" Leonard Speaking"
' Pill Leonard Thinking'
The warehouse was dark. It was lightly lit by the computer screens running. A glowing blue cube. It had been a week since he had completed MedBud. While his work on Ideal Human Genome was going slowly due to the large amount of data he had to study, he had started designing a delivery system. Sparks spat as Leonard welded some pieces together to form a casket-like shape. He had some inkling to the finished product, but he was still way behind his milestones.
As he observed the data on a monitor connected to the casket, his mind went back to his conversation with Paige.
Five Days Ago
Leonard logged into his Skype account, connecting his call to Dr. Paige Swanson in a couple of minutes. Paige's beautiful face appeared on the screen, but her haggard eyes told him of her busy life. Her eyes also carried a hint of frustration.
Leonard joked, "Looks like I will have to up my game. It seems you are quite annoyed by my calls."
Paige sighed, " Sorry about that. I am not frustrated by your call. Something else happened. Still, how have you been? I would have thought you did not want to talk anymore. I could not find you for almost two weeks. I even thought you lost yourself in the glamour of Vegas."
Leonard smiled before replying, "That would never happen. First, I am no longer in Vegas, second, I love talking to you."
Paige's cheeks dusted with a mild blush before she exclaimed, "Then, would you like to visit. I am coming to Princeton for a conference. We could catch up."
Leonard grinned, "That's great. I will see you soon."
The next day, Leonard boarded a flight to Princeton, which took about two hours from boarding to landing. Instead of leaving, he rented a car and waited for Paige to land. About half an hour later, he spied Paige leaving the airport with some serious looking researchers. She looked around quickly before her eyes locked with Leonard. They lit up like gems as she quickly made her way after informing her fellow researchers.
She approached Leonard, a soft smile on her face. Her constant interactions with Leonard, coupled with his intelligence, confidence and understanding nature brought them much closer than before.
The two spent the rest of the day roaming around Princeton. Leonard was familiar with the place, his alma mater was Princeton University after all, but the city seemed different. Maybe its the Pill's effect, or the effect of the woman beside him, but Leonard enjoyed the sights far more than before. For a couple of hours, he forgot about science or the urgency of his experiments, and simply enjoyed Paige's company.
As the evening came, with the sun slowly creeping towards the horizon, Leonard convinced Paige to accompany him to a bar. Leonard is not an alcoholic, but he invited Paige to help her relax for a while. Leonard's demeanour allowed Paige to get comfortable and in about half an hour, the two were nursing mild cocktails in a booth.
Leonard started, "Now that we have relaxed a bit, can you tell me what is the problem? You were quite frustrated when we talked yesterday."
Hearing his words, Paige became solemn. Her eyes fixed themselves on her drink before she remarked, "Do you ever wonder what happens to people who are too far ahead?" Paige asked, fingers tracing the rim of her cosmopolitan.
"There was this scientist at MIT. I met him at one of my conferences. While he was not smart at my level, he was a genius at Encryption and Cryptography. One day, he approached me, and told me about his research. He had created an encryption system so foolproof, governments couldn't crack it, and corporations couldn't exploit it. It should have changed the face of computer privacy."
Her lips curled in a bitter smile. "You know what he got? Rejections. His funding pulled. Then… a car accident on the Charles River bridge."
Leonard's brows drew together.
Paige leaned closer. "Visionaries don't die of bad luck. They die of being inconvenient."
Leonard sipped his drink, but his mind was elsewhere.
'If even brilliance can be erased, then only protection makes genius matter.'
Paige continued, "Yesterday was his death anniversary. A brilliant scientist who could make the world secure, died before he could make any impact. The only proof of his intellect is this…"
She pulled out a key with a Superman flash drive. It made him remember his own Batman one. She smiled wryly, "He gave it to me before his death. He always liked how Superman saved people and how his creation would save people's privacy."
Leonard was silent for a minute, before he signaled a waiter. In ten minutes, the waiter came back with two shot glasses filled with mead. Picking a glass, Leonard remarked, "It is said that Mead was the first alcoholic drink made in history, it is even the favoured drinks of Gods and Heroes of Norse Myth."
Raising the glass slightly, he motioned for Paige to do the same. He announced, "To a great mind."
Paige smiled sweetly before following suit. The two drank the mead at the same time, before their faces scrunched slightly. Leonard shuddered, "It's too sweet."
Paige agreed, but her eyes held warmth, not giving the overly sweet taste a second thought.
Now
Leonard wanted to continue work, but the anecdote Paige shared seemed to haunt him. In the days after his meeting, he busied himself with work, but that story kept appearing in his head. It filled him with terror, but not for himself. For some reason, that story struck a chord within him. He stopped work and laid down on a futon laid at the side of the warehouse. Even in the throes of sleep, his mind could not calm down. Leonard fitfully drifted into sleep, Paige's words echoing… and in that half-conscious state, the faces of the fallen appeared one by one.
He remembered the genius in Cryptography, but his mind brought him the fate of others much more clearly.
He remembered about Galileo, blind and broken in his home after having to publicly recant his support of heliocentric theory. He remembered Michael Servetus, burned at the stake with his books still chained to him. He remembered Ramanujan, a mathematical genius who died penniless at thirty two, ignored and neglected. His mind supplied the story of Alan Turing, forced to take drugs that chemically castrated him, just because of his sexuality. Tesla soon came to the forefront, a brilliant scientist exploited for his worth, his greatest inventions overshadowed and died in madness. More people kept coming to his mind, disturbing his sleep. Ludwig Boltzmann, committing suicide, Alfred Wegener, frozen in an Arctic expedition, Rosalind Franklin, ignored, with her achievements stolen, Sophie Germain, barred from Education.
Suddenly, Leonard woke up with a start. His eyes were clear and determined, even as he hyperventilated in the stuffy warehouse. Leonard's thoughts circled back to Paige's words.
Visionaries don't die of bad luck. They die of being inconvenient.
His hand clenched, he gritted, "Not on my watch."
Two Days Later
The warehouse was dark but for the glow of Leonard's computers. Leonard sipped a cup of coffee, as he looked at the small, blue cube. It was a SynthBrain CPU. While quantum computers could not work like regular computers, his hybrid SynthBrain allowed him to create a supercomputer level CPU the size of a showbox. Coupled with his recent advancements in AI studies for MedBud, he was a god on the internet.
Leonard grinned a little.
'Now, I am just an arc reactor, an iron man suit, a large mansion in Malibu, a large company, and a couple hundred billion dollars away from being Iron Man.'
Leonard leaned back in his chair before commanding, "Cygnus, report task status."
His AI trawled databases, hidden journals, and buried court records. The faces appeared one by one, each attached to a story of brilliance crushed under greed, corruption, or indifference.
Leonard's hand hovered over the notebook, writing one word at the top of the page: CHALDEA.
He underlined it. Then began listing names.
MIT, Boston
Rain hammered the windows of a university lab in Boston. Arun Rao shoved papers into a box as security guards loomed at the door. His machine — a sleek, algae-fed contraption that could eat oil slicks and spit clean water — sat dismantled on the table.
Arun looked around his lab, his heart filled with bitterness. He had spent two years working in this lab. While he was certainly nostalgic, his eyes held resentment and bitterness at the situation. He should have approached the President of the University himself, instead of going through the OSP. He still remembered how the greedy Head of OSP threw his research proposal and his research designs back at him.
"What is the use of cleaning those oceans? It only costs money. Your proposal and your device have little commercial application. And you want me to allow precious university grants to be used on such a project."
He had assumed that there would be further discussions. But two days later, he was ordered to clear his desk. The security guard, the same one he greeted everyday on his way to the lab, came with the said orders.
"I am sorry for your situation, but orders are orders, Dr. Rao. Your Lab access has been revoked."
He didn't look up. His voice cracked. "You'd rather have dead oceans than living ones. Because cleaning isn't profitable."
The guard sighed before consoling, "Dr. Rao, your intentions are good, but the world does not recognize them. You are not the first one who was fired like this. I am certain you will not be the last. Just two years ago, one of the researchers from the Computer Department had his grant pulled. It's unfortunate, he met with an accident a week later."
As the guards decided to give him space to pack, Dr. Arun Rao, a famed chemical and mechanical engineer, looked at his creation.
He pressed a trembling hand to the machine's shell, whispering, "You deserved better."
Federal Courthouse, Philadelphia
Flashbulbs popped as Dr. Sofia Vasquez stood in chains. Reporters shouted "drug trafficker!" while policemen smirked.
She was a certified doctor, a pioneer in biology and herbal medicine. She was on a research trip to a town at the outskirts of Philadelphia when a severe illness spread in the town. She took her medicine with her and treated the townsfolk. WIthin two days, the people recovered, but she was also arrested for dealing drugs and human experimentation. Her research — herbal compounds that outperformed antibiotics — was sealed in boxes carted off by officials.
During her trial, she found many people testifying against her. People she had never seen, lied in court to incriminate her of crimes she didn't commit. Her defense lawyer, a bumbling mess, provided a paltry defense, suggesting she take a plea deal, or she would face a larger sentence.
"My medicine saved lives!" she cried, voice breaking. "You can't bury the cure!"
The judge banged his gavel, unmoved.
She understood later on, that she had unknowingly stepped in an illegal medicine trial by a pharmaceutical company. In order to conceal this fact, and get their hands on her proven research, the company had bribed local policemen to capture her and press charges. Even when five people from the town complained against her imprisonment, they were quietly threatened.
Ikope Village, Nigeria
Ash choked the Nigerian sky as Emil Okoye knelt in the rubble of his classroom. Charred pages of philosophy books flaked apart in his hands. The warlord's men had left nothing standing. His students were gone — scattered or dead.
One of the few survivors in the ghost town found Emil, sobbing among the ruins of his temple of education, clutching torn books with bullet holes. The man quickly snapped Emil out of his almost catatonic state, pulling him to his feet and dragging him to a small truck carrying other survivors to Nairobi. Emil looked at the remains of his town, his school, and a small stuffed toy lying at the entrance of his village grabbed his attention. It belonged to one of his students. A curious eight year old girl, who asked some of the most outrageous questions. Bitter tears flowed down Emil's eyes.
Emil raised his voice to the empty air. "Education was our shield. And you shattered it." His voice cracked, then hardened. "But words… words will outlive you."
San Francisco Memorial Hospital, San Francisco
Hospital corridors reeked of antiseptic. Giselle Blanco — battle-hardened colonel, UN medals gleaming on her chest — stood powerless as doctors shook their heads.
Giselle stoically stood before the doctor. Dr. Brancusi, a young doctor, tried to make her understand, " Ma'am, we understand your urgency, and we even believe your promise. But we cannot bend the rules of surgery. Moreover, your insurance doesn't cover the cost of treatment. The surgery has been delayed for quite some time. If we do not operate soon, she will face permanent damage. It may even lead to death."
She clenched her fists so hard they bled. "Please doctor, try to control her condition for some time. I am trying to arrange funds. I have applied for aid from the U.S. Military, as well as the UN"
The doctor sighed, "I will try my best, but we have to operate soon. Please arrange the funds needed soon."
Giselle sat on a bench in the hallway. Soon, she received a message on her cellphone. There were a lot of flowery words, but the core message was "We are sorry for your condition, but we cannot provide aid."
Her voice collapsed into a whisper. "Why didn't they help me when I needed it? Did I not bleed for the nation?"
Seattle Courthouse
The courthouse emptied as Mike Ross stepped into the rain, his briefcase clutched like a shield. His career was over — not because he lacked skill, but because he exposed a corrupt judge who should have faced prison. Instead, the system exiled him.
A senior partner from his law firm, Jenna, came up to him. Placing a hand on his shoulder, she asked, "Are you okay Mike? I heard what happened."
Mike shook his head, "It is nothing. I just want to clear my head."
Jenna pushed, "Are you sure you are okay?"
Mike was annoyed. While he was a mild tempered man, right now, his mood was mercurial, " No, I am not okay Jenna. I spent years studying law, mastering every ridiculous, downright insane law of this country. I worked at the firm for two years, starting as an intern, all the way to my current position. Now, because I exposed injustice, because I stood by the truth, I can no longer practice law in this state. Years of hard work, sleepless nights, studying in one of the most competitive law schools in the country and coming out on top. Yet, when I tried to use the law to defend people, I lost my career."
Turning away from the wide eyed Jenna, Mike muttered bitterly, "Law is supposed to defend the people. But it defends itself more than the people."
Warehouse, Washington DC
Leonard looked at these reports . People, good people, downtrodden and defeated by the systems meant to help them. These were the people he wanted. Originally, he thought of inviting his friends as well, but something stopped him. His friends are good at taking shelter under the umbrella, but they are not suitable enough to hold the umbrella for others. He quickly drafted the letters. No grand promises. Just the truth: anonymity, resources, a second chance. A place to build without chains. Each message ended with a single word: Chaldea.
As he pressed send, his reflection glimmered faintly on the laptop screen. Behind him, the metallic coffin waited, silent and ominous.
'This world has stepped on many brilliant, good people. Now, these people will find a home, a cause worthy of their kindness and ambition. They will become the foundation. My inner circle.'
Leonard stood up from the floor, leaving the metallic shell on the ground. It stretched out like a coffin, sleek and terrible, cables snaking from it into generators that hummed low, like the growl of a waiting beast. He stood back, wiping sweat from his forehead, eyes drinking in the sight.
"This isn't a deathbed," he whispered. "It's a chrysalis."
Inside, graphene coils and nanotube wiring gleamed. It would bombard his body with radiation, rewriting his very cells. A crude, dangerous step toward his Ideal Human Genome. He pressed a hand to the steel lid, and in its cold reflection, his face looked like both creator and sacrifice.
AN: Done for today. The story is slowly but surely coming to the end of the first arc. The Sabbatical is about to end and Leonard will return to Caltech once more in a few more chapters.
AN2: I appreciate constructive criticism. If you have something to add, I welcome your suggestions after a small debate.
Support me on Patreon: patreon.com/SparksNFlames