Chapter Text
Newt hopes it isn't creepy to google the guy who's one of the best things ever to happen to you-- although, even if it isn't, he's spent so long searching for and poring over every mention he can find of Dr. Hermann Gottlieb that he may have crossed the line.
Hermann's barely older than he is, a mathematician and aspiring physicist from TU Berlin, and Newt feels an odd mix of emotions at the knowledge that Hermann is living in the city where Newt had been born, where most correspondence from his mother is postmarked from. Where she returned to after leaving him with his dad and going off to reconcile with her old husband... It was weird to think that Hermann might pass his mom on the street and never know who she was.
Judging by the articles, Newt guesses Hermann could understand having complicated feelings about a parent. There wasn't a single mention of Hermann and his career that didn't mention Dr. Lars Gottlieb at least once. Lars Gottlieb and his forceful personality, his forceful intellect, his legacy in the person of his middle son... Hermann looks pinched and tired in photographs, and awkward, looks like he's been dressed up to look the part of an academic and made to pose too long, and Newt feels for the guy, but he also can't help noticing Hermann's eyelashes, his sharp cheekbones and the shape of his mouth.
Thinking about Hermann's situation makes Newt feel like not pursuing music was probably for the best, because he can just imagine if every mention of him ever came with a reminder of how accomplished his mother was and how beautiful her voice is, how beautiful she is. Hell, probably also a mention of how his uncle had basically engineered and created an entire Sound. Probably a name-drop of all the people who clamored to work with him that were more famous and successful than Newt would ever be. At least in academia, he doesn't have to worry about that.
Hermann supports his more out-there ideas, even as he encourages him to think critically and to move forward with caution when presenting any work. He acts as a sounding board, and Newt does his best to do the same whenever Hermann needs to work through a problem on his end. Most importantly, Hermann shares his passion, in learning as much as possible about the kaiju, something no one at MIT really does. Not the same way that Newt cares about them. The whole world may share an anxious, fearful occupation with them ever since Trespasser, but Hermann is the only person Newt knows whose passion for discovery and understanding matches his own.
Outside of his own fields of study, Hermann is into computers, and admits to being good with them in a humble kind of way, but professes to have little understanding of the 'squishy' sciences. It's an assertion he had made without condescension, and he's done some outside reading to help him understand Newt's work, and Newt loves that. He doesn't have many friends outside of the biology department-- if he's honest, he doesn't have that many within the biology department-- just because he's never been able to carry on much of a relationship with anyone he couldn't enthuse about his work to, and it means a lot that Hermann actually studies up on biology so that he can dig everything Newt writes about, so that he can follow Newt's progress with artificial tissue and know what's really going on. Newt really wants to return the favor there, and he feels like he can get a lot about space, but not so much about the higher math, and where Hermann knows about a machine's brain, Newt's more familiar with the guts.
Still, they connect. Newt is pretty sure that the two of them could team up to do something awesome, between Hermann's apparent skill writing code and Newt's own abilities in mechanical engineering, skills he learned from his uncle, and learned to apply outside of music as well. If it wasn't for the kaiju, at least, Newt thinks they could... but they have bigger fish to fry, bigger things to put their collective brainpower to.
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It hadn't taken long for Dr. Newton Geiszler to become one of the most important people in Hermann's life... and a rather intimidating one, in some ways. Hermann is still trying to work towards his PhD in physics, he's barely a doctor of maths, newly-minted, and Newton, a year younger, is already teaching at MIT, already working on an exciting research project replicating artificial tissue... It's groundbreaking, with real-world applications, and Hermann hasn't accomplished anything like that yet.
He tries to remind himself that very few people his age have PhDs at all, and that mathematics is a field where getting through the process as quickly as he had is rare, that many people don't make it through the process at all... but ever since he'd learned that Newton was a year younger, he's felt a little dazzled by him. A little surprised to have his opinions wanted and valued by a man who was clearly beyond brilliant.
And yet, Newton seeks his opinions out and it sounds in the letters as though he really does listen.
It's Newton who values bravery, where Hermann has always relied upon caution. Hermann isn't sure which it is he errs on the side of, when he follows his father to a job working with the PPDC. It means putting his academic career on hold, but it puts him closer. Closer to the kaiju problem, maybe closer to some answers. He wishes that he could tell Newt everything. The non-disclosure agreements are long and the penalties severe, and so he can't tell about the real world giant robots that he's helping to code, he can't even say that he's writing code for the PPDC at all, and that alone would be exciting enough news.
When his stint coding ends, he has choices. Work as his father's assistant, work at his PhD... or enlist himself in the brand new Jaeger academy. He won't be a Ranger-- he knows that much straight off. But there's a whole field of kaiju study-- K-Science-- where he could work, where he could gather data to really predict not only the timing of the attacks, but maybe even the outcomes, the locations... maybe finally find out just where the kaiju are coming from and how to put a stop to it. There's so much he could do if he was just on the inside, and this is the one way to do it. The academy is still mandatory for anyone who isn't asked on by the PPDC, regardless of where they intend to do their part.
At least with any luck, he could turn any physics work he did for the K-Sci department into a dissertation. That's the thing he keeps telling himself, when his brain threatens to completely lose itself at the thought of quitting his academic progress. Besides, what good would a PhD in physics even do him, if the world was ending?
It's definitely bravery and not caution that drives him to enroll in the academy. He's never felt more excited to have news to write to Newton with.
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Dear Dr. Geiszler, PhD,
Newton, I have news. I'm sure by now you've heard about the Jaeger program and the academy, and if you haven't, I'm enclosing some links to articles and to the official site. I've been unable to talk about the work I was contracted to do for the PPDC, and it has been difficult to keep quiet in our letters. It's been so exciting to be a part of this, and I feel like I have so much more to contribute.
I'm going into the academy. I want to work in the PPDC's sciences. There's a lot to be learned and to be done, and the atmosphere is so invigorating getting to be on the cutting edge of it all. It's going to be hard work, and I admit I am nervous about it. It would be hard not to be. But everything is going to be so worth it if I can keep working with the PPDC. Everything I've played with so far using the data publicly available is just a fraction of what I'll be able to do once I'm working with the mathematicians and physicists in the K-Science department.
I'm shipping out to Alaska soon. I wanted you to be one of the first to know, and to know about all of it.
Newton, K-Science isn't all math and physics-- they need biologists who can figure out just how the kaiju operate. I can't imagine anyone has put as much thought into the subject as you have. The academy training is, I think, more a formality for those in science and technology, to help make us all part of the greater unit, or something like that. I've been assured that failing to meet the physical challenges won't see me dismissed from the program, it's more the spirit of the thing. I don't know how it will go. I am nervous. But this is where I feel I need to be. And maybe it's where you need to be, as well.
Think about it. I know you've been itching to get your hands on 'real' samples and that the bone slides that Stanford sent to you at MIT only made you hungrier for more. You could have that, if you could come with me.
Very sincerely yours,
Dr. Hermann Gottlieb, PhD
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Hermann,
DUDE. I'm a little incoherent right now, but dude.
This is amazing. I read over the links three times each, I can't even. My hands are shaking, for reals shaking.
I can't leave this project now. There's another year before I can, and artificial tissue is seriously a big deal to me right now, if it wasn't I'd drop it in a heartbeat to get to look at some real kaiju pieces. But with Kaiju Blue leading to massive organ failure and sufferers being written off of donor lists completely...
I mean fuck, if I could just keep a tank full of kidneys, you know? Of lungs or livers or even hearts. If we could get working organs that wouldn't be rejected by weakened host bodies, we could give more people a chance at staying alive long enough to find a cure, and that's something... Look, maybe it's a pipe dream. But even if it is, there are so many other medical applications for what I'm doing on that I can't leave the project until this phase wraps.
I mean, I kind of know I'm just dreaming, about a lot of things, but dreams get us someplace better than we used to be, even the dreams that can't come true. Shoot for the moon and at least you'll land in the stars, right? Well, no, you probably want to tell me about how that's completely backwards, but what's wrong with shooting for the stars and landing on the moon? It's still good.
But you KNOW as soon as I can I'm THERE.
-*Newt*
PS can't believe you're still so formal even when I can tell you must've been shaking with excitement too. You don't have to address every email you send me all formal, we're on a first-name basis.