#i have walked into doctor's offices for appointments about the fact i am literally starving to death and my body stopped making blood

[canonkiller]

abjectly refuse to romanticize weight loss and malnutrition. that shit kills you. to starve yourself is crippling¹ even in the ""bearable"" "well I'm just hungry less" / "other people have it worse" / "it's only a few skipped meals" / etc ways. you have this fucking life and that's it so please if you do nothing else allow yourself to actually be alive in it. do you hear me? take your supplements and multivitamins and eat breads and meats and vegetables and fats and sugars and shit that just fucking tastes good okay? thank you

[talesofstyles]

Drs Styles

paediatric heart surgeon harry, husband harry and dad harry. honestly the holy trinity.

warning: they did it in the car. bloody animals.

Harry

“Move your car, please!”

“What are you going to do? Write me a ticket?”

“This is in the interests of safety for the children!”

I look at the time in the car. I’ve still got about twenty to twenty-five minutes to watch this drama unfold at the school gate. I just wish we had popcorn because drop-off and parking situations at the school gates are always more entertaining than Good Morning Britain. 

The school gate is a strange social scene, and honestly, I don’t blame my wife for trying to avoid it like a plague. Sometimes, you don’t even have to talk to these people to know everything about their lives and more. I swear there are more gossips in the class WhatsApp group and daily playground chattering than in the copies of The Sun and Daily Mail combined. You know who’s married, who’s getting a divorce, whose husband shagged the au pair again, whose party you haven’t been invited to, even who’s looking for a builder. 

I see the school caretaker chuckling to himself as he sweeps the autumn leaves off the pathway, no doubt also enjoying our morning entertainment. 

“Why is Mrs Chambers screaming like that?” Alma, our eldest daughter, asks from the back of the car. 

“Because that man parks his car in a drop-off zone,” I reply, still watching him as he removes a child from his car seat. “Do you know who that is?”

“I think the boy is your classmate,” Alma turns to her sister.

Fiona, our youngest, peers over to inspect. “Oh yeah, that’s Rufus and his dad.”

“Do we like Rufus?”

“Not unless we like boys who pee down the slides,” Fiona scrunches her nose up. “He stood at the top and peed down like a waterfall. I haven’t gone down the slide ever since.”

I shake my head and let out a chuckle. “M’sure they’ve cleaned it up since, button.” 

Did you know that choosing a school for your child after nursery can be a head-throbbing, stomach-twisting, heart-pounding experience? Well, it can. How is one supposed to choose a school anyway? According to the proximity? Leavers Results? Adorable uniforms? Parents’ agendas?

After many, many discussions and visits through more schools than I can count, we ended up with Thomas’s Kensington. It’s a great school, and only ten minutes away from our home, making school runs easier. The downside of this school is the fact that it costs us an arm and a leg and that they’re always trying to rip us off any chance they get. Also, they only take the kids until 11, so after that, we’ll have to look for other schools again. But since our girls are only seven and five, we can worry about that later. 

There’s a strange mix of parents at this place. I went to school up in the North and the school gate scene is nothing like this. Here there are more au pairs, fancy cars, nicer clothes and people coming with impressive tans from their last weekend break in Antibes. The kids here are suited up too: the PE kit is the size of a small weekender bag, and we put them in uniforms that make them look smart, hoping that will increase the size of their brains. A child walks past our car with a cello case, another with a hockey stick. It’s a different land here. One that my socialist in-laws constantly tease us about and one which my mum was hysterical about because she was scared her grandbabies would be little Tories. I promised her I’d keep them grounded by only giving them plain hobnobs. None of those luxury chocolate covered ones.

Jokes aside, my girls are happy here. They’re thriving. They learn French and Spanish and Mandarin, even if they share a class with kids who have ridiculous names like Kitty and Archibald. 

A knock at my window calls me to attention. I wind it down.

“Are you Fiona’s dad?” A mum asks me.

“I am.”

“It’s about Ophelia’s riding party this Saturday at the riding stables.” 

Like I said, it’s a different land here.

“I thought we RSVPed to that?” I look at her in confusion.

“Yes, you did, but we have to change the food options as one of the partygoers is allergic to nuts. I’m making everyone aware and we need to let the guests know that they can’t bring any nuts on the day.”

A dirty joke is right there on the tip of my tongue and I’m trying my hardest to keep it in. My wife would definitely find it funny though, I’ve got to remember this and tell her later. 

“Noted,” I mean, I wasn’t going to send my daughter to a party with a packet of cashews anyway but I nod politely.

“And just gift vouchers for gifts please. Smiggle, if you can.”

Again, I nod, biting my tongue at the presumptuousness. But then I suddenly panic, because we haven’t entered the realms of pony riding just yet. Do I have to buy jods and boots? If I don’t, will my daughter be the odd one out? But Ophelia’s mum saunters off before I’ve got the chance to ask.

“Do I have to go to that party, daddy?” Fiona asks. 

“Well, we’ve already replied, poppet,” I tell her. “Did you not want to go?”

“I’ll go if I have to.”

I don’t answer because I get distracted by a vacant space. I edge the car forward so my girls can hop off. 

“I love you both. Have a good day, make good choices.” 

“Bye daddy! We’ll see you after work!”

***

Evelina London Children’s Hospital is our second home. Of course, as a children’s hospital, we try to make the place as fun as possible as not to freak those little patients out at being ill. It is bright and primary coloured, and each ward is decorated according to its own theme with different colours and lovely artworks. There are televisions and toys almost in every corner. We have a giant slide on the ground floor, and even the bins are shaped like red London buses. The aim was to help the children to forget that they’re in a hospital and take their minds off their sickness.

Since my wife and I are in the same department, our offices are next to each other, both overlooking the Thames. It’s nice up here. Would’ve been nicer if we could sneak in a quickie, but that’s practically impossible with our shared secretary’s desk sitting literally in front of our doors. 

Speak of the devil.

“Good morning. Here’s your tea,” my secretary follows me into my office with a cup of tea and a tiny plate with a couple of rich tea fingers. “Clinic until 3 pm, scheduled PDA ligation in the laboratory for 4 pm and then evening rounds on the wards.”

“Mornin’ Rhonda, you look lovely today,” I greet her cheerily. She’s a stern-looking woman who definitely likes her tea as strong as tits and who has probably never cried in her life. With such severity, she runs a tight ship, but she secretly has this affectionate side in her too. Not only is she a great secretary, but she also takes care of us in a way as a grandma does. She makes us tea, feeds us in between surgeries with biscuits or nice baby cheeses and crackers just so we wouldn’t starve. 

See that sofa over there in the corner of my office? Rhonda got me that. It was around the time when I had just become a new father with the sweetest, most gorgeous little baby who did not sleep. Alma wasn’t a fussy baby though. For some reason, she just wouldn’t go back to sleep after her midnight feed for months. Believe me, I tried everything. I changed her nappy, I swayed and jiggled and rocked and sung her to sleep. Odd nonsensical songs like, ‘Alma darling go to sleeep. Sleepy sleep sleep. Pleeeeease. I’m so tirrrred. My eyeballs may actually exploooode. I don’t want you to see thaaat.’ And she would just look at me all wide-eyed like I’d lost the plot. Those were song lyrics? That was rubbish. Please don’t give up your day job. Also, it’s not sleeping time. I’m awake. I’m ready for life. Come on, entertain me, old man. Isn’t this nice, just you and me? Tell me everything you know. EVERYTHING. 

Except of course she didn’t say all that. She would just stare at me and I had no idea what was going on in her little head. 

I took over my wife’s patients at the hospital during her maternity leave, so I had longer hours at the hospital. One day Rhonda found me napping on the floor between surgeries, so she sweet-talked some porters into looking for any old sofas on the go and paid to have this one reupholstered. She even bought me a fleece throw for it too. We really don’t deserve her.

“You hittin’ on me?” She deadpans. “Yer wife not doing it for you these days?”

“It’s the blazer. I’m a sucker for a blazer.”

“If I’d known, I would’ve worn it more often,” she replies. “Did my nice dress yesterday not give you the fanny flutters?”

“It’s schlong shiver for me,” I roar with laughter. “And it’s the tartan, makes you look well old.”

“YN, yer husband’s a bloody git, did I ever tell you that?” Rhonda says loud enough for my wife to hear, and I can hear my wife’s laughter from her office next door. “Drink your tea. Your first clinic appointment is in twenty.”

“Yes ma’am,” I salute her. 

***

The Arctic ward in the Evelina is home to many of our imaging, heart and kidney services. The name is probably giving it away, but everything is decorated in blue and white to go with the theme. We have several zones, and since paediatric cardiology clinics are held in the Walrus zone, I spend a great deal of time each day looking at walrus and snowflake decals. 

“Doctor Styles!” I hear a little voice shouts in excitement as I walk towards the waiting room in the outpatient ward. I smile, because I recognise that voice even before I see the little person.

The waiting room is very open here compared to other hospitals. There’s a sea of noise, snacks, tiny juice boxes and colouring pages. There’s also always a look of expectation, judgement on the faces of parents and guardians every time I walk in. They want to see if their doctor is old or qualified enough to see their children. There’s always one child who has the whole gang with them; parents, two sets of grandparents and even several aunts and uncles, and there’s also at least one child running around in circles out of boredom. 

This little lad bounces off his chair and hurls himself at me in a way like a little puppy would when its owner comes home from work. I put an arm out, hoping that he’ll apply the brakes but no such luck and he bundles himself into my arms. “Nice to see you, mate.”

His parents smile as they watch their son’s antics, who then runs off as I shake their hands. I turn around to see what caught his attention, and I can’t help but chuckle when I realise it’s my wife. 

“Doctor pretty Styles!” He exclaims excitedly as he bundles himself into her arms. She gets a mouthful of curls in the process. 

“Hi Rory,” she greets him as she runs her fingers through his curly mop. 

“Oi,” I pout as I walk towards them. “You don’t think I’m pretty?”

“Your wife is prettier,” he says with a shrug, his tone matter-of-fact.

She laughs and gives him a high-five. “Rory, you are officially my favourite patient.”

She is right. Rory is one of our special patients for sure. We’ve both known him for about six years now, ever since Rory’s mum gave birth to this tiny human next door at St Thomas and his heart was literally broken. I remember watching proudly from the theatre when my wife replaced two of his valves when he was born. It was in our early years of training. Long time patients like Rory almost always feel like family. We’ve seen all their parents’ tears and watched over their children throughout the years. They send us cards and wine every Christmas and despite all attempts to keep a professional distance, their kids do feel like our own.

Rory shrugs off his dinosaur rucksack and unzips it, pulling out a drawing of a blue whale and an opened packet of KitKat. I like that the whale wears a top hat and appears to also don a moustache. 

“I drew you both a picture. Only one though, because I figure you can share,” he says with a big toothy grin and hands the packet of KitKat to my wife. “And I’ve got half a KitKat here. Do you want it?”

“I’m good for now. Keep that KitKat for later on the tube,” she smiles and waves at Rory as she begins to walk away towards the fetal cardiology ward just down the hall. “Bye Rory, thanks for the picture.”

“Bye doctor pretty Styles,” Rory replies, making my wife laugh as she walks away. I give her a wave and a wink. 

“Hey Rory, did you know a blue whale has a heart the size of a small car?” I ask him and his eyes widen.

“No way! That’s mega!” He exclaims. “Do you think you could operate on a whale heart?”

“I would need a very big ladder,” I tell him. “And a wetsuit. I’d give it a go though.”

A senior nurse from the outpatient ward, Florence approaches us with a junior nurse trailing behind her. “Dr Styles, always a pleasure.”

I smile at her. “Florence. How are we today?”

“Busy as usual,” she replies. “We’re about twenty minutes behind I’m afraid. We had Dr Goodridge in this morning and you know he likes to talk.”

“He always runs over,” I chuckle. “Well, don’t worry. I’ll skip lunch and get us back up to speed.”

“I’ll make sure to send some snacks for you. Here’s your chart, your files are already in your office. And this is Alice, your nurse today. She’s newly qualified so might need some instructions.”

The new nurse looks terrified so I smile at her to try and calm her fears. I totally get that. When you work in medicine, unfortunately, you’ll realise that there are a lot of rude self-important wankers. 

I look down at my chart and find Rory’s name on the top of the list. “Well, look who’s coming with me to the exam room.”

Rory reaches out to hold my hand and we walk towards the examination room. His parents follow us closely, carrying the usual coats and devices that people do when they know they’re bound for a hospital waiting room. I see them inside and sit behind the desk.

“So, young man, I hear we’ve had a touch of drama with you. Can you tell me what happened?”

I’ve actually already got the information in the file, but I like the way this kid tells a story. He reminds me of my youngest. 

“So… I was at school and we were doing PE and I wasn’t really feeling it because it was cold and really we should have been inside but Mr Witter makes us go outside because he used to be in the Army apparently and he says we should get used to the cold but that’s what they do in prisons.”

I smile. “Go on.”

“And then my heart started running.”

“You mean racing?”

He nods firmly. Racing isn’t even the word. It sprinted to the finish like Bolt at 252 beats per minute, three times the speed it should.

“It felt like bubbles in my chest and then the school went crazy panicky and they called the ambulance and they brought me to the hospital but not this one, it was another one and it wasn’t as good because you weren’t there and they had really bad biscuit.”

His mum adds. “And they gave him some drugs to bring it back to a steady rhythm; they were close to shocking him.” Her voice trails off and both parents’ faces look drawn and pale remembering the incident.

Rory looks absolutely unbothered by this. To be fair, we have put this little man through everything. We’ve cut his chest open more times than is necessary for someone so small, we hook him up to machines and put him on treadmills. His resilience and character amaze me, and I really can’t imagine what it feels like to see your child so vulnerable and helpless, to be paralysed and weighed down with such worry.

“Alright then, little man, we need to make sure that your heart is working as it should. This is Alice, and she is going to take you over for an ECG and we just need to make sure your tick-tock is in good shape.”

Rory nods and jumps off the chair. His dad offers him a piggyback, and his mum smiles at them. I can hear Rory offering that half KitKat to Alice as they leave the room. 

His mother turns to me as the door is closed, her shoulders relaxing, allowing herself to breathe. “And how are you?” I ask her.

“You just think it’s done and then something like that comes along to scare you,” she says with a sigh.

“Let’s have these tests and then see if it’s anything major to worry about,” I try to calm her. “Episodes of rapid heartbeat is quite common in Rory’s case, and we can look into drugs to remedy that if necessary.”

She smiles, nodding.

“Did you have any other questions for me?”

She studies my face for a moment too long. “I… well, it will show up in Rory’s records soon, but my husband I are… I mean we’re getting a divorce.”

I pause for a moment. Of course, I know these things happen in life, but I’ve known this couple for years. I’ve seen them at their lowest ebb, bound by friendship and their love for that boy. I really do feel sorry for them.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I mumble.

“We just… we’re terrified about telling Rory.”

“He doesn’t know?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “We’re scared of breaking him. I mean, look at him. All of this stuff he’s been through and he carries on like nothing has happened. We don’t want to upset him.”

“It took a team of us the best part of six years to build Rory’s heart. There's a warranty on that workmanship,” I reassure her. “Have that chat with him. He’ll be fine.”

***

“Have we got time for dinner first?” I turn to my wife as we walk out of the hospital. We don’t normally have the luxury of ending our shift at the same time, but today is exceptional. We have parents’ evening at the girls’ school so Rhonda made sure to clear up our schedule after our evening rounds at the ward. 

“No, but we can raid M&S and eat in the car?”

I’m starving and I almost cry with relief at the suggestion. “Always knew I married the right woman.”

She chuckles. “Damn right you did.”

We leave the car at the hospital and she drags me along the walkways to Waterloo, the breeze biting at our cheeks. I pull her into M&S, dodging the marching commuters and grab a basket. 

“I’ll look for some wine,” she says before she saunters off. “Oh and I want sushi. None of that crap with the mayonnaise please.”

“Alright.”

I skipped lunch today so the whole place calls to me. I start taking very random things off the shelves: a packet of raspberry iced buns. That’ll do. I also take some hummus for my wife because she bloody loves hummus. I’m not even joking, I’ve seen her down a whole pot of it. Then I take some sushi as requested, some coleslaw, a family bag of mature cheddar and red onion crisps and a trifle. I hope I don’t bump into Rhonda. Next are cheese twists, noodle salad and cocktail sausages. 

It takes me a while to notice that there is a man right next to me with a roll of yellow stickers in their back pocket. Hello there, you are one of my favourite people tonight. Have I managed to find that sacred hour when all the food is being marked down? He labels some prawns with dip and even though I get a little squeamish about eating fish near its expiry date, I put it in my basket. I then follow him around the corner. Now, this is dinner. I put all sorts of random food in my basket and smile at the thought.

Ooh, knockdown pizzas. I should get a pizza. That’s tomorrow’s tea sorted, the girls will love it. Although I can’t help but wonder, what’s the limit for us to feed our daughters frozen pizza in a week before they get taken away from us? But eh, we might be able to get away with it if we give them frozen peas on the side. 

“Look at you,” says my wife, depositing two bottles of red in the basket. 

“Yes, it’s me. I’m the yellow sticker bitch.”

She snickers as we turn to head for the tills. “Excellent work.”

***

“Mr and Mrs Styles, welcome.”

“Mrs Ebner, always a pleasure,” I shake the headmistress’ hand who’s standing at the door. 

“Busy evening?” My wife asks her as she shakes her hand next.

“Always,” the headmistress replies with a smile, then proceeds to speak like she’s reading out of brochures. “But such a wonderful opportunity to connect with our parents and build on the special relationships we have with our school community.” 

Two uniformed minions appear.

“Lewis, Maggie, could you please show Mr and Mrs Styles through to the drinks reception?”

They both nod in unison. The boy holds his arms out like a waiter showing us to our table. We follow them through the school’s grand corridors to the main hall. It’s the one thing I like about this place. It’s very Hogwarts-like with hefty engraved name boards and sepia photos of successful sports teams. In the hall, a throng of parents mill around waiting to see respective teachers. It’s the same every year. We all dodge the people from the PTA trying to sell us quiz tickets, and the bowls of crisps out of hygiene concerns.

“Red or white?” Asks a lady in an apron.

This right here is the very reason we get through parents’ evening. From the look of the bottle, it’s decent wine too. I think that’s where a good proportion of our fees is going. 

“Red, please.”

We both take our glasses and walk to the corner of the hall. It’s essentially a holding area without the background music. The idea is that all the parents will get on and create a party vibe but it just becomes a strange family gathering. As terrible as it sounds, it’s sorted into cliques: parents who know each other via NCT groups, the international expat brigades who keep to themselves, the parents who’ve ostracised themselves by gossip, the ones who you know regularly brunch and ski together.

The boy from earlier suddenly appears in front of us. “Mrs Hughes is ready for you.”

I put my hand on the small of my wife’s back as we walk towards the classroom. Fiona’s teacher first and then Alma’s straight after. Right, we can do this.

“Mrs Hughes, we meet again,” I shake her hand. I’ve got no qualms about Mrs Hughes. She’s a seasoned teacher who likes a slack and sensible moccasin and we’re familiar with her since she taught Alma two years previously. When we enter the classroom, Lewis bows in reverence, taking his leave and I wonder whether to tip him. 

“It’s always lovely to have another Styles girl in my classroom. Fiona is a particular delight.”

My wife and I smile proudly. I’m sure Mrs Hughes says this to every parent here about their child, but that’s always nice to hear. 

“She talks a lot about you,” my wife says. “She seems to have settled in well.”

Mrs Hughes opens up a couple of books and it’s classic Fiona. Alma is ordered and neat—if she makes a mistake then she erases it completely and she underlines things with a ruler and listens to instruction carefully. She gets that from her mum. Fiona though, on the other hand, she’s all me. She has more wild abandon about her; no rulers, no rubbers. She puts giant crosses through things that don’t work and likes her bubble writing decorated with doodles of many, many cats.

I glance around the classroom as Mrs Hughes talks to us about standardised scores. The theme of the school is to show you how smart and educated these children are. Look at the copperplate handwriting, their reproductions of Van Gogh and our languages corner where they’ve all had a go at telling us what they like in French. I spy a contribution from my girl. J’adore les chats et le gâteau au chocolat. 

I’ve lost track of the conversation so I try to catch up.

“So to push Fiona into those top scores, perhaps we can look into tutoring? For maths, in particular, so she can grasp some of the concepts a little more tightly,” says Mrs Hughes. 

My wife and I look at each other confused. “Uh, I don’t think there’s a need, right? She’s only five.”

“It’s never too early,” replies Mrs Hughes. “We run an after-school tutoring club on Tuesdays that would help.”

Back when I was a youngster, clubs were fun endeavours that involved matching baseballs caps or were a chocolate biscuit that you had in your lunchbox. Maths tutoring session was not a club.

I ask her. “Is it free?”

“It’s fifteen pounds per session.”

See? My point being this should be a parents’ evening, not a sales session.

“Well, then it’s something to think about,” says my wife. “It could be that Fiona catches up with people throughout the year.”

“Possibly,” Mrs Hughes nods. Still, though, she proceeds to go into her folder and passes me a form. Sneaky. “Fiona has also shown great interest in languages and art. Her pictures have been a joy.”

Mrs Hughes goes to a file and pulls one of Fiona’s drawings. I glance down at it. It’s a standard child piece of art. The grass and sky are strips of colour to the top and bottom. It’s a family portrait, and we are as tall as the broccoli style trees. Wait, hang on a second. I count the number of people in the picture again. Is that-

“And Mrs Styles, I gather congratulations are in order,” she says with a smile. “Such lovely news.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Fiona told me it’s a boy,” she adds, and the sheer terror on my wife’s face at the realisation is priceless. “You must be very thrilled.”

I study the picture. There’s a house in the middle, and standing in a line in front of the house is our family. The one slightly taller than the broccoli tree is me. I’ve got my white lab coat, and I look like a serial killer because I’m holding a scalpel with the size of a butcher’s knife. Next to me is my wife, also with a white lab coat, but instead of a scalpel, she’s holding a very chunky baby who rather looks like a basketball with a head.

“Oh dear,” I chuckle. “Guess now we know what she’ll ask for Christmas.”

“Yeah,” my wife shakes her head. “We’re not expecting.”

“Oh, I apologise,” Mrs Hughes says with a sheepish smile.

“No worries, Mrs Hughes,” I tell her. “So, what else has our girl been up to here? Besides gossiping of course.”

Mrs Hughes laughs under her breath. “Well, in class, Fiona is attentive, bright and very helpful. She is a credit to you both.”

***

“I swear your daughter, Styles.”

We’re sitting in the car now. Finally done with parents’ evening, still laughing at the slightly creepy, chunky basketball baby in Fiona’s picture and the fact that three people, including Mrs Hughes, have congratulated us for the ‘baby’.

“You haven’t called me Styles in years,“ I turn to her with a grin. “Not since medical school.”

I can’t help but flashback to the good ol’ days when we had matching university hoodies and we’d test each other on the parts of a kidney whilst walking into lectures, sitting next to each other, sharing pens and cans of Lilt. 

“Well, after that I became a Styles too,” she chuckles. “Would be confusing then, wouldn’t it?”

“True,” I laugh under my breath, then I grab her hand and pull it to my mouth so I can kiss her knuckles. “Thank you.”

“What for?”

“For being a Styles.”

“Aw, aren’t we soppy tonight?” She smirks. “Alright, stop the car.”

“What?”

“There,” she points to a dark empty spot and I oblige. 

Then, before I can even ask her why, she reaches over and grabs me by the collar. Pulling me close to her and gives me a kiss. I kiss her back, and I smile when she bites gently on my bottom lip.

“Oi, oi. Something’s got you randy.”

The next thing I know, she undoes her seatbelt and then rolls her trousers down her legs along with her knickers, fumbling and giggling at the awkward movement. I push my seat back and pull my trousers down. 

“Don’t fall on gearstick now,” I joke as she climbs over to straddle me. “Well, unless you want to, of course…”

She laughs as she lowers herself over my lap. I really can’t believe what’s happening here.

“Mrs Styles, we’re about to have sex in a car. Around the corner from our daughters’ school.” 

“I know,” she says with a smile before she runs her tongue along my neck. “Not our first rodeo though.”

“Oh right, we did it in our Volvo years ago, didn’t we? Thought the suspension couldn’t take it.”

“And it turned out fine. Told you that you needed to have more faith in the Swedes, they’re a reliable breed.”

“I love it when you talk about Sweden.”

“Ikea.”

“Fuck.”

“Meatballs.”

“Billy Bookcase.”

She throws her head back in laughter and I take this as an opportunity to run my tongue along her collar bone. She gasps. I reach down to lift her before I slowly lower her over my cock. We both sigh as I enter her, a long exhalation with our lips barely touching. 

“Viggo Mortensen.”

“Isn’t he Danish?”

“Tomato, Tomahto.”

I smile at my wife and push my hips up, silently telling her that we don’t need to talk about Swedish people anymore. She grabs onto the car seat and levers herself up and down. I look at her in the eye, a goofy smile still plastered across my face.

But then I squint. Light. Bollocks, what’s that? Where’s that light coming from? Crap, that’s bright. Shit. I see the flash of a hi-vis jacket, a knock at the window and someone shaking their head.

Oh sodding fucking bollocking shit wank.

[coeurdastronaute]

Essays in Existentialism: Jurassic

I really love your fics so I was wondering if you'll pleaseee write a clexa jurassic park au Tks

“Most meat eaters walked on two feet. This made them faster and left their hands free to grab their prey,” the professor explained, clicking the pointer so that the page changed. “Most plant eaters walked on four feet to better carry their heavy bodies. Some plant eaters could balance on two feet for a short time.”

“What about T-Rex?”

“What about them?”

“When do they show up and did they hunt humans?”

“Here we have the first instance of failure to read the material,” she shook her head and walked in front of the lecture hall.

Almost two hundred students watched her as she cross her arms and smiled as she shook her head. This was her favorite misconception, and her favorite way to tease an entire group of freshmen. The professor leaned against the desk at the front of the room, with a giant projector screen displaying a large graph behind her. She felt powerful like that.

“Millions of years separate the faintest inkling of humans and dinosaurs. We probably wouldn’t be sitting here today if we coexisted during the same time period. Not even because of the sheer amount of predators,” she explained before clicking through a few slides until she came to the graph she wanted. “There is a little gap in the estimates, but the Earth had about fifteen to thirty percent less oxygen than it does now. That means about five times the amount of Carbon Dioxide existed, which is thought to have contributed to the fact that everything was so damn big back then. Yes?”

“Could dinosaurs exist now?”

“No.”

From the back of the lecture hall, a gentleman smiled and watched the professor push herself up from leaning and begin to walk around, emphatically explaining with her hands so that every set of eyes was trained on her, riveted by her passion and explanations.

As the professor moves around the class, he melts into the crowd, unnoticed in the sea of eyes, but still, they are just like the kids around him, glued to the woman who is so excited, she has to push her glasses up on her nose from time to time as she explains, who has to shove her hands in her back pockets to keep them from gesturing to explain magnitude and such.

“That wraps up week seven,” the professor offered as the familiar shuffling that indicated the end of the allotted hour told her. “Remember, next week we will be tackling differentiation and specialization! If you close your eyes and sniff the air you can smell it. Tests are coming. Start preparing.”

Melting into the crowd, he pulls the phone out of his pocket and makes a phone call as the sea of students rush past him.

“She’s the one.”

Hot as all hell, the day hung there, dirty and thick and angry at nothing in particular. The tropical afternoon made it impossible to breathe, while the sun itself pulled every ounce of sweat it could from bodies as sacrifice for existing. It was a warped version of the angels share if she ever heard it.

From her spot against the fence, Clarke ran her forearm over her eyes and pushed the sticky ends of hair from where they stuck, though nothing truly helped.

She was familiar with heat and sweat.

Her eyes never stopped moving, following a herd moving through the upper wall of the far valley before a truck pulled up and stole her attention.

“Dinner is served,” Raven called happily as she hopped out and slammed the door. Some animal squealed and complained in the crate in the bed.

“That’s my line,” Jasper complained as he parked.

“You’re late.”

“We had a little problem with the new pens over in quadrant Charlie,” the driver gave a pointed look to the girl in the brace.

“That’s what you want to hear when you’re surrounded by creatures that are literally faster and bigger and sharper than anything else on the planet.”

“Listen, I fixed it. There was an over--” Raven tried to defend herself.

“Please don’t do the engineer stuff again,” Clarke sighed as she grunted and opened the truck lift.

“I need to take a look at the wiring for the converter panel over here. Thought I’d catch the show first.”

“It’s not a show.”

“Sure it’s not,” Raven teased, earning a smile. “Release the pig.”

“She’s not a toy. She’s a dinosaur. I can’t make her put on a show, no matter what Jaha thinks I’m capable of.”

“You got the raptors to behave.”

“I got a pack of starving animals to believe that I was the only reason they could eat. I’m a long way off of--”

“Okay, none of that boring animal junk. Can you make them ride tricycles yet?” Raven interrupted, leaning against the truck as the other two carried the giant crate with the help of the keepers at the paddock.

“Did you fix the island’s surge problem yet?”

“I have a feeling you’re closer to the tricycles than I am,” Raven acknowledged before heaving herself up the first few steps toward the observation deck.

From atop the stand, the three stood there and watched, waiting for the beast to show.

“I haven’t seen her since the last trainer...” Jasper began before trailing off when he looked at Clarke. “Who really wasn’t as good as you, and had it coming, I guess.”

“Total asshat,” Raven agreed.

The trainer shook her head and crossed her arms, leaning back and waiting for the inevitable. The other two leaned a little closer until everything stilled. The ground shook. The trees parted and trembled. The pig squealed and fought to climb a wall it hand no chance of making a foot up.

And then nothing.

A few heartbeats went by, and everything tentatively resumed itself, the world kept turning, the sky kept sitting there, the clouds yawned.

The growl was quiet, subtle, melting into the world of the island. Clarke heard it though as she scanned the tree line. A few seconds later, it burst forth, teeth glistening and legs churning with all its might before eight inch teeth serrated dinner and swallowed it in two gulps.

“Holy fuck,” Raven and Jasper breathed in unison, unable to blink or take their eyes from the dinosaur below.

It let out a long roar, that shook the world and echoed from the stars, that brought quiet to the island for a long moment, as if everyone knew this was different.

“Yup,” Clarke chuckled as she made her way down the steps. “Buy me a drink at the canteen. I’m thirsty as hell.”

For a full minute, Lexa stared at the stranger who now sat on the other side of the desk at her office. If she had been the type to be amused at such jokes, she was certain she would have laughed for the entirety of the pause that settled itself in the room quite comfortably. Instead she settled for quiet and a disbelieving stare that turned into an incredulous lean back in her chair, oddly disappointed the the meeting about potential funding to continue her dig in China was a ruse for a madman’s stupid prank.

“I do need you to say something, Dr. Woods. I have a few other appointments before I head back...”

“To your island,” she supplied, slightly amused.

“Yes. I leave in the morning.”

“To go back to your island of dinosaurs.”

“Correct.”

“An island that has genetically modified, brought back from extinction after millions and millions of years, dinosaurs, that used science which I can only imagine is still light years away from being stable or even... real.... that Island?”

“Yes,” Thelonious Jaha nodded with a warm smile, watching as the scientist leaned forward once again and tried to form more words to express her disbelief.

“You have to go back to the island with... what? Triceratops? and let me guess, you have... What? Ornithopoda? Just... running around?”

“We do have a nice little collection of those. Quite gentle creatures. My favorite though,” he explained, crossing his leg and folding his hands over his lap, “I think are the Apatosaurus. Did you know that they fight like giraffe’s often?”

“Often,” Lexa barked a laugh and caught herself before sitting up a bit straighter and blanking her face from the outburst. She pushed up her glasses and took a deep breath before a giggle escaped once again. “Often this happens. That Apatosaurus fight. Like giraffes.”

“Dr. Woods, I came to you with a serious business proposition, one that I think is more than fair--”

“You want to visit your fantasy island that is populated by dinosaurs brought back from extinction by DNA collecting and replicating methods which are... impossible at best... to study and monitor your collection... or real, live dinosaurs. Is that a good summation, Mr. Wells?”

“Fairly fair, I should say,” he agreed, smiling at her kindly.

“Mr. Wells, the wealthiest man in the world, spent his money making dinosaurs,” Lexa shook her head and whistled. “Well, I wouldn’t have guessed that one. But if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Wells. I have a class at three thirty I should prepar--”

While she spoke, she watched him reach toward his briefcase, which she assumed meant he was ready to depart after she rudely berated his craziness. Instead, a stack of pictures slid across the expanse of her desk.

“Those are not doctored in the slightest, Dr. Woods,” he explained as the paleontologist surveyed the array without picking one up, leaning closer than she would have liked to pretend. “I approached you because you are the best in your field, the most well-respected and honored scientist in the study of evolution and especially paleontology, and many of your theories have not only proven true, but also helpful in the development of behavior models of our subjects.”

As Lexa picked up a picture finally, her guest stood and watched her squint, trying to find the falsehood.

“My terms are simple. Just come see the park, Dr. Woods, and the money will be made available in a grant the second you step back off of the plane in this city.”

A plane ticket made its way to the desk beside the images. All the doctor could do was stare back at the man who placed it there before her eyes were drawn back to the image in her hand. It was impossible. There was no way.

“If you have any questions, my business card is here,” he smiled and pulled it from his jacket pocket. “I hope to see you soon, Dr. Woods. We could really use your expertise.”

Still stunned and unsure what to say, Lexa heard him leave as she leaned back in her chair and swiveled away from her door, holding what looked the picture of a pterodactyl soaring. She shook her head to get the inkling of belief from taking root before she picked up the business card.

From behind her sunglasses, Clarke watched the small prop plane land and turn around at the end of the small runway. The metal of the jeep was hot against her hip, but still, she leaned there and waited for the professor who was coming to tell her how to do her job, as if training or working with animals could be taught in a classroom, as if it could be taught by a bone hunter who wrote articles and--

“Holy shit,” she whispered to herself as the door finally opened and the dorky, middle-aged professor with a paunch belly and affinity for wearing tweed and smoking pipes turned out to be a ridiculous beautiful, legs-straight-from-Olympus, short-shorts wearing, siren of a there’s-no-way-she’s-a-doctor, doctor.

It took a moment, but the trainer swallowed quickly and crossed her arms, not letting the momentary distraction keep her away from indignation too long.

“So that’s the person that’s going to tell you what to do,” Raven observed as she leaned over the top railing of the Jeep.

Clarke pursed her lip and crossed her arms tighter around herself.

“She’s here to study and offer feedback.”

“Looks like just your type.”

“I don’t have a type.”

“You do,” her friend chuckled. “Too good for you and unattainable.”

Before she could argue the point, the newest arrival shouldered her bag and made her way from the tarmac. The closer she got, the more Clarke was vividly aware of how right the engineer was, and how much it bothered her.

The tan of her legs, the way her sleeves were rolled up, the old baseball hat that betrayed hair that lingered somewhere between chestnut and auburn, that curled up near her ears in the heat. Clarke was taken with her jaw and her collarbones, though she would never admit it.

“Hello,” the professor smiled awkwardly.

“Dr. Woods, this is Clarke Griffin, our trainer--

“Handler,” Clarke corrected.

“Of the dinosaurs,” Lexa took the hand offered to her and shook it before pulling off her sunglasses and tucking them into her shirt. “Because there are dinosaurs here.”

Her eyes made Clarke gulp, her words made her smile.

“Yes ma’am. I handle the dinosaurs.”

With a polite shake of her hand, Lexa shook her head and sighed as it dropped, still almost amused at the situation.

“If there are dinosaurs, I can’t imagine they handle well.”

“All animals handle well enough if you listen to them.”

“These would be multi-ton creatures that have millions of years of evolution and survival skills--”

“Two minutes on the island, and you’re calling my job a bunch of useless garbage,” Clarke inhaled deeply and nodded to herself. “You could at least wait to tell me how to do my job until after you see me in action, Professor.”

“I’m... I didn’t. I’m not here to tell you how to do your job.”

“Good.”

“I think we got off on the wrong foot--”

“I think it’s just fine. You’ll be gone in a few days and that’s fine enough,” Clarke opened the back door and motioned for her to get in.

Still distracted by the blonde and the lips and the words that came out of them, Lexa furrowed before slowly crawling in the back seat of the Jeep. She put her sunglasses back on and fanned herself through her shirt.

“Hi. I’m Raven. Head Engineer, persistent tag-along,” the girl in the passenger seat turned around and held out her hand. “You met our resident surly handler.”

“Lexa.”

With a smile that grew larger as she took in the newcomer, Lexa watched Raven turn around and say something to Clarke that was eclipsed with the roar of the engine back to life. Raven’s laugh was silent though her head tilted back as if she were enjoying herself.

Lexa leaned back in the seat as they began to rumble along through half a road into the jungle. All she could wonder was why and how she ended up here.

The jungle was thick and lush, sprouting up on both sides, blotting out the sun so that it came down in little shots of pure gold through the canopy. Lexa jumbled in the back over the uneven path that was barely a road to start with and more of a trail that was confiscated by the trees every chance it got.

When they emerged, Lexa wasn’t ready. The sunlight blinded her for a moment before it all registered and she saw them.

From the driver’s seat, Clarke looked at the professor in the rearview mirror, the astonishment catching again. She exchanged a look with Raven who shook her head, but that didn’t stop her.

Lexa didn’t notice they weren’t moving. She noticed the articulation of the spine of the stegosaurus. She noticed the sheer size of the apatosaurus. In a flash, she peeled off the sunglasses and leaned closer over the edge of the vehicle, gripping it tightly before murmuring to herself that it was impossible. As far as the view stretched, as far as the eye could see, nothing but life existed, pure, primeval live.

“Well, what do you think?”

“That’s... Those are...” Lexa shook her head. In a second, Lexa dug in her bag and slipped on a pair of large, round glasses.

“You didn’t think that it was real?”

“How can it be real?”

“Magic,” Clarke grinned, amused at herself.

“Those are... those are... Those are...”

“Yeah.”

“A doctor,” Raven rolled her eyes. “She doesn’t even know what those are.”

“Can we...? What? How?”

“Mr. Wells is going to meet us at the main property,” Clarke said before starting the engine once again.

“Can’t we stay with them?”

The amazement was infectious, and Clarke couldn’t remember losing it, though she did in the grime of her day-to-day life. Raven was right. She had a type, which apparently included hot professors with big glasses and old baseball hats and legs that were godly.

“You’ll have plenty of time,” Clarke promised.

Lexa didn’t hear anything. She stared, wide-eyed and blown away by the giants that walked along the valley floor. She was certain her heart didn’t beat at all the entire trip.

The science, the show, the behind the scenes parts, Lexa was absolutely intrigued by, swallowed up in it the moment the handler and the engineer dropped her off at the main entrance.

Before she knew it, the day was over and her notebook was filled with notes and questions and ideas and observations, and she hadn’t even made it back out to the park that blew her mind.

“Finally escaping the lab, professor?” a familiar voice greeted her as Lexa attempted to make her way toward her room to try to type up her notes and see what else she wanted to look into in the morning. She had stacks of reading the doctors lent her so that she could be up to date on their findings. It was highly classified and she had to sign a million contracts just to read them, but she looked forward to it.

“I think I could live in there,” she confessed, head still twirling slightly.

“Where are you heading?” Raven asked, walking alongside the doctor, dragging her leg gently, appreciative that she slowed slightly.

“Just back to my room. I’m supposed to have dinner with some of the scientists in an hour to go--”

“You don’t want to do that.”

“I don’t?”

“Come slum it with the hired hands. I promise it’ll be way better.”

“I’m not sure your friend likes me very much,” Lexa remembered, adjusting her bag on her shoulder and pushing up her glasses. “And you’re not exactly a hired hand.”

“We all are in our own ways for Jaha. Trust me. Even you are. You just don’t know it yet.”

All she wanted was to shower and go back to her room, and yet Lexa decided that detoxing from the science, from the pounding feeling in her head that came from the impossible existing, it was too much.

“Plus, Clarke doesn’t warm up often to people. You can’t take it personally. She’s an animal person.”

“I don’t know that I’d consider these animals.”

“You have a lot to learn, doc.”

The little cantina was a slice of actual life in the middle of what felt like the Twilight Zone. Perched on the far side of the main compound, behind the employee’s only fence, leaning against what was left of an almost drained lake, the little open, sided hut was the nightly gathering place for everyone. Clarke enjoyed it as much as she could, though it made her feel as if she was missing out on actual life, far away, away from the tiny dome of the island.

The sun hung around, lazy and disinterested in leaving the day to give into the night. The big, fluffy clouds caught on fire and became embers, while the people below sipped drinks and ate from the communal buffet.

The addition of a stranger had everyone awake and buzzing. The little staff were all experts, all knowledgeable, all adventurous and running from things, and yet as tough as they strived to be, any kind of newness, of new person, made them yearn for the real world.

Clarke avoided it as much as possible. Something about a new person reminded her what she was running from, why she escaped from real life and wound up in this zoo.

She knew what Raven was doing, and Clarke wanted nothing to do with it.

The back porch looked out onto the field that led into the trees. From atop the slope she sat and drank the beer and let it cool her down, a near impossible feat in the weather.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” a voice behind her offered. “After meeting with Jaha, I understand why.”

Clarke didn’t move, didn’t say anything. She just took another drink and listened to the noises of the world beyond the tree line.

“I don’t want to tell you how to do your job. I came to study behaviors, not to... to... train them. I told him that’s impossible, and he said you said the same thing.”

Wringing her fingers, Lexa ran her hand up her neck and tried to think of what else to say, hoping not to do anything else to piss off the person she’d be working with for the next week.

“Anyway. That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Would you like a drink, Dr. Woods?” Clarke offered without turning around.

Somewhat relieved, the professor smiled to herself before grabbing the bottle offered and taking the seat beside the lounging handler.

“Lexa. You can call me Lexa.”

“You survived your first day. That’s impressive.”

“I don’t know how you do it every day. How long has it been?”

“About sixteen months.”

“Goodness.”

Both drank and stared at the sunset while the jukebox played something behind them. Clarke sighed and relaxed further while Lexa leaned forward and listened beneath the noise to what was happening out there.

“The Diplocodus sing at night,” Clarke offered.

“Like whales.”

“Yeah, something like that.”

From across the cantina Raven watched the two sitting on the back porch and congratulated herself on a job well done. It was no surge-proofed server system, but it was something.

For two days, Lexa soaks up everything that she can. She can’t imagine her eyes being any wider at every glance and nook and cranny. The entirety of the island is mesmerizing. For nearly four hours just one day, she spends sitting in a Jeep on the edge of a field observing. She filled up three notebooks in the short amount of time.

As much time as she spends observing, a certain handler spends just as much observing the professor. It isn’t on purpose, just always seems to work out that way. Something about the nerdy, quiet, passionate, smart, funny, kind... and the list raged on as Clarke tried to make an excuse for her gazing. Something about her just distracted Clarke at inconvenient moments, had her spilling words out of her mouth, even when she thought she was being quiet.

“Are you busy, Professor?” Clarke realized she was asking as she stumbled upon Lexa at the cage for check ups.

She’d meant to walk by, to leave her with possibly just a wave, while she assisted the vet with some notes. Of course, Clarke was suddenly a mess, and very much angry at her best friend for planting seeds that actually took in the arid desert that was her mind.

“Depends on what you may have for me today,” Lexa smiled in that way that felt like dew on ankles at dawn.

“I don’t think you’ve gotten a proper introduction to what I do.”

“Do I finally get to go into the employees only section that’s hidden behind those high walls and heavy doors?”

“No, but I promise you’ll have a better time than examining with Dr. Lame.”

“Dr. Lima is going to give me my first contact with dinosaurs.”

Clarke smiled to herself and flicked the keys in her hand.

“Trust me,” Clarke offered. “I rarely disappoint.”

The ride to the southern side of the island was bumpy and even worse than the one from the airport, but Lexa held on and for some unknown reason, trusted the handler. She regretted her decision precisely six minutes into the trip as she was nearly bounced out of her seat, earning just a grin from the driver who shrugged and adjusted her sunglasses.

Far in the horizon, clouds emerged from the horizon, angry and black, contrasting perfectly with the bright white-blue of the clear sky. Lexa shielded her eyes as they hopped along and recognized the storm coming in the way the breeze shifted and then calmed to almost nothing.

“How far are we?”

“Can’t you enjoy the ride?”

“Has anyone?” she retorted. “There’s a storm coming.”

“It hasn’t hit the first set of islands yet. We won’t see that for another hour or two,” Clarke promised as the Jeep slowed and stopped.

“Now you’re a meteorologist?”

“I’d like you a lot better if you were nicer to me,” the handler grumbled, pulling herself up by the crossbar and sliding out of the rover. Before Lexa could muster a reply, the blonde shouldered her bag and walked around, towards the front.

Half tripping and half afraid of being left, Lexa scrambled out after Clarke.

“I’m plenty nice to you,” she argued, pushing up her glasses as the tall grass tickled her bare legs. “You’re the one that’s rude to me.”

“I brought you out here, didn’t I?”

Lexa almost slammed into Clarke’s back, she stopped so quickly. Humming to herself, she met the challenging blue eyes and a smirk and swallowed deeply, blaming the humidity most of all.

“Yes, but you’re very surly, did you know that?”

“Surly.”

“Surly.”

“I don’t mean to be, it’s just... people talk a lot, don’t they?” Clarke asked, almost too honest and real, such a flip that it caught Lexa slightly off balance. “I don’t like wasted words.”

All she could do was follow down the faintest semblance of a trail. She wanted to ask more, but she felt like they were all wasteful kinds of words, no matter how she flipped them around and examined their surfaces in her head.

“We don’t breed, we reproduce,” Clarke explained as she came to a stop finally, digging through her bag. “Which makes herd dynamics easier.” She let out a low whistle.

For a moment, nothing happened.

The trees jostled, the shrubs moved, the earth shook slightly. With a squeal, a blur emerged and rammed into Clarke’s side, knocking her over in a fit of actual laughter. All Lexa could do was watch as the baby stood atop her and nudged her with a dull snout, rooting under her arm.

The trees moaned and came down to their side a few seconds later as a full grown triceratops came forward, timid and waiting at the edge. Lexa took a step back, eyes wide. She’d been close to the specimens before, but behind the glass back at the lab, in the paddocks used for observation.

“Okay, okay, enough,” the handler shoved at the teenage rhino sized creature that hovered over her. “Easy there buddy. You’re getting bigger and stronger.”

“That’s a...” Lexa trailed off slightly before she felt a giant breath on her shoulder and wet, sloppy lips on her shoulder. A horn met her eyes when she turned toward the adult.

“Yeah. It is,” Clarke chuckled.

Gone was the tightness of her shoulders, the defensiveness of her face. Clarke was a new person, full of life and joy. She righted herself despite the insistence of the animal that nudged her hips and ribs.

“Looks like Doreen likes you.”

“Doreen?” Lexa swallowed and met the large, doleful eyes of the thing that nipped at her shoulder, covering her in slobber.

“I like giving them old lady names. They remind me of old ladies. Nice and gentle, would give you hard candies,” Clarke grunted as she pushed back against the newly forming horns on the baby as it lifted her. “But get them mad, and they’ll take you to town with a wrath of many years lived.”

“Can I...”

“She doesn’t bite.”

“Just slobbers.”

“I thought they’d be a good way to properly introduce you to the real thing. This is what I do,” Clarke laughed as she got pushed again by the antsy little critter who came up to almost her shoulders. “They’re real and alive, and have personalities. You hypothesize on what makes them do what they do.”

She ran her hand along the plate of the dinosaur’s shell, feeling the unique texture, smiling to herself as she did.

“Who is that?” Lexa asked, nudging her chin at the thing still nudging Clarke.

“CJ.”

“CJ. Not a very good old lady name.”

“Clarke Junior,” she explained, blushing slightly at the admission. “I never thought I’d have to explain that to anyone.”

“She definitely has your legs.”

“I think she takes after my personality.”

A slobbery nose dug into Clarke’s bag, and Lexa grinned at the display.

It took impending clashes of thunder for Clarke to convince the good professor to retreat back to the main part of the park. It took a promise of taking her to see the herds on the southside of the river to get her to not mope.

The entire ride back, Lexa raved, and asked a million questions, her eagerness overpowering her fear of the weather and her worry about the ethics and implications of what seeing an actual dinosaur in real life, would mean. Clarke just smiled and answered what she could, amused at the way in which this girl was absolutely in love with the science of it.

As the rain started to fall, they dashed into the cantina and still, Lexa couldn’t stop talking, couldn’t stop gushing. Clarke realized it was maybe the best thing she’d ever done, to get a girl like that so excited and alive. She didn’t know how, but she liked it.

Gradually, the evening grew later, the rain came hard, the water coming down in buckets and the lightning flashing. Everyone emptied out as the lights flickered. Clarke was exhausted, but in no way eager to miss a second of Lexa, and she hated Raven for it.

“So we’ve made it clear that you love this, but you never told me why you study bones,” Clarke finally ventured, balancing the beer bottle on her knee as she leaned against the wall in their little nook.

“You never told me why you’re a handler,” Lexa countered, pushing up her glasses before tilting her head back for a long swig.

It was the drink and the hour, but Clarke let her eyes linger too long on the slope of her neck and shoulders.

“You first.”

“Fine,” the professor finally sighed with a grin. “I just like that for something so old, we don’t know anything about it. All of the information is there, we just have to find it. It’s a giant game. And I like hunting for them.”

“It was the cool hats and the digging, right?”

“And the computer models. That’s what really sold me.”

“I’m serious.”

“I went to the museum when I was a kid. My dad didn’t hang around much, but I did skip school and he took me to the museum, and we learned about dinosaurs. After that, he always sent me something about dinosaurs when he could. I don’t know where he went,” she shrugged. “Just stopped coming around, but I don’t know. The dinosaurs stuck.”

“See? That’s a much more human answer.”

“I’m human.”

“You use the scientific name for things and speak in numbers. You’re far from human,” Clarke chuckled and earned a look. She earned a blush and leaned across the table slightly, propping her cheek up and really looking at her.

“Tell me your deep, dirty secrets then,” Lexa finally managed.

“I’m boring. Good mom, good dad. I just always liked animals, and I didn’t like school. I did odd jobs. Horse trainer when I got out of high school. Dog and obedience classes. I joined the circus for a bit.”

“You’re lying.”

“Yeah, a little,” she grinned.

“I went to school to be a large animal vet, and I worked at a zoo for a long while. And then I just… My dad got sick, and I got an offer from Jaha that I jumped at to get away from home.”

“That sounds more like it.”

“Have you ever held your hand up to a tiger’s paw?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“I never thought anything would beat that feeling,” Clarke explained. “And then I came here.”

“But this place… it can’t… it can’t sustain this. The animals…”

“It’s not as perfect as they make it seem,” she agreed. “We had a bacterial outbreak that killed off a few dozen, and the raptors are showing signs of--”

“Raptors?”

That had been missing from the tour. Clarke gulped when she realized the words that came out of her mouth. Frantically, she searched her brain for a way to back track it, though none presented itself rightly.

“Um.”

“You’ve bred predators?!” Lexa yelled.

Clarke didn’t like that very much. She did, actually. She liked how angry she looked because her jaw was tight and her eyes were fire. But she hated it.

“I didn’t do anything. I just help try to keep them all alive.”

“There’s no way this place is safe.”

“We have high walls, lined with electric charges, and the predators are kept separate.”

“I can’t believe this,” Lexa stood and grabbed her bag, ready to march out.

Quickly, Clarke grabbed her arm and tugged her back.

“Where are you going?”

“To shut this down.”

“Believe me, it’s too late for that.”

The storm roared outside, and Clarke stood there, holding Lexa’s arm until she yanked it away. Slightly wounded, she just waited for the inevitable lashing that she was almost growing to expect from the professor.

Instead, she was met with quiet.

“You can’t be okay with it,” Lexa shook her head.

“I’m not, but I was too far in before I found out. Now I have all of those animals, like you met today, and I can’t just trust anyone else--”

“No, I get it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for?” Lexa asked, cocking her head slightly. Once more, in that place, in this room, around that girl, she felt overwhelmed.

“I don’t know. It just felt right.”

Once more, she shook her head and was met with a kind of grin that made her forget about giant carnivores who could eat her in one bite. Until she remembered.

“I should, um,” Lexa pulled away slightly, unsure how she got to be standing so close to an animal handler in the middle of an island in a jungle inhabited by extinct creatures. “I should go to bed.”

“Yeah, um, me too,” Clarke agreed, clearing her throat. “Tomorrow? See you early for the trip out to the river?”

“Yeah.”

With coy eyes, Lexa darted away as fast as her feet could take her without looking like she was running. Clarke stood on the porch and scratched her neck as she watched her look back and hurriedly look away.

And she hated Raven once again.

NEXT

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In March, Ajit Pai, the 45-year-old chair of the Federal Communications Commission, took to the internet—a community he joyfully inhabits and grudgingly regulates—to pay tribute to his favorite movie. “It’s not just, like, my opinion, man: 20 years ago today, #TheBigLebowski—the greatest film in the history of cinema—was released,” Pai wrote on Twitter. “Decades on, the Dude still abides and the movie really ties us all together.” And sure enough, the response to Pai’s cheerful tweet was united.

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I hope you enjoy watching that movie alone since you have zero friends —@aseriousmang

No one likes you dork —@chessrockwell_

The insults, hundreds upon hundreds of them, accumulated in his replies. Some took the form of incredulous Jeff Bridges GIFs, others mimicked famous lines of Lebowski dialog. (“Shut the fuck up, Ajit.”) People debated whether Pai was more like one of the movie’s nihilist kidnappers or its corporate stooge.

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The competition is stiff, but Pai may be the most reviled man on the internet. He is despised as both a bumbling rube, trying too hard to prove he gets it, and a cunning villain, out to destroy digital freedom. (As one mocking headline put it: “Ajit Pai will not rest until he has killed The Big Lebowski, too.”) The anger emanates from his move, shortly after being appointed by Donald Trump, to repeal Obama-era net ­neutrality regulations. He called his policy the Restoring Internet Freedom Order, an Orwellian touch in the view of his critics, who see ­it as a mortal threat.

In the simplest terms, the principle of net neutrality prevents internet service providers, such as Verizon or Comcast, from manipulating network traffic for discriminatory purposes. Defenders contend that, without such rules, those companies could exert nefarious powers. They might slow down Netflix, making movies like The Big Lebowski unwatchable, in order to push captive subscribers to their own properties, a prospect that becomes more plausible as telecoms like AT&T and Verizon expand into content. They could charge tech companies extra fees to reach customers, giving a competitive advantage to those that pay. They could starve a startup or stifle a voice of dissent. Pai discounted such scenarios, calling them “hypothetical harms and hysterical prophecies of doom,” and pointed out that there was little evidence of such behavior before the Obama administration imposed the regulations in 2015. But the opposition, drawing energy from the broader anti-Trump resistance, was not persuaded by his reassurances. “If you’re not freaking out about net neutrality right now,” the activist group Fight for the Future warned its followers last year, “you’re not paying attention.”

Pai sought to defuse suspicions by presenting himself as an affable nerd, dropping conspicuous references to Star Wars and comic book heroes. But the internet wasn’t buying it. Last May, after satirist John Oliver delivered a scathing monologue ridiculing what he called Pai’s “doofy, ‘Hey, I’m just like you guys’ persona”—he focused on Pai’s habit of drinking from a giant novelty coffee mug at meetings—and calling on viewers of Last Week Tonight to stand up for net neutrality, the FCC’s website received an onslaught of comments against the repeal. Most simply voiced support for Obama’s policy, but some spat ­racist vitriol at Pai, who is a child of Indian immigrants, or even threatened his life. Trolls tracked down review pages for his wife’s medical practice and filled them with abusive one-star reviews. Perhaps unwisely, Pai kept trying to fight back on the internet’s own terms. He jousted with celebrities and nobodies on social media. He staged self-conscious stunts, like appearing in a video entitled “7 Things You Can Still Do on the Internet After Net Neutrality,” in which he posed as a Jedi and danced to “Harlem Shake” with a bunch of young conservatives. But the video just inflamed the internet. On Twitter, Mark Hamill—Luke Skywalker himself—jeered at Pai, calling him “profoundly unworthy” to wield a light­saber. Someone else quickly identified a young woman dancing next to Pai as a right-wing conspiracy theorist who had helped spread “Pizzagate,” a hoax scandal from the lunatic fringe that linked Hillary Clinton to a child-abuse ring.

At a meeting of the FCC in November 2017, Ajit Pai drank from the novelty cup he finds so amusing—and his critics love to hate.

Zach Gibson/Bloomberg via Getty Images

On December 14, as that spectacle of Pai cavorting with the far right was zipping around the world, the FCC commissioners met to consider the fate of net neutrality. Demonstrators rallied outside the agency’s headquarters, but Pai appeared unperturbed as he and his four fellow commissioners filed into a fluorescent-lit chamber. By Washington tradition, the FCC’s membership is divided, with two seats picked by the opposition’s congressional leaders. His two Republican colleagues spoke in favor of the repeal, while the two Democrats offered harsh dissents. The chair had the final word. “The internet has enriched my own life immeasurably,” Pai said. “In the past few days alone, I’ve set up a FaceTime call with my parents and kids, downloaded interesting podcasts about blockchain technology, I’ve ordered a burrito, I’ve managed my playoff-bound fantasy football team. And—as many of you might have seen—I’ve tweeted. What is responsible for the phenomenal development of the internet? Well, it certainly wasn’t heavy-handed government regulation.”

As Pai spoke, there was furtive commotion in the back of the room. A hulking armed guard stepped forward. “On advice of security, we need to take a brief recess,” Pai said abruptly, and then stood up and hurried out a side door. A murmur went through the audience: bomb threat.

The room was evacuated and searched. Eventually everyone returned and Pai called for a vote. The repeal passed, 3–2. Pai took a satisfied sip from his much-maligned coffee mug.

People who know Pai swear that his nerdy persona is authentic. And even his adversaries will admit that he’s an anomaly in the Trump administration: a skillful practitioner of the Washington game. Pai has spent his entire professional life in the capital, acquiring influential patrons (Mitch McConnell, Jeff Sessions) and insider expertise. As Harold Feld, an ardent critic who works for the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, laments, “Why was my area of policy the one that got the guy who actually knows what he’s doing?”

Behind Pai’s brainy, technocratic mask, though, is an alter ego: ruthless conservative ideologue. In this sense, he is emblematic of Trump’s Washington, where all debates—even the bone-dry bureaucratic ones—have become so heated that they are fought like matters of life and death. Pai’s competence has allowed him to make quick work of undoing the Obama administration’s legacy at the FCC. But his polarizing politics assure that the battle over internet regulation will keep raging. “I like Ajit Pai personally, although I don’t want to defend him in public,” admits another net neutrality supporter. “But you’re not allowed to try to destroy the internet and then be treated well by the internet. The internet should hate him.”

Pai may be a creature of Washington, but he still presents himself as a provincial at heart. He grew up in the small town of Parsons, Kansas, where his parents, both Indian-born doctors, practiced at a county hospital. Pai’s connections to the wider world were AM radio and his family’s satellite television dish. Today many rural communities are without broadband internet access, an issue Pai often addresses publicly. “I’ve been to many, many towns around this country, and I’ve seen how people are on the wrong side of that digital divide,” Pai told students at his old high school in Parsons last September. (He declined to be interviewed for this article.) He told the assembly about a momentous occasion: meeting Trump in the Oval Office for the first time. “You walk out and you see the grandeur of the White House and you think about the fact that you just met the most powerful person in the world, and I couldn’t help but think about a kid I used to know 30 years before,” Pai said. “He was a shy kid, bushy mustache, bushy hair, really awkward talking to people, just didn’t quite know what was going on. He was, candidly, a dork.”

Pai could argue, though, that dorkiness was his ticket out of Parsons. He was a top-flight debater in high school and, later, at Harvard. He arrived in Cambridge as a Democrat, but under the influence of a professor, Martin Feldstein, who had advised Ronald Reagan, he adopted a conservative free-market philosophy. Pai was also put off by the racial politics on Harvard’s campus. After the 1992 race riots in Los Angeles, his residential house invited students to post their feelings on a wall—a literal, brick-and-mortar one. Though a minority himself, Pai was skeptical of liberal identity politics, and he wrote that “the real problem” when it came to race at Harvard was “voluntary segregation.”

“Pai is very much casting his lot with this Trump revolution.”

Pai graduated from Harvard in 1994, a year in which two developments emerged that would shape the course of his professional life. That October, Netscape released the first commercially successful web browser, opening the way for the modern internet. A month later, the Republican Party won control of Congress. The spirit of Newt Gingrich’s “Republican Revolution” was strong at the University of Chicago, where Pai had just started law school. He belonged to the Edmund Burke Society, a vocal conservative group, but also studied with Cass Sunstein, a brilliant liberal scholar of administrative law. (Gigi Sohn—a Democrat and net neutrality advocate who worked at the FCC when Pai was there—told me that after a controversial vote, she saw Pai vehemently arguing with someone who had disparaged his knowledge of administrative law on Twitter. Explaining his anger later, he told her: “I got an A in Cass Sunstein’s administrative law class!”)

When Pai later moved to Washington, he joined a cohort of young conservatives who were impassioned about curtailing regulation. “Ajit was a type, as were a lot of his friends from Chicago, that would geek out about the differences in originalist philosophy of Scalia and Thomas,” says a friend from the time, Ketan Jhaveri. “And how to use that to get the government to do less.”

In 1998, Pai joined the Justice Department as a junior attorney in the antitrust division. He was assigned to a task force overseeing the telecommunications industry, which was going through a period of upheaval. Deregulation had contributed to a boom in dot-com stocks, huge investment in broadband, and a wave of telecom mergers. In 2000, Pai took part in an investigation that eventually blocked the proposed merger of WorldCom and Sprint, partly because it stood to give one company a dominant percentage of the internet’s “backbone” infrastructure.

Protesters, like these in Chicago, came out in force to support Obama-era net neutrality regulations. But the Republican-­majority FCC repealed the rules on December 14.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

The concern, then as now, was that the company that owned the pipes could also manipulate the flow of data. For practical purposes, some traffic management was essential, but the academics and engineers who pioneered the internet could already foresee how that control could lead to abuses such as blocking access to websites and “throttling”—or deliberately slowing—the connections of certain consumers. In 2002, a young law professor named Tim Wu wrote a short paper that he titled “A Proposal for Network Neutrality.” He framed the issue in modest terms, suggesting a standard that regulators could use to decide which methods of network management should be permitted (for the valid purpose of directing traffic) and which should be banned (for distorting the fundamental openness of the internet).

“I was sure it was a complete waste of time,” Wu recalls of that paper. But the phrase “net neutrality” caught on. Over time the concept has come to mean something far more sweeping, invoked to protect not just bits of data but free speech, personal privacy, innovation, and most every other public good associated with the internet. (Pai has called it “one of the more seductive marketing slogans that’s ever been attached to a public policy issue.”)

The world of telecommunications law is small, and Wu says he crossed paths with Pai around the time he came up with the concept of net neutrality. “Back in the day, he used to throw pretty good parties,” Wu said. Pai was active in the Federalist Society, the intellectual center of the conservative legal scene, but he was a bipartisan networker. He used to arrange large happy hour events, sending out mass email invitations that took the form of clever limericks. “Everyone knew his politics, but it was kind of like a joke,” says Jhaveri, who worked with Pai at the Justice Department and is now a tech entrepreneur. “A lot of our close friends were liberal and would give him a hard time about it, but all in good fun.”

After the Justice Department, Pai went to work at Verizon as a corporate attorney, but his foray into the private sector lasted just two years. He went on to Capitol Hill as an aide to two of the most conservative members of the Senate: first Sessions, from Alabama, and then Sam Brownback, who represented Pai’s home state of Kansas. Unlike his bosses, Pai was not a fire-breather on social issues, but he could see who was on the ascent in Washington during George W. Bush’s presidency. Finally, in 2007, Pai found his natural place at the FCC, taking a midlevel position in the general counsel’s office.

Established in 1934 to oversee radio airwaves and the Bell telephone monopoly, the FCC is one of those government institutions that conceals its importance behind an impenetrable veneer of boringness. The agency has historically had a dynamic of symbiosis—to put it politely—with the companies it oversees. FCC staffers deal mainly with lobbyists, and often become lobbyists, shuttling back and forth between K Street and the “8th Floor,” as the commissioners’ suites are known in Washington.

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As Pai joined the agency, activism was starting to stir around the issue of net neutrality. On a basic level, the problem concerned an ambiguity in the way the law dealt with internet service providers. The ones that started as phone companies were regulated under Title II of the Telecommunications Act and classified as “common carriers.” The cable companies, like Comcast and Time Warner Cable, were governed by the more permissive Title I, which covers “information services.” During the Bush administration—after much lobbying, litigation, and a Supreme Court decision—the FCC reclassified all ISPs under the looser designation of information services.

“That deal really was: You won’t be regulated like a phone company—which they hate, it’s very expensive—as long as you invest and serve the country,” says Michael Powell, Bush’s first FCC chair. “And what did the companies do? Over a decade, it was the fastest-deploying technology in the history of the world. They invested over a trillion dollars.” Of course, putting broadband in the less regulated category meant the FCC would have fewer powers to police anticompetitive practices. In 2004, Powell, a Republican, set forth voluntary principles. “It was consciously and purposely meant to be a shot across the bow of the ISP industry,” Powell says. He was telling them to behave or else the rules could return.

Pai appeared in the video “7 Things You Can Still Do on the Internet After Net Neutrality.”

Courtesy of YouTube

The video included a group of young conservatives, one of whom had helped spread the “Pizzagate” conspiracy. The internet pounced.

Courtesy of YouTube

Powell’s approach looked feeble to net neutrality advocates, who were backed by an emerging economic and political force: Silicon Valley. Companies like Google suspected—not unreasonably—that the internet service providers, which had invested all that capital in broadband, resented them for skating on their networks for free. The providers were rumored to be interested in charging tech companies for fast delivery, a practice known as “paid prioritization,” and if they started to exploit their middle­man position, it could potentially upend the economy of the internet. “I’m not saying that Google doesn’t act out of self-interest,” says Andrew McLaughlin, who helped start Google’s public policy operation in Washington. “But that self-interest was the sense that the long-term future of the internet is better off if it’s free and open.”

The new billionaires of Silicon Valley embraced Barack Obama when he ran for president in 2008, as did many of their employees like McLaughlin, who became a White House technology adviser. “The Democrats won the fight about who was going to hang ­out with the cool kids,” says Randy Milch, who was then general counsel at Verizon. “Then they carried the water for the cool kids. That’s how this became a partisan battle.”

Obama took up the cause of net neutrality, and his first FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, cut a deal with the telecom companies to accept new regulations. This incensed congressional Republicans. If Obama favored net neutrality, congressional Republicans were opposed, and the formerly technocratic issue became a right-wing bugaboo. On Fox News, Glenn Beck drew crazed diagrams on his blackboard linking White House aides who favored net neutrality to Marxist academics and Mao. With encouragement from its allies on Capitol Hill, Verizon sued the FCC. This was much to the consternation of the rest of the industry, which considered Genachowski’s rules preferable to the hardcore alternative of common-carrier regulation.

In 2011, when a Republican seat opened up on the FCC, Mitch McConnell put Pai forward for the post. During his confirmation hearing, when Pai was asked about net neutrality, he said he’d keep an open mind as the courts considered Verizon’s lawsuit. Net neutrality advocate Harold Feld wrote an approving blog post, calling the nominee a “workhorse wonk.”

“Boy, was I wrong,” Feld says today.

After McConnell and the Republican leadership sent Pai to the commission in 2012, he revealed himself to be a fierce partisan. He reportedly shocked FCC staff with the militantly conservative rhetoric of his very first dissent, over a small-bore decision about the Tennis Channel. Pai went on to clash bitterly with Tom Wheeler, the Democrat who led the FCC during Obama’s later years. “Pai was running circles around him,” says Craig Aaron, president of the advocacy group Free Press, who watched Pai maneuver in league with Republicans on Capitol Hill. So when a federal court sided with Verizon in early 2014, requiring the FCC to find a new net neutrality approach, Pai was ready. “He went to war,” Aaron says.

The court decision appeared to leave the FCC only one route: classifying service providers under the restrictive rules that covered phone companies as common carriers. This was the outcome the ISPs had dreaded. In 2014, in a move Pai decried as White House meddling, Obama released a YouTube video endorsing this approach. Pai fought against what he called “President Obama’s plan to regulate the internet.” But the regulations passed, and in June 2016 a court upheld them. The issue looked settled. Then, in a turn no one saw coming, Trump won the presidential election.

Pai never explicitly identified himself with his party’s “never Trump” faction, but as an intellectual conservative and the son of immigrants, he has little sympathy for the president’s crass nativism, says a friend who talked to him throughout the 2016 campaign. “I would be very surprised if he voted for Trump,” this friend added. (An FCC spokesperson says Pai voted for Trump.) Still, when Trump won the election, Pai, like many Republicans in Washington, recalibrated his ideological agenda. “I knew once Trump met him and heard his life story, Trump was going to like him,” says Christopher Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax Media and a confidant of the president’s. It helped that Pai’s old boss Sessions was, at that time, one of Trump’s most trusted advisers. When offered the FCC chairship, Pai eagerly accepted the post.

When Trump won the election, Pai, like many Republicans in Washington, recalibrated his ideological agenda.

As the nation’s top telecommunications regulator, Pai’s unofficial duties include presiding over an annual Chairman’s Dinner, also known as the “telecom prom,” a Washington hotel gala filled with inside jokes about cable retransmission disputes and the like. In last year’s speech, Pai offered tips for his newly powerless Democratic colleagues (“Tip #1: Leak … frequently”) and performed a skit in which he poked fun at his own reputation as a corporate shill. It depicted a young Pai, circa 2003, conspiring with a real-life Verizon executive. “As you know, the FCC is captured by industry, but we think it’s not captured enough,” she said. “We want to brainwash and groom a Verizon puppet to install as FCC chair. Think Manchurian Candidate.”

“That sounds awesome,” Pai replied enthusiastically. All that was missing was “a Republican who will be able to win the presidency in 2016 to appoint you FCC chairman,” the Verizon executive said. “If only somebody could give us a sign.” The twangy bass line of the Apprentice theme played, and Trump’s face filled the screen.

It is difficult to serve Trump without getting muddied in the mayhem of Trumpism—as Sessions and many others have discovered. Last fall, when Trump launched a Twitter attack on NBC, suggesting it might be “appropriate to challenge” its broadcast license for reporting “Fake News”—that is, news he didn’t like—the FCC chair kept quiet for days before meekly declaring that the FCC would “stand for the First Amendment.” Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democratic commissioner, says: “Maybe it was fear. But history won’t be kind to silence.”

For the most part, though, Pai has been left to run the FCC with little interference. Trump may love television, but he doesn’t care about the dry arcana of telecommunications regulation. At Pai’s sole Oval Office meeting, last March, Trump mainly wanted to talk about winning and their shared love of football, Pai told others, and gushed about the strategy his buddy, Patriots coach Bill Belichick, had employed to stage a Super Bowl comeback against the Falcons. Insofar as the White House has an opinion on net neutrality, it was set early by Steve Bannon, Trump’s political adviser, who declared that the “deconstruction of the administrative state” would be one of the administration’s core priorities.

LEARN MORE

The WIRED Guide to Net Neutrality

“It was sort of knee-jerk in the White House,” says a Republican net neutrality supporter who discussed the issue with both Pai and Bannon last year. “Bannon said, ‘This is Obama’s rule and we should throw it out.’ ” Though Bannon has since been banished, the deregulatory campaign marches on. Beneath the fireworks display of angry tweets, Russia investigations, and sex and corruption scandals, Trump has been filling the judiciary and federal agencies with appointees determined to curtail bureaucratic power.

Even before he was named chair, Pai said he wanted to take a “weed whacker” to FCC regulations, and it was inevitable, given his and his party’s hostility to net neutrality, that he would reverse Obama’s common-carrier designation. But Pai’s order went much further. It allowed ISPs to do what they want with traffic, so long as they disclose it to customers in the fine print, delegating enforcement power to another agency entirely: the Federal Trade Commission. “I think most people thought he would take the rules and roll them back in a modest way,” Rosenworcel says. “This was radical.” Effectively, he has set the industry free of the FCC.

Pai has also made decisions favorable to other corporations, like Sinclair Broadcast Group, the owner of nearly 200 local television stations, which is vehemently supportive of Trump’s agenda. Among other things, the FCC eased ownership rules that limited Sinclair’s growth and is reviewing a controversial merger that would allow it to control another 42 stations, giving it a presence in 70 percent of the US. Progressive priorities, meanwhile, have been slashed. The FCC has moved to curtail Lifeline, a program that subsidizes phone and internet connections for poor people. If the cutbacks go through, some 8 million consumers could lose their Lifeline connections.

“Pai is very much casting his lot with this Trump revolution,” says Aaron of the advocacy group Free Press. Pai has responded to Free Press’ net neutrality criticisms by calling the group “spectacularly misnamed,” characterizing one of its founders as a radical socialist. He is even more unsparing behind closed doors. A former employee of a public interest group tells of being berated by Pai for an offending press release. “When you were talking with him privately, he used to seem genuinely interested in understanding,” says someone who has discussed net neutrality with Pai on several occasions. Now, however, his mind is closed to contrary thoughts. People who work at the FCC say that the agency is roiled by internal conflict. “It is incredibly partisan,” Democratic commissioner Mignon Clyburn told me in December. “I’ve been there for almost nine years, and I’ve never seen it to this degree.” In April, she resigned.

How to Speak Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers (ISPs) should not speed up, slow down, or manipulate network traffic for discriminatory purposes. It needs its own glossary.

Blocking and Throttling

The crudest types of net neutrality violations. Blocking means exactly what it sounds like, while throttling refers to deliberately slowing the flow of data.

Paid Prioritization

Without net neutrality, ISPs could prioritize—that is, speed up—the flow of data from certain sites, giving an advantage to companies that pay tolls.

Title I and Title II

ISPs want to be covered under Title I of the Telecommunications Act, which is fairly lenient. But net neutrality advocates prefer Title II, which would treat ISPs as “common carriers” and allow tougher regulation.

Common Carrier

A legal concept that says certain entities—like railroads and phone companies—are so important that government needs to ensure they are open to everyone equally.

Gloria Tristani, a former Democratic FCC commissioner who now represents the National Hispanic Media Coalition, went to visit Pai last June, up on the 8th Floor. Sitting in armchairs in the chair’s spacious suite, Tristani tried to broach the subject of net neutrality and the Lifeline cutbacks, but Pai gave her a frosty reception. She says that she tried to be diplomatic, saying that, despite their party differences, she still believed Pai was motivated by his view of the public interest. “He gets up from his chair, goes to his desk, and comes back with a sheet of paper,” Tristani recalls. Pai thrust the paper at her. “He says something to the effect of, ‘You really dare say that to me?’ ” On the paper was a tweet she had written in favor of net neutrality. Posted beneath it was a picture of Tristani at a protest, pointing toward a “Save the Internet!” banner. It was next to a monstrous effigy meant to symbolize corporate money, from which Pai and Trump dangled on puppet strings. (An FCC spokesperson says Pai recalls a less confrontational encounter.)

Pai’s opponents make no apologies for demonizing him, given the stakes they say are involved. Without net neutrality, they predict, consumers could end up paying more money for less bandwidth, while tech companies that have come to depend on fast connections could be faced with a shakedown: Pay up or choke. The service providers scoff, saying they have no incentive to alienate their customers. But if Pai’s enemies and allies agree about one thing, it’s that his policy aims are about something larger than the speed at which packets of data traverse the cables and switches that make up the physical infrastructure of the internet. “I don’t think this fight is really fundamentally about net neutrality,” says Berin Szoka, founder of the libertarian advocacy group TechFreedom, who is well acquainted with Pai. “It’s really about people who, on the one hand, want to maximize the government’s authority over the internet, versus people who don’t trust the government and want to constrain its authority.”

A decade from now, it’s possible that the net neutrality argument will look like the first skirmish in a much larger conflict—one with shifting alliances and interests. For years, the service providers have been telling Silicon Valley to be careful about what they wished for. Earlier this year, Powell, now the top lobbyist for the cable industry, told me: “They are going to lose the war, because they are acclimating the world to regulation. They’re going to be next.” And sure enough, over the past few months of scandals over Russian bots and Facebook data-­harvesting, and the ensuing congressional hearings, the notion that the government might seek to expand its regulatory purview over Silicon Valley has started to seem conceivable. The tech companies are suddenly friendless in Washington, facing pressure not only from the left, which now sees them as no less evil than the ISPs, but also the right, which complains that its voices are being muffled by speech restrictions.

It is no coincidence that last year, as the FCC prepared to repeal net neutrality regulations, Silicon Valley’s response was notably muted. The conservative antiregulatory ideology might represent the industry’s best hope for an escape route for an industry that now fears government constraints. And besides, the big tech companies are no longer so sure that net neutrality is crucial to their business models. Even if service providers start charging tolls, the dominant internet companies will have negotiating power. Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, conceded at an industry conference last year that net neutrality is “not our primary battle at this point” because his company is now “big enough to get the deals we want.” The demise of the regulation could even have an upside for a now-established incumbent like Netflix, protecting its position from upstart competitors. “I think there is a growing consensus,” says analyst Craig Moffett, “that while it’s nice to be able to talk about how an issue like paid prioritization will strangle the next Google before it’s born, no one will benefit from strangling the next Google before it’s born more than Google.”

it is impossible to say whether Pai has killed net neutrality or whether, in the long term, it will return, either through a change of power in Washington, a court decision—appeals are ongoing—or even legislation. It is safe to predict, though, that there will be no peace between Pai and the internet. Over the past year, as he has been ­parodied and tormented by trolls, Pai has spent a lot of time in real life, on the road, driving rental cars through rural states and promising to bring broadband to the heartland. He has directed billions in funds to close the “digital divide” while appointing an advisory committee to identify regulations that slow down deployment. Even on his signature issue, though, there are problems. The committee is stacked to favor corporate interests, critics say, and Pai’s choice for its chair, the chief executive of an Alaska telecommunications company, created an embarrassing scandal. She resigned last year and was later arrested on federal fraud charges related to that telecom business.

Pai says his rural initiative is intended to help neglected consumers, but his barnstorming has led to widespread speculation that he has one eye on Kansas. “He’s probably going to run for Senate one day,” says Roslyn Layton, a policy expert who dealt with Pai as a member of Trump’s FCC transition team. “He wants to be known as a person from rural America who cares about rural America’s concerns.”

Still, it’s hard to imagine Pai running for office after his recent experience in the fray. He’s proven to be a formidable infighter but a maladroit public figure. Though he tries to maintain an indifferent air in public, people who know him say he has been rattled. Jerry Moran, a Republican senator from Kansas, held a small reception for Pai at a Washington townhouse last spring. The attendees were old friends and colleagues, and Pai became emotional. “He broke down,” recalls Wayne Gilmore, an optometrist who owns a radio station in Parsons. “His family was already getting death threats. It was real.”

“He broke down. His family was already getting death threats. It was real.”

With the darkness, though, comes a bright side: Pai is now viewed as a hero by conservatives. One Friday this past February, Pai went to a convention center outside Washington to deliver a speech to CPAC, an important annual gathering for members of the conservative movement. Out in the corridor, many slim-suited young deplorables with fashy haircuts were milling about, along with a woman costumed as Hillary Clinton in prison stripes. Pai was in the unenviable position of following Trump, who had delivered a rambling stem-winder in which he joked about his hair, maligned the ill John McCain, and talked at length about arming teachers, his response to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the week before. By the time Pai took the stage for his segment, which was titled “American Pai: The Courageous Chairman of the FCC,” the schedule was running around an hour behind.

Pai walked onstage with Dan Schneider, one of the conference organizers. “Ajit Pai, as you probably already know, saved the internet,” Schneider said, by way of introduction, as Pai guffawed appreciatively. “And he spent a lot of hours preparing a wonderful speech that he’s not going to deliver now.”

“OK?” said Pai, who was carrying a copy of the speech in his inside coat pocket.

“As soon as President Trump came into office, President Trump asked Ajit Pai to liberate the internet and give it back to you,” Schneider went on. “Ajit Pai is the most courageous, heroic person that I know. He has received countless death threats. His property has been invaded by the George Soros crowd. He has a family, and his family has been abused.” Then Schneider sprung a surprise. He brought an official from the National Rifle Association onstage. She announced that the NRA, a conference sponsor, was giving Pai an award. “We cannot bring it onstage,” she said. “It’s a Kentucky handmade long gun.”

Pai looked dumbfounded. It later emerged that FCC staffers backstage had prevented the NRA from bringing out the “musket” for fear of violating ethics regulations—and also, no doubt, wanting to avoid the spectacle of the enemy of net neutrality brandishing a firearm, the week after a deadly school shooting that had ignited massive protests. Friends later said that Pai was enraged that his speech on internet freedom was preempted, but he smiled and gave awkward thanks. Afterward he was ushered downstage for a panel discussion. “Wow,” he said, unable to hide his befuddlement. Pai nonetheless managed to hit some of his usual notes, quoting Gandalf the Grey and praising his own decision to take on the interests favoring net neutrality. “Some people urged me to go for sacrifice bunts and singles,” he said. “But I don’t play small ball.”

Pai had been blocked and throttled, but he was still winning.

Andrew Rice (@riceid) last wrote for WIRED about architect Bjarke Ingels.

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