The Revelations by Erik Hoel (some good books to read TXT) 📗
- Author: Erik Hoel
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Just like that the vision vanishes. He is alone on the roof, and a mere failed scientist once more. This winding culmination is impossible, far-fetched, and even if it were true he is no longer the man for the job, and he, delusional with lack of sleep and stress, is suddenly sure he is merely indulging a runaway train of thought. He stumbles away from the ledge.
The blue rose is still in his hand. Examining its cosmic shade, a near-blooming star of night, Kierk has his second realization of the night, more significant, faster, simpler, more overbearing, time slowing down when he thinks—really, this has been a love story all along. He hadn’t been expecting that, even in all this authoring.
The door to the roof, which has been kept open by a cinderblock Kierk dragged over, opens, and the darkness is pierced by the light from Carmen’s phone.
“Don’t close the door!” Kierk says. “It locks from the inside. Leave the cinderblock.”
Carmen carefully closes the heavy door on the cinderblock, then walks over to join Kierk at the edge.
“What are you doing up here?”
“Just thinking about stuff.”
Standing beside him she looks out over the expanse of the lightless city. They are silent for minutes on end, taking it all in. His eyes have adjusted and now he can see the finest details of the barren streets, which are inky and silent up to the wall of light that is Midtown.
After a while Carmen finally says—“Sorry for getting you dragged into all this. I really thought there was something . . . to solve. And I’m sorry if it impacted, you know . . .”
Kierk’s hand finds hers and she trails off.
“It may have been inevitable. Which means,” he says, both facing out to the dark streets, “that I’m going to be leaving.”
Carmen’s hand squeezes his as he continues. “There is a choice to be made on your end. Because the Francis Crick Scholarship Program? It’s a failure. One Crick Scholar is literally dead. Another, me, is being kicked out. And another’s monkey self-lobotomized. Next week is going to be a political circus. Bad press. Bad rumors. They won’t get the funding renewed for next year. Certainly there’s not going to be those prestigious NYU tenure-track positions for any of us anymore. You can stay here and inevitably have all your funding dropped. Or . . .”
“Or what?”
“Have you ever been to Paris?”
Carmen laughs. “Wait, you’re serious?”
“The Sorbonne has a burgeoning consciousness science program. For you, I mean. I’m through. It’s over for me. I’ll do something else. I’ll show up to the after-work parties and make everyone mad but that’s it. They’d take you in a heartbeat and no one will blame you for leaving a failing mess of a program.”
“But what will you do?”
“I don’t know. Something else. And I think I’m finally okay with that.”
He hands her the blue rose, which she hadn’t noticed in the shadows of the roof, and she, perplexed, takes it from his hand delicately. One hand goes up to her mouth when she sees what it is.
“So you are serious . . . How serious? Because—”
He kisses her and feels the great tremulous activity in him mirrored in her. Faces together, unwilling to part, his cheek is touched by the small wet of a
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