#*john voice* NO like what ARE you youre clearly not. Human. Not all the wa- did you just say private investigator. oh my fucking god.

[ruskaroma]

omg omg (i really need professional help) i had this Vision of dark+DARK+mean!john wick learning about an asshole who bullied their bunny-really-the-nicest-human-being!reader back during her school years (the reader cluelessly mentions it during conversation). john is not just angry outraged etc, he is The Rage, The War, The Biblical Day of Wrath, so he finds that guy, beats/tortures the living shit out of him and then brings his absolutely clueless little pretty bunny so that she could finish him. john is behind the reader, his arms wrapped around her arms, his hands on her shaking hands holding a gun pointing at the barely breathing man tied to a chair. the reader is crying begging to stop, and john goes "he deserves it, honey <3. now, right kneecap. go, princess, don't let me down".

Oh my god I have something for you.

Let’s give it a very dark twist, shall we? We’ll stick to this concept, but let’s make it even darker.

TW: mentions of past sexual and physical abuse, blood and gore, graphic depiction of torture, john being a very very mean man like he is fucked in the head may god bless his soul, john is also forcefully making the reader kill the man so there’s that.

It was a slip of your tongue. You didn’t notice it, but John surely did. You were used to rambling your thoughts away, a habbit that John adores so much, hearing your voice and telling him everything that’s in your head, because it means you’re not keeping any secrets from him.

A supposed to be peaceful Saturday night ruined John’s whole week, but he didn’t let it show. He kept himself composed around you, smiling so softly when you’d share a random fact about the things you’re holding or whatever comes in mind. He’s a master in the arts of keeping his expression controlled despite his emotions practically clawing their way out of his fucking lungs.

Your head was on his lap as he brushed your hair with his long fingers softly. For a hand that’s killed too many people to count, it’s surprisingly merciful around you. A shitty horror movie was playing on the TV but your attention quickly diverted to somewhere else when you watched a rather familiar scene in the film.

“Oh, man, that sucks. I know how it feels, I used to get hit by my ex-boyfriend all the time.”

What the fuck, John thought. His fingers stopped their movements as he furrowed his eyebrows. You said it as a whisper too but he heard it. He heard it fucking clearly.

“What?”

“Huh?” You moved your head to look up to him. “You said something?”

“You did,” John pointed out. “About your ex-boyfriend. What did you say?”

“Ohhh,” you said in realization, but your tone was calm. Like it was the most fucking normal thing to say in a conversation. “Yeah, he was mean. He used to hit me every time I made a very small mistake, but he said sorry when we broke up.”

John didn’t know what to say. He was frozen, trying to comprehend the words that were being thrown at him all at once.

His baby – the love of his life, someone who cannot even hurt a fucking ant – just dropped a bomb that she was a victim of abuse.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” John tried to keep his voice leveled, soft, as he placed a large hand on your cheek and pulled you up so he could take a good look at your face.

“Well, you didn’t ask. And it’s not like it mattered anymore. I went to therapy and everything was back to normal.”

“No, that’s not –” he closed his eyes in frustration, trying so hard to keep his shit together. “Did he do anything else? Where is he now?”

“He’s–he’s doing fine. I don’t know where he is, it’s been awhile since we’ve gotten in touch.”

John could hear the tremble in your voice, like you knew what was going to come, like you knew what he’s going to do.

He didn’t answer after you said that. He looked away from you, put his attention back to the television.

You shrugged it off, hoping he would let it go.

*

He did not, in fact, let it go.

You came home one day after work to see him being rather... cheery than usual. It was unusual in itself. John being particularly cheery was not something you see in your everyday life.

He had already cooked dinner when you arrived, ate it beside you with an arm around your shoulders. He was also crooning at your ears, asking about your day if something special happened.

“I have a surprise for you.”

Your eyebrows flew up, curious yet amused. Is this why he was cheery all of a sudden?

He led you to his basement – a place where you’re never allowed to go, always bolted shut and completely restricted to you. You were getting a pretty bad feeling about this.

“What–what are we doing here, John?”

Again, he didn’t answer. You could see the grim, dark expression on his face as he opened the door. The face you only ever see when he was just coming back from a long, tiring day at work. The face you only see you know he just slaughtered someone.

Turns out, he did.

Not exactly slaughtered, but close enough.

The man who made you go through hell for years, tied up in a chair in the middle of the room, missing all his fingers on both his feet and hands.

“John, what the–”

Your boyfriend pushed a heavy pistol in your hand, and your heart is beating so hard inside your chest you couldn’t speak properly. You haven’t yet got the time to comprehend what was happening. It was all too fast.

“Pull it.”

“J-John, please don’t–”

“Pull it,” John repeated. He didn’t like repeating himself. You know this. He was standing behind you, his chest pressing against your back, warm and broad and his voice sounded so menice and fucking evil and– “Pull it, baby, before I do it myself.”

“Why are you–” your voice was shaking as well as your hands. You wanted to drop the weapon but you knew it wouldn’t do you any good, not when John was just behind you. “Why are you doing this, John? Please let him–let him go, it was a long time ago–”

“I don’t care,” he said simply, one large hand sneaking down to grab your wrist that’s holding the gun, pointing it directly at the man who’s – Jesus, was he still alive? You saw him move, he flinched, then let out a cough that made more blood from his mouth drip onto his lap. “I haven’t killed him yet because that’s your job.”

“N-No–” tears were forming into your eyes. The feeling of John’s hand gripping yours was already too much to bear, much worse pointing it to the man who abused and neglected you during your relationship, but why were you feeling bad? “John, I–I don’t w-want to, John, please, I don’t want–”

John sighed, disappointed, but he didn’t let you go. Instead, he leaned down closer to your ear and pressed a soft kiss there. His beard tickled, making you flinch and let out a shaky breath as you gulped hard.

“John, he–I know you’re doing this because you think it’s best, but I–I promise you that it’s not worth it–it’s in the past and, and–”

“Excuses, excuses,” John whispered, standing straight and taking a step away from you, positioning himself in front of the gun. “Here you are, begging for the life of the man who abused you in the past. Don’t you think that sounds absolutely ridiculous, baby?”

“It’s not–it’s not ridiculous, John, I promised! We–we talked one time after our breakup and he–he apologized for everything, I swear–I swear, John, it was all in the past–”

John cut off your rambling with an evil stare, and it was so unlike him that it scared you right to the very core. “Pull the trigger or I will. I’ll put a fucking hole in his head, saw it off and send it to his little wife and children back in Vegas.”

“John–” you sobbed. “John, please–”

“Did you know that I made him confess every diabolical shit that he’d done to you every time I chop off one of his fingers?” John said it in such a calm and steady tone that it made you only afraid of him even more. “I chopped all his fingers, and he still won’t stop confessing more. Can you believe that?”

“I already forgave him–I already forgave him, John, this wasn’t necessary–”

“It won’t be the same if I’m the one who pulls the trigger now, would it? It wouldn’t be fair, because I’m not the one who suffered under his hands,” John pushed even further, walking back to his original position behind you, gripping your arm and pointing the pistol directly at his head. “If you don’t pull that fucking trigger in the next five second, I’ll let you use a chainsaw to do it and trust me when I say you wouldn’t want it messy.”

You gulped, feeling yourself grow more and more afraid as John stood behind you. He was radiating anger, but he was keeping it at bay, though his swear words might be some of the leakage of his emotions he couldn’t contain any longer.

“I don’t want–don’t make me d-do this, John–”

“One...”

“John, please–”

“Two....” His voice was scary. Deep and level, and the grip on your arm tightened. You felt suffocated.

“I’m gonna throw u-up if I–”

“Three...” He was getting agitated.

The man’s head rose up from his position earlier to meet your eyes, and you swore you felt your stomach churn. His eyes were fucking gone.

The man opened his mouth to speak and a weak voice came. “D-Don’t–”

You pulled the trigger.

“There’s my little bunny.”

You dropped the gun as soon as his brains flew against your face and onto the wall, painting it red. You couldn’t bear to watch any further. You turned with a sob and buried your face in John’s chest, crying hysterically as he soothed you calmly by petting your head.

“Good girl. You did so fucking good, I’m so proud of you.”

[mirismuffins-ovo]

Plant Palace pt 5🌿

[There was a time skip from the last chapter]

John and Eddie's relationship had been good and if anything they got closer as John's pregnancy progressed. There were some nights when John couldn’t help but be in pain feeling the rushed growth of the three babies stretching his belly. The maroon sweater and a few other articles of clothes were the only things left that really fit John's growing tummy. John had started to struggle working with such a large amount of weight. And his sensitivity had gone up immensely touch wise and whenever he touched plants they’d sprout out of proportion. Eddie had been more concerned about John and kept saying John should really start staying home. John always insisted that he was alright but after he had a harder time at work and a few rude customers came in they decided it was time to start planning for a visit to John's godparents.

John and Eddie were packing the car for the trip to his parents,it wasn’t super long but they were cautious for the sake of John. Knowing John needed lots of water snacks(sugar) and light,not to mention the weather had gotten colder recently. John adjusted his clothes as he sat down in the front seat,he was embarrassed of the weight he’d gained in his hips and some in his chest. As John did this Eddie got into the car and started the drive,John gave a soft smile at Eddie and rested his hands on his distended belly rubbing it gently. “I’m sorry if they act weird by the way,they are regular humans though”

Eddie was actually excited for the little road trip they were going to have. He was super proud of John and how far he had gotten over the past several weeks. He loved snuggling up to his boyfriend at night and playing with the babies, which he was still waiting for his turn to feel the outward kicks.

“I’m sure they’ll be splendid.” Eddie smiled. “I’m pretty excited to meet your family, know how you grew up or were raised. It could help us take care of the little ones.” An idea popped in his head. “Speaking of the sprouts, have you decided to name them?”

Eddie felt a small chill so he turned on the heater to warm them up a bit. He also planned to stop by a drive through coffee shop to grab some hot cocoa for the road. The older man was sure his boyfriend would love the surprise treat.

John gave an awkward look at first when he mentioned how he grew up and he focused on the second question. “I haven’t yet,I want your help with that if that’s alright?,I’m not sure what the little fruit gummies will look like when they’re here.” He smiled warmly and patted his belly feeling one of them kick. John was pretty excited to see the babies. “ Henry and Quinn are good people they’ll be pretty helpful,but do not listen to them when they say baby names” He laughed softly “not the best judgement with names,we had a cat named Pringle’s” He smiled at the memories,still gently patting his round belly. Nearing the small coffee shop Eddie pulled off the main road and John was a bit confused until he realized this was a surprise stop. His face lit up “Oooo are we getting cocoa” he couldn’t help but excitedly fidget. They were maybe just a bit farther out from his childhood home.

“Of course cocoa.” Eddie smiled, ordering two with extra whipped cream and marshmallows. Sprinkles for John’s. “I might have a few ideas on the baby names, but I’d want to see them first to confirm if they’ll fit.”

Then they took off down the road again. The two enjoyed the scenery, watching as they drove further north towards John’s godparents place. Finally after 6 hours of travel, they arrived just after the sun had set. Eddie could see John be a little nervous about seeing his family after he assumed it was a while. Eddie took his boyfriend’s hand as he turned off the car.

“It’ll be okay. I’m here with you and we can turn around now if you want to leave.”

There were a lot of memories in that house “no no it’s okay...I just don’t know how they’ll react to um “he looked at his tummy and then Eddie “I know they won’t be mad but it’s still awkward” he shrugged and took a deep breath as they got out of the car Eddie helping John down making sure he wouldn’t fall. Eddie grabbed their bags and John grabbed bittys carrier,she let out a soft tired meow waking from her nap. They walked up to the front door of a nice looking house,it was surrounded by large tall trees,there seemed to be no neighbors around for a distance. John hesitantly pressed the doorbell and he heard a shuffle from inside.

The door clicked open to reveal a tall man just a bit shorter than Eddie,he wore glasses and had brown hair and a sweater on his face was slightly scruffy and showed a few signs of graying with a few streaks in his hair. His face lit up brightly when he saw John “My little Johnny!” He said lovingly just before realizing that the small redhead had quite the large tummy covered by his sweater. Another person shorter than John and androgynous looking opened the door more “Oh my..John you’ve gotten fat” they said a bit shocked as they allowed the couple to step in from the cold.

John felt his face get hot with embarrassment “hello to you too Quin”

Henry had pulled John in for a hug trying to be careful with John's tummy “so is this your handsome husband?” He gasped slightly and looked at John with a raised eyebrow “I see you’ve inherited my taste in men John” he said teasingly. John was an embarrassed little mess dealing with his godparents.

Eddie blushed and felt a little bad for John. He wanted to speak up to correct the older man, but he kept his lips tightly closed. Instead he just smiled and helped with the bags. When they greeted the other man, he blushed a little further when he heard the compliment.

The house was lush and cozy, growing into a grandparent’s aesthetic, but also manly. He quite liked the subtle decoration. He stayed close to John as they were shown around the house. He dropped off the bags in their room for the weekend and continued to stay close. Although he knew these people were safe, he couldn’t help but feel protective of John. He offered John the chance to return home, but he was the one who wanted to hide and protect him and the babies.

Once the house tour was over, they all decided to relax in the living room for the evening until they had to go to bed.

It was the next morning and John woke up in the arms of his lover,who he’d found tiredly rubbing his plump tummy in a loving manner. “Morning” John smiled softly and nuzzled his face into Eddie's shoulder inhaling the lovely scent of him. John struggled to sit up with the weight of the babies,he huffed as he slouched in bed. “I can’t wait to meet them,but we should probably tell Henry and Quinn and see if they’ll be able to take care of them” John sat up and struggled to grab the clothes out of his bag on the floor,he wasn’t able to bend down,and had been needing help getting dressed. “I can’t reach it” he sighed, cradling his bulging tummy that rested in his lap while he sat back on the bed. He heard a light knock on the bedroom door and he heard Henry call for them to come to breakfast. Eddie had helped John get dressed and they went to breakfast together sitting down at the table that was covered in pancakes and assortments of fruits. Quinn set down a cup of tea for John and the coffee pot in the middle of the table.

John had proceeded to eat his breakfast and a large amount at that. He decided to speak up “so I’m pregnant..if you couldn’t tell” he cleared his throat glancing or a moment at Eddie still nervous,but he heard Henry squeal with joy and come over to and get on his knees “your having a baby????” He softly poked his tummy. Quinn humpfed and rose an eyebrow at this,it was obvious that Quinn didn’t like John too much.

John gave a soft laugh “three actually” he was shy about it but Henry couldn’t help but smile and place his hands on John's tummy and placed his ear close and lovingly listened. He could hear the shifting of the babies and laughed happily before giving John a big hug and looking at Eddie “congrats your two!” Quinn had started to clean up the table not saying anything

“It might be too dangerous to raise them in the city,there’s a chance that they might look too plant-like..so we were wondering if you could take care of them part time?” Henry looked like he was about to say yes,but Quinn’s voice rang out “No!” John looked startled and Henry whipped his head back to look at his partner.

Eddie didn’t bother to correct Henry’s joy when John brought up asking to help raise them. When Quinn shouted ‘NO!’ It shook them a little. Eddie noticed Quinn wasn’t too pleased to see John and with him being a complete stranger to the two, he could understand a little of the frustration. Clearly there was something here that Eddie was missing.

“I’m not sure of what’s going on between you and John, but I know little to nothing about Abnormals, Abnormal pregnancies, let alone plant children.” Eddie voiced. “I know it sounds so short but I’ve known John for over a year now and we’ve been together for a good four months or so, all he’s doing is asking for help.”

Eddie could see anger boil in Quinn’s eyes. Henry and John became quiet. He looked at all three and sighed. “Could we at least talk about this before making a final decision? If anything, think about John, when he shouldn’t be having stress on him. Both of us are unsure about all of this, the unexpected rock tossed into our short relationship but we’re both trying our best to figure this out. We’re not dumb teenagers who went and got ourselves knocked up. I just happen to be here when it’s brought up. We’re both functioning adults as much as we would love to care for the babies like any other family should when given the opportunity, there’s just that barrier, especially with America having a tight ass about things.” He looked over them all. “I deeply care about John, so just hear us out, please.

John was upset and he moved closer to Eddie for comfort. Henry was distressed about how his partner had reacted,Henry was more than happy to help John but then Quinn spoke again. “We’re not raising anymore abnormals Henry,I don’t know how you pamper him” Quinn raised a hand to point towards John with anger “DO YOU NOT REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS LIKE RAISING HIM” they sighed with anger and shook their head. “Three more!? Continuing his bloodline,you know his parents and his past,another Prince-“

Henry snapped “that is quite enough” John could feel it hard to not cry but he kept calm and looked away at the floor,grabbing into Eddies hand.

“If they find we’re associated with the Prince family,which keep in mind could have happened while we raised him,but that never happened. There’s still places to hide them Quinn” Henry shook his head “I’m sorry about this John” He muttered to John and Eddie,seeing the small pregnant man looking upset.

Quinn continued “this is johns problem were not responsible for him anymore”

John took a shaky breath and tried to pull Eddie away “w-we should get going..it’s a long drive back” he said in the middle of the silence “im..sorry for asking about it”

“What…” Eddie was shocked at what just went down. He was forming more questions than answers. But John was already on the move pushing past them with tears in his eyes to pack the clothes he took out for the night while Eddie quietly gathered Bitty. He didn’t want to say anything but he now understood why John was nervous in the first place about even telling him.

What had John gone through growing up? Was Quinn always this rough on him? What is Quinn’s fault that John was so scared of humans? Where were they going to go now for help? He knew a ticket to Canada wasn’t cheap and to live there was too long a process. If the pregnancy was going how John said, faster and quicker, especially with three, they were pretty much out of time.

John was already 2 months gone into his pregnancy and could have them after the third. Plus with winter approaching, John was starting to lose his energy, another reason why Eddie wanted him to stop working. He was at a loss as he packed the car while John said farewell to Henry. A pit in his stomach formed for John, feeling that this would be the last time he would see the people who helped raise his boyfriend.

The younger man was sniffly and red-eyed by the time they got into the truck, Bitty settled between them. The ride was tense, silent. All Eddie could do was hold his hand. He was sure there was something they could do to solve this problem. But he promised he was going to stick by his boyfriend until the end, even if they were old in age.

“We’ll be okay.” He said, hoping the words would help a little, but knowing how things were, he pit in his stomach never left and wasn’t any time soon.

[bcimbatmandude]

More Human Than Meets the Eye-A Study in Pink, part 3-chapter 4

Freakin tumblr deleted my shit and I had to start this chapter all over!!!! Booooooooooooo

Yall be glad I love yall!! Enjoy the next chapterrrrrr

SHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSH

Previously: Without missing a beat, Sherlock stated, quite nonchalantly, "And I said 'dangerous,' and here you are." Sherlock turned and walked out the door. John sat there thoughtfully for several seconds, then angrily grabbed his cane, following his new flatmate out the door.

"Damn it!"

SHSHSHSHSHSSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSH

knock knock knock

Adaline woke up as soon as she heard what sounded like someone knocking on the front door. She scrunched her eyes tightly together, cursing being a light sleeper, and tried desperately to drift back off into dreamland. When the noise didn't occur again after about a minute, she rolled over, snuggling deeper into her covers, sighing in contentment when she finally found another comfy spot.

knock knock knock

Eyelids flew open.

Groaning and grumbling, the seven year old quite literally rolled herself out of her father's bed, hitting the floor with a dull thump. Eyes still halfway closed, she picked herself off the floor and began walking towards the front door. Still suffering from sleep disorientation, as she walked out of the bedroom, she didn't turn her body quite far enough to make it completely out the door, and she whined when she felt her left little toe hit the corner of the bedroom door frame.

Eyes watering, toe throbbing, she slowly hopped her way into the living room.The girl walked into the living room, flipping on one of the lamps that her father or Mr. John must've turned off when they left. She had almost made it to the front door when suddenly, it was slammed wide open.

Frozen in shock, she listened as Mrs. Hudson made a sharp cry of indignation."You can't go in there you brutes!" she cried fiercely. Adaline watched, eyes wide, as Inspector Lestrade strode into her and her father's living space, followed by several other police officers. "Just search everywhere," Lestrade instructed his crew. "There's no telling where anything might be."

"Uncle Greg?"Lestrade looked over when he heard what had to be his adopted niece's voice, softly call out to him. "Ada?" he frowned, looking the girl over. She was still in her night clothes, which consisted of an adorable set of purple pajamas with kittens all over them. Her curly blonde locks were in a disarrayed mess on her head, and she rubbed her eyes several times. It became very obvious to the detective then that she had just woken up, and he felt a stab of dismay and guilt run through him when he realized that he and his team had probably just frightened the little girl, bursting into the flat like they had. "Where's your father?" he questioned, looking around the flat.

"He's not here! I was watching her while he and John went out." Mrs. Hudson answered, standing at the door. She constantly shook her head and tutted in disapproval at the madness in front of her. "And he would not appreciate you breaking into his flat like this, especially while his daughter was here. Alone," she ended, huffing indignantly.

Lestrade paused at her ending statement, actually beginning to look a bit nervous."What's going on?" Adaline asked. She watched as several officers went into the kitchen and starting opening and closing the drawers.

"It's a…" Lestrade began, not knowing quite what to tell the child.

Adaline simply raised an eyebrow at her 'uncle,' and the Inspector, remembering who's child he was talking to, decided to finish his statement.

"….drugs bust."

"Be a good baby freak," Adaline heard a voice say to her left. "..and keep out of the way," Anderson taunted at her. She had to swerve sharply to the right to avoid being sideswiped by the awful man, who was making it his new goal in life to dump out as many drawers as possible. "We don't want the little girl contaminating any evidence."

"Anderson!" Lestrade barked, not pleased with the words being spoken, or the tone of voice. He was still "Uncle Greg" and no matter whose daughter she was, she was still only a little girl. He wouldn't tolerate a grown man name calling a child. Besides, if Sherlock had heard him…

Right on cue, a loud bang was heard as the front door slammed shut. Adaline heard Mrs. Hudson ask Sherlock what he had done, Sherlock responding in a confused manner. The blonde haired girl heard hurried footsteps climbing up the stairs, and then her father was striding through the door, army doctor close behind. "What the hell is going on here?" he demanded, eyes searching the room almost frantically.

"I'm here," Adaline called out to him. Sherlock's eyes snapped to hers. The man took three long strides, and then he was standing in front of his daughter. He kneeled down to her level, something he did a lot, and grasped her arms. "Are you alright?" he asked, looking into her eyes and studying her facial expressions. He would know instantly if she were lying.

"I'm fine," she reassured him, hugging him back when he pulled her into him. She pulled away and crossed her arms grumpily. "They woke me up though."

Sherlock smiled for half a second, knowing that she was in fact properly upset at being woken up. His daughter enjoyed her sleep as much as she enjoyed her ice cream. The smile was gone off of his face though when she hugged him a second time, grasping on to him a little too tightly. They had scared her. His eyes hardened just slightly, and he called out calmly to his flat mate."John."

John had been watching as his new living space got violated, scowling when one of the officers dumped out another kitchen drawer. What the hell was happening? He heard a familiar voice call his name, and looked to his right. Sherlock was hugging Adaline who looked to be grasping on to her father's shoulders very tightly. Her green eyes were wide and clearly unsettled at the current events. Quickly realizing what was being requested of him, he went over to the pair, standing behind Adaline and wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

Adaline unconsciously leaned back into John, and Sherlock stood up, satisfied that his daughter was now taken care of. He turned away from John and Adaline, looking towards Lestrade and his crew. "I don't like repeating myself," he addressed them all, baritone voice ringing throughout the room. "What is happening here?"

"Don't worry, Sherlock," Lestrade spoke. "We didn't interrogate Ada. We knew you'd find the case. I'm not stupid." "You're correct, Inspector," Sherlock agreed. "You're not stupid."

Lestrade was surprised for a moment at his words, however he scowled when Sherlock continued."You've passed far beyond stupid. You're a complete imbecile if you think you and your lot can break into my flat like this." "You can't withhold evidence," Lestrade argued. "And we didn't break in." "Oh?" Sherlock countered, voice hard. "So you and your men didn't burst into my living room unannounced?"

"I don't believe my daughter knew you were coming over judging by the fear in her eyes."Lestrade had the smarts to look guilty at that last statement. "We didn't know she'd be here alone," he said, glancing over at Adaline apologetically. "What do you call this then?" Sherlock continued.

"It's a drugs bust."

John, who had decided to be silent up to this point and focus on comforting Adaline, now spoke up. "Seriously?" he snorted. "This guy, a junkie? Have you met him?""John," Sherlock said quietly, trying to stop the man. Adaline started fidgeting within John's arms. "I'm pretty sure you could search this flat all day," he continued unknowingly, "and you wouldn't find anything you could call recreational."

"Mr. John," Adaline said pleadingly.

John looked down, frowning at her tone of voice. He studied the uncomfortable child, and then his eyes slowly traveled to his flat mate. The two held gazes for a long moment as a brief silence fell over the flat.Adaline began fidgeting even more, not being able to handle the tension that had built up in the room. She was somewhat thankful when John's quiet, unbelieving voice finally broke through the silence."No."

"What?" Sherlock questioned nervously."You?" John said, completely surprised. "Shut up!" Sherlock countered angrily, turning back to Lestrade. "I'm not your sniffer dog."

"No," Lestrade shook his head. "Anderson's my sniffer dog."

"What? An…" Sherlock started.

Lestrade nodded towards the kitchen where about four officers were scouring around. Anderson turned around at the mention of his name. He waved sarcastically at Sherlock.Adaline watched the exchange wearily. She felt eyes on her then, and looked up to find her father looking at her closely. Too closely. He was searching for something….

She quickly looked down when his gaze became too much. Sherlock, having received his answer, let out a growl. "Anderson," he snarled, and John noted to himself that he spoke the man's name like it was a curse. "What are you doing here on a drugs bust?"

"Oh I volunteered," Anderson sneered, venom dripping. Adaline glared fiercely at the man, wishing she was tall enough to punch him in the face. "They all did," Lestrade threw in. "They're not strictly speaking on the drugs squad, but they're very keen." Adaline scoffed at that and Sherlock bit his lip hard enough to taste blood.

Donovan came into the room then. She was holding a glass jar with white, round objects swimming inside. "Are these human eyes?" she cried, holding the jar up. "Put those back!" Sherlock demanded. "They were in the microwave!" the woman said, disgusted. "It's for an experiment you twit!" Adaline shouted, very upset now at the way they were treating and regarding her father.

John held her tighter when he heard the distress in her voice, shushing her softly. Sherlock threw her a glance telling her to calm down and she huffed, her body going lax against John's.When Sherlock was sure that his daughter wasn't going to spew out any words or phrases that a little girl certainly shouldn't be saying, he looked to Lestrade and spat out, "This is childish!"

"Well, I'm dealing with a child," the Inspector retorted. "Sherlock this is our case. I'm letting you in, but you do not go off on your own. Clear?" The detective stopped where he had been wearing the floor away with his angry pacing and glared at the grey haired man in front of him. "Oh, what, so..so you set up a pretend drugs bust to bully me?"

"It stops being pretend if we find anything," Lestrade stated quietly.Adaline was watching the interaction very cautiously, her teeth continuing to bite away at her lower lip. "I am clean!" Sherlock loudly proclaimed. "Is your flat? All of it?"

"I don't even smoke." Sherlock unbuttoned the cuff of his left shirt, rolling up his sleeve to show off the nicotine patch on his lower arm."Neither do I." Lestrade rolls up the right sleeve of his own jacket, showing a similar patch to the curly haired man. Sherlock rolled his eyes, turning away, and both men proceeded to fix their clothing. "So let's work together," Lestrade offered. "We found Rachel."

"Who is she?"

"Jennifer Wilson's only daughter."

Adaline shifted away from John a little, and he looked at her questioningly. She smiled at him reassuringly and shuffled over to her father's chair. The child snuggled down into the seat, receiving a small amount of comfort from the familiar smell. "You need to bring Rachel in," her father proclaimed. "You need to question her. I want to question her."

"She's dead," Lestrade informed.

"Excellent!"

John and the others looked over at the man, shocked. Adaline just sighed, exasperated, very accustomed to her father's ways. "How, when, and why?" he continued, unperturbed. "There has to be some sort of connection."

"Well, I doubt it," Greg said, "since she's been dead for fourteen years. Technically she was never alive. Rachel was Jennifer Wilson's stillborn daughter, fourteen years ago." John grimaced at this information and turned away. When Sherlock heard the words however, he was confused."No, that's…that's not right. How…why would she do that. Why?"

"Why would she think of her daughter in her last moments?" Anderson questioned, upper lip going up. "Yup, sociopath; I'm seeing it now." Without even looking towards the dim witted man, Sherlock threw a sharp glance to his daughter, who had at this point, had enough of Anderson's comments. When she met her father's gaze, which basically said, If you get up you'll regret it, she huffed loudly and slammed back into the seat.

Sherlock rolled his eyes at his daughter's antics, and turned back towards the crew. "She didn't think about her daughter," a voice said, and Sherlock swung back around to look towards Adaline again. Her eyes were wide and caught off guard to see everyone suddenly looking at her, and she looked as though she had even surprised herself by speaking up.

Adaline blushed a bright red at all of the eyes that swiveled towards her, and she was seconds away from burying her head in a hole when she spotted her father giving her an encouraging nod. She gulped and forced herself to straighten, trying with all her might to look much more confident than she felt. When she spoke, she was proud to say that her voice didn't waver...that much. "She scratched her name on the floor with her fingernails. She was dying and probably didn't have a lot of strength left. That takes a lot of effort to do something like that. And it would've hurt."

Sherlock wasn't ashamed at all to say that when his daughter finished her explanation, a giant, proud smile stretched across his face. He couldn't have stopped it if he tried. Adaline immediately ducked her head when she was finished speaking, as though all of the courage had suddenly drained out of her.

"The victims all took the poison themselves," John spoke up, feeling sorry for the girl. "You said he makes them take it. Well maybe he…I don't know, talks to them? Maybe he used the death of her daughter somehow."

Sherlock turned to look at him, genuinely puzzled. "Yeah, but that was ages ago? Why would she still be upset?" John stared at Sherlock for what seemed like the fifteenth time that day in utter disbelief. The detective realized that the whole flat had gone silent, and looked back awkwardly at John. "Not good?"

John glanced around at the others, his gaze stopping on Adaline who was shaking her head at her father hopelessly. "Bit not good, yeah," he confirmed.

Sherlock quickly shook off the incident and stepped closer to John, looking at him intently. "But if you were dying, if you'd been murdered, in you very last seconds, what would you say?"

"Please God, let me live."

Adaline sucked in a sharp breath when John said this, her eyes becoming very sad for the kind man she was growing to like very much. It was obvious from his tone and the way his body slumped a bit that he'd had firsthand experience with that situation. Sherlock, thankfully, seemed to realize that he needn't continue on with that specific line of questioning, and hurriedly continued."Yeah, but if you were clever, really clever…" his voice trailed away.

"Jennifer Wilson running all those lovers; she was clever. She's trying to tell us something."

Just then, Mrs. Hudson walked into the room. "Isn't the doorbell working? Your taxi's here, Sherlock."

aaaaaand that’s the chapter. written twice by the way, if you didn’t hear that already at the top. I hope you enjoyed! till next time!

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Why (most of) the 2010s Marvel legacy characters didn’t work

For Marvel characters I think it comes off as profoundly undermining when they get legacies, at least in the specific way Marvel attempted this throughout the 2010s.

To explain this we need to actually first look at DC’s characters in order to compare and contrast why legacies for them tend to work out better than they do for Marvel.

Simply put back in the 1930s-1950s (if not even later) DC’s characters were almost always created as powers first, people second. Wish fulfilment fantasy figures over flawed mere mortals.

Consequently you could legacy Green Lantern and the Flash in the 1950s and then do so again in the 1980s-1990s because so so long as you had a guy with a ring and another guy with super speed you were retaining the essence of both characters, the fundamental point and appeal of them.

But the Marvel characters were the other way around and practically deliberately designed to be so. 

Thor was the story of the life and times of Thor Odinson. Spider-Man was the story of the life and times of Peter Parker. The Fantastic Four was never the story about a brainiac who stretched, a girl who could go invisible, a kid who could burst into flame and a guy who looked like a rock monster. 

It was about a stern scientist obsessed with his work. A nurturing young woman who loved him but was frustrated by his tendency to get lost in his work. Her younger brother interested in sports cars, girls, excitement and other typically hot headed teenage endeavours. And an average Joe who was tortured and depressed that he was no longer human. 

Ben Grimm could’ve looked like any kind of monster and the central point of his character would have been retained. The F4′s specific powers, complemented their personalities, but they were not the driving point unto themselves. 

In contrast let us consider Captain America, probably the Marvel character who’s done the ‘replacement legacy hero’ storyline the most (at least within 616 canon). How comes he  lends himself so much better to this type of story than the other Marvel characters? 

Simple, because unlike most of the big name Marvel characters you know of, he wasn’t created in the 1960s or beyond. Cap was the product of the 1940s and was a peer to those same early days super heroes from the Golden Age, including the original Green Lantern and Flash. Like them he began fundamentally more as a symbol and powerset than a person. 

But now flashing forward to the 21st century many (most in my view) Flash fans were upset (and continue to be so) Wally West’s ascension to the Flash mantle was undermined and ultimately undone for the sake of restoring Barry Allan to the spotlight. The reason for this upset when Wally himself had replaced Barry? Wally had proven himself a far more flawed, nuanced and complex character than Barry had ever been. 

He demonstrated a degree of characterisation in the Flash role that Barry never had. It wasn’t even that he simply had more of this than Barry, but that Barry, just like Jay Garrick preceding him, had little to speak of in the first place. Thus the contrast between Jay and Barry was mostly superficial but the contrast between Barry and Wally was as stark as comparing Spider-Man to 1950s Superman.*

But Wally West, and the entire DC Universe from Post-Crisis onwards in fact, were in that mould precisely because they were trying to be more like Marvel comics has been since the 1960s onwards. 

DC in effect began prioritising the people beneath the costumes over the powers.** But Marvel starting in the 1960s had pretty much always been like that with their heroes.

Consequently when legacies popped up and those new characters were pushed as being just as good, just as worthy, or (in some cases) lowkey pushed as being better  than their predecessors it naturally rubbed those fans with decades of emotional investment the wrong way. OBVIOUSLY  a woman or a POC can be just as worthy and just as capable as a man or a white person as a superhero. But series to series, character to character, it was almost like Marvel was taking away your beloved pet.

Imagine for a moment you had a pet named Rex that you’d known and loved for years. 

Then Marvel insisted on taking Rex away from you when there was nothing wrong with him. In his place they give you another clearly different pet with Rex’s collar, who gets Rex’s bowl, Rex’s food, Rex’s toys, Rex’s bed and even Rex’s name and asks you to treat them not as just a new dog but straight up the new Rex.

Except he isn’t Rex. Rex is Rex. The ‘new Rex’ playing with Rex’s toys, doing the same tricks as him or having his collar doesn’t change that.*** 

Because Rex was more than a collar, his toys or his tricks. He was an individual that you’d known and loved. And even if you know Rex is going to come back ‘eventually’ having Rex taken away from you at all, having the new Rex supplant them (especially if old Rex was screwed over for the sake of new Rex’s arrival) and having so many people insist new Rex is just as great or more great than old Rex (to the point where many people loudly proclaim they don’t even want the old Rex back and the old Rex was kinda lame and boring) is going to create a massive dissonance. Maybe you would’ve been chill with the new Rex is he was just another additional pet called Rover or even like RexY who was similar yet different to Rex, but not actually promoted AS Rex or as his replacement. 

Maybe you would’ve been okay with the new Rex if the old one got too old, died naturally or accidentally. But you aren’t okay with it because there was nothing wrong with Rex, you LOVED Rex and Rex had been with you and been around generally forever. So the new Rex felt like he was undermining him, especially undermining Rex’s individuality. 

That’s how I think most Marvel fans felt about practically EVERY legacy situation that’s ever cropped up from the 1960s onwards, not even the ones just from the 2010s. I remember  the outrage when Bucky was announced as the new Cap. I know there were people salty about Eric Masterson as Thor and the Spider-Man Clone Saga speaks for itself.

Compounding the situation is that more than a few media outlets (despite imo not representing the feeling’s of the majority at all) promoted (and in some cases still promote) the new characters as not just better than they are (see the dozen or so lists talking about how great Riri allegedly was) but along with many fans tear down the older characters whilst doing so. 

See every article ever talking about why Peter Parker in the movies (and sometimes in the comics) NEEDS to die for the sake of Miles becoming the new Spider-Man in spite of their rationales rarely making sense from a creative/financial POV and utilizing misrepresentations of both characters to varying degrees. Even fans that appreciate the social/political relevancy of the new characters are going to naturally be upset in response to that and angrily voice opposition when the character they love gets dragged through the mud like that. And that then gets exacerbated when they are labelled as bigots for feeling upset by the changes or reacting against the character they love being dragged through the mud.**** 

Especially considering they would’ve reacted the same way regardless of who was the replacement hero.  Again, fans at first didn’t take kindly to John Walker or Bucky as the new Captain Americas so the idea that backlash against Sam Wilson was entirely or primarily racist was itself profoundly ignorant. Especially when you consider black reviewers such as those on the Hooded Utalitarian were calling it out as bad storytelling and bad representation for black people. SpaceTwinks went issue by issue through Spencer’s Sam Wilson run and called it out as racist, ignorant and naive. NONE of which is me saying that there isn’t more than a little bigotry going around detractors of these new characters nor that there aren’t obviously bad actors.

But those people did not and do not represent the majority and framing the situation as though they do is disingenuous and highly unethical. In conclusion, the backlash against the 2010s Marvel legacy characters was entirely natural, understandable and for the vast majority came from a place of love for the original characters not a bigoted hatred for the new characters skin colour or sex. 

It was a testament to Marvel’s, and the wider media, misunderstanding the psychology of most comic book fans. 

P.S. In regards to that, though it isn’t exactly talking about what I’ve spoken about I’d highly recommend checking out this video which touches upon the disenchantment Star Wars fans felt over the Sequel Trilogy, which itself could be viewed as doing the same thing Marvel did with it’s replacement legacy characters.

P.P.S. The reason I think the likes of Miles Morales or Kamala Khan succeeded where others failed is chiefly due to their rise to the role of legacy replacements stemmed from their predecessors not  being sidelined for their rise to the spotlight. Miles never ever replaced the 616 version of Peter Parker, widely considered by most fans and Marvel internally as the true and legitimate version of the character. Kamala Khan meanwhile picked up the Ms. Marvel only when Carol Danvers discarded it and became Captain Marvel. She was still in the spotlight in her own right, Kamala simply got her own spotlight using Carol’s obsolete name. Which isn’t all that dissimilar to fan favourite Cassandra Cain’s rise to the Batgirl mantle now I think about it.

P.P.P.S. A possible counter argument to all I’ve said is the success of the Superior Spider-Man/Otto Octavius. After all why was he embraced when Sam Wilson and Jane Foster wasn’t? Was a double standard rooted in bigotry at play?

No, but the answer isn’t neat and simple.

I think Ock as the new Spider-Man was more embraced partially because Ock had been around essentially as long as Spidey himself. But more poignantly  pre-Superior Spider-Man was so atrocious that a sizzling and sexy idea like Superior (which generated tons of cheap novelty) felt utterly refreshing, even to people who had actually LIKED pre-Superior Spidey under Slott. It’s like how people praised the early Big Time stories despite their problems because compared to BND they were genuinely better.

Plus Superior, for all it’s god forsaken writing, didn’t exist to clearly workshop potential movie ideas or chiefly in aid of a social/political cause. Someone can agree that there should be more black or female superheroes but disagree that the older characters should be sidelined in the attempt to achieve that.

Especially when there were better alternative options such as introducing those newer characters within and alongside the established hero’s narrative or simply introduce them independently as has happened recently with the likes of Lunar Snow.

*This is also why I suspect Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman survived from the Golden Age into the Silver Age. Because they were the DC characters who (more than any of the other ones) had actual personalities/substance to them. **Of course this didn’t begin wholesale with the post-Crisis era. But noticeably the characters who had worked with this new shift in priorities prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths stayed generally the same thereafter (E.g. the Titans, Batman) whilst characters who had largely vacillated or struggled (e.g. Superman and Wonder Woman) were given fresh starts which proved critically and financially successful.  

***Not even if he does everything just as well as Rex did or does some stuff differently that’s still good (although the overwhelming majority of the time new Rex is clearly not as good as the old Rex).

****I’ve seen people be called racist and misogynists for calling out Riri Williams honestly ridiculous degree of competency as a hero/tech genius in spite of her age. This is not an invalid criticism, yet disliking the character because of those reasons is grounds to be labelled as something ugly by another (imo minor yet also vocal) contingent of fandom. 

Hell I was called a Trump supporting Breitbart reading bigot for calling out Marvel as two-faced due to never putting a black writer in charge of Sam Wilson as Captain America or a woman in charge of Jane Foster as Thor. It isn’t exclusive to comics either as I and other people have been accused of racism/misogyny for disliking the Last Jedi in spite of that film to my eyes being itself racist and sexist anyway.

[technohumanlation]

Whumptober Day 17

The ever so lovely @whumptober2019 made a list of prompts to complete every day for the whole month of October and I’m giving a shot at it this year! 

As always read what you can handle and do not read if you are squimish to any of the warnings.

"Stay with me”

Warnings: Blood, character deaths, violence.

Characters: You as reader, Sixty, Nines, OC android

Wrote this one to “clemetine” by Halsey and “Circles” by Post Malone. 

Also, if you guys are interested I have a whumptober2019 playlist on my spotify. Just look for me: Leonixon 

“Okay John, have a good night, now.” You raised a hand in goodbye with a sweet smile at the janitor as he left for the night. You however were pulling a longer shift, staying behind, filing through paperwork and reports that were relevant to your ongoing case.

You were a green horn, new to this specific precinct and the shoes to fill from the officer that retired were large. This building and the people within held their virtues highly.

Especially the specialized team made of a few android brothers that were apart of the revolution itself. They were the epitome of professionalism. Well, except for one.

The one named Sixty caught your eye early on. He was interesting and his energy was something you couldn’t ignore. He was an asshole. There was no way of putting it nicely. But you didn’t mind to call him such a slur. He owned up to the name with pride. 

The first time you saw him was when his middle brother, Nines was his name, tossed a data pad at him in annoyance. The brother caught it in his hand with ease, a shit eating grin upon his face. Clearly it wasn’t the first time he had done it.

You caught what was on the data pad and blushed immediately. Rather explicit porn was playing in a minimized window in front of a report he had been attempting to type.

“Do this again Sixty, and I’ll have you reported!”

Sixty cackled joyously. “Yeah right! Don’t you like that man on man shit?” He yelled after him loudly, catching a few officers attention. They gave the fuming android a glance before going back to their own business. Just another day it seemed like.

Nines turned around and shot him a firm middle finger to which the brother cackled even more.

You couldn’t help but not stop a small smile that crossed your lips at his antics. As if he felt your eyes on him, he looked up to you.

You jolted in embarrassment and cleared your throat looking back at your computer, acting like you had been doing work the whole time. He caught you red handed but he made no indication.

But when you looked back at him he was smiling rather warmly. It seemed he was happy someone laughed at his prank.

As the days went on, more and more of the precinct began to speak with you. Small talk turned into full conversations in the break room.  

“Sixty put salt in Gavin’s coffee again.”

“And he put windshield wiper fluid into his thirium.”

“Said it tasted like kool-aid.”

A chuckled left you as you took a sip of your own coffee. In a way he kept morale up. Even if some of his tricks were on the verge of being downright cruel it made you feel at ease knowing that he didn’t take himself so seriously.

A sudden sting had you rushing over to the sink to spit out the mouthful of coffee. You gagged. “Oh my god?!” You panicked.

And that was when you were officially part of the precinct. From across the bullpen Sixty seemingly went on his business but the smirk that pulled at his lips was evidence enough that he was the one who salted not just Gavin’s coffee, but yours as well.

The next day you enacted your revenge upon the android. You hacked his datapad and it started to play obnoxiously loud music. You pressed your lips inward and bit down to prevent a fountain of giggles escaping you.

“Who the fuck?” He looked up from his desk and around the bullpen. His angry voice was traded for humor as he pointed at Ben.

“I know it’s you! You generation thinks this joke is still funny!” The smile that pulled at his face now made funny things happen to your chest. Ben shouted his retort waving him off. “Bullshit! I’m onto you Benjamin!”

You bowed your head and enjoyed a good laugh.

“Fucking rick-rolling me...” He hissed to himself.

“Clever.”

The rumbling baritone of Nines suddenly behind you had you jumping in your seat. You placed a hand against your chest and looked up to the humored brother. Your cheeks flushed a deep red from being found out.

You soon realized that he wasn’t outing you, or scolding you. As a matter of fact, was that...approval you saw as well?

“Yeah,” You cleared your throat. “Payback you know?” You offered.

He huffed a little breath of humored laughter and was on his way.

Every so often you would rick roll the android and he would grow more and more frustrated. No one suspected it was the meek and timid new officer fresh from the academy that could do something so brilliant, so soon.

“Shut up, fuck boy.” Gavin growled for the third time this week. “It wasn’t me.”

“Fuck you Reed. Wait, that’s Nines job but...”

“Just shut up.”

And even now, as you smiled down to your long cold coffee, you were scared to drink it but you needed it. Pulling this long shift was killing you.

With another desperate gulp of stale, cold, coffee you paged through another file. You swallowed it screwing your face in distaste. You went to take another sip but a hand on your shoulder and another mug of coffee was presented to you just the way you liked it. A smile graced your lips and you looked up to your android partner.

“Thank’s Clemmet, God you’re such a heaven sent.” You reached up and patted his shoulder in thanks.

“I know cold coffee is unpleasant to some humans. I took the liberty of making you another pot.”

Clemmet was an older android model. He was a tall and handsome fellow with lovely flawless tanned skin. His uniform was pressed to perfection and he was always quick to accommodate you. He was a slower model, upgraded networks and communications unfortunately affected him in the worst of ways. Frequent updates and malware scans had to be performed to keep him in tip-top shape.

He was a deviant and they considered letting the poor thing go and live life freely. But he decided to stay with the reasoning of liking his job. Many human officers had rotated through him, his lack of quick thinking and smooth functions being more of a burden than help. They had “dumped” him on you but you rather liked him. You liked his slower processing and even voice as he spoke.

He was smart and soft. Agile and quick. Strong and assertive when needed to be. Clemmet was considerate and showed his kindness through small gestures.

“Sit up, officer, your spine is misaligned.” When you slouched in your desk chair.

“You have a voice message from you sister.”

A warning of “Your coffee contains sodium chloride,” when Sixty had once again salted the pot of coffee.

And last but not least the way he made your coffee.

Light and sweet.

“Your efficiency will slowly decline by twenty one percent per hour. I would keep this in mind.”

You smiled flicking your eyes up to him. “Of course, I know.” You brushed him off but he smiled knowingly.

Not an hour later your body betrayed your mind. The coffee had your mind buzzing but sadly your body ached and was tired. You grumbled under your breath pushing aside the tablet.

“I was correct,” He snipped. “Again.”

“Yes, I know.” You moaned. 

“I will drive you home.” He stood from his chair snatching away your keys from your reach before you even could take them. You hissed a curse. 

“I’m fine. Honest. I’ll just keep the windows down and-.”

“I detect an eighty percent chance you will fall asleep at the wheel. I will not take that chance.”

You gave in easily. Clemmet would hound you relentlessly until you did so anyhow. You learned this fact the hard way.

Halfway to your house you had nodded off and your android partner was more than happy to take his jacket off to cover you up. You murmured under your breath. It was a chilly night. Or rather morning.

“Say, Clemmet, why don’t you stay over? It’s late and I don’t want you to drive all the way back to the precinct.”

“I’m alright,” he murmured your name genuinely. “I have to recharge.” It was a lousy excuse.

You hated the fact that he practically lived at the precinct. He waited on the charging station until the next morning, awaiting his orders from you. Even if he was deviant, he was still like a lost puppy. You didn’t mind guiding him through the day. Ordering him to do things was out of the question. There was a difference that you firmly believed in.

Dark eyes looked over to you in the span of the quiet moment left for you to think in.

You peered outside the window suffling yourself under the jacket more comfortably. It smelled of your favorite fabric softer. No one else bothered to do his laundry so you were more than happy to. “You’re always welcome home.”

They were a block away from her apartment. There wasn’t much time to convince him otherwise.

“C’mon, honestly-hey!” You jerked forward when the android had slammed on the breaks, his eyes turned towards an alleyway just aways from your apartment building. Before you could ask what had him so shaken up, sending his LED into a flurry of yellow and red, he was already speaking.

“There is a distressed signal next to us.”

“What?” Your fatigue was overtaken by a shot of adrenaline that ran through your veins with heat. Your eyes were opened wide looking out the window for any sign of a struggle. “Wait, is it an android or people? Should we call for backup?”

“No, I am taking you home. Hide there and wait until it’s safe. I have already called in for backup. Paramedics just in case of injury.”

“My ass, Clemmet! You’re my partner. I’m not letting you go in alone.” You were already opening the door and walking out into the cold dark night. Behind you, you heard his voice calling your name.

He placed the car in park and was already by your side.

You pulled out your firearm and kept it aimed true in front of yourself. As shadows gave way to dim lighting from the nearby streetlamp a familiar figure was held by the collar of his shirt.

The report of the handgun made you jump. The body fell limp to the puddled ground of the alleyway. The body was mangled and beaten and made no attempt to move or recover from the killing bullet.

You were bitterly reminded that you hadn’t killed yet. They you had only been a decent shot at targets and not live people.

It would be tested here and now it seemed. Even with Clemmet by your side your feet drew you in towards the possible danger.

You stepped closer and realized the familiar face of none other than Sixty. You stopped in your tracks. More adrenaline shot up your spine into your chest.

“Detroit police, put your fucking hands up!” You yelled. The stern voice was foreign and unknown in your own ears.

The shadow turned towards you and aimed. You gasped.  The reports, one, two, three, four, echoed into the night. The body in front of you jolted backward from each bullet as it met it’s wrong target.

Clemmet fell in front of you. The bright thirium blue seeping into the broken asphalt. Dead eyes looked up into yours. Your breath became ragged and quickened. The tears that prickled at your eyes strained your voice and your breathing. You looked back up and the shadow was revealed to be another android.

It raised its gun to you, ready to finish off what it had started.

A cry ripped from your throat. Anger, sadness, helplessness and the evolutionary need to conserve your life overtook your body. You were along for the horrendous ride.

Your body shook as you pressed the trigger, the familiar and unwanted recoils jolting you as they met their mark.

It was just a target you thought. Just a piece of paper. But it wasn’t. The target bled blue, splattering across its body as it finally dropped its weapon.

The shadow dropped and you were left in the silence. All that remained was the low murmurings of the idle engine of the vehicle behind you.

You released your hand, the heavy metal clattering to the ground at your feet.

You had killed for the first time. It felt terrible. You felt sick.

Shakily you looked down. Not to the gun you had dropped but to Clemmet. Your partner. Your friend, lay unmoving.

“Clemmet...Clemmet...” Your voice cracked and was so very small as you dropped to your knees. You hands trailed over his body. They shook so very violently. He had taken the bullets that were meant for you without a second thought.

Finally your shaking hand cupped his face delicately, tears flowing freely from your eyes. Everything else was forgotten. The smell of thirium stung your nose. You didn’t even know it had a smell. Yet, here you were, the smell making you gag.

He was dead. Clemmet was dead. The weight of the reality before set in and a cry escaped your throat. Apologies, one after another were rasped from your trembling lips. You bowed your head pressing your forehead into his chest and sobbed.

Among the quiet of the night and your sobs, a groan from beyond had you gasping and looking up. Sixty was alive?

There was hope that not all was lost. You reluctantly stood from your place next to your android giving him a hesitant glance before you decided. You had to help the living. That’s what your training had taught you.

But this wasn’t training. This was all too real. Your feet carried you by his side and to sank to your knees next to him.

“S-Sixty?” You flipped him onto his back. Before you had arrived and the gun was pulled out, Sixty had managed a physical altercation with him. There was a sign of clear struggle. A broken nose that bled that hideous blue. His arm twisted in an irregular angle.

Your eyes eventually fell to the bullet wounds.

“Holy shit, ow, ow...” His rasped turned into choking words. Blood pudding in the back of his throat. You placed fingers into his mouth to clear it out, tilting his head to the side. The other hand pressed to the worst of the bullet wounds, the one closest to the bullet near his thirium pump.

“What-what happened? What-?” Your voice quivered and shook, the syllables barely coming out clearly. But Sixty understood. A sad smile came to his lips. His head shaking side to side. He spat out more thirium his breathing wet and gargled.

Your eyes flicked to movement by his side. His hand curled into a fist, the pointer finger indicating something by his legs. A carton of broken eggs and a roll of soaked toilet paper.

“Was-shit,” He murmured your name. It made you pause. You didn’t think he knew what your name was. And hearing it tumble from his lips made your heart ache. He was dying and...God on Earth the two androids you loved with all your heart were…

This wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“Look, I k-knew it was you.” A blue stained smile shook his lips. “The videos, the music...cute. You-you’re cute. Egg your car as payback. Got jumped and-.”

His breathing suddenly stopped and then the desperate clicks of internal fans not working began to make him twitch. Startle hysteric sobs tumbled form your lips.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. Clemmet-,” His voice physically hurt to say out loud. “Had help coming you’re okay. You’re fine. You’re...gonna be okay.”

“I’m fine!” You spat. “Not you! Help is coming for you!” Three bullets all strategically placed to make his death long and suffering. How cruel. How terrible.

“Thanks for-for laughing.” He choked. “When n-no one else would.”

“No, no...Sixty listen to me.” You tried to sound stern but the tears in your eyes made your throat sting. “Stay with me, you hear me?”

His eyes fell closed.

You lifted your hands away from his body as any vibrations of living were slowed. “S-Sixy?” You murmured. Just as the distant sounds of sirens came he was already gone. “Stay with me...”

[dfroza]

our Creator told stories

explaining the significance of eternal things.

and these have been conserved for us in the Scriptures as read in Today’s chapter of the New Testament in the book of Mark which is a story that offended some of the people listening:

Then He told a story.

Jesus: There was a man who established a vineyard. He put up a wall around it to fence it in; he dug a pit for a winepress; he built a watchtower. When he had finished this work, he leased the vineyard to some tenant farmers and went away to a distant land.

When the grapes were in season, he sent a slave to the vineyard to collect his rent—his share of the fruit. But the farmers grabbed the slave, beat him, and sent him back to his master empty-handed. The owner sent another slave, and this slave the farmers beat over the head and sent away dishonored. A third slave, the farmers killed. This went on for some time, with the farmers beating some of the messengers and killing others until the owner had lost all patience. He had a son whom he loved above all things, and he said to himself, “When these thugs see my son, they’ll know he carries my authority. They’ll have to respect him.”

But when the tenant farmers saw the owner’s son coming, they said among themselves, “Look at this! It’s the son, the heir to this vineyard. If we kill him, then the land will be ours!” So they seized him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard.

Now what do you suppose the owner will do when he hears of this? He’ll come and destroy these farmers, and he’ll give the land to others.

Haven’t you read the Scriptures? As the psalmist says,

The stone that the builders rejected

has become the very stone that holds together the entire foundation.

This is the work of the Eternal One,

and it is marvelous in our eyes.

The priests, scribes, temple leaders, and elders knew the story was directed against them. They couldn’t figure out how to lay their hands on Jesus then because they were afraid the people would rise up against them. So they left Him alone, and they went away furious.

Then some Pharisees and some of Herod’s supporters banded together to try to entrap Jesus. They came to Him and complimented Him.

Pharisees: Teacher, we know You are truthful in what You say and that You don’t play favorites. You’re not worried about what anyone thinks of You, so You teach with total honesty what God would have us do. So tell us: is it lawful that we Jews should pay taxes to the Roman emperor or not? Should we give or not?

Jesus (seeing through their ruse): Why do you test Me like this? Listen, bring Me a coin so that I can take a look at it.

When they had brought it to Him, He asked them another question.

Jesus: Tell Me, whose picture is on this coin? And of whom does this inscription speak?

Pharisees: Caesar, of course.

Jesus: Then give to the emperor what belongs to the emperor. And give to God what belongs to God.

They could not think of anything to say to His response.

Later a group of Sadducees, Jewish religious leaders who didn’t believe the dead would be resurrected, came to test Jesus.

Sadducees: Teacher, the law of Moses tells us, “If a man’s brother dies, leaving a widow without sons, then the man should marry his sister-in-law and try to have children with her in his brother’s name.”

Now here’s the situation: there were seven brothers. The oldest took a wife and left her a widow with no children. So the next oldest married her, left her a widow, and again there were no children. So the next brother married her and died, and the next, and the next. Finally all seven brothers had married her, but none of them had conceived children with her, and at last she died also.

Tell us then, in the resurrection [when humans rise from the dead], whose wife will she be? For all seven of them married her.

Jesus: You can’t see the truth because you don’t know the Scriptures well and because you don’t really believe that God is powerful. The answer is this: when the dead rise, they won’t be married or given in marriage. They’ll be like the messengers in heaven, who are not united with one another in marriage. But how can you fail to see the truth of resurrection? Don’t you remember in the Book of Moses how God talked to Moses out of a burning bush and what God said to him then? “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” “I am,” God said. Not “I was.” So God is not the God of the dead but of the living. You are sadly mistaken.

One of the scribes who studied and copied the Hebrew Scriptures overheard this conversation and was impressed by the way Jesus had answered.

Scribe: Tell me, Teacher. What is the most important thing that God commands in the law?

Jesus: The most important commandment is this: “Hear, O Israel, the Eternal One is our God, and the Eternal One is the only God. You should love the Eternal, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second great commandment is this: “Love others in the same way you love yourself.” There are no commandments more important than these.

Scribe: Teacher, You have spoken the truth. For there is one God and only one God, and to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves are more important than any burnt offering or sacrifice we could ever give.

Jesus heard that the man had spoken with wisdom.

Jesus: Well said; if you understand that, then the kingdom of God is closer than you think.

Nobody asked Jesus any more questions after that.

Later Jesus was teaching in the temple.

Jesus: Why do the scribes say that the Anointed One is the son of David? In the psalms, David himself was led by the Holy Spirit to sing,

The Master said to my master,

“Sit at My right hand,

in the place of power and honor,

And I will gather Your enemies together,

lead them in on hands and knees,

and You will rest Your feet on their backs.”

If David calls Him “Master,” how can He be his son?

The crowd listened to Him with delight.

Jesus: Watch out for the scribes who act so religious—who like to be seen in pious clothes and to be spoken to respectfully in the marketplace, who take the best seats in the synagogues and the place of honor at every dinner, who spend widows’ inheritances and pray long prayers to impress others. These are the kind of people who will be condemned above all others.

Jesus sat down opposite the treasury, where people came to bring their offerings, and He watched as they came and went. Many rich people threw in large sums of money, but a poor widow came and put in only two small coins worth only a fraction of a cent.

Jesus (calling His disciples together): Truly this widow has given a greater gift than any other contribution. All the others gave a little out of their great abundance, but this poor woman has given God everything she has.

The Book of Mark, Chapter 12 (The Voice)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 4th chapter of the book of Job:

[Eliphaz Speaks Out]

[Now You’re the One in Trouble]

Then Eliphaz from Teman spoke up:

“Would you mind if I said something to you?

Under the circumstances it’s hard to keep quiet.

You yourself have done this plenty of times, spoken words

that clarify, encouraged those who were about to quit.

Your words have put stumbling people on their feet,

put fresh hope in people about to collapse.

But now you’re the one in trouble—you’re hurting!

You’ve been hit hard and you’re reeling from the blow.

But shouldn’t your devout life give you confidence now?

Shouldn’t your exemplary life give you hope?

“Think! Has a truly innocent person ever ended up on the scrap heap?

Do genuinely upright people ever lose out in the end?

It’s my observation that those who plow evil

and sow trouble reap evil and trouble.

One breath from God and they fall apart,

one blast of his anger and there’s nothing left of them.

The mighty lion, king of the beasts, roars mightily,

but when he’s toothless he’s useless—

No teeth, no prey—and the cubs

wander off to fend for themselves.

“A word came to me in secret—

a mere whisper of a word, but I heard it clearly.

It came in a scary dream one night,

after I had fallen into a deep, deep sleep.

Dread stared me in the face, and Terror.

I was scared to death—I shook from head to foot.

A spirit glided right in front of me—

the hair on my head stood on end.

I couldn’t tell what it was that appeared there—

a blur . . . and then I heard a muffled voice:

“‘How can mere mortals be more righteous than God?

How can humans be purer than their Creator?

Why, God doesn’t even trust his own servants,

doesn’t even cheer his angels,

So how much less these bodies composed of mud,

fragile as moths?

These bodies of ours are here today and gone tomorrow,

and no one even notices—gone without a trace.

When the tent stakes are ripped up, the tent collapses—

we die and are never the wiser for having lived.’”

The Book of Job, Chapter 4 (The Message)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for Sunday, April 11 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible, along with Today’s Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s message from the Institute for Creation Research

April 11, 2021

Remember His Benefits

“Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.” (Psalm 103:2)

The benefits of the Lord are, indeed, great and marvelous, and it would be an act of ingratitude not to remember and appreciate them. Note the following partial list in this psalm:

Forgiveness. “Who forgiveth all thine iniquities” (v. 3). God forgives all! He “cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

Healing. “Who healeth all thy diseases” (v. 3). The greatest and ultimate disease is that of aging and death, but one day “there shall be no more death” (Revelation 21:4).

Redemption. “Who redeemeth thy life from destruction” (v. 4; see also 1 Peter 1:18-19).

Glorification. “Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies” (v. 4)

Provision. “Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things” (v. 5; see also James 1:17).

Strength. “Thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (v. 5).

Protection. “The LORD executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed” (v. 6).

The greatest benefit of all, of course, is the gift of salvation, by the mercy of God. Note the testimonies of God’s mercy: “Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies” (v. 4). “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy” (v. 8). “For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him” (v. 11). “But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him” (v. 17).

Infinite as the universe, enduring as eternity—these are the dimensions of God’s mercy! “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us” (v. 12). No wonder this great psalm both begins and ends with the inspiring exhortation: “Bless the LORD, O my soul!” HMM

[bluewatsons]

Jeremy Bernstein, Godel’s Universe: Threading between genius and insanity, he changed forever the way we view mathematical truth, Commentary Magazine (September 1997)

In the fall of 1957 I began a two-year fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Although I was by then committed to a career in theoretical physics, I had been a mathematics major in college, and one of the residues of my undergraduate years was a feeling of awe for the work of Kurt Gödel, then a professor at the Institute.

In a brief series of papers written in the early 1930’s, when he was in his mid-twenties, Gödel had transformed forever the way we view mathematical truth. Prior to his discoveries, it was generally assumed that mathematical systems—like geometry or the theory of numbers—rested solidly on a foundation of extremely plausible axioms and definitions (for example, that between any two points there is one and only one straight line). These axioms and definitions were in turn connected to mathematical theorems (for example, that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is 180 degrees) by a stainless-steel webbing of logical argument. What was mathematically true was provable.

What Gödel showed was almost the exact opposite. First, in systems complicated enough to include the usual numbers and their properties, there were necessarily propositions that were, he argued, undecidable. Although they might well be true, no proof of their truth could in principle exist within the system. Moreover, among these undecidable propositions was the consistency of the axioms themselves! You could never demonstrate that your axioms would not lead to a logical catastrophe. You might find one day that the axioms implied both the truth and the falsity of the same proposition. The castle you thought you were living in might turn out to be a house of cards.

Listen and Subscribe to had studied this in college, and it is why I held Gödel in such awe. Although he was in some sense my neighbor at the Institute—his office was in the next building—it would never have occurred to me to visit him there. Not only was he reputed to be “reclusive,” I could not imagine what I would have to say to him.

But then J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Institute’s director, decided that it might be nice to hold what Radcliffe girls in an earlier age used to call a “jolly-up”: a little social gathering where we could all meet each other. It took place, as I recall, in the Institute cafeteria, where the usual suspects—professors, visitors, the odd local—had all been rounded up. And there in the corner, much to my astonishment, was Gödel. I recognized him instantly from his photographs. He was exceedingly thin, and looked Central European in the same way that Kafka looked Central European. Perhaps it was his dark horn-rimmed glasses: I used to wonder if a single factory in Austria had supplied them for the entire Austro-Hungarian empire.

Why Gödel came to this “jolly-up” I cannot guess, but at some point he started to be introduced around—perhaps by Oppenheimer—and soon it was my turn. When I gave him my name he replied: “I knew your father in Vienna.”

Here was a proposition that was not only decidable, but decidedly false. My father was a rabbi in Rochester, New York, and to the best of my knowledge had never set foot in Vienna. But when I politely pointed this out to Gödel, he repeated, in exactly the same tone of voice, “I knew your father in Vienna.” Clearly, whatever the confusion was, it was not going to be resolved at a “jolly-up.” I thanked him and he moved on to the next guest.

It took three days before it finally dawned on me whom Gödel had in mind. In the theory of sets—the theory of ensembles of objects—to which he had also made monumental contributions, there is a famous theorem named after Emil Schröd Felix Bernstein, two German mathematicians. Bernstein, who was some ten years older than Gödel, must have come to Vienna at one time or another, and the two men must have been introduced. So, at least, I surmised: I never got another chance to speak to Gödel and verify my hunch.

_____________

All this came back to me in reading a new biography of Gödel by the mathematical logician John W. Dawson, Jr.,1 who teaches at Pennsylvania State University. It is with some reluctance that I use the term “new biography,” since that may imply a string of previous such studies. In fact, since Gödel’s death in 1978, and apart from brief sketches, there has been no biography.2

The reasons are not difficult to seek. To write a biography of Gödel, one must really understand what he did, and this is something only a professional mathematician or mathematical philosopher can do. And then there is Gödel’s character to deal with.

To call the man “reclusive” is to trivialize the matter. Certainly in the last years of his life, and on and off for most of it, he was a fullblown paranoiac. As far as I know, he granted almost no interviews. From time to time he would respond to inquiries about his life and work, but in many cases his responses were never actually mailed. They were found only after his death in his Nachlass, his personal papers. (Dawson has catalogued these, along with the rest of Gödel’s unpublished manuscripts.) Among the Nachlass were library slips for every book Gödel had checked out of any library since he was a student in Vienna in the 1920’s.

Dawson has reassembled Gödel’s life and work with understanding and respect. Indeed, one wonders whether, after his biography, there can be another.

_____________

Kurt Gödel was born in Brno, Moravia, on April 28,1906. He was baptized a Lutheran even though both his parents were non-Lutheran Christians—a fact I mention only because later in his career some people (including Bertrand Russell) seem to have assumed that he was Jewish. As far I can tell from Dawson’s book, there was no indication in the family of any special genius for mathematics (this, by the way, was also true in Einstein’s family), although the young Gödel was, as one might expect, an excellent student. He also began early on to exhibit the kind of detachment and withdrawal that would characterize his adult life.

In 1924, Gödel entered the University of Vienna. It was his intention to study physics, but after a couple of years he gravitated toward mathematics, in part because of a gifted teacher, Hans Hahn, who was one of the founding members of the “Vienna Circle”—a group of brilliant scientists and philosophers who had taken it upon themselves to rid science of “metaphysics.” Gödel attended some of the meetings of the Circle but apparently said very little, probably because he vehemently disagreed with its positivistic approach. Gödel was then, and remained, a Platonist in mathematics: mathematical entities, he thought, have a reality which we do not create but rather discover. I suspect he was not disappointed when his theorems showed there was more to mathematics than what could be generated by logical deduction from axioms.

In 1910, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead had published a monumental treatise, Principia Mathematica. The title was not accidental: it echoed in part the title Newton gave to his treatise—the one that laid the foundations of the science of mechanics for the next two-and-a-half centuries. What Russell and Whitehead thought they had done was, similarly, to lay out a set of axioms and principles from which every true statement in mathematics could be derived; but the program of their Principia lasted only about twenty years. In those years, mathematicians like David Hilbert asked whether one could show that the axioms were actually consistent as well as “complete”—in other words, that every true proposition necessarily had a formal proof. Hilbert himself (to say nothing of Russell and Whitehead) thought the answer was yes.3

It is not clear what exactly inspired Gödel to study the completeness question. There were hints that Hilbert might be wrong, but it took Gödel to demonstrate it, as he did in his Ph.D. thesis. He was in his mid-twenties, about the same age as Einstein when he showed that Newton’s Principia was wrong.

Neither then nor later did Gödel feel that he had exposed some kind of inherent limitation of the human mind. What he showed, rather, was that mathematics was not a logic machine. Some years later, the British mathematical logician Alan Turing refrained Gödel’s results by translating them into the language of such a machine—namely, an abstract computer whose properties Turing himself defined. This was not a real machine of tubes and wires, but in principle it could perform any computation a real machine could perform. Turing found that in using his “machine” to explore an arithmetic net of inferences, there were necessarily some propositions for which the computing procedure might never terminate. For these propositions, the machine would go on grinding forever without letting the user know if they were ultimately true or false. This became known as the “halting problem.”4

Not long afterward, Gödel showed that among the undecidable propositions (as I noted earlier) was the consistency of the system itself. This finding, which was as much a surprise to him as it was to everyone else, introduced a completely new way of looking at mathematical systems.

On the face of it, to ask whether a system is inconsistent sounds as if we were standing outside the system and noting its properties. Gödel’s genius was to encode such a question within the system itself. He devised a method of attaching numbers—“Gödel numbers”—to formulas and hence to the strings of formulas that comprise a logical deduction. Any proof that the system was consistent would then be represented by a single number. But Gödel’s ingenious translation of formulas into numbers showed that this final number states its own nonexistence. Since it cannot exist, the consistency of the system cannot be proved.5

The reaction to these results was, at first, mixed. Hilbert was very disturbed, but he was also too good a mathematician not to come to realize that Gödel was right. John von Neumann, about Gödel’s age and one of the quickest mathematicians who ever lived, had also been working on the consistency of mathematical systems when he learned that Gödel beat him to a proof of undecidability. Not long afterward, von Neumann emigrated to the United States; he became one of the first professors at the Institute for Advanced Study and, when it came time in the late 30’s for Gödel himself to emigrate, instrumental in finding him a home there.

_____________

In 1933, Gödel made his first visit to the Institute to deliver a series of lectures. Upon his return to Vienna in 1934, he underwent the first of his nervous breakdowns, a subject Dawson treats with sensitivity and compassion.

Right from the start, Gödel’s psychological disorders were mixed up with physical ones. Before he entered the Pukersdorf Sanitorium near Vienna he suffered an inflammation of the jawbone, traceable, it seems, to a bad tooth. Gödel accused his dentist of infecting him, perhaps deliberately. For the rest of his life, he was sure that doctors of all kinds were conspiring against him, and as his real physical problems increased, his paranoia kept him from seeking adequate treatment.

In 1934 Gödel was seen by an eminent psychiatrist, Julius Wagner Jauregg, who concluded that his breakdown was a consequence of overwork and recommended a brief stay in a spa. Considering the mental prodigies Gödel had just accomplished, the diagnosis seemed plausible enough; but a year later, he was back in a sanatorium suffering from depression. Still, he managed to make a second trip to the United States, during which—and this, too, was characteristic—he was as brilliant and, at least as far as mathematics was concerned, as lucid as ever.

One of the things that surely saved him over the years was his relationship with the woman who eventually became his wife. Her name was Adele Thusnelda Porkert. She was six years older than Gödel, and when they met she was already married—unhappily. Although she professed to have once been a ballet dancer, at the time of their meeting she was employed as a dancer in a Viennese night club. What this meant in reality is unclear, but to Gödel’s family she was little better than a prostitute, and his brother and his mother—his father had died in 1929—vehemently opposed his interest in Adele. By the mid-1930’s, however, he and the now-divorced Adele were traveling together, and in 1938 they married.

In the wedding picture reproduced in Dawson’s book, Adele is blonde and rather pretty-looking, while Gödel appears almost sleek—dark horn-rimmed glasses and all. But when, two years later, the economist Oskar Morgenstern met Adele in Princeton, he would confide to his diary that she was a “Viennese washerwoman type: garrulous, uncultured, strong-willed.” Be that as it may, she seems to have been able to deal with Gödel’s paranoia, tasting his food to reassure him it had not been poisoned and listening patiently to his complaints about how the refrigerator was emitting poison gas.

On March 12, 1938, German troops entered Austria and were greeted with joy and open arms by the population. It is difficult to assess the nature of Gödel’s reaction. Insofar as he said anything, it was oddly detached, but whether this reflected his true feelings or was a form of self-protection cannot be easily judged.

The Nazis running the Austrian educational system were themselves uncertain as to how to deal with Gödel. Against him was the fact that his thesis had been supervised by a Jew—Hans Hahn. On the other hand, he seemed completely apolitical. The authorities never quite trusted him. In the meantime, von Neumann and others were trying to secure a non-quota visa to the United States, without which the German authorities would not allow him to leave Austria.

During this period, Gödel was beaten up on the street by Nazi thugs who took him for a Jew, and it became imperative for him to leave. Finally, in January 1940, the Gödels were able to emigrate, taking the trans-Siberian railroad from Berlin and then a ship from Yokahama to San Francisco, where they arrived in March.

_____________

It is a curious fact about Gödel’s relation to the Institute that, despite his being one of the greatest mathematicians of this century, he was not given a permanent professorship until 1953. Nor did Princeton University confer an honorary doctorate on him until 1975, well after he had received all sorts of other honors elsewhere and was anyway beyond the point of caring; he did not even bother attending the award ceremony. What lay behind this shabby treatment may simply have been academic politics of the usual, viperish kind. In any event, a more interesting facet of Gödel’s stay at Princeton was his relationship with Albert Einstein.

It is hard to imagine two people less alike. Whatever revisionist notions have been advanced in recent years about Einstein’s character, no one has accused him of paranoia. There radiated from him a supreme sense of self-confidence and serenity. Physically, too, he and Gödel were totally dissimilar. Einstein impressed many people as a very powerful man: C.P. Snow, who visited him in the late 1930’s, thought he resembled a retired rugby player. Gödel, by contrast, looked as if he would blow away in a strong wind. Finally, Einstein never had much interest in pure mathematics, and even less in academic philosophy. For him these were simply useful tools for unlocking the secrets of the “Old One”—his playful reference to God.

Nonetheless, the two men became very close. Einstein, along with Morgenstern, and to a lesser extent von Neumann, took it upon himself to look after Gödel. Among other things, Dawson suggests that Einstein may have been attracted by Gödel’s ability to adopt some apparently outrageous position and defend it by means of intricate logical argument. It is also possible that in some sense Einstein enjoyed Gödel’s “craziness.”

Two anecdotes suggest as much. Both are in Dawson’s book, though I myself heard the first one from the horse’s mouth—in this case, Ernst Straus, Einstein’s last mathematical assistant. At the Einstein Centennial meeting in Princeton in 1979, Straus recalled how, just after the presidential election of 1952, Einstein burst into his office to announce that Gödel had now gone completely mad: he had voted for Eisenhower!

What Straus did not describe—and this is the second anecdote—were the circumstances that made it possible for Gödel to vote at all. In December 1947, Gödel went for his citizenship hearings in Trenton, New Jersey. He was accompanied by Einstein and Morgenstern. But there was a problem: Gödel had detected a logical flaw in the American Constitution, and was quite capable—so his friends feared—of refusing to swear allegiance to a country so deficient. On the way, Einstein tried to distract Gödel by telling all sorts of stories, but it was like trying to stop a train with a Q-Tip. Fortunately, the presiding judge in Trenton was the same man who had sworn Einstein in as a citizen a few years earlier, and the minute Gödel began his disquisition he made it clear he was not interested in the famous mathematician’s logical dilemma. In fact, Gödel later described this judge as an “especially sympathetic person.”

Aside from all this, Einstein was impressed that Gödel had made a significant discovery in the theory of relativity—something the textbooks now refer to as the “Gödel universe.” Gödel claimed that he was led to his discovery by reading Immanuel Kant on the nature of time. Whatever the source, he hit upon a new solution to Einstein’s cosmological equations, according to which the whole universe rotates and it is possible, therefore, to travel backward in time. Whether this universe of Gödel’s has any connection with our own is another question.

A final anecdote, in connection with this discovery: a few years ago, the Princeton physicist John Wheeler told me that in the 1970’s he and two junior colleagues decided to pay a little visit to Gödel. Although it was a nice spring day, they found him in his office wearing an overcoat and with the heater on. Gödel wanted to know if in the course of their work they had found any evidence for the rotation of the galaxies, and was disappointed to learn they had not even considered the possibility. It turns out that Gödel was trying to find his own evidence by consulting a standard source—probably The Hubble Atlas of Galaxies—and measuring angles with an ordinary ruler. Just to complete the story, Wheeler also told me that years later he ran into a man at the Institute who was going through page after page of these hieroglyphs to figure out what they signified, in preparation for a biography of Gödel; it was Dawson, of course.

Dawson ends his book wondering if anyone could make a drama out of Gödel’s life as one was made from the life of Alan Turing. But Turing’s life was a drama. He helped to crack the German Enigma code during World War II; he was a homosexual who was convicted under the Gross Indecency Act; and he later committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple. If there is drama in Gödel’s life, it lies in the narrow path he threaded between genius and insanity. Suffering greatly, he left an intellectual legacy—an entirely new way of looking at mathematical truth—to be pondered forever.

Footnotes

Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel. A.K. Peters, 361 pp., $49.95.

Fragmentary conversations with Gödel by the late mathematical logician Hao Wang have just been published under the title A Logical Journey (MIT Press, 391 pp., $40.00), but these hardly count as a biography.

This whole subject is nicely reviewed in Dawson’s book, though the nonspecialist who finds it hard-going might profitably consult Douglas Hofstadter’s 1980 volume, Gödel, Escher, and Bach, a less scholarly but somewhat more “user-friendly” approach to the issues.

On account of such phenomena, some commentators see a relation between Gödel’s incompleteness theorems in mathematics and Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principles in quantum mechanics. This, however, is not only befuddled but deeply ironic, since Gödel, like Einstein, did not believe in quantum mechanics.

The Gödel number that states its own nonexistence is an extremely sophisticated example of the self-referential paradox, of a sort that has been known since the ancient Greeks. Perhaps the most famous involves the Cretan carrying a sign, “All Cretans are liars.” Is this Cretan a liar?

[dimensionhoppingrose]

In My Veins (17/20)

Title: In My Veins Rating: K+ Pairing: Ten/Rose, human AU Summary: –Telepathic bond soulmate AU– Everyone kept saying kids couldn’t develop telepathic bonds, that it was completely impossible. John Smith and Rose Tyler defied the impossible.

Notes: Well I finally managed to hash out a soulmate AU enough to be happy with writing it. All the blame for this entire story goes to @lastbluetardis​, who not only encouraged it, but also allowed me to yell at her about it until I was happy enough to start writing it. Blame her entirely.

Read it on A03

Catch up on Tumblr

John: 19

Rose: 17

I’m an idiot.

John looked up from his textbook, frowning. You are not. What’s wrong?

I don’t know. Rose sighed, and John had a feeling she was dropping her head on her desk. I thought this A-level thing was a good idea but now I’m not so sure.

Of course it was, John said at once. You’re brilliant.

I don’t feel brilliant, Rose said dismally. I feel like an idiot.

Why don’t I come over this weekend and help you study? I bet I can help you even more in person. Especially since they’d probably have to study in full view of her parents, making it impossible for them to get distracted. Rose giggled a bit at his train of thought.

Yeah, that might be good.

* * * * * * * *

Jackie and Pete were gone when John got to Rose’s on Saturday, but they had still given John full permission to come over, since he was helping Rose study — as long as they stayed in the living room. Tony had been in the living room, but Rose had kicked him out when he kept trying to talk to John about video games.

“He’s here to help me, not you. Get lost.”

Tony stuck his tongue out at Rose before leaving, and they returned their attention to Rose’s books, spread out over the coffee table.

“I’m an idiot,” Rose sighed after a few minutes. John kissed her temple.

“You are not, shush,” he scolded her gently. Rose frowned, staring intently at the books.

“What if I fail?” She asked quietly after a minute. “What if I can’t get into any universities?”

“Then… you can try again. Or if you want, you don’t have to try again. You can just… get a job. If you want a job. I doubt your parents would make you get one.” Honestly, it was a miracle Rose and Tony were as well-grounded as they were. Pete and Jackie were good about not spoiling them too much, but Tony was the same age John had been when he had gotten his first job, and there was no way in hell Tony was going to go out and tutor people for pocket money. John was sure if Rose didn’t want to get a job right away, Pete would be more than happy to pay for things for her.

“But if I don’t get into university…” Rose’s voice drifted off, and John tilted his head, frowning.

“Then what?”

Rose struggled with the words for a moment before finally giving up and just reaching out to John with her mind, letting him feel everything. John knew she had a lot of insecurities, but she was good at tucking them behind a wall and never letting John too close.

But he felt it now. He felt her worries. She was so afraid of not being good enough for John. She was afraid he would be bored with her because she wasn’t as smart as him.

She was scared he was going to leave her.

“Hey…”

He took her hand and pulled her into a tight hug, kissing the top of her head. “You are smart, first of all. Your biggest problem is that you get psyched up and anxious. But being smart isn’t what makes you good enough.”

“Easy for you to say,” Rose muttered; it would’ve been hard for John to miss the flash of resentment that went through her at those words. “You’re brilliant.”

“Yeah, okay, fine, I’m good at school,” John ceded. “That doesn’t make me a good person. A good person is kind, they care about others, they want to help and take care of others. Being a good person isn’t dictated by your A-levels or if you even went to university.”

Rose sighed, snuggling into John’s chest for a minute. “Yeah,” she mumbled finally. “I know. I’m sorry. I sound like a brat.”

“No, you sound frustrated,” John disagreed, pulling back to look down at Rose. “And I get that. I do. But you gotta give yourself more credit. And stop being so hard on yourself if you don’t get something right away. You’re your own biggest enemy.”

“Okay. Okay.” Rose took a deep breath, sighing. “Come on, let’s get back to work.”

John leaned in to kiss Rose before they started again. He knew she was worried. He knew she was insecure. And he knew he was at least part of the reason for that.

So he did his best to pour every bit of love and affection he felt for Rose into that kiss, and into her mind. He loved her, wholly and completely, no matter what.

And he wanted her to know that.

The kiss ended quite abruptly when they heard the front door open, and quickly pulled apart. Not that they were doing anything, but they still knew Jack and Pete wouldn’t appreciate walking in on their daughter and her boyfriend making out when they were supposed to be studying.

* * * * * * * *

“So I think I’m gonna move back with Sarah Jane for the summer, and try to find an apartment in London that won’t completely bankrupt me for the school year.”

“I bet if I asked Dad he would help you pay for an apartment,” Rose said thoughtfully, and John made a face.

“I don’t really want to ask your dad for money. Especially since they already half think I’m some kind of gold digger.”

“I think Dad’s starting to come around.” At the very least, he seemed happy that John seemed willing to spend so much time helping Rose study. “And I mean, I’m going to live there too in less than a year, so he’ll want to make sure you’re not anywhere too dangerous.”

John’s expression went slack at that, and Rose could feel him mentally floundering. “Oh. R-Right. Yeah. Um. I’ll make sure I get a decent place, we don’t have to bother your dad for money.”

Rose made a face. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing. You should probably get some sleep, it’s late.”

“No, what’s wrong?” Rose demanded, trying to stamp down on the anxiety that was threatening to fill her. “Do you not want to live with me?”

“No, I do!” John said quickly, and Rose believed him. “I just, um… we um… we’ve never really been… alone, ya know?”

“Yeah, it’ll be great,” Rose said at once. “Right?”

“I… I just… um…”

He waved his hands nervously, and for the first time… ever, really, Rose realized he was anxious and nervous. That was new.

“What’s wrong?”

John ducked his head, and it was hard to tell with the bad camera quality, but Rose was pretty sure he was blushing. We’ve never really been… alone, ya know?

Yeah, you mentioned that. Rose wasn’t sure why he had switched to the bond, but she wasn’t going to call him on it.

So we’ve never, um… ya know… um… He was waving his hands again; his mind going a mile a minute, and Rose couldn’t keep up. We’ve never… done anything more than… ya know, kiss.

Yeah, I know — oh. Sex. He was talking about sex. John was definitely blushing now. Do you… do you want to have sex?

Not… Not really. That’s the thing. I don’t really want… I mean, I love you! He must have felt the sudden spike of worry that went through Rose’s head. I just… I’m not… really interested in sex, I guess. Like, it’s not something I care about. I’ve never even, um…

He waved his hand again, clearly too uncomfortable to say the words, but Rose got the gist of it. Okay, she said quietly. I mean, if you don’t want sex, we don’t have to have sex. As long as we’re together, that’s all that matters, right?

The relief that flooded through John was immediate; his blush disappeared, and he beamed. Yeah. Being together is all that matters.

His smile was infectious. Rose grinned as well, giggling a bit.

God, she loved him.

* * * * * * * *

“Um… Mum? Dad?”

Pete and Jackie looked over at Rose, a bit surprised. Rose was rocking back and forth, hands clasped behind her back. She was nervous. It had gotten easier to talk to her parents about John. But she knew this particular topic was going to upset them.

“Can I talk to you about something?”

They recognized that voice. That was her ‘this is going to involve John’ voice. “Of course, sweetheart.” Jackie paused the movie they were watching, and Rose stepped into the living room, sitting down in the arm chair across from the couch.

“So um… you… you know when I turn eighteen, I’m moving out, right?” She had thought it was obvious — of course she would move in with John as soon as she was able. But after the conversation with John, she was worried. What if they hadn’t realized it?

“We… suspected, yes,” Pete replied. Jackie’s jaw clenched noticeably. Rose tried not to be too put off by it. “I suppose John will be looking for a place to live.”

“Yeah, he’s going to go back to his aunt’s for the summer and find somewhere to live for the start of the school year,” Rose said. “But um… he doesn’t have a lot of money, you know.”

Rose! It had taken longer than Rose had thought for John to catch on to what she was doing. Rose frowned.

It’s not just for you. It’s for me, too. They’ll be happier if I’m somewhere they approve of. And I’ll be happier because they’re happier. And you’ll be happier because maybe they won’t hate you. Everyone will be happier.

“Arguing with him?” Pete guessed. Rose rubbed the back of her head, sighing a bit.

“He doesn’t want me to talk to you about this,” Rose admitted. Now you know how it feels.

That’s low.

“If John wants help,” Pete said slowly, “we can discuss it with him. Especially if you’re going to be living with him someday soon. But that’s a conversation we’d like to have with him, not through you.”

Rose had to struggle not to smile. See? I told you. I think they’re starting to like you.

Let’s not get crazy here.

“I’ll talk to him about it.” Rose blew out a long breath before quietly adding, “Thank you. I know you don’t… entirely approve of all of this.”

Another look went between Jackie and Pete. “We want you to be happy, sweetheart,” Jackie finally said. “That’s all we’ve ever wanted. I hope you understand.”

“I do.” It was hard to believe sometimes with the way they acted, but in a lot of ways Rose did know it. They just… all had different ideas what would make Rose happy.

Rose stood, crossing the living room to kiss each of her parents and hug them both.

“Thank you.”

* * * * * * * *

I’m an idiot.

John sighed, looking up from his textbook. You are not. You’re just getting down on yourself again.

It’s kind of hard not to get down on myself when I’m an idiot.

Hey, John said firmly, frowning. Listen to me. You are not an idiot. Your self esteem just sucks, and you’re too hard on yourself. Why don’t we take a break from studying for a bit? Go do something you’re good at, get your mind off things.

Right. Sure. What am I good at again?

Flute. Go play your flute.

Rose sighed, but her attention turned to getting her flute and music out. A few moments later, the gentle sound of music drifted down the bond, and John smiled a bit. He knew focusing on music for a bit would help Rose get her mind off her worries.

And it was nice for him, too. Listening to Rose play was always a highlight of his day.

You know, Rose said thoughtfully after a minute. When we live together, you’ll have to listen to me play all the time. In person. Especially if I major in music. You might get sick of it after a while.

Never, John said instantly and sincerely. He couldn’t imagine any scenario where he got sick of listening to Rose play.

He couldn’t imagine any scenario where he got sick of anything Rose said or did.

Sap, Rose said, catching on to that train of thought. John laughed a bit.

But I’m your sap.