[TBBT] Ch: 4 [Meet Leonard] (Patreon)

The fifth box felt heavier than it probably was, though that was likely more due to my exhaustion than the actual weight. Moving had a peculiar way of making everything seem more complicated than it needed to be.

A box filled with personal items shouldn't have been a challenge for someone who'd spent years immersed in advanced science and participated in more academic competitions than any reasonable person would. Yet here I was, in the hallway of my new apartment building, struggling with a cardboard box as if it were some final boss.

I'm thinking of hitting the gym soon, but it'd be great if I could get a reward from the System related to physical health.

Well, the movers had already departed after placing the larger boxes inside. I decided to carry the remaining smaller ones myself. There weren't many left, and after everything that had happened over the last two weeks, doing at least this much on my own felt appropriate.

I opened the door to Apartment 5B and stepped inside, then put the box down near the wall. The apartment was still largely empty, with a few boxes scattered around and almost nothing else to make it feel like a home. The walls were bare, the kitchen cabinets empty, and the living room somehow looked even bigger without any furniture.

I stopped for a moment and took a deep breath.

My fresh start currently consisted of a sleeping bag, my laptop, some clothes, several books, certificates, research notes, and a few personal items I considered important enough to bring. Everything else could wait. Furniture, decorations, equipment, and all the little things that turned an empty space into an actual home weren't exactly urgent.

Though, as I looked toward the empty corner where I planned to set up my workspace, I had to admit that a proper desk would be useful. The same could be said for a comfortable chair and a better computer setup than the laptop I'd brought with me.

Once that thought started, my brain immediately began expanding the list.

A massive bed that felt like sleeping on a cloud, a powerful air conditioner keeping the place at the perfect temperature, a giant television mounted on the wall, and a gaming setup built from the best hardware available in 2007. Add a comfortable massage chair where I could collapse after spending all day buried in research, and I'd have pretty much everything I wanted.

And, obviously, the UCS Death Star II LEGO set.

That one was practically a necessity.

I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck.

The annoying part was that I could afford all of it.

Five million dollars was sitting in an account with my name attached to it, and furnishing the apartment from top to bottom wouldn't make any meaningful difference to that amount. I could probably walk into several stores tomorrow, point at whatever I wanted, and have the entire place finished before the end of the week.

The temptation was definitely there.

There was also nothing inherently wrong with spending some of the money. Buying a bed and a desk wasn't exactly financial corruption, and I wasn't planning to prove my independence by sleeping on the floor while eating canned beans for the next five years.

Still, I hesitated.

I had already decided that I wouldn't touch Mom's money unless I genuinely needed it, and I didn't want that decision to disappear the moment something comfortable caught my attention. If I started making exceptions immediately, I'd probably become extremely talented at finding reasons why every new purchase was technically necessary.

That was how human beings worked.

Give us enough intelligence and we'd eventually find a logical justification for almost anything.

I looked around the empty apartment again.

For some reason, the sight of it brought a strange pressure into my chest.

It wasn't sadness. If anything, I was probably happier than I'd been in years. For the first time in my second life, there wasn't a professor waiting for my next paper, a university planning my next position, or some institution quietly deciding where someone with my qualifications was supposed to go next.

There was only me.

Twenty-one years old, standing inside an almost empty apartment in Pasadena, with no idea what I was supposed to do tomorrow unless I decided it myself.

That should've felt completely liberating.

Instead, some part of me found it terrifying.

I closed my eyes for a moment.

I'd spent so many years moving toward the next objective that I wasn't entirely sure what to do when there wasn't one already waiting for me. School had led to university. University had led to research. Research had led to doctorates. The doctorates were supposed to lead toward NASA, another university, a federal program, or some prestigious laboratory.

There had always been a next step.

Now there wasn't.

I had spent dinner telling my father that I wanted control over my own life, and apparently the universe had decided to immediately test whether I actually knew what to do with that control.

A quiet laugh escaped me.

"Figures."

I opened my eyes again and looked around.

The apartment was still empty.

But it was my empty apartment.

That thought settled differently.

Everything that appeared here from now on would be something I'd chosen. The furniture, the equipment, the decorations, even the ridiculous LEGO set if I eventually decided I wanted it badly enough. None of it needed to happen today.

I didn't have to build an entire new life before dinner.

That realization helped more than I expected.

I crouched beside another box and opened it, sorting through the things I'd brought with me. There were a few books near the top, followed by some clothes, my certificates, and a thick collection of notes from years of research. I moved several folders aside before noticing the familiar guitar case tucked against the side.

My hand paused against it.

Out of everything I'd brought with me, the guitar was probably the strangest thing for me to feel attached to.

I pulled the case free and rested it on the floor before opening it.

The guitar sat exactly where I'd left it.

For several seconds, I simply looked at it.

I hadn't played nearly as much during this life as I had during my first one. Science had consumed most of my childhood and practically all of my teenage years, leaving music as something I occasionally returned to when I needed to clear my head.

But the familiarity had never disappeared.

I reached inside and ran my fingers lightly across the strings.

Even that tiny sound was enough to bring back an absurd number of memories.

Bars, restaurants, weddings, private parties, studio sessions, television work, exhausted nights carrying equipment home, and all the small moments when music had been one of the few things in my first life that actually felt uncomplicated.

For a while, it had simply been something I was good at.

Then it became something I needed.

Now, for the first time, I could decide what I wanted it to become.

I lifted the guitar from its case and sat down against the wall because I still didn't own a chair.

That needed to change soon.

I adjusted the tuning almost automatically before playing a simple progression.

The notes echoed through the empty apartment.

I stopped after a few seconds.

Then played it again.

My memory responded immediately.

Songs surfaced one after another, some familiar enough that millions of people in my first life had heard them without thinking twice. Melodies, chord progressions, lyrics, arrangements, production styles, entire albums and musical trends existed inside my head years before most of them were supposed to be created.

I stared down at the guitar.

Knowing those songs existed was one thing.

Actually sitting here in 2007 with an instrument in my hands made the opportunity feel considerably more real.

I could reproduce them.

Not all at once, obviously. Releasing two decades of suspiciously perfect hit music in a single year would be a fantastic way to attract the wrong kind of attention, and I had no interest in becoming some bizarre musical prophet who somehow predicted every major trend before it happened.

But carefully?

A song here.

Another one later.

Different styles, different releases, maybe even material written for other artists once I understood the industry well enough.

That could work.

More importantly, it gave me somewhere to start.

For the last two weeks, I'd been thinking about laboratories, companies, patents, investments, and my father's five-year challenge as though I needed to solve all of them simultaneously.

I didn't.

I needed money before I could build laboratories. I needed experience outside of academia before I started companies. And before I could change the world, I should probably get a chair.

I laughed quietly and leaned my head back against the wall.

"One thing at a time, Karl."

The guitar rested comfortably across my lap while the last few notes faded through Apartment 5B.

For the first time since leaving home, that actually sounded like a reasonable plan.

Things were definitely getting weird.

...

A knock on the door interrupted me before I could decide what to play next.

I looked toward the door, then down at the guitar resting across my lap.

For a second, I considered ignoring whoever was outside. I'd barely moved in, half my belongings were still sitting inside cardboard boxes, and I currently had enough thoughts running through my head to keep several psychiatrists employed for years.

Then there was another knock.

Apparently my mysterious visitor had patience.

"Coming."

I carefully set the guitar next to its case and pushed myself off the floor. My legs hurt a little after sitting against the wall for so long, which made me realize I really needed to buy some furniture before my back started complaining.

I crossed the living room, stepped around two boxes, and opened the door.

The man standing outside looked familiar. Brown hair, glasses, shorter than me, casual clothes, and the kind of friendly expression that looked as though it had spent years surviving somebody else's personality.

Leonard Hofstadter.

For a brief moment, I simply stared at him.

Seeing Sheldon Cooper's name in scientific journals had been strange enough. Seeing Leonard standing three feet away from me was something else entirely. Television did a poor job of preparing you for the experience of meeting someone your memories insisted had once been fictional.

Thankfully, Leonard seemed to interpret my silence as ordinary confusion rather than existential recalibration.

"Hi," he said with a small smile. "Sorry to bother you. I saw the movers earlier and figured someone had finally taken 5B. I'm Leonard. Leonard Hofstadter. I live downstairs in 4A."

There it was.

A completely normal introduction.

I smiled and extended my hand. "Karl Peterson. Nice to meet you."

Leonard took my hand. Then his expression changed. The handshake lasted perhaps half a second longer than it should have as his eyes narrowed slightly behind his glasses.

"Karl Peterson?"

I already knew that tone.

I'd heard versions of it from professors, graduate students, journalists, and researchers at conferences who recognized the name before they recognized the face.

"That's what my birth certificate claims," I replied.

Leonard's eyebrows rose. "Wait. You're the Karl Peterson?"

I leaned lightly against the doorframe. "I'm hoping there isn't another one running around ruining the name."

Leonard laughed, although the surprise remained on his face. "No, sorry. I just didn't expect you to be living here."

"Most people don't expect scientists to live in apartment buildings?"

"No, I mean I've read your work."

That caught my attention.

Recognition wasn't unusual anymore, but there were different kinds of recognition. Most people mentioned the degrees first because two doctorates before twenty-one made for an easy headline. Others mentioned whichever paper happened to overlap with their own field.

Leonard looked genuinely interested.

"What did you read?" I asked.

"Your paper on optofluidic laser-scaffolding for bioregenerative life support."

I blinked.

That wasn't the answer I'd expected.

Out of everything I'd published, that paper occupied a strange intersection between aerospace engineering, microfluidics, biological life-support systems, and laser physics. Plenty of researchers had cited it, but very few people outside those areas bothered reading beyond the abstract.

"You actually read that?" I asked.

"Yes. Multiple times," Leonard replied, then seemed to realize how enthusiastic that sounded and gave a small shrug. "I'm an experimental physicist. High-energy lasers are kind of my thing."

That made sense.

More than that, it made the coincidence rather interesting.

I stepped away from the doorway and gestured inside. "In that case, you might as well come in. Fair warning, the apartment currently has all the comforts of an underfunded field station."

Leonard glanced past me at the empty room before stepping inside. "You weren't exaggerating."

I closed the door.

"You play?" Leonard asked, seeing the guitar case.

"I do."

"For fun?" He looked back at me.

That question almost made me laugh.

"Something like that," I replied.

Leonard looked curious, although he didn't push. Instead, his attention moved toward one of the open boxes near the wall. Several folders had shifted during the move, exposing the corner of a familiar diagram.

His eyes stayed there slightly longer than normal.

I noticed immediately.

"Go ahead."

Leonard looked back at me. "What?"

"The paper."

He hesitated. "I wasn't trying to snoop."

"You were absolutely trying to snoop."

He looked mildly embarrassed. "I was trying to identify the diagram."

"Scientifically motivated snooping is still snooping," I said with a little chuckle.

"That's fair," Leonard said.

I crouched beside the box, pulled the folder free, and handed it to him. "This is an earlier draft."