"I do love the smell of a sweetly-made, well-bound … book…" Walter Bishop lifted the aged, beaten notebook, sunk his face into the most center page and then ran it along the spine, his nose quivering.
Peter had arrived at the lab just in time to catch the moment, loping through the room, a cup of coffee in each hand. He stopped dead as Walter hit mid-sentence and then walked more slowly forward and slid one of the cups over the table toward his father.
"Gotta tell ya, Walter," he set down his own coffee, then, too, pulling off his jacket, his scarf, "Big relief to hear the word 'book' come out of your mouth."
"What? Oh," Walter set it down, nodding, picked up his coffee and saluted Peter lightly with it, his mind obviously still clearly elsewhere. He turned back, flipping through a few more pages. "Good morning son, how long have you been here?"
"About ten seconds," Peter said. "You're in early?"
"Yes, well, I had a most unusual call from Austerity this morning. A woman came here looking for me, wanting me to analyze this for her, help her interpret some things in it that are beyond her ken. I think… I'm fairly sure I'm supposed to know her."
"May I?" Peter asked, reaching for the notebook and Walter nodded.
It was a journal, clearly, and a beautiful one: Thick and wrapped in a rich, soft brown leather cover full of embossing. It was compact enough to toss in a knapsack but large enough for detailed notes and it was jammed full of them: formulae, graphs, scatter charts done by hand, detailed missives next to snippets of thoughts that had been scrawled all over the margins. A dozen different pens had made the marks, but only one hand.
Peter's breath caught a little as he read: More than 99 percent of people who might ever pick this up could ever have a true sense of what the author was researching and it was very discomforting stuff. Then he flipped another page and his fingers froze.
"Walter, what's this? What's a Constant?"
"Oh, well, a constant in mathematics is a quantity with a fixed value…"
"No, no, I do understand that," Peter cut him off as gently as he was capable of, tapped the page scrawled in red ink with one finger. "But he's using it colloquially here… "'If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my Constant.' How can a person, a human being, be a Constant?"
"Oh, well, son," Walter struggled for the words to explain, shaking his head, his eyes damp at the realization that his child still had a lot to learn. "It's very hard to express in English, but then very easy to see once you internalize it. Haven't you sensed that life itself … the people, the places, the moments in it… they're all our variables, our constants. We are each our own formula."
Walter stopped, pulled the notebook back and switched gears entirely.
"The author's mother is Eloise Hawking. Where do I know her from?"
"Eloise Hawking, as in the ex-wife of Charles Widmore?" Peter asked. "Walter, Widmore Industries makes Massive Dynamics look like a place where people go to do arts and crafts."
"Of course!" Walter flipped the book shut, picked up his coffee, sipping. "I spent many an evening at Charles' dinner parties. Quite the collection of people he liked to keep around him. I once had a conversation with Mick Jagger and Carl Sagan about how the middle eight of most rock songs correlate accurately to natural vibrations picked up by the SETI project," Walter grabbed the notebook, wandered off in search of his coat. "Apparently, all over the galaxy creatures can't get no satisfaction."
Peter stood staring at Walter, slowly shaking his head as Olivia rolled in for the day. She was smiling, pulling her hair out from under her coat, shaking off a light layer of snow.
"It's really coming down now," she said, dropping her gloves on the table next to Peter, wrapping her arms around his waist. "Good morning. You look bothered."
He blinked, leaned in and kissed her neck, said nothing but continued to look bothered.
"Ostrich!" Walter yelled, "I need you."
"She's not here," Peter said. "She hasn't been here since I got in."
"Oh, of course," Walter walked toward the nearest chair, sat, kept his coat on. "She went to run an errand. I'll just wait here. I need to go think about this, somewhere where I can let the free associations flow. Somewhere …"
"Where they make milkshakes?" Olivia asked and Walter's face broke into a wide, thankful smile.
"Exactly, my dear," he said, and then turned his face to the door, and they knew they were gone to him: He was focused on waiting for Astrid.
"Is this something we need to worry about?" Olivia whispered, her arms still around Peter's waist. "What's in that book, anyway?"
"Nothing good," Peter said. "Half an hour ago, I didn't know there were electromagnetic pockets dotted around the globe that might just play a role in keeping good and evil separated from each other for all of our sakes….."
"Uh yeah," Olivia said, "That sounds like something we need to be in on…."
Walter started laughing, grimly. They were both surprised he'd heard them at all.
"Oh no," Walter said, shaking the book. "You want to leave this alone. This," he tapped it with one hand, "Once you get involved, you never get out. Ever."
"Eloise's son," Peter said. "I get the sense he's in trouble?"
"He's dead," Walter said, "Most definitely dead. Eloise is hoping I can find a way to remedy that."
"Walter, how?" Olivia asked, taking a few steps toward him.
"Oh, many ways. Mobius Strip, time loops…. he's been through one, he can take another, I'd guess."
Astrid walked into the lab to see the three of them silent, staring at each other.
"I can come back…" she said, until Walter jumped up happily, patting her on the shoulder, steering her to the door.
"Let's go, please," he said. "I need some quality time at the diner."
Astrid shrugged, waved to Peter and Olivia on their way out.
"Why do I feel…" Olivia walked back to Peter, drawing him to her again, "Like we probably shouldn't let that just lie? Like maybe we need to go see what's up with the places in that little book?"
"For once," Peter said, "I'm willing to listen to Walter. Let's leave it to him. Whatever happens… happens."