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Meet the Men Who Saved the World
(That no one else is talking about.)
We all know about Becket and Mori, the Last Rangers of Hong Kong and the late Marshall Stacker Pentecost. But Doctors Hermann Gottlieb and Newton Geiszler might be two you haven’t heard about until now. And when you hear their story, you’ll wonder how it ever stayed a secret for so long.
By Arlo Rhodes, New York Times Magazine
Typography and Illustration by Candace Victoire
[On the right side of the opening spread, a full-page, full-length photograph of both scientists, standing side by side. Doctor Gottlieb is dressed in a conservative, classic grey wool suit, white shirt and fastidious tie. His chin is lifted, and he stares almost down his nose at the camera. His cane is propped in front of him with his right hand resting on the handle, and his other is held behind his back, in a posture evoking parade rest, or perhaps a balletic pause. To his left, Doctor Geiszler stands facing fully frontwards, feet planted shoulder-width apart. He is wearing a vest and matching trousers, a white button-down beneath. The buttons are undone to his suprasternal notch and the sleeves are rolled up, both places revealing the swirling ink of his tattoos. His thumbs are hooked in his front pockets, displaying his forearms, and his head is tipped slightly forward – he stares directly out at the viewer from behind his thick-framed glasses, the suggestion of a playful smirk on his face. Both men are dressed and posed to deliberately mirror one another, but the images they strike could not be more disparate.]
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Rangers work in tandem: this has been the standard since the early days of the Jaeger Program, at the beginning of the Kaiju War. Rare it was that two people matched minds and physicality precisely enough that they were able to become one inside the infamous Drift, become more than the sum of their parts in order to maneuver the titanic Jaegers with all the customary grace and brutality. These exceptional duos became the post on which every nation hung their hope. In interviews and videos, it was plain to see the way in which they would move and speak in sometimes eerie synchronicity. So on first learning of the fateful (and frankly terrifying) Drift shared by Doctor Newton Geiszler and Doctor Hermann Gottlieb, late of the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps Kaiju-Science Division, one expects them to finish each other’s sentences and mirror each other’s posture.
Assuredly, when it comes to this pair, that is absolutely and unequivocally not the case.
Geiszler and Gottlieb do not so much finish each other’s sentences as step on their tail ends, eager to refute or clarify or argue on whatever topic is at hand. They are by their very presence an illustrative mnemonic for the right and left brain: Geiszler, with his tattoos and slang and general disarray as the former, and Gottlieb’s steadfast and rigid orderliness of speech and appearance the latter.
On a brisk, breezy day in late winter, doctors Geiszler, 36, and Gottlieb, 37, are ensconced in the warmth of a small, mid-century styled café hidden away from the bustle of the East Village. They are in New York for just a few days consulting with the Center for Drift Research and Technology, part of their ongoing contract with the newly-restructured PPDC. The setting seems at odds somehow with both men, and yet they fit comfortably here; perhaps that is the very reason why they do. They are already in the thick of an animated argument, and it is plain to hear that it has been going on for some time, days perhaps. The atmosphere between them is charged as they throw out well-worn barbs, their ripostes encompassing everything from their proofing methods to the music they were playing in the lab when a certain result was reached. But there is no hint at all of hostility; the two are sharp and smart and scathing at regular turns, but they sit together, close to each other on the banquette side of the table, and share at intervals weighted looks that give the impression of saying more than words could.
Geiszler greets me first, springing to his feet and capturing my hand in a double-fisted handshake held a slight moment too long. Gottlieb is far more genteel, though not as warm, offering his hand across the table as I sit and curtly apologizing for not rising at my appearance. A server comes, bringing a refill of coffee for Geiszler and another pot of hot water for Gottlieb’s tea.
“I remember the first time I did one of these,” Geiszler says, referring to the interview at hand. “I was like 14, I think? I’d just graduated from MIT and got accepted into their doctorate program. It was kind of a mess, because I could never shut up and just kept talking and talking about god knows what kind of junk.”
“You still can’t shut up,” Gottlieb interjects. “And you still generally talk about junk.”
The two are no strangers to being pondered over by the public at large. Both child prodigies, the spotlight shone bright on their early achievements. In a stunning twist, both agree that the media frenzy is quite unique in America – but the concurrence is short-lived, as they have, predictably, wildly diverging opinions on exactly how they feel about that.
“It was different in Germany,” Gottlieb says. “There wasn’t so much invasiveness about your private life. You were recognized for what you put out into the world for recognition, and that was it.”
“I loved it, though,” Geiszler counters. “I’m s—t at making friends, so I felt like it kind of helped when people read about me in an article and then saw me at school, so they at least could be like ‘yo, there’s that kid – you know a lot about dinosaurs, right?’”
At this point Gottlieb mumbles something about patronization. Geiszler, notably, does not disagree. Still, the need to stand apart and be known before a single word is spoken is apparent in Geiszler’s ostentatious trendiness, and his controversial choice of ink.
“[Interviewers] always asks about the tattoos first,” Geiszler says flippantly, but it is clear he is eager to show them off. He moves to begin unbuttoning his shirt in the middle of the café, and only stops when Gottlieb threatens to smack him with his cane. Instead, he rolls up his sleeves and points out as many as he can by pulling his collar aside, and settling to show the rest in a series of photos on his phone. They are truly impressive in their intricacy – if grotesque and distasteful by some standards – but they obviously hold deep meaning for the doctor.
“It’s not an idealization thing,” he explains with the air and tone of someone who has had to do so many times over. “It’s closer to fascination, a commemoration of a sort.”
Geiszler’s infatuation with the Kaiju predates even K-Day. In his childhood he was always a fan of the classic monster movie, alien invasions from above and creatures that rose up from beneath. One could also arguably trace Gottlieb’s current-day vocational calling to his early love of astrophysics.
“Far be it for me to espouse a belief in destiny, but I do believe in self-fulfilling prophecy,” Gottlieb says. “It’s all statistics and patterns, really. I had a shelf filled with science fiction books about spaceships and robots, and if you ask Newton about it I’m sure he will admit to wearing out more than one VHS of In einem Land vor unserer Zeit.”
“Guilty,” Geiszler says, holding up his hands in surrender.
Not destiny, but perhaps a significant coincidence: both scientists happen to be German nationals, though neither call the country home. Geiszler moved from Berlin to Boston with his father and uncle when he was a child, and Gottlieb left Garmish-Partenkirchen for Oxford, where his mother hails from, after earning his doctorate at TU Berlin.
Dig far enough into the trove of the internet and you can unearth pictures and articles of a young Geiszler, as small and gawky as any teen would be, except in his case the braces and acne are bracketed by cap and stole, and displayed as prominently as the diploma clutched in front of him, proclaiming Newton Geiszler as a PhD in biology. In the following six years, Geiszler would go on to earn an incredible five more advanced degrees, including another doctorate in electronic engineering. He was the second-youngest graduate of MIT, and his voraciousness in academic achievements remains unmatched. When asked how he managed the focus and discipline for one doctorate at such a young age, let alone multiple PhDs before his 21st birthday, Geiszler merely laughs.
“The ADHD helped a lot,” he says. It is unclear if he is joking or not.
In contrast, there can be found little photographic documentation of Gottlieb’s early academic life. One rare image found depicts Gottlieb at an age close to Geiszler’s graduation photograph, standing solemnly in front of an expanse of whiteboard covered every inch in careful numerals, formulas, shapes and equations making sense only to minds as superior as his. By his teens, the photos and articles focus mainly on the work he was doing in concert with his father. Even then he looks much like he does in the present day: modestly dressed in understated wool and tweed, an air of amortality about him – his youth apparent despite his staid deportment. Absent then however is his ever-present cane, only showing up when he reaches his early twenties. Gottlieb gives a terse explanation that his injury was a result of an accident and that he does not wish to speak about it, and thus not to expect him to divulge.
Gottlieb is also particularly reticent about his family life. As many have by now realized, Gottlieb’s father is in fact Dr. Lars Gottlieb, the infamous scientist and architect who has faced international public disgrace as the most vocal and steadfast proponent of the $20 billion failure that was the Pacific Perimeter Program (better known as the Wall of Life Project). They have been estranged since 2020, when their formerly antagonistic relationship finally ended in an as-yet permanent rift over the younger Gottlieb’s continued support of the (then waning) Jaeger Program. On this topic, even the unfailingly garrulous Geiszler clams up in respect to his partner. After a deep scowl and a deeper sigh, Gottlieb finally speaks up.
“He is an old man, set in old ways,” Gottlieb says. “It is strange, for a German especially, to think that the solution to anything would be to build a wall against it. It is not the only place in which my beliefs and my father’s diverge, but it has been by far the most contentious.”
While on the topic of having a well-known parent while being distinguished in your own right, I ask Geiszler about his mother, who happens to be noteworthy German opera singer and musician Monica Schwartz.
“Man, you’re not pulling any punches, huh?” Geiszler laughs. “We’ve got that in common, Herms and I, the parent issues.” His deflective smile fades into something more rueful. “Honestly, I don’t really know her all that well. We’ve spoken only rarely, at my dad’s insistence – never hers. I’ve met her a couple of times in person, but there’s no connection there. She’s a nice lady, don’t get me wrong, and she’s incredibly talented. But I think the best thing she ever did was leave me to be raised by my dad and my uncle. It was a weird situation for everyone, and they just tried to make the best of it. I like to think they succeeded.”
The “weird situation” he refers to is likely the fact that he was conceived when both Schwartz and Geiszler’s father, Jacob, were in marriages to other people.
As impersonal as his relationship with his mother may be, Jacob Geiszler and his brother, Gunter, are typical proud and doting parents.
“I like to say it’s all his fault,” Jacob says, pointing to Gunter, whose face breaks into a wide grin. “He’s the one always used to stay up late watching the monster movies with Newt.”
The Geiszler brothers are sat side by side on a video call. Behind them is a truly stunning array of musical instruments. It’s a wonder, coming from such a musically inclined family that Geiszler didn’t pursue music himself.
“Oh, he always did, though,” Gunter assures me. “I could hardly get him out of my studio when he was a boy.”
Geiszler admits to being able to play seven different instruments fluently: Guitar, drums, saxophone, piano, cello, Autoharp and theremin. Every last one was taught to him by either his father or uncle. When he realized his calling was to be in the sciences instead of music, he saw it as merely a different path to his own goal of super-stardom.
“I always said, like, I know I’m meant to be a rock star, but maybe not in a rock band. It’s a state of mind more than a concrete concept immutable from it’s context.”
“Puerile rubbish,” Gottlieb scoffs, to which Geiszler only raises his eyebrows.
“Tell that to the ladies hacking my tablet and adding their contact info and pictures to my photostream,” Geiszler says, winking rakishly.
At the end of the day however – groupies or not – Geiszler assures me, it’s all about the love of their field. Regardless, he still keeps up with his music, playing often to keep in practice.
While the elder Dr. Gottlieb could not, predictably, be reached for comment, older sister Karla and younger brother Bastien were more than happy to speak their brother’s praises.
“I am the youngest,” Bastien says, “But Hermann was always the little brother in the physical and emotional sense.”
At this, Karla laughs behind her hand. “He will kill you for saying things like that, you know.”
Bastien, in typical brotherly fashion, merely dismisses the thought with a shrug and a mischievous grin. But Karla is herself willing to be quite candid.
“He was always reserved, always lived a richer life of the mind than anything else,” Karla says. “We Gottliebs are infamous for being competitively intelligent, and we were always needing to prove ourselves to our father. When mother died, we were all naturally devastated, but I think Hermann felt that pain more keenly than the rest of us. He felt somehow especially pressed to prove to our father that he was of worth.”
Bastien is quiet for a moment after this, then he speaks. As he does so, it is not to me or the video screen, but to his sister.
“I think the day he realized that no matter what he did, however intelligent he proved himself to be, father wouldn’t ever truly see eye to eye with him – that was the best thing for him.”
Karla nods. “He’ll always hide inside his numbers,” she says. “We all have those sorts of coping mechanisms, for better or worse. But Hermann is the bravest of us. I don’t think he realizes that, even after all he’s done.”
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The two met, believe it or not, through being pen pals – an anachronistic origin for two so poised on the cutting edge of science and technology.
“It was the only way I could find out how to contact him,” Geiszler says. “All I had was a snail-mail address, and then he sent a letter back, and it took us a truly silly amount of time to exchange email addresses, because we were so caught up in it all.”
Before K-Day, Gottlieb had aspirations to enter the Royal Air Force, perhaps eventually becoming part of the Space Program. His injury, and subsequently the attack by Trespasser on San Francisco, changed his goals – especially after catching wind of the Jaeger Project, led by Dr. Caitlin Lightcap and Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld, both acquaintances through his father. Gottlieb lent his exceptional single-minded focus to preparing code for the Neural Bridging Interface (Lightcap’s “Pons” technology), which would eventually evolve into the Operating Program for the Mark I Jaegers.
Concurrently, Geiszler was making waves in the biological community. He built up his notorious reputation being a frequent attendee of rallies and protests standing on the side of the STEM-inists, the influential feminist “hard sciences” collective that successfully lobbied for widened access to stem-cell research in 2017, and again the following year when they helped defeat the bill calling for hardline restrictions on xenobiological datasharing. Geiszler continued in this vein with his radical and inspired hypotheses about the physiology of the Kaiju. His initial blog on the subject of xenobiology still exists in more or less its original form at KaijuBio.info – though it is by no means light reading for anyone not well-versed in the most esoteric parts of the life sciences.
It was Geiszler who contacted Gottlieb first, wanting in-depth information about the engineering that was going into the Jaegers, and what exactly they were meant to accomplish in their offensive against the Kaiju. He offered up his theories and research for Gottlieb’s consideration, and the depth and originality of his ideas caught Gottlieb’s interest like no one’s had before. He wrote back immediately requesting more intricate explication, which Geiszler was only too eager to provide, similarly engaged as he was by Gottlieb’s intellect.
From then, the pair would write veritable dissertations back and forth to each other. Gottlieb remembers receiving a 15-page letter, handwritten front-and-back in Geiszler’s near-indecipherable hand, and answering it with a 20 page letter of his own, complete with diagrams and schematic drawings.
“I still have them,” Geiszler admits, to which Gottlieb looks slightly surprised. Geiszler laughs. “Yeah, dude. They’re all shoved in an old suitcase at my dad’s. Every last one.”
“I kept yours as well,” Gottlieb says, going slightly pink at the ears. Asked where he’s kept them all these years, he reluctantly reveals he’s carried them with him from Shatterdome to Shatterdome, having nowhere else to store his personal effects. His admission earns him a bout of jovial laughter and a jostle of shoulders from Geiszler, and it coaxes a smile out of Gottlieb.
The epistolary friendship continued for nearly three years, until the two had a rare chance to meet in the spring of 2015: Gottlieb was to accompany his father on a trip to Chicago. Geiszler admits to cutting class and taking his father’s car without permission just to make the drive to meet him. And what happened when the two finally met face to face after so many years?
“We hated each other!” Geiszler exclaims. “Well, maybe not hated, but we were definitely turned off in a way that kind of derailed what we were hoping for.”
“He was certainly not what I was expecting at all,” Gottlieb says. “I don’t think either of us were.”
What Geiszler and Gottlieb were hoping for and expecting was not what they got, which was in Geiszler’s words, “a truly epic battle of an argument” about everything from the abstract concepts of scientific discovery to what constituted professional appearance.
Gottlieb tells of being shocked by the incongruous appearance of his friend. At the time, Geiszler had a bright green stripe through his hair, a labret piercing, and the beginnings of what would become his trademark jacket of tattoos. Gottlieb too appeared differently: his leg was still in a corrective brace, and his gait was, as he put it, “embarrassing.”
Looking back, the two realize there were more impediments to their camaraderie than just unexpected physical presentations.
“In letters,” Gottlieb explains, “I could be bold and brash – confident in a way that was hindered when those I engaged in person would become distracted by my leg, either in sympathy, pity or disgust. I was and still am incredibly socially anxious. Conversely, Newton’s thoughts were far more coherent and linear when written down. Reading his ideas and listening to him try to explain them without going shrill with excitement or getting distracted by some obtuse, tortuous tangent are two wholly different animals.”
“Basically, the blind date was a bust,” Geiszler sums up.
They thought it was to be the beginning and end of their acquaintance, but not long after that first unsuccessful meeting they both, independently, joined up with the PPDC and enlisted in the Jaeger Academy: Gottlieb first, in late 2015, and Geiszler the following year.
In its heyday, they headed their own disparate departments: the best and brightest leading the best and brightest from all over the world. Geiszler had twenty-three biologists, chemists and biochemical engineers working under him; Gottlieb had two sub-divisions he was in charge of: six dedicated to mapping out the physics of the Breach, and 12 translating and updating the operating system code for the latest Jaegers and the LOCCENT teams.
“Those first two or three years, we had separate facilities,” Geiszler says. “In Anchorage, the whole sub-basement was allotted to K-Bio, and Herms had a set of first level offices for his dudes. The thing was, we never could stay out of each other’s way. Often our work overlapped in one way or another, but the rest of the time it was mostly pigtail pulling. I’d go in and draw Kaiju reproductive system diagrams all over his blackboards.”
Gottlieb sighs, but there is a grin accompanying it. “And I would retaliate by making his imaging interface freeze up at random intervals.”
“That was you?” Geiszler exclaims. “You absolute [unprintable expletive]!”
“Oh, you knew that. Don’t be stupid,” Gottlieb retorts. Geiszler looks half scandalized and half impressed.
It wasn’t long before Marshall Pentecost realized there were projects on which the scientists needed to confer more closely on in an official capacity. By the time they reached the Sydney Shatterdome, they were a team whether they liked it or not. Geiszler mapped out the physical weaknesses of the Kaiju as dictated by their alien anatomy, and Gottlieb advised the Jaeger crews on which weapons would best serve them in battle according to this information. It was here that Geiszler finished work on what he calls his “Milking Machine” – the strange-looking contraption that collected, measured and categorized various vitreous fluids from the Kaiju for chemical classification. It was also in Sydney that Gottlieb finally began forming the definitive predictive formulas that would accurately place the times and appearances of Kaiju when activity was measured in the area surrounding the Breach, as well as a model of the structure of the Breach itself. Working together, whether it was spite or healthy competition, certainly seemed to help the two men accomplish exceptional intellectual feats in a relatively short amount of time.
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When the Jaeger Program’s star began to fade after the loss of Ranger Yancy Becket and the Jaeger Gipsy Danger off the shores of Anchorage in 2020, the funding was cut to such a point that in order to conserve power and personnel in the move to the last active Shatterdome, in Hong Kong, they were finally forced to share one single lab. Now they were not just adjacent, but in the very same space.
“We actually had to resort to putting a tape line down the middle to bisect it, like bratty children sharing a bedroom,” Gottlieb reveals. “At that point I’d been putting in complaints like clockwork to get him removed, but I never received a satisfactory response.”
Geiszler shakes his head, sitting back with folded arms. “The antagonism reached a fever pitch then and just stayed there, you know? The world was ending. Everyone was at least a little pissed. Could you blame us?”
“I blame you,” Gottlieb says.
Geiszler sticks his tongue out at him.
As times got more desperate, so did the measures they took. In the few days preceding Operation Pitfall, Gottlieb and Geiszler were grasping with everything they had for an answer to a problem they weren’t sure had a solution.
“I’d just completed the predictive model that foretold the Triple Event,” Gottlieb explains. “And Newton had just become absolutely convinced that his theory concerning the brain structure of the Kaiju would lead him to an epiphany – if he Drifted with it.”
“Ultimately we were sort of both super right,” Geiszler says. “And we’d never before –”
“And never since,” cuts in Gottlieb.
“– wished that we weren’t.”
Asked how he felt when he discovered Geiszler after his initial Kaiju Drift – with a partial and barely-living preserved frontal lobe, using a homemade Pons – Gottlieb’s angular face goes soft, and for the first time in our meeting all traces of disdain are absent from both his expression and his voice, leaving nothing but raw truth.
“It was terrifying,” Gottlieb says. Geiszler’s attention is rapt; he is no longer smiling and his eyes are wide behind his thick glasses. “I saw him on the floor, saw the blood in his eye and his nose, and my own heart just stopped. At that moment I thought – Gott, ten years together, I leave him alone for one night and he dies on me. What a selfish bastard.”
The attempt at humor is tempered here by Gottlieb’s apparent distress and discomfort at remembering the ordeal. He swallows audibly and has to take a moment before continuing. Geiszler is uncharacteristically still and silent beside him.
“Later on I found a recording he made,” Gottlieb continues, “detailing his process for the Drift. I listened to it, hoping to figure out just why he would do something so hare-brained, and what did I discover but the whole last part of his record is him telling me he did it just to show me up. That I ‘drove him to this’. He knew full well what might happen, that he had a very high chance of dying, and his last words were to stick it to me. In some perverse way – and this just goes to show you the very essential nature of our relationship – I was touched that I would be his final thought, even as antagonistic as that thought might have been. He is as brave as he is stupidly impulsive, but he also trusted me enough to know that by addressing the record to me, I would at least be able to know what went wrong, if anything had. It speaks to his scientific integrity and incredible commitment to his field.”
It is clear at this point that Geiszler has had no knowledge of any of this until now.
“Dude,” he says, and nothing more.
Gottlieb, in response, only blushes and looks down into his empty teacup.
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Under Marshall Pentecost’s orders, Geiszler was compelled to recreate his results, this time with a fresher specimen. He located and obtained access to another Kaiju brain: the offspring of the fallen Otachi, defeated by Gipsy Danger. As for exactly how the location and access were obtained, Geiszler’s grin turns sly again and Gottlieb gives him a few sharp warning nudges with his elbow. All they can tell is that whatever isn’t still classified is “almost too ridiculous to be believable.” But as much as I wheedle, they insist at this time it is all they can offer – though Geiszler looks fairly ready to bite through his lip with wanting to spill the proverbial beans.
So the stage is set: Geiszler and his self-invented Pons – the cobbled-together Geiszler Array, the at-once nascent and decaying Kaiju brain, and Gottlieb ready to charge literally headlong into the unknown. But how did they know they were Drift Compatible?
“We didn’t,” Geiszler says. “If you’d have asked me at any point until the very moment I flipped the switch, I’d have told you it would’ve never worked.”
As for the decision to share the neural load, it was all surprisingly enough Gottlieb’s idea.
“What else could I have done?” Gottlieb asks. “We had no other recourse. It was imperative that he do it, so I had no choice. I was not about to let one of the best minds of a generation fry as I stood idle. What was it you had said to me? ‘Fortune favors the brave.’ I suppose I took it to heart.”
The exact details of the Drift itself are also classified, but the doctors agree to tell as much as they can.
“It was messy,” Geiszler says.
“Disorienting,” Gottlieb adds.
“There were no parameters, no Conn-Pod to measure our depth or vitals or the strength or stability of the handshake. There was nothing but me and him and...it.”
They refuse to elaborate on what “it” was. One can only assume it had to do with what they saw inside the Kaiju’s mind.
“There’s no hiding in the Drift. We saw everything. We were in each other’s minds as much as the Kaiju’s, and that was as comforting as it was scary.” They share an understanding look, its full meaning cryptic to all but each other. This is it: the look Jaeger Pilots share, the look of the truly Drift Compatible.
Given that they learned enough from the Kaiju’s mind to successfully help seal the Breach at the eleventh hour, did they also come away with a better understanding of each other?
“Well, yes and no,” Gottlieb answers. “I realized primarily that I did in fact know him better than I thought I did, and all of it had happened subconsciously over the decade that we had worked so closely.”
“That’s weird,” Geiszler responds. “Because I think I realized then that I didn’t know you half as well as I thought I did.”
Because of the unregulated nature of the Drift they shared, the Ghost Drift that lingered after was particularly strong. Gottlieb recounts waking up the next morning and getting out of bed, only to find himself on the floor in a heap having forgotten his cane. He gained the ability to read music, and all but lost his pre-existing herpetophobia. Geiszler recalls that for weeks afterward, he couldn’t stomach the taste of coffee, and still sometimes has dreams of Gottlieb’s brothers and sister, whom he’s never met. On close examination of each of their left eyes, one can still see matching red rings around their irises, a common side-effect of neural overload.
To this day, they claim that the connection lingers, even though they’ve never Drifted together since. It is difficult to refute; while they are not a eerily in sync as other Compatible pairs might be, there is no denying that between them, the connection is unusually strong.
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“We absolutely hold them responsible for saving our lives,” says Raleigh Becket. The doctors were instrumental in laying the plans for Operation Pitfall, and for ensuring its eventual success. Becket remembers focusing on their voices in the last moments before he and Mako Mori made their last attempt to close the Breach.
Becket says his first meeting with the two, however, was quite odd.
“Newt especially was a weird one. He told me right off the bat that he wanted to see a Kaiju up close and personal.” Becket laughs. “Well, I guess he wound up getting as close as anyone possibly could. Even still, I knew they must be the best – Marshall Pentecost wouldn’t have settled for any less.”
Here, he levels a significant look at his Drift partner.
“Sensei had so much faith in them,” Mori says, speaking of her mentor and adoptive father, the late Marshall Stacker Pentecost. “I knew then whatever they told us was what we had to do, without question.”
Mori, the lone child survivor of the attack of Onibaba on Okinawa, grew up on the front lines of the war calling the myriad Shatterdomes her home. Because of this, she has known the duo almost from the very outset of the PPDC.
“Newt used to look after me,” she remembered. “Though it wasn’t so much babysitting as hanging out, listening to and playing music. There weren’t ever many people my age around, but Newt could play that part for me when we were together. He was a peer, a confidante. He helped me not to be afraid of the Kaiju – he taught me that they are as fragile as the rest of us, that they could too be broken down into their component parts and be defeated.”
Doctor Gottlieb was also close with her.
“He was my tutor from time to time, and eventually my colleague when I began the restoration of Gipsy Danger. We spent many times together talking far into the night about coding, the possibilities of that code translated into physical form. Everyone always said to steer clear of him, that he was grumpy and cantankerous, but he was never like that with me. If anything, I always appreciated his no-nonsense approach to things.”
The Rangers still work with them on a regular basis through the Center for Drift Technology and Research, along with LOCCENT Specialist and recently appointed Engineering Director Tendo Choi. Mr. Choi seems especially fond of the pair, having known them both for many years in a professional capacity as well as a social one.
“Hermann could run circles around anyone when it comes to coding and tech,” Choi says, “But get him out of the lab and he’s lost, bless him. Newt, on the other hand, takes geeking out to a new level. His work is his life, and his life is hard core everything. He says he’s a Xenobiological Rock Star? Believe him. But as far as the truth goes, I have to say he’d have jumped in the ocean and sailed out to sea a decade ago if it wasn’t for Hermann. And Hermann wouldn’t be much more than a pile of chalk dust if not for Newt.” Choi smiles widely and leans in, the clips on his suspenders gleaming as bright as the spark in his eyes. “You want to talk about Drift Compatibility? I’ll tell you this. There’s a reason Marshall Pentecost always denied their transfer requests. The Kwoon wasn’t the only place sparring between Compatibles went on, if you catch that drift.”
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These days, Geiszler lectures to three packed halls a week at MIT, and chairs the newly-christened Xenobiology department there as well. Sometimes, he says, students line up the night before in order to speak with him during his office hours.
“Like they’re waiting to get into a concert, man,” Geiszler says with obvious glee at what he calls his ‘rock star status’. “Sleeping bags and the thing full of coffee and the whole nine. It’s nuts.”
To this, Gottlieb only rolls his eyes. But if rumor has it, the line to speak with him in his offices at Oxford, where he is Director of the Applied Mathematics department, winds its way down the hallways on a regular basis, even when his scheduled appointments are full. Over one year out and demand is still high to engage their viewpoints on myriad topics. Last summer, they went “on tour” as Geiszler puts it, giving a circuit of lectures around the world, and institutions are still clamoring to get them to speak at their schools or conferences. Their catch, however, is both of them or neither of them for these engagements. Audiences are inclined to agree.
“It was taxing, but its rewards outweighed the pain of jetlag,” Gottlieb admits.
“I f—king loved it,” Geiszler says. “There is seriously nothing better than seeing a hall full of people, bright eyed and hanging on your every word. And that those words are explaining something you love, that you are devoted to, madly passionate about? Man. Anyone who has ever taught – and that’s both of us – will tell you you can’t get any more gratifying than that.”
As for adjusting to life in peacetime, and being apart for the first time in over a decade – they’ve had their challenges.
“It’s true, I do miss him,” Geiszler says. “No one yells at me quite the way he used to. Their insults are all so sub-par.”
“Yes,” agrees Gottlieb. “I hardly know what to do with myself when I’m not being constantly distracted by blaring experimental electronic death metal or the smell of ammoniated putrefaction.”
For now, they have a few days together, stuck in the same offices just like old times, working on their joint project. What are their feelings about that?
Gottlieb smiles shrewdly and looks away – but Geiszler has an answer at the ready.
“It’s great. I don’t think there’s anyone in this universe or any other that understands me like Herms does. I could say all that tired old junk about opposites attracting, but when you strip it down to its most basic formulas, we’re more alike than anything.”
===
After the interviewer thanks them and leaves, Newt and Hermann settle their check and hail a cab back uptown. Once inside and whizzing off up Park Avenue, Hermann turns to Newt and gives him a loaded sigh.
“Fantastic,” he says. “You had to end it like that. Now the entire world will know come next month.”
“Oh, yeah, me,” Newt retorts. “I’m the one who was talking all about how dedicated and passionate my ‘colleague’ is to his field of study.”
“At more than one point, yes, you were.”
“Well, so what?” Newt says. “I want the whole world to know how much I respect and admire you, okay? And honestly, anyone with an iota of reading comprehension could see right through it.”
Hermann gives Newt a sidelong look. “You really think so?”
“Dude. We’ve been bickering like an old married couple since 2017. You really think it would let up once we’re on the verge of actually becoming a literal old married couple?” Newt turns bodily in the back of the cab, pinned only by the strap of his seatbelt. “Wait. You’re not...you’re not embarrassed are you?”
“What?” Hermann scoffs. “No! Don’t be ridiculous.”
Newt feels almost ashamed at how relieved Hermann’s indignation makes him.
“It’s just,” Hermann continues, “I am a private person, Newton. I don’t want our accomplishments to be overshadowed by a media circus turning this into ‘Love Inside the Shatterdome’.”
Newt chuckles at Hermann’s reference to the website they’d found, devoted entirely to entries espousing the real and fictitious romantic exploits of everyone’s favorite Jaeger pilots. As of late, it has been nothing but wall-to-wall speculation about when Mako and Raleigh will wed. By now quite good friends with the pair, they know the site’s readers will (unfortunately for them) be holding their breath for a very, very long time. Newt may or may not have been disappointed by the complete lack of entries about himself and Herms. Even Tendo and Alison had three or four, for god’s sake. If nothing else, he is hoping this New York Times profile will generate a couple for them.
“Are you serious, man?” Newt says, eyebrows arching high over his black frames. “We Drift with a Kaiju on a Pons I made out of scraps in less than seven hours, you correctly predict a triple event with your math-magic, and we’re both now pioneers in Tide Drifting – and you think our relationship is the weirdest thing they’re going to latch onto?”
Hermann hums discontentedly.
“We still don’t know what our families may say. Or Mako and Raleigh. God, I hope they don’t speak to Tendo. Everything he says sounds like an innuendo.”
“You know,” Newt says after a moment, “It really wasn’t all about that anyway. Everyone knows what we did, and that it was awesome. What they want to know is how awesome the people behind all that awesomeness are!”
“If ever a word was more overused,” Hermann intones, not unkindly.
They lapse into a thoughtful silence, tired of speaking all afternoon. It isn’t until they are back at their hotel, waiting for the elevator, that they speak again.
“In the cab,” Hermann says, “You said we were ‘on the verge of becoming a literal old married couple.’”
Newt slides a look sideways at Hermann. “Yeah?”
“For the sake of preciseness –”
“Uh huh,” Newt says.
“–what exactly did you mean by that?”
Newt smiles.
“Oh, you know.”
Hermann frowns, but it’s one of his frowns that explicitly hides a more amused look. “No, I do not. That’s why I asked.”
“Well,” says Newt, as the elevator dings and opens up in front of them. “I read somewhere that they say you’re a smart guy. You’ll figure it out.”