Quod Erat Demonstrandum
This is the last time I'm kicking you out of bed myself.
His face is spread on a desk. His neck hurts. The alarm goes off.
In the haze of half-sleep, Stan registers the few facts at hand in a vague order. Even in his confusion, he doesn't need any more to remember. He has been through this routine so many times, by now, that even his unconscious takes it for granted.
Without looking, he feels the general area of the sound. On the left, just behind the photo. He shushes the emergency alarm clock in one quick, annoyed push.
It is the cautionary measure – he never fails to set it on 6 AM and bring it along, just in case he forgets to make it to his bedroom. It happened today, and many times before today. He hates it every time.
Still, even if he can afford to swear with exceptional spite, he doesn't have much of a choice.
You see that mirror? You are a mess. Is getting wasted until dawn your idea of fun?
He always keeps a spare suit in one of the lab cupboards. A toothbrush, too, if it gets really bad. He remembers how empty that furniture used to be, and marvels at the debris daily habits leave behind.
Before going back up, Stan has to hide. Comb and jacket at hand, he bargains for the best of his horrible looks – in case anyone sees him while he rushes to the bathroom, he needs at least that.
He inevitably gets there without being spotted, anyway. Practice makes perfect.
Stan is not the fancy type, except when he needs to put on his mask. Half an hour later, he is another man – clean, shaven to the point he can be, and as mysterious as he could get in a practice of years.
The man in the basement, the pile of groans and resilience that consumes himself on a bunch of damn books, can go back to sleep for a while.
Why you drink so much, you say? How the hell should I know?
Stanford Pines, Mister Mystery, comes down the stairs at eight every morning. Weekends may not be included. Of all the trinkets he needs to finish the job, there are two he needs the most, and never leaves behind.
The audience is used to seeing a façade. Yet, without his signature clothes and his mirth, they may even understand there is someone else underneath.
He enters the kitchen five minutes later. It is his cue to start practice – and every day, after all this time, he still gets better at being another person. It surprises him to see that what is left of his family is never disappointed.
No one has ever loved him this much, and just for the way he is. Not in a long time, at least. Can he really find a way to tell them the truth?
Stanford Pines ends breakfast at half past eight, in a whirl of racket and small hands pulling at his clothes. At nine, he is open for business, and ready for ten hours of racking up cash.
All the while, Stanley Pines desperately uses it all as a distraction.
And where the hell were you this afternoon? A job interview? No, I'm not going to ask how it went. I don't need to hear how hard they kicked your ass on the way out.
Stan loves doing this, there is no hiding it.
The Mystery Shack is all he was meant to be in life, turned into work. It took him long enough to make serious money out of gullible people – but now that he does, and it keeps coming, he is almost surprised to see how well it actually works.
He wasn't cut out for genius, or international success. He wasn't the one, something tells him, and he rejects the correction with stinging bitterness. He could only flourish in the shadows of a godforsaken town, just weird enough to escape diffidence and the authorities.
In his measure, from his little corner of world, he is the picture of success.
The end of each new summer day leaves him with fresh money, and an armful of laughing children. It is so much more than he can say he ever had.
He will not ruin it by thinking how he ended up here. Not this early in the evening, at least.
What do you expect to accomplish in your life, with that head of yours? Dust and flies. That's all you have in there.
Whenever he goes over the physics notes again, the air doesn't stay silent for long.
Over the years, Stan has covered the diagrams and the formulas in more insults than he can count. The vast vocabulary of his lifetime has always given its best – and the forest of numbers, the one thing he knows to truly deserve the title of mystery, requires its finest selection to this day.
But thirty years have gone by, and nothing has been tremendous enough to make him quit. Most likely, he muses as he traces the empty space of a third journal he could never find, that moment will never come.
Giving up was out of the question from the start. As the hours of his studies pile up, the idea grows more and more unacceptable. And with no chances to opt out of it, he is left to climb that mountain of books over and over.
He has to admit, it is not impossible. It may be true – what was Ford's natural element, his reason and way to breathe, will never be his own. But over time, in his forced familiarity with calculations and theory, Stan has come to know that science is just an overly complicated jigsaw puzzle.
It means building foundations forever, and only being able to progress by building on what came before. Every fragment he adds, with all the caution required by a foreign ground, needs the full shape of the previous piece.
It was hell, he must say. He expected it. The surprising part? It really wasn't impossible to manage.
And, despite what everyone else thought of him, he has come a long way.
Seriously. Thank God for your brother.
He can do it.
That is what keeps him awake and learning, far from the need to surrender. If he came this far, he can do anything he wants.
At this point in time and space, the opposite is just a memory. What matters is his struggle of today. There is no point in dwelling on things he managed to prove false.
He cannot turn back time. What he can do, despite it all, is look for a remedy – and he won't believe he can't, not anymore.
In fact, the truth is the opposite. There was no one there to witness the biggest mistake of his life. No one is allowed in this secret, or knows another way. Not even one.
Regardless of anything, Stan is the only one who can help him.
And Stan is the one who will bring him back, someday.