The small brushes of the paintbrush timidly touched the barely visible details on the meeple, giving the imposing armour some individual highlights with the silver paint. Edward pushed the bulky magnifying glasses over his forehead and carefully turned the plastic around, studying each side with sceptical eyes. It didn't seem like there really was much work left to do. The tinkerer looked up from the figure and stared a little lost at his almost finished masterpiece in front of him. For the past two months he had dealt almost non-stop with the role-play game, eagerly learned the rules by heart and bought all the necessary add-on sets in order to be able to experience the adventure visually. The Riddler stroked his tangled hair. It had been a hell of a job painting all the small little objects himself. The black-haired man put his work on the table and stretched slightly, then rose from his stool. It was time for a well deserved break. The paint had to dry first anyway. Edward shook his hands out to relax them a bit and glanced at the clock in his workshop. Almost midnight. Time always flew by when he was absorbed in his work and not distracted by unnecessary disturbances every two minutes. The younger yawned heartily. A coffee would surely work wonders on him now. The tinkerer didn't bother to be quiet walking around the old house. He had no doubt that his partner would still be awake. Understanding Jonathan Crane's daily rhythm was an almost impossible task. Edward had tried often enough to memorize certain key points in the older man's daily life, but the longer he lived with the dark professor, the more the initial logic eluded his observations. Whenever the Riddler woke up from nightmares during the night, Jonathan was wide awake too. The inventor rarely saw his partner actually sleep or eat.
This only raised further questions. Questions, Edward hadn't yet had a plausible answer to. Anyway, there were a number of other things that puzzled him in dealing with the former psychiatrist and preoccupied him more than he wanted to admit. They had been living together in the old mansion for three months and every day brought out a new, interesting detail about the older man, which at the same time literally begged for further explanations about it. Already the first week in the own four walls was enough to show the black-haired man painfully that he actually knew next to nothing about his lover – despite one whole year of a stable relationship. The Master of Fear evaded a meaningful categorization and seemed to want to hold on to it, much to the displeasure of his curious partner. The tinkerer grumbled quietly as he washed his beloved coffee mug thoroughly in the sink. The formerly bronze gears, which served as a special handle, slowly faded to a matt grey. To his astonishment, the coffee machine had just finished running and was still full of hot, well smelling coffee. The Riddler poured himself some of the black gold, then hesitated a little. He stared at his distorted reflection in the cloudy liquid. For a moment, the inventor had the feeling that he was being dragged deeper into the broth and was facing an unknown abyss. Strange. The younger one broke away from this thought and left the kitchen with the mug, sipping the coffee lightly from time to time. Should he visit Jonathan for a moment? Mostly, the older one was busy day and night perfecting his fear toxin. The black-haired man shrugged his shoulders slightly and made his way to his partner's small study. When moving into the house, the former psychiatrist only insisted on being able to work as far away from his workshop as possible so as not to be suddenly interrupted by noise during complicated calculations.
The tinkerer took another sip of his coffee. In general, the Master of Fear was the definition of the word calmness itself, clearly enjoying the silence around them. Edward knocked on the sturdy study door, then waited a few seconds. He would probably have to wait an eternity for an answer or invitation, but the inventor respected the dark professor's privacy and gave him time to prepare for an unexpected visitor. After a while the younger entered slowly. The air in the study was unnaturally difficult to breathe. Even if Jonathan hadn't handled chemicals today, there was a constant, almost odourless haze in the air. The subdued light in the room also had visible difficulties penetrating the small particles. This didn't seem to bother the elderly in the least. The Riddler looked at his partner, who was probably brooding over a complicated text. The pitted forehead was furrowed and the bony fingers fidgeted restlessly on the yellow page of the book. Before the black-haired man could say anything, the former psychiatrist anticipated him coolly: "Can I help you with something, Edward?"
The person addressed winced slightly. Why did he still feel not welcome in this room? Despite the uncomfortable feeling, the inventor pushed the second chair at the table back slightly and sat down on it, then cast a cautious look at the text. The letters didn't look familiar to him in any way. The low voice of the Master of Fear rang out quietly next to him: "Please don't bother trying. The book is written in Hebrew." The Riddler frowned. His partner placed a bookmark in the book and slowly closed it, revealing the cover. This was in a simple blue tone, but the gold letters seemed to be in Hebrew as well. Unreadable for the inventor. Jonathan sighed cautiously and said calmly: "The word Tanach is a name for the Hebrew Bible." The Riddler had to hold back a laugh. That had to be a really bad joke from his partner. Edward smiled a little and replied, slightly amused: "Why in the world are you reading the Bible, John? I thought you were a passionate scientist. Don't waste your time on theological nonsense." The thin man literally froze into a pillar of salt. His eyes were half closed and fixed the letters on the simple cover. An unbearable silence returned between them. The tinkerer felt that something had suddenly changed in the room. Something started raging and reaching for them. Jonathan's body in total still didn't move, but the sinister professor spoke in his scratchy voice: "Your words in connection with this book can stir restless spirits, Edward." His heart was suddenly beating louder in his chest. What was going on here? Had the brown-haired man poisoned him again? The Master of Fear picked up a second book on the table and opened it, turning slowly to the desired page. A monstrous structure could be seen on it. The former psychiatrist stroked the picture and went on almost in a whisper: "The Tower of Babel. A presumed plan of mankind to reach the heaven of God without his help, which forced the almighty Being to confuse the peoples with different languages. They couldn't longer communicate with each other and were scattered all around the world in anger and hate about their failure. An impressive story of pure arrogance."
Edward looked at the structure and gave a slight shudder. He still didn't understand what his partner wanted to point out. After a while the sinister professor asked without any emotion: "Aren't we all prisoners of this deceptive arrogance in the end?" The Riddler slightly scratched his three-day beard and replied insecurely: "Why do you call the behaviour arrogant, John? If people were able to build the tower successfully back then, weren't they entitled to be proud of it or what?" Scarecrow sank deeper into his thoughts. His fingers grasped the pencil with which he slowly drew his own building on the paper. After a while he said quietly: "Should we really be proud of it just because we supposedly can do things like the Tower of Babel? Isn't it more the case that we humans dare to tackle projects that sooner or later grow over our heads and throw us back when they ultimately fail? The construct of humanity is fragile. Way too fragile to even come close to doing justice to the word God." The inventor thought hard about what had been said. He finally shook his head and hesitantly replied: "Why all these weird questions right now? They make me depressed just listening to them." The sinister professor snorted in amusement. He took the mug next to him and took a sip of the coffee, warming himself on the porcelain. The Master of Fear ran his free hand through his straw hair, replied in a whisper: "I am only thinking critically about whether I am not creeping up on the same arrogance of the people of Babylon in my research and whether this arrogance will bring me down at some point, if I don't stop striving for senseless perfection in life."
Another minute of silence came between them. That was clearly a way too difficult topic for a harmonious evening. Edward looked almost concerned at the older man's petrified face. Pride. Arrogance. Perfection. These topics were not unknown to him either. The Riddler looked down at the picture again and replied meekly: "I don't think so, John. You're not trying to reach God or even be God. Or are you trying to do that?" The person addressed began to laugh softly. Again something in this room seemed to want to reach for those present. The former psychiatrist tapped the building on the paper a few times with the pencil and mumbled, barely understandable: "Who decides who is God and who is not? In the end, a god is only a supernatural being in the simple definition, who has a great and not scientifically describable transcendent power. For my victims, this may apply to me at a certain moment also, so we are faced with an insoluble dilemma." The inventor gradually got a headache. He massaged his temples lightly and closed his eyes for a moment. These in-depth conversations with the former psychiatrist made him absolutely fearful. Jonathan loved to deal with his own impermanence and at the same time to consciously question others – in fact, he did not show any consideration for the poor souls he met on those days. The younger one sighed lightly, tried hard to put words together in a meaningful way. The gaunt man suddenly opened a drawer on his desk and took out a small box, carefully lifted the lid. There were innumerable pieces of broken glass in the box in different shapes and colours. The Master of Fear began carefully to pile the pieces on top of each other. He said calmly: "I often have to remind myself that I am only human, Edward. My existence alone serves no higher purpose and any interpretation is a disastrous mistake. Also in my body there is only a weak heart that will stop beating at some point. My shell is ruled by a cold soul and an irrepressible spirit that is looking for more in this bleak life. For years I have been hungry for knowledge without knowing what I actually want to know and every search ended in an unsatisfactory compromise of the all-encompassing ignorance of human existence when no answer can be found."
The tower grew taller and taller with every word spoken. The black-haired man remained silent even after this explanation. Only rarely did the elder give insights into his thinking and his motives. He appreciated it all the more when Jonathan volunteered to tell him what was going on in his mind. This didn't make the thoughts any less terrifying or disturbing. The next words, however, caught the younger one completely unprepared: "The Bible helps me to recognize my own humanity and to accept it grudgingly. The scriptures show where we come to our limits with our intelligence and where conjecture finds its place, no matter how confused and tumultuous it may be. Everyone has the right to believe what they want and scientists also have the right to believe, whether in current laws of physic or long-outdated theories. So it is not my right to stand over it in my inadmissible arrogance." The tinkerer nodded slightly and stroked his beard again. It all made sense somehow, even if the choice of words bothered him a lot. He still had a question on the tip of his tongue: "I understand somehow what you want to tell me, John, but why do you know how to read Hebrew? Where the hell did you learn that?" The sinister professor smiled mysteriously and closed the book with the illustration. He put another mosaic on the erected tower and replied calmly: "Some questions don't always have to be answered immediately, Edward."