Nerv: Dry Cleaning and Takeout
Stage II: Day of Memes
The American Embassy was noisy, overcrowded, and even a little dirty. Rei stood aside reading quietly, while Shinji fidgeted. Yui hung onto Gendo's arm, looking quite guilty. The children had to miss a school festival that they've been looking forward to, and would henceforth never be able to see their friends again, not for a long time, anyway. Yui felt a deepening sense of responsibility, and tried to compensate by heaping them with candies and treats they'd otherwise never be allowed near. They responded with sullen looks, as it they considered the treatment too childish for them. Teenagers, she thought. They're wired to be disagreeable. She'll be so glad when they finally grow up. In the counter, Gendo was haranguing with the American at the desk with a pile of shoddily filed paperwork. He should have someone else to do it, she thought. He's hopelessly disorganized. Of course, there was no hope of being able to afford a secretary, not that their paperwork warranted much of a need for one.
At the counter, Gendo and the American behind it stared at each other, neither man willing to move a muscle until his opponent gave up.
"You know my paperwork is in perfect order," Gendo said. "What's the delay about?"
"Mr. Ikari, your wife's papers are all in order, your children's papers are all in order, but yours are not," the man hissed. "Shall we continue this fight or will you capitulate and make it easier for everyone?"
Gendo leaned forwards, crossing his fingers and peering over his glasses. The man flinched, intimidated by Gendo's straight face and cold, black eyes.
"Well played, sir, but I am not, in fact, missing any documents."
"Well, then, where is your photo, which you should have taken before coming here?" the man said, sweating a little.
"The photo is right here," Gendo said, sliding his hand into the pile of loose papers and withdrawing a tiny manila envelope. "Did you think I would forget so important a detail? How sad your family would be if you caused me any more…inconvenience." He fixed the American with his usual intimidating eyes, half his face mysteriously hidden behind his hands.
Sweat was pouring down the worker's forehead as he frantically put Gendo's paper in order. Gendo smiled to himself and cast another look at the man's open wallet, which contained a photo of a tall woman and a gorgeous teenage girl. It was so simple. All he had to do was look around and there was already a weak spot to poke. He felt a little sympathy, and saved his next volley of threats. The man hastily scribbled some stuff down, and handed Gendo a purple receipt.
"Please return in five days to claim your passport," he said. "Good day."
"Thank you, sir," Gendo said. "And please, give my regards to your beautiful wife and daughter." The man gulped, unable to think how this stranger knew, but Gendo had gathered up his papers, and he was already on his way by the time the man recovered his wits enough to serve the next person in line.
"Gendo, dear, what did you do?" Yui whispered. "The poor man looked like he was going to faint!"
Gendo fixed his glasses and looked right into Shinji's eyes.
"Son, were you watching?"
"Uh, yea," Shinji replied uncertainly.
"Deduce: what did I do, what was the purpose of what I did, what were the results? Quick!"
"Um, you observed his cubicle for signs of vulnerability, found through interpretation of visual cues what the target cares most about, and used that to pressure the target to work with greater enthusiasm," the boy said rapidly.
"Good boy!" Gendo cried. "And it worked beautifully! I was missing several papers—albeit minor documents, but in his haste he has completely overlooked them! Instead, he gave us our passports without question, all because I saw his family photo on the desk!"
He slapped Shinji on the back.
"Learn well, Shinji. You'll need it in the future."
Rei and Yui looked disapprovingly at the men.
"Mother, I find father's tactics highly questionable in terms of ethics," Rei said. Yui hurried the gloating man away before anyone noticed.
"Of course, dear, but your father is just looking out for us. Remember, ethics is directional, Rei. From our point of view, it is beneficial, but from the man's point of view, it is terrifying—"
"No, mother, I will not write a research paper on the topic of ethics," Rei countered, before her mother could suggest it.
"No, of course not, dear," Yui said. The men had gone ahead of them by this time, with Gendo somehow relapsing into a grandiose scheme for world domination that he always seemed to recount over and over again, involving mentally incapacitated children, giant machines, and some sort of god-cloning. Yui shook her head, thinking that if only he stopped trying to be an evil dictator, he could probably get a better salary.
"You know, dear," she said with acid in her voice. "We have a mad janitor, Anno-san, at our lab who's always spouting the same pseudo-religious, pseudo-scientific, misinterpreted Freudian ideas that you are so obsessed with. You guys should be friends…whenever he's out of the madhouse, that is."
Shinji winced at his mother's hard remark, and retreated behind Rei to escape Yui's glare. Gendo guffawed and pulled his wife into his arms.
"So you want me to be murdered by some ex-psychopath, huh? Then you can get at a younger and better-looking man than me. Yui, you are cruel!"
Yui pushed him away with a frown on her face.
"Act your age. You're setting a bad example for Shinji."
"What about Rei?"
"She exceeds your level of maturity by well over nine thousand points."
Rei interjected with a cough.
"By Professor Akagi's scale of psychological development in the Homo sapiens species, the difference is actually eight thousand and eight points, with an error margin of approximately 0.000000009%. However, that is taken with the object of comparison at a level of zero. If we disregard this assumption, then the difference will be, as you say, over nine thousand."
Gendo whirled around, flapping his jacket like a cape. It failed miserably, the cheap material plopping back to his back.
"That crazy cat lady has no right to evaluate anyone else's psychology!" he boomed. "Not with the way she screamed when her cat fell out of its hidey-hole in the ceiling! She treats the damn critters like her children."
"Father, you threw a book at Ceiling Cat," Rei pointed out. "It flipped the ceiling panel he was seated on."
"Ceiling—what?"
"Ceiling Cat," Rei said, "is the nickname of a six year old male Felis catus domestica, of light brown, streaked fur, named for his tendency to look through lifted ceiling panels at the laboratory. Professor Akagi is especially fond of him, as she created him from scrap DNA, and was naturally worried when you knocked him down."
"Still a damn cat," Gendo said.
Yui sighed, planting her face into the heel of her hand. Gendo and Rei argued daily, with Rei presenting cold, hard logic and Gendo decrying her arguments grandiosely with loud words and sweeping gestures. Shinji quickly became bored and followed Yui into a store to make some random purchases.
Gendo needlessly slammed both of the shop's door open with a sweep of his arms. Yui winced as the salespeople glared at the man who strode in wearing a shabby suit and the airs of a king. Yui sighed, gathered up her shopping bag, only to have it taken from her hand by Gendo.
"I'll carry it, Yui," he said. "You go outside with the kids."
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
"What?"
Yui dangled his wallet in his face.
"It's the third time this week that you've left your wallet when you went out," she scolded.
"Well, that's why I've got you," he said teasingly.
"Oh, shush, and don't get short-changed!" she shoved the wallet into his hand and marched out. He shrugged, paid the bills, narrowly avoided miscounting a stack of 100s as a stack of fifties, and walked out to meet up with his wife and children.
End Stage II