word, promise, cropped up again, Promises he hadn't made. Promises he couldn't keep. Promises he found himself desperate to live up to, even knowing their paradise visions was spiralling out of control. He worked all waking hours of the day, the team he'd assembled were pushed to capacity, simulations were run and re-checked without room for error. The culmination of their labor was a wide room, a large and intricate device, and a blastproof shield. He stood tall behind it, hands clasped, dark-tinted safety glasses concealing his unwavering eyes.
The experiment started. The ceiling he stared up at when he woke up was not his own. He found out most of it from the newspapers, penned by the very same journalist as had interviewed him back then.
Of course, as he reached up to feel his face, the loss of his left arm was a detail he discovered himself.
Assembling it quickly in frantic snatches, he skimmed across paragraphs. There had been an explosion. It had been a tragedy. It had been an even better story than the first one. The promising rise, the impossible hubris, the devastating fall...and after the three-act tale had reached its ending all that remained was the protagonist that had starred in it, drained, used and uninteresting.
Months had gone by, gray and red months, tick-tocking rhythmically across paroxysms of depression and rage. The field of his studies didn't want him, and with his credibility shot the amount of work required to re-enter their hallowed sanctums seemed far too daunting to bear. The Royal Society quietly changed its mind; they never reclaimed his symbolic medal, but in the list of awardees his year was marked by a blank space and a correction. Finding himself in the position of needing to salvage both a mangled heart and a tarnished mind, the days had passed by in a haze of half-hearted studies, restless sleep, and physical therapy.
His mind had slipped off familiar problems, now suddenly too personal to keep his heart from racing. He held a certainty, but it had proven false; he knew his theory, but it had failed him; the tools of his trade were blunting, held in twitching fingers. His most dearly-held comfort had shifted overnight into his greatest disappointment, and his unoccupied mind wrenched restlessly with its hollow, excavated insides.
One day they'd come down to talk to him, bearing several pamphlets with options for prostheses. The conversation had turned rapidly towards the technical, and he broke up his habitual silence to delve into layers of follow-up questions. Well past the realms of the pragmatic, he pressed them for details on the mechanics of its function, the materials used, the muscle contraction sensors. Academic journals were soon replaced by the scrutiny and study of his newly-fitted myoelectric arm.
In the depths of his personal crisis, it offered him what he most direly needed: A fascinating problem. Clicking joints, imprecise motions, an array of awkward wrestling with thumb rotations. There was room for improvement. There was always room for improvement. Turning his field of study elsewhere, Enoch Drebber got to work.
Engineering became his alternative, and over time, a new hobby had become a new career. The rising, falling star bolted across the horizon, and did its utmost not to look back. A series of personal experimentation had occurred, his custom-built arm had proved his potential, and the machines he surrounded himself with became good company. His medal vanished around the same time as a set of streaking gold inlays appeared on his hand, its mix of pride and spite coiling around his wrist. And, eventually, drifting across the currents of possibility once more, Drebber had found his place in the surprisingly-accepting halls of Yumei.
He didn't regret his life, nor his decisions, nor his job. But sometimes...he found himself lingering in places like this, downcast and contemplative.
In the gentle hum-whirring ambience of the workshop the sound of a creaking door was unmistakable, no matter how silent it tried to be. He whirled around, dropping the screwdriver from his hand. "Who's there?"
A gangly figure, splaying his hands in motions that seemed intended to be calming, had bellowed back at him. "I come in peace!"
Ah. Him. The man was no stranger to his department; not to most of them, really, as his absentminded wanderings often took him extremely far afield from his own. Drebber gave him a curt nod of recognition, a mechanical motion. "Good evening, Dr. Harebrayne."
"Good evening, Dr. Drebber!" He shot back, voice blaring. Generally, there was a weather-shifting rhythm to his temperament, his sunny disposition occasionally clouding over or crackling into energetic thunderstorms. "There's something I wanted to discuss with you―" He tilted his head to the side. It seemed a cold front was approaching. "―or, no, not particularly, as such, more, have wanted to discuss with you for a while―" His back straightened, heralding clear skies once more. "―of course, that's all depending on whether you're busy or not!"
"Not particularly, no." He said, arranging his tools back into their orderly structure. The man carried with him a radiant enthusiasm ― infallibly warm, and almost invariably slightly too bright for his liking. The way he'd addressed him lingered in his mind, though. As he spoke, he deployed a monotone laden with precise, measured emphasis. "But...it's Mr. Drebber, you should know. The thesis was never approved."
"Ah―yes, but―well, no, since―I mean, it should have been!" He lunged forwards. Incipient thunderstorms sparked on the horizon. "That's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about, in fact! I've been pondering the conundrum for several months, and I have an array of suggestions about your work―"
He furrowed his brow, knowing all too well the zeal individuals could wield when confronting fields outside their own. "With all due respect, engineering's not exactly your area of expertise."
"No, no―" He rustled his hands rapidly, the sleeves of his labcoat flapping perilously close to a piece of threatening-looking industrial equipment. "Physics! Science! Your hypothesis, Dr. Drebber!"
"Ah." His left hand twitched. He reached back towards his toolbox with a hasty motion, fingers flicking back over to tighten a screw. "...It's nothing worth mentioning."
"I can insist that it is! Please―I've direly wanted the chance to talk to you in person, but it's, well, me with the students, you with your..." He trailed off, seemingly realizing he had no idea what his colleague got up to all day. His hands shot out. "That is, we're both so busy, now might be our only chance!"
Another convert from the magazines, he supposed. He let out a long, deep sigh, excavating the ancient memories of his abstract. "Well, the now-disproved theory of photokinetic dynamism operated on the thought that using refracted light, the rotational torque of a molecule could be harnessed for―"
Harebrayne cut him off in an enthusiastic flurry of rapid nods. "I know! I read your dissertation over and over!" He tilted his head sharply to to the right, staring up at the ceiling, fingers restlessly tapping. "Or, well, I shouldn't claim expertise, of course. I only first heard of it a few months ago, but I've been immersing myself as deep as I can into any related theories―"
He drew a quick breath to intercept him, but that detail gave him pause. His eyes fixed on him, taking in every inch of his guileless expression. He didn't seem like he was lying, he didn't even seem capable of it, but still...it seemed so impossible. "...Only a few months ago?" He was silent for a moment, as if waiting for the penny to drop. When it didn't, he nudged him along further. "Nothing...before then?"
A jolt rolled across him, jostling his glasses. "Ah, well―no. I'm awfully sorry, Dr. Drebber." The rampant energy that had been playing across him fizzled and faded for a moment. As he clenched his fists firmly in front of him, it returned in force. "I'm afraid I didn't know you were a renowned scientist!"
His shoulders stiffened. Words clogged his throat. Moments ticked by. He reassembled his composure. No need to delve into the specifics, not at present. "I appreciate your consideration, but...we tried the experiment." He shook his head, a back-and-forth pendulum motion. He spoke, voice enveloped in a shell of cold focus. "It didn't work."
Harebrayne stepped closer, carried on a tide of explanatory gestures. "Because of the layout of the pipework! With that curve at that angle, the refraction would make the substance react before the intended velocity was reached, draining most of the force of the reaction―" He gabbled off with hurtling speed, but...his words drifted across and around Drebber in a gentle tide. All he could focus on was the eye contact of someone who, for the first time in more than a decade, seemed to have taken him seriously.
Adjusting his glasses, the enthusiastic electricity concealed beneath them beamed and sparked like a haywire Tesla coil. Despite himself, Drebber found that it was arcing across to him in light jolts of intriguing static. "―meaning the results of that incident can only be considered null and void! I can assure you, the theory is sound! It's just the experiment that's flawed!"
Silence spread across the insides of the workshop, and long-rusty gears in his mind began grinding again. The man...had a point. It had all been too vast to think about the moment, one sundering rip that separated his old life from his present one, but it was undeniable that there was margin for error within the constraints they'd constructed. Thoughts began racing down tracks he'd laid years ago, zipping with untold speeds towards worlds untouched. What if―they could―no, since―but what if―
He lapsed out of his bout of brainstorming, voice emerging in a numb monotone. "We would need...two tons of titanium alloy."
"Yes!" Harebrayne shot back, grinning wide for a moment before recalling reality. "That is...not in the school budget, I'm afraid. Perhaps my savings...? No, Twenty thousand pounds will barely get us one ton, let alone two..." He mumbled, twiddling relentlessly with the pens in his pocket, pulling up a handful of change from within. "But maybe five thousand and six...?"
For a moment, he locked a laser-fixed stare at nothing in particular. A path was branching before him. Promises. Potential. Possibilities. Silence, contemplation, and a curt nod. "We'll look for ways. And...Albert?" He paused, glancing over at this ludicrous, ecstatic, erratic young man, bursting at the seams with an enthusiasm that had been bright enough to sting his eyes. But now that he'd gotten used to it...there was a glimmer there, a truth beyond the veil. Perhaps he could see by his light. "Thank you."