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Sean. Sean was known to be a rather observant person. She could note even the most minuscule details of a person’s demeanor. As in, slight decibel changes, eye movements, trembling hands—anything along those lines. They’ve generally been successful when employing her knowledge in various situations—regardless of the level of solemnity. However, even the most experienced operators have their mishaps. After many millennia, singular mistakes still held disastrous consequences.
So why, then, he couldn’t even understand himself? Especially regarding a certain aspect in particular? Sean comprehended most of herself; she knew what interested her, strategies she utilized best when dealing with patients, who she could consider a friend—OR WHO SHE LOVED AND WHY.
…That part. That’s the exact part that baffled the supposed excellent, perfect mind of hers. And, embarrassingly enough, only fully comprehended it in a conversation with a fellow operator.
Sophia was fairly as competent as Sean, even if xey were thousands of years younger than them. Nevertheless, something rather trivial—at least, compared to other situations xey witnessed—bothered xem immensely. Because of Sean’s millennia worth-of experience, Sophia opted to talk about it with her.
“Was there any sort of malfunction in recovering your patient? I’ve seen it happen every now and then—trust me, it’s insufferable,” Sean emphatically admitted.
“It’s not even related to that, actually. Not like my patient could get recovered anyway,” Sophia clarified to them.
“Oh, right. Earth-6777 never had any recovery centers,” Sean eventually recalled.
“Honestly, this may sound ridiculous to others, but… it’s her… choice of love interest that I’m concerned about,” the younger operator embarrassingly admitted.
“No no, I honestly understand your confusion. Even if my patients’ problems didn’t necessarily involve romance, other choices they made had utterly irritated me. Go on, Sophia,” Sean encouraged xem.
“Just to clarify, she doesn’t have an abusive spouse—if that’s the right word—or whatever. She doesn’t have any sort of wretched home life; it’s fairly well for her actually—in that aspect, at least. Or any sort of… I’m so sorry, my concern would just sound so absurd if I said it out loud.”
“Look, we all have our fair share of eccentricities; it’s perfectly normal to have them. Besides, no one else is here in this room—you can tell me.”
Sophia haphazardly groaned. “Starfruit’s in love with some workaholic-of-a-teammate that she met in a competition. Technically, he’s the captain of the team—either way, it baffles me. I can’t even physically rationalize it, despite my efforts to do so.”
Xey took a breath once more. “I get that both of them are highly competent in their own ways. One thing in particular is that both are much more intelligent compared to their fellow teammates. Well, it got to the point where they made an alliance and so far, they seem to be doing well.”
“So, what’s your point here? Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with it,” Sean expressed to xem.
“Iceberg Lettuce—the name Starfruit and others call him—is ludicrously stoic… I wish I was joking. I ponder this daily: Does he even know how to express any sort of feelings? Trust me, so many of the other contestants have at least something to make them stand out. But this guy… I don’t know.”
Wait a minute… this description eerily described a certain someone they knew.
Sophia took note of Sean’s widening eyes. Xey then flushed in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, it’s really dumb, I know.”
“It’s not… go on again,” as Sean tried to ignore their own gradual realization.
“Ok… Anyway, Starfruit mentioned a few times that she’s ‘pansexual’; she’s attracted to anyone, regardless of gender, I think.”
“That’s correct,” Sean told xem.
“If she’s pansexual, then how come her heart eventually settled on someone who’s such a bore? She had every choice at the tips of her hands, and yet… chose him.”
Sean just stared at xem for a few minutes before the latter snapped her out of his respective ‘La La Land’.
“You said I wouldn’t be judged, regardless of what I had to say to you! And yet, you stare at me as if I’m a maniac for even questioning something so minuscule!”
“NO NO I’M SORRY! IT’S NOT YOU… it’s me,” Sean confessed.
“…What does this have to do with you, exactly?”
“I think… I’m a Starfruit here. Her situation almost completely mirrors mine, and… I don’t even know anymore.”
At that moment, the line between ‘operator’ and ‘patient’ seemed to blur. When thoroughly analyzed, Sean and Starfruit didn’t seem so different; both of them had energetic personalities, rejoiced in social gatherings, and yet… their hearts belonged to people that were the epitome of opposition to their souls.
Iceberg Lettuce, as Sophia implied, had an unflinching expression—regardless of the situation or his feelings (if he ever had any). He liked books and utilized his intelligence, sure, but what else did he have, really? The older operator, who finally realized that this other object reflected someone else…
Michael.
Other than appearances and roles, they, too, weren’t so different from each other. Michael was an avid reader—a fact that they would rather take to the grave, if Lumynex even held any. Furthermore, they barely—if at all—showed any sort of interest besides work. No wonder she locked herself in her room for four thousand years.
Iceberg Lettuce was absolutely no better; after every challenge, he’d lock himself in his room and read—that’s it. Booooooring. The only thing that made his bedroom moments entertaining was Starfruit herself, whenever she went to his room. No, they weren’t actually doing anything, just talking about whatever they wanted.
Those moments imitated Sean’s visits to Michael’s room. Although both situations took place in different settings, they were basically the same thing. What a bore, Michael and Iceberg Lettuce. And people genuinely love them for being… them? It’s a mystery that no one knows the answer to, Sean didn’t know either—even with their so-called ‘excellent, perfect mind’.
Sophia snickered at Sean’s dilemma. “I mean, no offense but you definitely didn’t seem to be into such stoic people, either.”
Sean scoffed. “Oh trust me, I would never know.”
That conversation with Sophia did not go the way as expected. It was supposed to be a discussion where xe received answers that Sean would provide to xem; that was it. However, the operator utterly entrapped in ponderation was Sean herself. Their ‘excellent, perfect mind’ of hers was of no use, if it had any.
Love. Love could be about anyone and anything, if someone thought hard enough about it. However, as visualized in the previous conversation, it doesn’t always mean that one could describe—or even understand—what they’re feeling. Indeed, words such as ‘unpredictable’ or ‘unexplainable’ could be employed for this type of situation.
Especially someone like Starfruit—a renowned scientist in her world—one could be searching for eternity if they ever chose to explore how and why they felt this way. Science, generally, is about searching for answers to questions that one may have. It involves a long, painstaking process; this includes making an hypothesis, testing it out, then noting the results—regardless of whether said scientist was correct or not.
The bigger issue here, though, is that a hypothesis is supposed to be a testable statement between two or more variables; an educated guess for what may happen. Neither Starfruit nor Sean, ironically, were actually educated in the field of romance. They never really had a first-hand taste of what it’s like to truly love someone before. The fact that both duos had mismatched personalities never made it any better.
In addition to that, ‘love’, in this case, was never tangible in the first place. How can one even test it out if one can’t hold it in the palm of their hand? There isn’t even any independent variable, dependent variable, controlled variable, or anything that could make this a valid scientific experiment.
No, nothing could ever make it one anyway. In the words of a great scientist, before Starfruit’s time:
“Great scientists are marked not by their answers but by how great their questions are. Because not all questions are made equal.
Here’s a question: ‘What temperature does the number 7 melt?’ That’s a completely meaningless question. Even though the nouns and verbs are in the right order, and it has a question mark. Imagine how many people have asked those types of questions before and spent their whole life trying to answer them. We haven’t heard of any of them because they were barking up the wrong tree.”
Trees, like any other plant, need a sufficient amount of nourishment to grow properly. What if you don’t even know how to nourish whatever you’re trying to grow? Let alone how to experiment on it?
Especially in Sean and Starfruit’s case, ‘love’ is ultimately not something that can be physically tested on. There are an infinite number of variables ascribed to this concept; too many to make a proper hypothesis on it. Even if the supposed hypothesis were to be grammatically correct—as mentioned before—it’d be foolish to even try to do so.
Inevitably, in situations such as with Sean and Starfruit’s, the words ‘unpredictable’ and ‘unexplainable’ could be employed for this. Especially with such an intangible concept of theirs.