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Post by Nola on Apr 20, 2017 5:24:10 GMT
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Post by Nola on Apr 20, 2017 6:21:04 GMT
Regarding HenryHenry Sumner was my first character, created sometime in late 2006 for A Call to Duty (ACTD). His first mission was a training mission in which he and his ship were destroyed by tiny Smurf-like aliens getting into the machinery and messing with the wiring. Henry cackled like a madman as the ship imploded around him, his face smeared with blue goo as he set about killing as many of the little shits as he could before he died. Things only got weirder and more murderous from there. His first posting was aboard the Defiant-class USS Pharaoh as a science officer. At the time, I had it in my head that I wanted to become an astrophysicist because I took 'reach for the stars' far too literally. So Henry was a scientist, and since he was at least partly based on myself, he was damaged goods. Since I was still figuring out what this game was about at the time, I kept the source of this damage 'simple': child abuse. Star Trek's take on Earth is a utopian one, obviously, so the idea of child abuse wasn't an easy one to jibe with the world. Of course, I'm a DS9 fanatic, so I didn't mind taking a somewhat darker view of Earth than what Mr. Roddenberry had imagined, but even a darker view of Star Trek's Earth is several shades brighter than the modern version. So Henry probably wasn't routinely physically abused or completely neglected. I decided to have Henry's damage came from the expectations and demands of his father, Charles, a man who never quite reached his ambitions and decided to take it out on his family. Starfleet and the sciences both offered an escape from those expectations, and so I made Henry a damaged science officer just trying to build himself some wings while he plummeted off the cliff of adulthood. Anyway, the Pharaoh was somewhat short-handed, and, as it happened, we didn't have a tactical officer. Not having a tactical officer on a Defiant is like not having a flame decal on you Pontiac Firebird - what's the fuckin' point, right? I decided to have Henry pull double-duty as a science and tactical officer. At the time, it fit the notion I had of Henry being the troubled genius type (I was not nearly as good a storyteller back then). What wasn't intended was the conflict that would define Henry's early Starfleet career as he bounced between the nobler pursuits of science and the sense of camaraderie that came with being a tactical officer. The end of Henry's time on the Pharaoh (also the end of the Pharaoh) came during a fun time-travel/dimension hopping arc that saw at least one character erased from existence, and also saw Henry inadvertently commit genocide. The Pharaoh, lost millions of years in the past, had been under attack by an unknown alien vessel. Desperate to survive, Henry looked for some weakness he might exploit. An earlier scan of one of the aliens revealed a potential vulnerability to the rhinovirus, so Henry got the bright idea to modify a torpedo with a batch of the virus and launch it at the enemy ship in the hopes that it would either weaken them or at least scare them off. This was essentially a war crime, of course, but I didn't really think of it at the time, and nobody said anything about it because some of the ship runners in ACTD played fast and loose with that kind of thing. Anyway, they found a way to get back to what was roughly their time period, but their Captain had been erased from the timeline for unknown reasons (Henry suggested a sort of chaos theory, that there was no guarantee that things would play out exactly as they would have even if they'd made zero changes to the timeline). Also, the aliens whose ship Henry had effectively smallpoxed were extinct due to an unknown plague. Heh, oops! I can't tell you exactly what happened after the Pharaoh shut down, mostly because my memory gets real fuzzy about the order of events more than a year ago. I know I made Sara after I'd gotten addicted to playing, and I know that I dropped out of the game for extended periods a couple of times. At some point, Henry was assigned to the Sovereign-class USS Seleya, which was kind of like ACTD's flagship at the time. The Seleya's XO was Commander Maor, played by a guy named Eldad, and for those of you who didn't know him, Eldad was a colossal asshole. He openly mocked people in OOC, he routinely criticized the GD (SM in ACTD), Karri, and his character always pulled the most dickish moves he could. He was the definition of a 'toxic player,' and to a person you are all leagues better than Eldad. Anyway, Henry found himself in another dimension-hopping arc aboard the Seleya, and while he had at that point committed to being a Tactical Officer, his insubordination streak was in full swing. Henry didn't care for authority because of course he didn't, I made him in 2006 when I had a misanthropic bent a mile wide. So, both in character and out, I was not inclined to cooperate with Eldad. And boy, did I get the opportunity to not cooperate with Eldad... I don't remember the exact particulars of the situation because, as mentioned, my memory blows. We were on a planet that was, like, out of phase with our normal universe, and we needed some device that the planet's authorities had and wouldn't let us use. Somewhere along the way, we decided we'd just raid the building where the device was and take it so we could go home. Henry was riding in a vehicle with Maor as the XO went over the plan, part of which involved setting off explosives near what was essentially a community center. Henry strenuously objected, because fuck Eldad, and made his intent to prevent the XO from carrying out the plan very plain. In response, Eldad had another player stun Henry, and he was tied to a post in a tent for the rest of the mission. The CO came in and talked about how disappointed she was, and seemed unwilling to hear Henry's case. Once we were back in our proper phase of existence, we discussed what might happen as a result of the incident with Henry, and the idea of a court martial was floated. I didn't mind the idea, both because I have long preferred to let consequences play out for my characters, and because I had zero doubt that Henry would at least be vindicated in his objection, if not his threat to stop Maor. Karri and Lilia, the CO player, had some military connections, and we thought it would be interesting to bring them in as admirals for the court martial and to treat it like a real thing. After talking with their military peeps, Karri and Lilia took me aside (as much as one can in a chat room) and basically said that the court martial might tear the ship apart because Eldad had fucked up good. Eldad being Eldad, it was likely that any judgment against his character would result in him blowing up and causing the rest of the ship no end of drama, so I proposed a solution - Henry would resign his commission, now disillusioned with Starfleet, and spare the ship the OOC chaos a court martial would bring. More to come in later posts...
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Post by Nola on Apr 20, 2017 6:42:18 GMT
The Seven Deaths of Henry Sumner - IntroI don't have many of Henry's old logs to share, unfortunately. I have developed an unfortunate habit of releasing my character writing into the world and then moving on, not really saving any of it. I did save a few, however, that had some importance, including 'The Seven Deaths of Henry Sumner.' I'm not sure I can adequately explain where the idea for this log came from. I think it was born primarily from the sense that I never really put much effort into my logs. Don't get me wrong - I was meticulous in my portrayal of the characters, and the logs I wrote were very much in keeping with those personalities. At the risk of seeming maybe a little arrogant, however, the logs were effortless to write. When I'm writing for my characters, whether they're characters in the game or in my other writing, I don't have to put much conscious thought into it. To put it another way, I write them the only way they can be written, like it's already fully formed in my head and I just kinda spit it out onto the page and there, it's a thing that people can read if they want, let's move on. This also had the effect of making me feel a little doubtful when people complimented me on my logs. Long story short (too late), I felt like I could do better. I wanted to do something that felt truly ambitious so that the compliments I would get for my logs didn't feel so undeserved (not that I don't appreciate them, of course; this is just my personal brand of insecurity at work). So, late in the life of STE, I set out to write my biggest and, hopefully, best log to that point. 'The Seven Deaths of Henry Sumner' was the result of this effort, and it is by far the most ambitious and in-depth log I've ever written. Coming in at 13,090 words, it's not quite a novella, but is definitely in novelette territory. I approached the log in what I imagined was a 'professional' manner. I proofread each section numerous times, each one going through a few drafts before I let myself feel satisfied about posting it. For the sake of the readers, I broke it up into 11 parts, and will present them here as such. I don't want to spoil anything, but given the desire to make this feel a bit bigger than my usual writing, I let myself use some elements that I hadn't really wanted to use before. You'll see what I mean. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it if you haven't already read it. If you have, I hope it holds up
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Post by Nola on Apr 20, 2017 6:48:50 GMT
The Seven Deaths of Henry Sumner Part 1
2454
Ira IV had long become inhospitable to complex vertebrate life, the result of a runaway greenhouse effect that triggered a significant ice age. A kilometer-thick glacier now buried what had once been a fertile valley, home to thousands of mouse-like Ira’i. The last had been transported off-world nearly sixty years prior, and the planet abandoned. Until recently, anyway.
The valley now had one occupant: an older human man. He came on a shuttle filled with provisions and excavation supplies. Using the craft for shelter, he began to dig through the ice in a winding corkscrew path. Beneath the ice was a cave he had known when he was far younger, and he was determined to return. So he dug for nearly two years.
The shuttle became increasingly less viable as a vehicle as he went, scavenging parts to keep an old dilithium mining laser operating. When he’d reached the halfway point, he carved a small chamber for himself to serve as better shelter. Unpowered, the shuttled did little to protect from the biting winds of the surface. Eventually, he moved all his remaining supplies into the chamber, and did not see natural light for the rest of the dig.
So he dug, and he slept, and he ate, throwing the last of his body’s vigor into the work. When he was too weak to dig, he would sit and stare at the ice surrounding him, and let the looming specter of death fill his being. It was a soothing balm for a weary soul, and after some rest, he dug with renewed purpose.
He finally reached his destination, and fell to his knees and cried as the last wall of ice fell away, leading into the cave. After several moments he crawled inside, dragging behind him a rucksack filled with the last of his supplies. He took his time eating the last of the provisions, consisting of a pair of Starfleet field rations. It was a fitting last meal.
He had come to this cave for a purpose. It was here that he had lent assistance to a group of Ira’i displaced by their planet’s rapidly changing climate. It had been the first time he’d ever felt any sense of purpose, or importance. It has been the first time that Henry Sumner truly mattered.
His stomach struggled to digest the hardtack as he made his way through the cavern complex, a handheld torch his only source of light. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for, but he felt he’d know when he found it, and found it he did, lying on the ground in what had been a supply storage area, as he remembered it.
He knelt down and picked up the old, tarnished combadge, consisting of the Starfleet chevron and a Command division insignia. Moving to a sitting position, he propped the torch against a stone and took off his gloves, wanting to feel the frozen metal in his hands. He ran his fingers along the edges, turning the badge over slowly.
They’d given him an Axanar Humanitarian Medal for his work in Ira IV. Of all his commendations, that had been the only medal he ever displayed. As more and more of his years were devoted to warfare, both against and in defense of the Federation, it was his memories of pursuing peace that shone most bright. This was a fitting place to die, and with tears in his eyes and a smile on his face, he began to remove the many layers of protective clothing he’d been wearing.
The cold bit into his marrow as he shed the last layer of long johns. His trembling figure belied a body that had once been fit and finely sculpted. The years had sagged his heavily-tattooed skin, distorting the various images of things he had once thought important. The names on the Cross of Lorraine on his back were no longer legible.
He sat against the frozen cave wall, clutching the badge with all his might, and he went through the checklist. He would lose feeling in his extremities first, as his body fought to preserve the vital organs. The bitter cold would eventually give way to a paradoxical feeling of warmth as the body ceased to resist. He would feel very tired. He would fall asleep, and he would never wake.
He would know peace.
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Post by Nola on Apr 21, 2017 23:06:06 GMT
Interlude
Going back and reading over the Seven Deaths log, I realize I neglected to mention how deeply personal the log got. As I mentioned, Henry is largely based on myself (and Sara on who I'd like to be), and I drew on some of those personal experiences for the log. As a result, a couple of the segments get a little intense, so consider this a heads up.
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Post by Nola on Apr 21, 2017 23:07:19 GMT
Part 2
The old man had ceased shivering, the paradoxical warmth beginning to sink in. It wouldn’t be long now, and he tried to stave off the building delirium and think of the good things that had been in his life. First and foremost, he thought of his sister, Sara. He thought of her oft-changing hair, and the way her eyes lit up when she smiled, and how she could validate him with nothing more than a warm look.
He thought of how she died, back when the Federation first split. Some gutless Section operative shot her in the back in her own bedroom, knowing it was the only way to bring down the Bremen while she was in command. Henry had gone on the warpath after that, taking the Vonnegut and blowing the shit out of every Section installation they didn’t know he knew about.
But he didn’t want his last thoughts to be of war, and he tried to think of other good things. He tried to think of Kesh, but it was difficult. He had only another minute or two of consciousness left, and thinking was becoming impossible. All he could bring to mind was the feel of Kesh’s lips that one night, and then the darkness took him.
Henry felt a profound emptiness of being. He didn’t feel cold. He didn’t feel warm. He wasn’t in pain, and his mind no longer strained against the murkiness of near death. In fact, his thoughts were remarkably clear.
“You look cold,” a voice spoke. The words echoed through the chamber and deeper into the cavern complex. Whoever it was spoke English; Henry hadn’t brought a translator with him. He hesitated a long moment before slowly opening his eyes.
A human-looking woman was crouched in front of him, her head tilted curiously. She was on the short side, with mousy red-dyed hair and dark eyebrows above emerald orbs. She reminded him vaguely of Sara, but only in passing. This definitely was not Sara. In fact, Henry couldn’t be sure there was actually anyone there. Hallucinations could easily be a-
“You’re not hallucinating,” the woman said.
“Tha’s jus’ what a hallucinated would say,” Henry slurred. Still, he could feel the vigor seeping back into his bones, the entropy of his should-be corpse somehow reversing. The woman chuckled and moved to sit on the ground. She was wearing some kind of light linen wrap that transitioned into a skirt. It definitely wouldn’t protect her from the cold.
“What are you doing in this freezing cave?” she asked.
“I could ask you the same,” said Henry. His voice seemed oddly clear given the fact that he hadn’t spoken much over the last two years. He was beginning the suspect the woman in front of him wasn’t human at all.
“I’m here because you’re here, so now we’re back to why you’re here,” she explained. Henry stared hard at the woman, not sure how much he should say. Given that he was about to let himself freeze to death, however, it probably wasn’t too great a risk.
“Came here to die,” he answered. She seemed taken aback, though it looked more like surprise than alarm.
“You came here to die? Like, voluntarily?” she asked. “Cool!”
Henry gave her a ‘what the fuck’ look, completely at a loss.
“Who even are you?” he asked in mild exasperation. The woman sighed and rolled her eyes.
“Names are such shallow things,” she replied. “They don’t really mean anything on their face, you know? A name only means something if you know of the actions tied to it. I mean, if I told you my name was Steve, would that really answer your question? You don’t know who the fuck Steve is.”
That made more sense that Henry was comfortable with, and he begrudgingly abandoned his irritation for the moment.
“Alright,” he said, taking a moment to think. “What are you, then?”
“Ah, there’s an interesting question,” she remarked, planting her chin firmly in her palm. “To be honest, I’m not sure you’d comprehend what I am if I just told you. It’s kinda meta, you know?”
“So let me get this straight,” Henry began. “You come here and interrupt my date with oblivion, you won’t tell me your name, and you won’t tell me what you are, but you’re not letting me die. Why?”
“Well,” she sighed. “I’m always on the lookout for interesting things, see? And I’ve encountered a lot! It’s seriously hard to surprise me, you know? I mean, I’ve seen people choose to die before, but it’s usually for a cause, right? That whole martyr thing is super popular. But here you sit, stripped naked in an ice cave you spent two years digging to get to. Why not just strip up there and save the trouble?”
“This cave is important,” he answered. “I have memories of this place. It seemed like a fitting place to go.”
“Why not go out in a blaze of glory?” she pressed. “That seems more your style. I mean, you’ve had your share of battles.”
This elicited a deep frown from Henry. The woman clearly knew more about him than she let on, and he again wondered if maybe this wasn’t some elaborate vision brought on by the throes of death.
“I don’t want to fight any more,” he said. “I just want it to be over.”
“Why?”
“Oh, fuck you. Why are you torturing me with this shit?”
“What, questions?”
“Yes!”
“I’m curious.”
“Too fuckin’ bad!”
This was apparently funny to her, bringing forth a deep belly laugh. She leaned forward, looking into his grizzled and gray visage, seeming to peer beyond the physical.
“If I tell you my name, will you let me ask some more questions?” she asked.
“I feel like I don’t have much choice in the matter,” he said.
“You kinda don’t.”
“Jesus. Fine. Who is this bitch before me?”
The woman leaned forward and shifted onto her knees. She slowly crawled towards him, and for a brief moment he thought she might try to kiss him, but instead she moved her lips to his ear and whispered.
“You can call me Q.”
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Post by Nola on Apr 29, 2017 17:32:31 GMT
Part 3
“Alright, that actually explains a lot,” said Henry after a long, expressionless stare. He didn’t know much about the Q, but he knew enough to know that they meddled, and that they could meddle like no one else. Now a Q was meddling in his death long after any interest he might have had in meeting one had waned into nothing, and he had little idea what one would gain from talking to him now. Then again, that timing made a certain kind of sense. The Q didn’t seem the type to show up when they were expected.
“Yeah, I guess it’s not really much of a secret to you Starfleet types,” Q remarked.
“Just ask your questions,” Henry bade, closing his eyes and resting his head back against the icy cave wall. Q gave a victorious smirk.
“So why do you want to die?” she asked. The question touched many parts of Henry’s memory at once. He remembered all the friends he had lost, and all the mistakes he had made. For a brief moment, the totality of his life occupied his consciousness, and it threatened to overwhelm him.
“I’m an old man with nothing to live for,” was all he managed to say past the lump in his throat.
“You’re not that old,” said Q. “I mean, you’re what, 90-something? With modern medical technology, humans can live to be nearly 200; you’re not even half-way there.”
Henry managed a small scoff and a loud, echoing sniff.
“Nine decades is enough,” he offered. “I want no part of the other eleven.”
This seemed to excite Q, drawing her towards him once more.
“See, that’s what’s interesting,” she explained. “The Q are timeless, you know? Hell, it takes effort just to remember that it’s a thing for you linear mortal types. I’d figure you’d want to get as much time as possible; I don’t get this whole ‘that’s enough for me’ thing.”
“The Q don’t feel pain, do they?” Henry asked, a hint of curiosity starting to manifest.
“Only when we want to,” answered Q. “Why?”
Henry felt a renewed sense of exhaustion at the thought of trying to educate a Q in the nature of material existence. He was starting to feel like he was trapped in some philosophy 101 parable, and he didn’t have the energy to start talking about elephant parts. He decided to keep it specific to himself.
“My life may have been relatively short, but it has been full, and too much of it is pain,” he explained.
“But wounds heal, right? Even the metaphysical ones. ‘Time heals all wounds,’ I’ve heard,” Q replied.
“A comforting proverb that rarely holds true,” he asserted. “It would be more accurate to say that time numbs all wounds. The more time passes, the easier a wound can be to carry, but the metaphysical ones never really heal. Each one chips a little bit away, and while you try to adapt and carry on, the heart can only take so much.”
“We’re talking about a metaphorical heart, right?” Q inquired. “Like, you don’t lose a piece of your actual heart when your psyche is damaged.”
Henry chuckled lightly, and the sound seemed entirely foreign. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed, not counting psychotic breaks.
“Not usually, no,” he confirmed.
“So, these experiences you talk about, the ones that caused you pain, they lower your ability to endure further pain,” reasoned Q. Henry gave an affirmative nod. “Do they actually reduce your overall ability to endure, or do they just kind of like take up space, leaving less available?” she pressed.
“I don’t fuckin’ know,” Henry muttered. “The effect is the same, really.” “Is it?” Q asked.
“Isn’t it?” was Henry’s sardonic reply.
“I mean, we’re basically talking about something like active memory versus passive memory,” Q explained. “If these events are clogging up your active memory, and they’re static since they occurred in a lineal reality, wouldn’t you be able to dump those static events into passive memory to free up the active?”
Henry looked to Q with a growing frown, fully aware that this analogy was tailored for him. He wondered if she was trying to talk him out of dying, even though such a thing seemed counter to stories he’d heard of the Q. It seemed more likely that her interest in the mechanics of his decision to die was driving this line of questioning.
“People aren’t computers, even if your kind wants to reduce us to our simplest elements,” Henry explained. “We don’t have RAM, we’re not walking gelpacks, and we can’t just ‘shunt’ memories about. When you’re linear, these events aren’t neatly contained packets of information. They are your life. They change you. They mold you into a different version of yourself from one moment to the next.”
Q remained silent for a moment. Were she a linear being, Henry might wonder if she were trying to process this information.
“So these events are more like sieves,” she offered.
“Sure,” sighed Henry, burying his face in his hands and trying to will Q away.
“Psh, that’s not gonna work,” said Q.
“If you’re that far in my head, why are you asking these questions?” he asked.
“See, now it’s you who don’t understand my existence,” Q chided. “To me, all these things in your head simply are. It’s like looking at a painting, you know? I can see the picture, but that doesn’t mean I can see how the artist painted it. I can’t watch their brushstrokes, or their revisions, or their long, frustrated stares at a blank canvas as they try to will an image onto it.”
“You want me to show you my brushstrokes?” was Henry’s dry query. Q snickered at that.
“Gross, no,” she replied. “At least, not all of them. I just want to see the ones that make you so sure you’re ready to die.”
“I’d say I don’t want to talk about it, but I get the feeling you’re going to keep me alive until I do,” he lamented.
“Yup,” confirmed Q. “Although, I can think of a compromise. You don’t have to tell me about it. Instead, you can show me.”
“Show you?”
“Show me.”
Henry regarded Q skeptically. Neither option seemed bearable, and he was starting to see the casual torment the stories had mentioned, even if this particular Q didn’t seem actively malicious.
“Fine,” he relented. “On one condition.”
“Yes,” said Q. “I will let you die once we’re done.”
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Post by Nola on May 5, 2017 2:03:22 GMT
Part 4
The room was familiar to Henry. The walls were a medium shade of beige. The room’s sole large window was lined with dark blue curtains patterned with stars and galaxies, and the sun bathed the dark mahogany floor. An unmade bed was shoved into a corner off to the side of the window so as to avoid being caught in the solar rays. A desk was on the other side of the window, made of real oak and covered in a variety of PADDs, text books, and disassembled items of indeterminate nature.
But it was the muffled sound of yelling elsewhere in the house that first tipped him off to where Q had spirited them. This had been his bedroom from birth to the age of 18, and his refuge from his volatile relationship with his father. As a result, it had seen a fair number of the events that seemed to interest Q the most. In fact, he was having a hard time discerning exactly when in his life this was; after a certain point, the tribulations of his adolescence had blended together, and by the time he was finished at the Academy he had trouble recalling the order of the things he did remember.
“This room’s kind of adorable,” observed Q. “Little stars on the curtains; oh, and a matching blanket!”
Henry took a deep breath, steadying himself and moving to the window. The Puget Sound glistened in the distance, dotted with both islands and boats of various size. He could see the old Seattle-Bremerton ferry, which had been maintained and refitted over the centuries, and now served as a floating museum of Seattle maritime history. He and Sara liked to lean on the deck railing and eat ice cream as the ferry ran its route. During the summer months, they would sometimes catch sight of breaching Orca pods.
The door to the room burst open, drawing the attention of both Henry and Q. Henry’s younger self stepped in and slammed the heavy wooden door with all his might. The sound was sharp, and distinctive, and a sense of foreboding began to fill the older Henry’s chest. His younger self was roughly 15, and the pieces in his memory began to come together.
The boy’s chest heaved, and he seemed to struggle to decide whether to approach his bed or his desk. After a moment, the boy simply screamed. It wasn’t a growling, angry scream, or a frustrated shout. It was a sharp shriek of anguish. His mother had once joked to him about how unmanly his screams were, and the old man gave a bitter frown. It was tempered, however, by an odd sense of sympathy for the boy, and it occurred to him that he’d never really given himself such sympathy before. For whatever reason, he’d always echoed the scorn his father had laid down, and his mother and brother had reinforced.
The boy sobbed for a few moments, running his hands over his face. Henry could remember how hot his skin had felt at the time.
“Wow. Must have been some argument,” said Q. “What was it about?”
Henry didn’t answer, instead watching as the boy stumbled over to his desk. He continued to sob, hands trembling as they rifled through one of the drawers, producing a hypospray.
“What’s that?” Q pressed.
“Zolpidem,” Henry answered with an unsteady voice. “A sleep aid.”
The younger Henry pressed the device to his neck and injected a dose.
“You decided to take a nap? That seems kinda anticlimactic,” she mused.
The boy injected a second dose, and then a third.
“Oh,” said Q, starting to catch on. Henry shook his head as he watched the boy fill himself with enough zolpidem to put himself out for good. He managed to give himself one more dose as he stumbled off to the side, then fell to the floor with a solid thud, the hypospray rolling off to the side.
Henry and Q stared silently at the boy for long moment.
“How did you-” began Q, who was interrupted by the door creaking open.
“Henry? Are you ok?” called a younger girl. She opened the door a little more and peeked in. The older Henry felt his heart break, and he hid his face in his hands. He couldn’t bear to see what he had put Sara through that day.
“Henry! No!” the girl screamed, pushing into the room and falling to her knees at the boy’s side. He could hear a light smack as the girl tried to rouse her brother.
“Henry! Please, no! Come back!” she cried, and the desperation in her voice reduced the older man to tears.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. For her part, Q remained silent and watched as the young girl panicked.
“Mom! MOM!” Sara screamed, and Henry could hear her footsteps leave the room as she went to get help for his younger self. After a long silence, Henry sniffed and lowered his hands, finding himself back in the ice cave with Q.
“You survived,” observed Q.
“I was beamed to the hospital,” said Henry, wiping at his eyes with trembling hands. “They managed to get most of it out of my system, but I slept for two days straight. They kept me in for observation for a while, and I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.”
“’Personality’ disorder?” echoed Q, not understanding. Henry took a moment to collect himself before explaining.
“It’s a result of a malformation in part of the human brain, the amygdalas, which processes emotion and memory, among other things. Genetic mutations and environmental pressures can cause it to malfunction, causing prolonged periods of negative emotions.”
“What caused yours?” Q wondered. Henry gave a shrug.
“Hard to say for sure,” he said. “But my father was very much a perfectionist, and he didn’t react well if you didn’t do what he wanted you to do. He would yell, and berate, and threaten.”
“Being yelled at can damage your brain?” questioned Q, not entirely convinced.
“Over prolonged periods of time, yes,” said Henry, giving a frustrated huff. “The brain is not meant to handle persistent stress. It produces chemicals that fundamentally alter your brain chemistry and genetic code, and before you know it, fucking despair is your very being, and every god damned waking moment is agony.”
His voice had been getting progressively louder, and Q had recoiled a bit. Henry stared at her, chest heaving as an all-too-familiar rage simmered just beneath the surface. He lowered his gaze and took a deep, settling breath, and the two sat in silence for several minutes.
“Your sister really cared about you,” Q offered after a while.
“She did,” agreed Henry. “She was the only family member who ever tried to understand me, and not make me feel like shit. For a long time, she was my whole world.”
“Did anything change at home after that?” Q asked.
“Not really,” sighed Henry, running a hand through his hair and resting his head back against the cave wall. “Mom was maybe a little more sympathetic, but dad would throw it in my face whenever he felt like it. I just kind of decided that I would just try to keep my head down until I could join the Academy, and get as far away from home as I could.”
“Why wait?” Q pressed. Henry gave another shrug.
“For Sara.”
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