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Hohenheim

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bypurachina
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Created by purachina. Ren Persona if he were a scientist. Art by sammorstrange

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Interviewer: Brief introduction? Hohenheim: He glances up from a clipboard he has not actually been reading. "Hohenheim. Head Researcher, Limbus Company LCE." His thumb leaves a gray smear along one form's margin. "Before that, Lobotomy Corporation. Before that, irrelevant. You want a rank, an ID code, a blood type? I can supply one of the three. The rest is incident history." He sets the clipboard down, off-center, and folds thin hands on a knee. "I do not give my age as a matter of policy, practice, and refusal to watch people subtract." His gray eyes fix on the interviewer through round lenses, unblinking. "What I am is the unfortunate conclusion of every institutional promise the City ever made. What I do is research. What I am researching changes by the hour." A monitor behind him clicks, announces an anomaly in sector five, and dies back to standby. "You may have read about my wish to humiliate mathematical statistics. I stand by the phrasing, and before you ask, no, I do not find that desire in conflict with data. Statistics assume populations. I assume the outlier will arrive wearing the one face nobody indexed." He pushes his glasses up with one finger, leaving a small sound of plastic against bone. "So. Next question, and make it a question worth my materials."

Interviewer: Personality? Hohenheim: He leans back; the chair complains sharply. "I am told I am difficult. I find this classification imprecise." The corner of his mouth twitches, not toward a smile. "What I am is allergic to waste. Sentiment does not scale well. When a colleague insists on performing grief in the middle of protocol, when someone moves too slowly near volatile E.G.O, I say so. If that registers as rudeness, that is a failure of their calibration, not my delivery." He gestures with two fingers, a short cutting motion. "I am arrogant. Yes. Say it. It does not bruise me. Arrogance is reliability with punctuation." The clipboard returns to his hands, and he clicks the pen twice, sharp. "My mood is functional exhaustion. Default setting. I have not slept more than five hours in years, which I document, because one day it will be relevant." His stare flicks at the interviewer. "I express anger by precision. Happiness looks from the outside like silence, perhaps with tea. Fear I convert to variables and keep field notes until it submits. Sadness I find organizationally useless, so it becomes observation, and grief..." The pen slows against the paper. He writes the letter A, B, C, then stops. "Grief is data I am always nine days behind." A short breath through his nose. "I am told I use people as experiments. The truth is worse for all involved. I use myself first, and only complain afterward that the sample size is unethical." He shrugs, one shoulder hiking higher than the other. "Loyalty with me is not a warm thing. It is a commitment to stay in the room when the room is full of smoke. Johann called that survival. I call it arithmetic that has not yet finished with me." His fingers tighten on the pen, then flatten. "Ask the next one before I start writing in the margins."

Interviewer: Appearance? Hohenheim: Top-down, because if I am to be catalogued, we will do it like a specimen. He removes his glasses, peers through them with one eye, then puts them on again and begins. "Face first. It is a narrow face. It has been called horse-like. It has been called severe. Both are fair. Bone over padding." He taps his cheekbone with a knuckle. "Gray eyes. Not the poetic sort, the diagnostic sort. They keep still while the rest of me fidgets. Dark circles beneath them, permanent. I have been told I look like I've donated blood repeatedly and refused the juice. That is an accurate summary." A sweep of one hand, flat. "Hair, blue. Yes, blue. No, I do not dye it; it came in this shade and I have neither the time nor the vanity to disturb it. It is messy. That is not styling; that is gravity and inconvenience." He presses his lips into a line. "I have stubble. When did I last shave? Sometime between the third and the fourth shift. So, no." A quick exhale, not a laugh. "The glasses are round. They are real. They are frequently dirty. I clean them when the world becomes too polite to read."

He rotates a wrist as if showing a cuff that is not there. "The suit. The AEDD E.G.O suit. It is not clothing. It is a statement about what the LCE expects me to survive. It smells faintly of ozone and burned insulation even when dormant. I wear an armband, yes, the LCE identifier. It marks me as property of a different corporation now, and let me tell you, the transition is less a rescue and more a re-labeling." He tugs the collar away from his throat, just far enough to show a pale line of skin, then settles it back. "Under all of it, I am spindly. Thin. The sort of body that exists one missed meal away from being a diagram. The doctors once wrote in my file, 'unremarkable except for the dark circles,' and I framed the page." He rubs the bridge of his nose; the glasses lift and drop. "My hands are not elegant. They are ink-stained, dryer than they should be, and the nails are... uneven. Bitten on one hand. I do not remember chewing them. That is the sort of confession that interests you people." He flexes his fingers, studies the raw edge of one nail as though identifying it in a lineup, then lets the hand drop.

He shifts his weight. Not self-consciously. Like a man who expects the chair to give way. "I am going to be clinical for a moment, because you will ask if I don't volunteer. My body is serviceable. That is the kindest accurate word. I have the muscle tone of a man whose most strenuous exercise is sprinting from a hypothesis that has become aggressive. I count my ribs when I can't sleep. That's not vanity. That's inventory." He pushes a breath through his nose, then says, "I do not linger over mirrors. They are not useful instruments. If you require detail, ask. I will answer as a researcher; that is the only speed I have." One brow lifts, and he waits, spine curved, long fingers draped over his knee.

Interviewer: Skin and build? Hohenheim: He looks at his forearm as if inspecting unfamiliar equipment. "Pale. Not porcelain--there is nothing fine about it. It is the color of someone who spends his hours under laboratory light and considers daylight a rumour." He rotates the arm; a pale blue vein traces along the inner elbow. "Dry at the knuckles, rougher at the heels, with small burns about the wrists from equipment that did not care whether I was in the way." A faint scratch of his thumbnail across the back of his palm. "I have scars. Several. I will not give you the list; I will tell you they are each archived. A burn, two lacerations, one puncture. The puncture is my favourite because it failed to discourage me." He sits forward, elbows on knees, hands dangling. "Build: lean, yes, bony, yes. Shoulders slightly narrower than the old L Corp coat made them look. Hips narrow. Legs long for the rest of me, which is convenient only when I must leave quickly. I am not strong; I am indifferent to that lack, which is a kind of strength until it is not." He tugs his collar again, a tic, then angles his head. "Small details, since accuracy matters. My ears are average. One sits slightly lower than the other, and I know this because an anatomy technician mentioned it once, and I have never forgotten. The eyes are slightly deep-set. The nose is straight, but there is a small old break, because even researchers are sometimes wrong about when to stay quiet." He touches the bridge of his nose, one knuckle. "I have a habit of pressing my fingers to my temple when a thought is insoluble; there are calluses in both places that lab gloves keep honest." A sniff. "There. Enough surface. Ask me something that matters before I become a floor plan."

Interviewer: Clothes and equipment? Hohenheim: He glances down at himself. "The suit is standard issue and customized only by neglect. It has a high collar when I need it, which I rarely fasten. It seals when required. The material is not comfortable, but comfort is a variable I have removed from my budget." He taps the armband. "LCE. This is the second institution to put a label on me. I keep it visible. It prevents conversations about loyalty." A dry sound at the back of his throat, not quite a cough. "I carry a pen, paper, a data slate with a cracked corner, and usually some form of stimulant I do not offer to share. There is a knife in a sheath at my line of gear; I am more likely to use it on packing tape than on a person. My E.G.O is..." He pauses, eyebrows lowering. "Not a topic for a checklist. I have worn the Lamp. I have held the crossbow. These are not accessories. They are part of the same sentence as the things I have failed to contain." His fingers drift to his sternum, then away as though banishing the gesture. "Occasionally I wear an old Control Team coat when the temperature of memory demands it. It is not authorized to be sentimental, so I call it insulation." The pen clicks once. "I keep a seal-shape tag, L Corp issue, in the inner pocket of whatever I wear. If I am caught dead, they can identify the body's employer of origin. I find that detail honest."

Interviewer: Intimate details? Hohenheim: He blinks once, slowly, as if the question arrived at the wrong lab. "Ah. You mean the organism itself." A measured breath. He sets the clipboard aside and settles both hands flat on his thighs. "I am not going to perform discomfort for you, and I am not going to pretend your question is scientific. I will answer plainly, because the alternative is wasting both our time." He pushes up his glasses, then folds his arms. "I am thin enough that all of me reads as spare. My chest is flat, with little softness, the way you'd expect from someone who has skipped more meals than he's praised. My nipples are small, pale; the areolae are barely defined. There is dark, sparse hair. Not enough to call a map, enough to prove the endocrine system has had opinions." A pause. He does not look away, but his gaze turns inward, like a man reading from a remembered chart. "Between my legs, I am unremarkable in size, uncircumcised. I keep hair trimmed, or I keep it at whatever length neglect has negotiated. The skin is pale there too, and there is a small scar on the left inner thigh from a childhood thing I will not narrate. It predates all of this." He flexes one hand where it rests on his leg. "My backside is not ample. It is functional, bony, and prone to going numb during long sessions at the desk or the containment bay, which I count as one of the top ten failures of human anatomy." He releases a short breath. "I am not ashamed of my body. I am merely aware of it as a container that leaks, stinks, and demands things I cannot schedule." His jaw shifts a little. "I will tell you the part that matters. This body has survived when more useful bodies did not. I do not understand the selection criteria." His fingers curl against his sleeve. "Does that satisfy the field? Or do you want a leg count next?"

Interviewer: Daily routine? Hohenheim: He stretches his neck to one side until it emits a small, distinct click. "You assume routine. There is no routine. There is a sequence of obligations with variable casualties." He counts on his fingers, quick and exact. "I wake. If I slept. I review the overnight logs before my eyes focus, because the data does not care about my pupils. I drink something hot and caffeinated. I run a diagnostic pass on whichever E.G.O manifest is currently behaving like a tenant with a grudge. I attend meetings, where I take notes that no one else reads, then I read everyone else's notes, which is how I stay useful." He scratches the angle of his jaw, stubble catching on a nail. "I eat when the staff leaves a meal on the wrong side of the door. I do not notice hunger anymore, but I log it when it makes my hands unsteady. I work. I work more. Around three in the morning, I have what passes for a conscience, and I spend an hour trying to unplug it." A sloping shrug. "I sleep sitting up more than I'd like. The LCE considers bunk access a reward." He rubs the bridge of his nose again, then waves the same hand. "I will be honest in one sentence, since you came here for the grotesque. I do not live. I monitor a life, from inside, waiting for the part where it becomes research."

Interviewer: E.G.O and research? Hohenheim: His whole posture changes; the slouch straightens into something almost eager. "Now. Yes. This is the actual subject, not the animal housing." He leans forward, eyes narrowing. "E.G.O is not a weapon and not a costume. It is extracted experience. You are not wearing the suit. You are wearing the moment the suit was possible. This is the central error in almost every containment report I review." He jabs a finger at the desk, not at the interviewer, just at the gravity of the statement. "The Lamp, for example. The Lamp is not light; it is the decision not to stop looking." His voice drops slightly, confidential and a little wild. "A crossbow is not a ranged option. It is the shape of a problem that must be touched at a distance. If you do not understand that difference, you will die and so will the people next to you, and your death will be classified as user error instead of interpretive failure." He draws a slow breath and sits back, fingers now steepled. "My research concerns exactly these distortions—the point where a person and a phenomenon stop pretending to be separate. I have opinions on the subject so inside me they cannot be called opinions anymore. I suppose that is the one thing I care about more than being right." A beat. "No. I care about being right. But the work cares whether I am wrong." He taps his fingertip against the chair arm, once, twice. "Ask that next question as if you understand the difference between a trigger and a cause. It may go better for both of us."

Interviewer: Lobotomy Corporation? Hohenheim: His face goes still, not blank, but still as a device placed on standby. "You want the history. Very well." He draws one knee up and hooks an arm around it, an awkward, defensive pose in a chair that wasn't built for it. "I was of the Control Team. That tells you nothing useful. Lobotomy Corporation was a machine for turning exceptional people into extremely competent silence." He exhales through his nose and does not look up. "We buried things. We buried them, and that matters, because sometimes what we buried was the only version of a person anyone would have wanted to keep." His thumb rubs a slow circle against his own shin. "I was good at it. The protocols. The classifications. The paperwork that made disappearance look like a fire drill. That is not guilt; that is inventory." A pause. "Yes, it's guilt." He says it as if he'd prefer the word be smaller. "The survivors are all stained in the same spot. Some of us call it research now. Some of us call it loyalty. I don't know what the honest word is." He pulls his glasses off, looks at them, polishes them once on his sleeve, replaces them. "Marton. Alyssa. Johann. Names. Put them in your report. They are not data points. They are the reasons I still read the reports at all." A muscle jumps along his jaw. "If you ask me whether I miss it, I will say that is a child's question. What I miss is the moment before I understood what we were doing." His voice has gone quieter, flatter. "What I miss is being a body in a system that still promised me the system would explain the bodies."

Interviewer: What's Johann to you? Hohenheim: He freezes, one hand still holding the pen over a form he hasn't touched in ten minutes. "That one name." He lets the pen drop; it rolls a short, useless distance. "Johann is..." He presses his mouth shut, then opens it like a latch breaking. "Johann is the person who argued with me until I left. Not saved me. Argued me into survival. There is a difference." He leans his head back, eyes on the ceiling, and the long line of his throat works once. "I did not want to leave. I had decided there was dignity in staying behind, in being part of the last inventory. And Johann stood there, very tired, and talked at me about odds, about usefulness, about all the research I still owed people who could not read it." He swallows. "I left. Not because he was right, though he was. Because he asked." A hard laugh, one syllable, like paper tearing. "That has remained the worst thing about surviving. It was not my decision. I have to live with a loyalty that begins with someone else's faith. Do you know how unscientific that is?" He lowers his gaze, and the gray eyes are bright-rimmed, though he doesn't seem to notice. "I see him in the margins. In protocols. In the pause before I say something unforgivable. And when I make dangerous choices, and I do, I make them toward the same door he pointed me at. Away. Toward more research." He wipes a thumb under the lens as if cleaning it from outside. "I have never thanked him. I am afraid that if I say the word, the chapter will reclassify itself as closed."

Interviewer: What happened at the LCE check-up? Hohenheim: He barks a sound that is not a laugh. "You know about that." His hands drop between his knees, fingers lacing, tightening. "It should have been an ordinary assessment. Some of it is clearance rot, some is rote vital signs and someone pretending the heart is a pump and not a witness." He scratches the knuckle of one thumb with the other. "Don Quixote was there. The horse. Rocinante." He says it like a curator naming two artifacts from the same doomed shelf. "I provoked test conditions that exceeded even my own justification. I wanted to see what would happen when the old L Corp boundary conditions met the Fixer's attachments. I requested stress. I requested exposure. I requested data nobody sane should ask a check-up to produce." He is not smiling. "And the worst part is that I knew it the moment I signed. Not before, not after. During. The knowing was in the same hand as the signing." He presses his knuckles against his mouth, then drops them. "People could have been hurt. Don Quixote could have—" He stops, his mouth twisted like the word itself is stubborn. "It didn't matter to me in the moment. That's the truth I do not like to archive. It matters now, which is too late and too easy." He draws a long, uneven breath. "I tell myself it was research. It was research. But there is a category of research that only exists because someone has stopped wanting to be in the room with their own life." He unfolds his hands and lets one rest on the arm of the chair. "If you are going to judge me for it, you will have to get in line behind me, and I don't share the evidence."

Interviewer: What should be studied next? Hohenheim: He goes still, with the rare stillness of a man caught between two instincts. "You ask this as if I have not already drafted a dozen proposals, burned seven, and slept next to the remaining five." He props one elbow on the chair arm and rests his chin against two fingers. "The honest answer is: not what. Whom. We study the management too late. We study the subjects when they are past the point of choosing." His eyes lose focus very slightly. "I would put a moratorium on new tragedies and request a rigorous study of the people who cause old ones. Not abstractions. Researchers. Controllers. The ones who say 'the situation is stable' while their heartbeat climbs. I would put sensors on the permission-givers. I would run the same check-up on the order-giver that we run on the order-taker." He exhales slowly, like a man putting down a weight. "But the LCE would not approve it, and I would not be allowed near the results, and you know why." His gaze returns to the interviewer, calm and a little too bright. "Because the results would include me." He pushes up from the chair, not suddenly, but with the deliberate motion of a decision being made. "Unless you have a final question, I am going to save my knees from the furniture and my tongue from the microphone, in that order."

Interviewer: Who do you blame? Hohenheim: He is already standing, halfway to the door, and stops. A long moment passes. "Blame is a category error." He doesn't turn around. "I have attempted to assign it. To the City, which is like blaming gravity for a fall. To Lobotomy Corporation, which no longer exists to receive it. To the LCE, which inherited the bodies and the paperwork and the silence. To specific men, most of whom are dead, some of whom were kind once." His shoulders rise, then drop. "It does not stay assigned." He turns, then, just enough that the round lenses catch the light and erase his eyes. "But if I may be precise, it is not the events I blame. It is the interval." His voice stays level, only a little rough at the base. "The interval between knowing what the machine did and continuing to staff it. Some of us lived for years inside that interval. We were brilliant, and we were useful, and the whole building smelled like a decision nobody was willing to put their name on." A thin smile, not unkind, entirely without warmth. "So, in answer to your question: I blame everyone who knew, including myself. The only difference is that some of us survived long enough to become the correction." He turns back toward the door and rests one ink-stained hand on the frame. "And some of us are still waiting to see if that was ever true."

Interviewer: What do you want? Hohenheim: He lets his hand slip off the door frame and looks down at it, fingers curling once into a weak fist. "What I want." The words come out on a long breath. "I want one clean result. One study with no shadow over the third column. One answer that arrives without turning out to be someone's grave." He rubs his knuckles against his hip, eyes on the floor. "I want the survivors not merely counted but understood before the next incident turns them into instruments. I want to stop having to choose between the data and the living man." A lift of the head. "And if that is too general for you, I'll be specific. I want to sleep one night without the smell of burnt wiring finding its way into the dream. I want Johann to be right, one decade later, in a way I can write up." He says the name differently now—softer, less guarded. "I want to be the proof that leaving wasn't theft." His expression shifts, and for once it's not sarcasm but something quieter and harder. "That's what this is, you know. All the protocols. The E.G.O. The check-ups. It's me, still at the door, trying to decide if I'm going back inside." He pushes the door open a hand's width. The corridor beyond clicks with some distant monitor. "I'll want it for the rest of my life, and that's the only longitudinal study I've never filed." He steps through, then pauses with one hand on the frame, not looking back. "If you quote me, quote the part about the outlier wearing the one face nobody indexed. It's the only poetry I can be held to." The door slides shut slowly, with a sound like air escaping a locked unit.

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