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These days, Robert House surrounds himself in certainties, as many as he can wrap his fingers around. Or perhaps, more aptly, he surrounds himself in the knowledge of outcomes so mathematically likely to come to pass that for some stretches of time, on occasion years, on occasion months, on occasion hours, on occasion for only the briefest snatches of seconds, he can allow himself to imagine they offer him certainty. Though in the back of his mind, ripe on the tree of knowledge, tempting with the hiss of a snake, ever present, ever lurking, sits the truth that relentlessly haunts. Certainty does not exist. The lack of certainty the only certainty that never ceases. There always remains a margin of error. He is no fool who might pretend otherwise. And, after all, who knows the humors of fate better than he? Irksome.
Still, to dwell on this little joke of the universe is a whirlpool that might consume him. And to allow himself to drown in a notion he cannot change would be insane. And he is not insane. So, neatly, he tucks the thought away when it arises, adds another lock on the door behind which it is shut, and turns instead to sharpen his paradigms that much more. Wrests back another thousandth of a percent likelihood into his grasp.
That is productive. That is progress.
Uncertainty is the only certainty that persists, perhaps. But another certainty that exists is that Robert House will, too, always persist. Forever, if he has his way, and beyond that.
In the end of the world, there is still no certainty, but also there is some. He has a date, and that is one thing. And a plan, and that is another. There’s much he does not yet know that he would like to. And though the lack of knowledge has begun its slow corrosion, a tingle at the edges of his skin, a burn that tickles but lacks a singe, it does not yet inflame his mind. There are players on the board he cannot see. But also players that he can. When Cooper Howard buys a ticket to Las Vegas, the date of the end of the world jumps forward a month. Cooper Howard, star of the silver screen, whose daughter’s birth had manifested the end of times. Curious.
Curious. That is his only and primary emotion toward the other man. Who had let himself be interrogated by a stranger in a washroom with only the slightest bunch of his shoulders betraying him. Who had raised his eyebrows when he’d stood close enough to whisper in his ear, but hadn’t flinched away. Who’d turned delightfully crass when pushed. Expected? Unexpected? Robert House doesn’t know, but the memory turns up the edges of his lips.
But, merely, it is curiosity. And what is curiosity? By its very definition only a desire to learn more, to know more. And it is in his interests to know this man who procreates and solidifies the end of the world. Who visits a city and shifts armageddon. Yes. He must allow his curiosity about this Cooper Howard to be sated. It is imperative that he does. It would be foolishness to pass up such a chance to tighten his variables and improve his equations; to sharpen the algorithms upon which his legacy rests that much more.
And so, he instructs his double to bring Cooper Howard to him. But he does not, in any fashion, look forward to it.
Anticipation. Desire. Fondness. Emotions, of any kind, truly, may present as pleasant at times, or unpleasant at others, though unpleasantness has its own certain poetry to it when it strikes. And, in either case, scientifically, he seeks to experience as wide a range of sensation and feeling as he can. In controlled environments, of course. The welcome, novel sting of a blow to the jaw, which might serve to heighten the enjoyment of a test nearing completion, allowed at precisely the right instant in time. But like films, they are fictions---emotions in the wild. Only complicating intruders that blur the results of his computations. That make that margain of error, the one he does not think of if he can help it, become all at once a hydra with many heads. When individuals become emotional, they cease all rational behavior. Then the outlier events come. Sudden shifts. Unexpected noise in the crispness of mathematical clarity.
Irritants.
No. His curiosity is strictly business. Whatever the quirking edges of his mouth, and perhaps, the unusual care with which he selected his suit this evening, might attempt to imply. Lips and ties are not reliable witnesses.
It begins pleasantly enough. He offers to Cooper Howard more information than he has allowed anyone else to understand about the current state of things. The man knows already, after all, about the Demon in the Snow, and Barbara Howard’s prophetic declarations of doom to a room of dim-witted executives. Cooper Howard understands enough to suspect Vault-Tec as a contender for the originator of the coming doom, and Robert himself, although he is quite wrong on both counts. The other man, perhaps, is the second-most aware individual that exists when it comes to the truth of the end of the world. And though it is a foolish sentiment, some part of him enjoys to share his knowledge with another, to consider it with a second mind, even if that mind is a touch duller, though perhaps more amusing, than his own. It pleases him, again, he admits, foolishly, that even as Cooper Howard scoffs at his predictions, offers dubious snorts at his carefully collected points of data, he so quickly begins to assume that he, Robert, will have an answer to every question that arises in him. Cooper does not, surely, know about the margin of error. Might quickly come to believe that it is possible for a man to be certain and that it is Robert, who is that man. It must be pleasant. To have such innocence about the way of things.
Our destinies are mathematically intertwined. He tells him. And it might perhaps be the most ardent sentiment he could express to another soul.
But innocence, pure as it is, cannot last. And the confession of his own uncertainty, that ever-present tingle below his skin, he offers to Cooper on some whim he cannot fully articulate. Lays bare the tingle that does not yet burn, but might, if left too long a question mark, spread like wildfire, consuming everything in its path. Consuming him.
What if I’m not the House? What if someone else is?
The words ebb out of him, in a cadence, strangely vulnerable, he did not plan to use. In truth, he is not entirely certain he wished to say them at all, to give them voice from where they sit, on their low boil, in his lungs. To bring them from the potential energy of air vibrations to complete constructions of sound that another can hear, and with an uncontrollable tremor to the makeup of them, a catch in his breath. Vexing. Unbearable. They are merely a fact. A fact with no valence. It is possible he is not the House. And if he is not the House. He will become the House. He will understand what is necessary, and the threads of reality will adjust, unravel, and sew themselves back up in the pattern that he desires. He will persist, uncertainty be damned.
But already, he can sense it. A margin of error. Horrifying. Worse than anything else. His own margin of error. So carefully stamped out that it barely exists, and yet, as he knows, exists nevertheless in the corners, can appear here, can strike at any moment. He did not intend to say the words, and now he has said them. He did not intend to offer this to Cooper Howard, and now he has given it.
Why had he given it?
It lurches something unpleasant, with less poetry this time, unplanned, in his chest.
And so, when Cooper Howard does not acknowledge this gracefully. And, in fact, his expression changes into something ugly, eyes growing overlarge, for the first time no longer listening, in total sum disbelieving, and he does not offer thanks for the information and the honesty, for Robert’s exposure of himself, which no one ever receives, which is a gift he has been given for reasons that are not clear even to the bestower, and instead, with an unrepentant, smug drawl offers, What if you’re just a fucking lunatic?
When all of this.
Something surges inside of Robert House. Short circuits and snaps. Like a thread of wire, imprecisely implemented in a piece of machinery. And, he, inside his mind, furious at its happening. Inside of him, the wires are laid perfectly, precisely, unperturbed by the erraticness of emotion and the simplicity of the standard man. But, somehow, in this moment, Cooper Howard’s words ringing in his ear, he is unable to prevent either one from overwhelming his better instincts.
The fear of it.
Of this pathetic humanity.
I’m a lunatic? And somehow, his lips are trembling, and the edge of the words falters into gasp.
Yeah.
And it angers him. That Yeah.
Ohhhh. It angers him.
Blood rushes through veins that haven’t swelled in this fashion since a time he cannot recall. He might see them lush beneath the layers of his cells, if he cared to examine more closely. Perhaps when he had been informed about Anthony’s treachery, this distortion of his body had occurred. This explosion of endless synapses, so long at rest. Perhaps then. But he had promised. He had sworn. Never. Never again. And he had not lapsed.
Until now.
Until Cooper Howard, a man who procreates and solidifies the end of the world, a man who visits a city and shifts armageddon, who draws out his syllables with an unrepentant expression of distaste and makes Robert House lose his senses.
It hardens his voice, the rage, as it builds, sharpens his tongue. He’s always had a sharp tongue. But he so rarely looses it. So rarely speaks to anyone anymore. It builds. The explosion inside of him, the sweet, dark inferno. It frightens him. How many missteps he must make in this moment? As the noise in the data, inside of his own data, distorts so hideously.
His hands are shaking.
The beating of his heart gone rhythmless.
Breaths coming erratic.
And as he speaks, as he tells Cooper Howard that he knows him, that he knows what he is. Not a cowboy. Not an innocent. Not good. But a killer. A killer! He finds that at some moment that he cannot remember. And how can he not remember? When inside of him, there should be only precision, careful control. But he cannot remember. Cannot recall at what precise moment in time his voice made the leap, swung wildly from speaking in his genial way to something else.
Only that at once, he finds it raised.
Finds he is yelling.
He is yelling.
The imprecision of himself.
Horrifying.
The way it lingers. Even when Cooper Howard has fled. And the sudden emptiness of the room. A room that has not changed, neither more nor less empty now than it was in previous times, filled with everything he might require. But that, all at once, strikes him as empty. Why does it strike him as empty when nothing has changed? And his body, everything in it elevated, jostled, out of order. Broken. Broken. Broken.
Terrible.
He thinks.
He hates Cooper Howard.
He thinks.
An emotion he can’t afford to have, hate.
He thinks.
He thinks he---
No, he thinks, that he can afford even less.
And in a calculation of whether Cooper Howard would be able to seep into the marrow of his bones in such a fashion, to flood through his senses, and infect him with his own cursed weakness, the numbers would reflect with certainty that the likelihood was nearly impossible. But always, there exists a margin of error. And somehow, defying every expectation, except those of his lips and his ties, Cooper Howard flattens his curve.
These days, Robert House surrounds himself in certainties, as many as he can wrap his fingers around.
But despite everything.
His room seems empty.
Now that Cooper Howard has left.
Would it be so bad to err?
He waits for the beats of his heart to return to their correct rhythm, 65 beats per minute, and his lungs to ease into their typical way, everything inside of him to settle back into the shape of a solid, thriving mechanism---then locks the thought behind the door.