Chapter 19: The Pepperwood Manuscript
Nick's laptop sat open on the kitchen table, screen angled toward the couch where no one was sitting.
I'd come out for water at 2 AM, unable to sleep through the anticipation of tomorrow's crises. The glow caught my peripheral vision first—a Word document, white page against the dark kitchen.
THE PEPPERWOOD CHRONICLES — DRAFT 1
I didn't approach. Didn't need to. The title burned itself into memory from six feet away.
Nick emerged from the hallway, stopping dead when he saw me standing near his open laptop. His face cycled through panic, embarrassment, and defensive hostility in about two seconds.
"It's nothing." He crossed the kitchen in three strides, slamming the laptop shut. "Stupid project. Just—don't."
"I wasn't reading it."
"Good. Because there's nothing to read. It's garbage."
The denial was too aggressive, too immediate. The show had never made clear exactly when Nick started writing, only that Julius Pepperwood existed as his creative alter ego—a hard-boiled detective navigating mysteries Nick himself couldn't solve.
"Okay," I said. "Water?"
"What?"
"I came out for water. Do you want some?"
The pivot confused him. He'd been prepared for mockery, questions, the kind of attention creative vulnerability always attracted. My deflection left him without a target.
"...Sure."
I filled two glasses. Handed him one. Drank mine standing at the sink, looking out the window at nothing.
Nick sat at the table, laptop closed, fingers drumming against the cover. The silence stretched.
"It's a novel," he said finally. "Or it's trying to be."
"Okay."
"About a detective. In New Orleans. Named Julius Pepperwood."
"Good name."
"It's a stupid name." But something in his posture shifted—the defensive hunch relaxing slightly. "I've been working on it for... I don't know. A while. It's probably terrible."
"Most first drafts are."
He looked up, surprised. "You write?"
"No. But I read about writing." Not entirely false—the Memory Palace contained fragments of craft articles, blog posts, video transcripts from my pre-transmigration life.
Nick's fingers continued their rhythm on the laptop. Decision brewing. I waited.
"You could read it," he said. "Tell me how bad it is."
"You sure?"
"No." He slid the laptop across the table anyway. "But everyone else would just say it's fine to make me feel better. You're weird enough to be honest."
An insult wrapped around a compliment wrapped around trust. Classic Nick.
"Okay," I said. "I'll read it tonight."
He nodded, standing abruptly. "Don't tell anyone. Especially Schmidt."
"Understood."
He retreated to his room, leaving me alone with his secrets and a glass of water I'd already finished.
---
The manuscript was exactly what I'd expected.
Terrible structure. Brilliant voice.
Julius Pepperwood lurched through New Orleans with Nick's gruff poetry, his observations about humanity filtered through whiskey and cynicism. The plot meandered without purpose, characters appearing and vanishing without introduction or resolution. But the sentences—God, the sentences.
The rain fell like it had something to prove. Pepperwood didn't trust rain that tried too hard.
She walked into his office like a question mark in heels. Some questions, you don't want answered.
New Orleans smelled like history rotting in a jazz club. Pepperwood liked things rotten. Kept expectations low.
The Memory Palace catalogued every rough sentence, every accidental poetry. I'd observed a literary editor at a coffee shop three weeks ago—her marginalia technique, her feedback structure, the way she framed criticism as possibility rather than failure.
[Technique Recalled: Editorial Feedback (Literary)]
[Fidelity: 79%]
I opened a notepad file and began constructing feedback. Not "this is broken" but "what if you tried." Not tearing down but building toward.
By 4 AM, I had three pages of notes organized by category: narrative structure, character development, voice consistency, pacing. Professional-grade analysis from someone who claimed to watch videos and read books.
Nick had left a note in the manuscript margins, page forty-seven: Is this too weird? Probably too weird.
I circled it and wrote: Weird is the point.
Human moment: the coffee I'd made at 2 AM sat cold beside me, forgotten. I'd been reading for three hours without noticing time pass. Nick's voice had that effect—you got lost in it despite the structural chaos.
The document saved. The laptop closed. I sat in the dark kitchen, holding something fragile that Nick had trusted me with.
Tomorrow I'd tell him his stupid project could be something real.
The question was whether he'd believe me—and whether he'd ask how I knew.
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