A Menace to Society

[Melissa Terrance]

"To a certain extent we do, I haven't had time to review the files of the entire student body though."

[Null]

"Well, this guy here was found after being buried in the antarctic for centuries, so I'm sure a few weeks in the freezer won't hurt anyone. Heck, it would probably make life that much easier for everyone else on campus, to boot."

[Melissa Terrance]

"But that wouldn't necessarily be better for him."

[Null]

Will shrugged, tossing the specimen cup from one hand to the other. "Eh, he's a Star Trek nerd and you're a psychologist. Make up some shit about the needs of the many or something and he'll probably accept it."

[Melissa Terrance]

Melissa ponders that for a bit. It wouldn't be unlike putting someone into a medically induced coma, but that was done to avoid further trauma to the individual. Her fingers drummed on her arm, and she finally says, "No, do what you think will work. I'll monitor his mental sense to help you gauge the response."

[Null]

"I mean, this is going to be a process. Don't you have some actual people to keep from freaking out or something?"

It didn't take a telepath to realize that Will was trying to get the psychiatrist away, or at least keep her from observing too closely.

[Melissa Terrance]

"Professor Rede can handle those cases if they arise. Or is there something you don't want me to see here?"

[Null]

"I get it, it's funny, because you have no eyes. How many fingers am I holding up?" Will asked, flipping her off.

[Melissa Terrance]

"Oh, I have eyes, they just don't work. I've adapted," she says as an invisible force flicks Will's extended finger.

[Null]

"Alright, look. I'm worried you're going to be a major buzzkill here," Will tried to explain. "We're trying to develop a personality from scratch and, uh...I'm sorry, but you don't look like a hip, outgoing modern young adult."

This, too, wasn't entirely honest, but it at least was heading in that general direction.

[Melissa Terrance]

"I'm sorry I'm don't dress like I'm up on the latest piece of internet slang," she says with a snort. "I'm staying to make sure you don't cause him undue trauma. Do I need to deliver an ultimatum?"

[Null]

"How are we defining "undue" trauma here. What about due trauma?"

[Melissa Terrance]

"That's for me to determine as a psychologist and a telepath. I'll have to judge based on my sense of his mind."

[Null]

"OK, but...if you had a patient who couldn't control their powers, and were a threat to everyone they were near, what would you do with them?"

[Melissa Terrance]

"That's a mildly loaded question and not easily answered. Every patient is different and there's no one-size-fits-all therapy."

[Null]

"A dodge. Fair enough; I'm used to it from both psychics and psych-ics. I guess you get a double-dose of it, huh?" Will shrugged.


"This is where I stand on the issue right now -- it's patently clear, after weeks of observation, that this 'patient' has zero control over what he does. If we hadn't been there in the hospital, Maldon would be absorbed by now, killing everyone who lived here. And that, I should hasten to add, would be a bad thing.

So, decisions decisions. I can either try to figure out a way to impose discipline while rebuilding a personality here and trust that the idiot won't kill everybody, or I can work less on forming a personality and more on trying to help him be something more useful. Like a houseplant. Or a plunger. Something a little less dangerous, savvy? Anything better than locking his ass in Muir forever and ever."

[Melissa Terrance]

"I would argue for the former over the latter. And I agree that Muir is a last resort in all cases."

[Null]

"OK, two things then.

One: why? Honestly, why the former over the latter. We've already got one Will, and most people will think that's more than enough. If this dude loved being stuck in a closet for months on end, why not just tweak it so he leans into it more? Out of hair forever.

And two: Uh. Any suggestions on how to go about doing that? Self-restraint isn't exactly my forte."

[Melissa Terrance]

"Because regardless of how he came to be, he has a right to self-determination unless all his brain activity has ceased. I can tell you right now that there's at least the rudiments of activity in there. As for the how, I could tell that restraint isn't something you quite get. Given that he spent some time in a closet of his own accord, I take it he typically has a good amount of restraint?"

[Null]

"Too much, if you ask me, and you did, so there. Dude could be bleeding out of both eyeballs and he'd rather slink off into a corner than raise a fuss. You know, a pussy."

[Melissa Terrance]

An eyebrow rises at that. "I'll let that slide due to your avowed lack of restraint and the unusual nature of the situation." She regards the rudimentary presence in the makeshift prison, "It does sound like there's an imbalance there that is in need of some assistance."

[Null]

"Frankly, I was thinking about doling him out by committee. Splitting him up and letting different pods focus on different individual things, and then mushing 'em all together to try to create some kind of half-way functional human being. Shari and I did some experiments on him earlier, and the results...well, they sucked, if I'm being honest with you."

[Melissa Terrance]

"I'm sure they were done with utmost experimental rigor." She ponders for a moment, "Though the idea of building up various parts of him a little at a time until he can work on his own is not totally off course."

[Null]

"'Course it's not. It's my idea, isn't it?" Will scoffed.

[Melissa Terrance]

"The trick, and the part that you didn't cover, is not to make his decisions for him. It's a delicate thing and one I don't think 'smashing it all together' will help."

[Null]

"You know, you're right. We should ask him what he wants."

"HELLO IN THERE, BLOB BOY!" he shouted, vigorously shaking the sample container up and down. "YOU UP? YOU GOT OPINIONS ON THINGS?

Well, gosh golly gee, he doesn't seem to be talking. You have an Ouija board or something we could use?"

[Melissa Terrance]

Melissa reaches out with her power, gingerly lifting the container out of Will's hand, letting it float a little in the air as she sets it back down. As she does, her minds reaches out to the presence inside the container, trying to get a better, clearer sense of the state he's in.

[Will Stanton]

No thoughts, or even real emotions, per se -- just sort of the rudimentary bits there. It was like poking a fish with her mental powers -- there were responses to stimuli, but with so much of him removed by the Brotherhood, there didn't appear to be much in the way of cogent thought or deep ideas...at least, not as he was, now. It was all on the level of basic instincts.

That's not to say there was NOTHING there, but delving into it would be more like looking at abstract pictures rather than portraits, or single notes rather than full chords. Poking and prodding might get some useful information out of it, but it'd have to be open to interpretation.

[Melissa Terrance]

"So he can absorb whatever material we provide?" She asks outside-Will, while still monitoring inside-Will.

[Null]

"Yeah, basically. In fact, the more raw -stuff- we dump into him, the faster he'll grow into something both normal sized and, theoretically, either conscious enough to control his ungodly urges or lacking the motor control to hurt anyone. Or both, frankly. You know, win-win.

Now, depending on what we dump in, he'll develop...differently. And not always obviously, either. It's all a complicated connotation-transformation-implication-filtration, and you can never be QUITE sure what you're going to get. Add in cotton candy, and maybe he'll be all sweet, or maybe he'll be airheaded, or maybe he'll just be pink. Throw in a copy of 1984, and he might become a fascist, or a revolutionary, or he may just like to write.

Or, then again, he may just become a copy of the book. Who can say? If it's something you don't like, you erase it and start again."

[Melissa Terrance]

"So he might go with the metaphor or he might go literal." She seems to contemplate that for a moment, "What if we just add some more material? Like Play-Doh or modeling clay or something like that?"

[Null]

"If you're just trying to make him larger, that would work -- Dr. Bowen usually just used a kind of saline solution kind of thing. Any matter'll do, and bland vanilla matter will prevent it from overwriting anything that's already there.

Of course, the difference THERE is that I maintained my damn faculties -- I was thinking and acting the same way, so I could overcome any outside influences and the like. This guy is a) shattered beyond that, so there's nothing 'there' to overwrite and b) a wimp as it is, so I highly doubt he'll be able to resist any outside influence, so that's no good, there.

I don't know what would happen if we just filled 'im up with play-doh, because it's never been done. I'd be willing to give it a shot, though."

[Melissa Terrance]

"So if you got all the spine, as it were, care to hazard a guess what would happen if we gave him part of you?" It was an idle question as she mused through the possibilities.

[Null]

"Yeah, that's not happening," Will said, firmly.

[Melissa Terrance]

"But, say from a hypothetical scenario, what do you think would happen?"

[Null]

"Hypothetically speaking? I'd punch you in the face.

I want NO part of him, whatsoever. You can't imagine how much better things have gotten for me since I've been stripped of all that weakness and sentimentality. I'm a better person for it. My first idea for how to deal with all this was to blow up the damn hospital with him inside to permanently get rid of him. You know that, if we fix him, he's just going to cause more problems down the line most likely, right?

I'm not even going to touch him when he's like this. It's too risky for me."

This didn't really answer Melissa's question, of course, though it perhaps opened a window into JerkWill's psyche.

[Melissa Terrance]

"Ah, I see. So... spine was a misnomer earlier. He is the one with the personal restraint and you have impulse. Why don't you tell me how the two of you ended up this way?"

[Null]

Will rolled his eyes some at the quip.

"Right. Miriam had gone off the reservation, as she is wont to do, and I went out to try to stop her, as no one else seemed particularly interested in doing so. She got the drop on me, and split us into two, mailing the spineless one to Ireland and keeping me for herself. She split off all the codependent shitty bits cultured by the Samantha McManus of my world and send them off to the Sam of this world, and boy howdy, let me tell you, did that ever go swimmingly.

A few months later, Miriam revealed this trick to the unsuspecting people over here, because a bit of a dark side that she had accidentally unleashed in me went a bit off the reservation, as she is wont to do, and she needed help bringing her in. Miriam cleaned up that mess, no harm no foul, and that's how we ended up with a pair of Wills over here. Simple as that.

You know his story, I presume."

[Melissa Terrance]

"You informed of a bit of it yes. And, for the record, I was not advocating combining the two of you as a whole. Rather that you seem to possess the qualities he lacks and therefore needs."

[Null]

"Well, he can't have any of me. Non-starter.

In fact, we should further the difference, so people stop thinking we have anything to do with one another. We'll come up with a new name or something for whatever he turns out to be. Something that keeps him in his place."