[For Pascal Rougon] All the dreaming, Scheming and screaming, Become one...

[suture_guy]

It's been a few weeks since the earthquake, and Stein has returned to his rooms in the Mansion. He's considered finding a nook of his own beyond the basement laboratory: Muraki leaves him a bit unsettled, and while he appreciates the life-saving care that the other pale doctor gave him, he's not sure of the methods

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[doctor_pascal]

Well, Pascal's door is unlocked, and on it, there is a sign:

Docteur Pascal Rougon
General practitioner of medicine
Available at all times for medical emergencies.

It's probably hard to miss.

[suture_guy]

Hmm, a fellow colleague? This could prove productive: He'll tap on the door, gently, but loud enough to be heard.

[doctor_pascal]

Must be the 3 o'clock appointment, Pascal thinks, though he doesn't look at the clock (why would he? there's no time standard, is there?)

So without looking from his notes, he calls, "Come in."

[suture_guy]

"I was wondering if I might stumble upon a fellow colleague," a slightly nasally voice might say. And if Pascal should look up, he'll find a very ...odd fellow entering, clad in a long lab coat with a series of surgical-like stitches angled over it... To match the zipper-ish scar angled across his pale face. And then there's large machine bolt through his noggin. "Hope you don't mind the intrusion, I'm Doctor Franken Stein."

[doctor_pascal]

“That remains a mystery to me,” Pascal explains, “but I have seen dead some folks who were very indubitably deceased, mangled beyond recognition, returning from the grave weeks or months later, without so much as a scratch.”

A beat. A thought for Felix.

“... without so much as a physical scratch. The mental damage, on the other hand...”

[suture_guy]

"The flesh is often more resilient than the mind, which makes the mind almost the more precious," he admits, with a concern born of first-hand knowledge.

"So would you say, there is some kind of healing forces at work here?" he asks, curious.

[doctor_pascal]

“I would reckon instead that this place keeps us alive, or brings us back, so that it may keep messing with our minds,” Pascal replies darkly.

“Others may call it mercy. I call it whimsy, with a side of cruelty.”

[suture_guy]

"Mmm, indeed: mercy without good judgement may as well be cruelty," he muses. "And if there is some kind of intelligent being at work here, it's either glaringly ignorant of human nature, or utterly sadistic."