Chapter 277: Book 4 Chapter 38.1: Into the Minds of Madness

“Bernouli’s theory was the primary approach to experimental expansion for a handful of years, but never produced significant results,” Vell explained. “The library of historical and mythical comparisons just wasn’t large enough to make comparative analysis work. However, it’s seeing a comeback lately since our larger library of discovered runes is making the comparisons easier.”

Vell took that moment to stop and get a drink of water. Since Kraid was still “teaching” in the actual classroom, Vell had been forced to gather students outdoors on the quad. It wasn’t all bad, but he had to raise his voice a lot more to be heard in the open space, which hurt his throat.

“There’s going to be a few questions about this on the final, but the big one is that there’s going to be a practical application of the overlay method, so make sure you study that. Everybody clear?”

Someone in the back of the makeshift classroom raised their hand. Vell pointed at them.

“This isn’t class related but someone is running towards you real fast,” the student said.

Vell peered around the edge of his whiteboard and saw Cane sprinting in his direction.

“That’s fine, I know him,” Vell said. “Well, mostly fine. Class dismissed.”

The sprinting indicated that something had gone wrong, probably on an apocalyptic scale, but Vell kept that to himself. He rolled the whiteboard to the side and walked forward to meet Cane halfway.

“Hey Cane, what’s going on now?”

“Some freshman chick made a helmet that lets a bunch of folks get together and view people’s memories,” Cane said. He had learned to be very upfront when filling Vell in on nonsense. Saved a lot of time. “Wanted to use it for therapy purposes.”

“So, what, are people trapped in their own brains or something?”

“No, works great, actually, very impressive,” Cane said.

“Then what’s the issue?”

“She used it on Kraid,” Cane said.

“You should’ve led with that,” Vell said, before breaking out into a sprint towards the neurology lab. Cane followed, but since he was already winded, Vell beat him to it. As he approached the central lab, somebody ran the other direction, shrieking at the top of their lungs. Not a good sign.

The one who’d run screaming appeared to be the lucky one. There were several students lying on the floor weeping, some of them in the fetal position. At the center of the lab, one young woman sat in a chair, slack-jawed and empty-eyed, with a strange helmet still strapped to her head. Kraid was lounging in an identical chair, with his feet kicked up on a nearby table and a similar helmet discarded nearby.

“Hey, Harlan,” Kraid said. “I was wondering when you’d come running.”

“Kraid. What’d you do to her?”

“Nothing she didn’t ask for,” Kraid said. He pinched the catatonic students cheek, and she didn’t react at all. “She wanted to get inside my head, see what made me tick. I gave her the highlight reel.”

Kraid got out of his chair and gave the limp student a light shake, which once again caused no reaction. He put a hand under her chin and closed her slackjawed mouth, which fell open again as soon as he pulled his hand away. Kraid stepped away as she started to drool.

“I think it was my mid-forties that broke her,” Kraid said. “I had a blowtorch phase. Took her a second to realize that wasn’t pork I was cooking, but when she did, well…”

After glancing over his shoulder at the student once again, Kraid chuckled to himself.

“Don’t you have a company to be rebuilding?”

“Oh, are you still leaning on that?” Kraid said. “That was months ago, Harlan, I’m already back up to the second richest man alive. And I’m working my way back to number one.”

The smile on Kraid’s face was always leering and unpleasant, but he found a way to escalate how creepy it was. He was up to something (moreso than he always was).

“I don’t know what the hell you’re planning, but I’m not letting you get away with it,” Vell said.

“Right now the only thing I’m planning is ruining this idiot’s day,” Kraid said, gesturing to the comatose student. “As for stopping me-”

Kraid leaned in, and his eerie smile grew even wider.

“-you can try.”

----------------------------------------

Vell was trying. He was trying quite hard, in fact.

“I feel like you’re not listening to me,” Vell sighed.

“I am listening, I just don’t think you know the complexities of the situation as well as I do.”

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The leader of the experiment, a young woman named Yuna, had a personality Vell could best describe as “Old Alex-adjacent”. She was aggressively overconfident and assured of her own success even as she barreled towards an obvious disaster. Vell and his friends had managed to talk every other student out of participating in the experiment, but Yuna was intent on seeing it through.

“I have been on the receiving end of Kraid’s bullshit for four straight years,” Vell said. “Something like thirteen, if you count the first time he experimented on me against my will.”

“I didn’t do that personally,” Kraid said. “We didn’t officially meet until later.”

“Thanks for clarifying. Kill yourself,” Vell said flatly. Kraid already being on hand made a bad situation even worse.

“See, I think that lack of sympathy is really clouding your judgment,” Yuna said.

“Hold up,” Cane said. “Did you just accuse Vell Harlan of having a lack of sympathy?”

“Yes.”

“Excuse me for a second.”

Cane stepped out of the room and started laughing so hard he almost choked. Vell ignored him and carried on.

“Yuna, sympathy has limits,” Vell said. “It’s Alistair Kraid! He eats baby pandas.”

“What?” Yuna said. She looked over her shoulder. “Have you done that?”

“Not today,” Kraid said. “Though I could go for chinese, now that you mention it.”

“For the record, it is equally likely he is referring to an actual Chinese person,” Vell said. “He’s done that too.”

“Hmm. Interesting,” Yuna said. “I’ll have to watch out for any China-based trauma while I’m in there.”

“Ugh, god, are you serious?” Vell said. He gestured to Kraid, who smiled and waved with his skeletal hand. “Kraid doesn’t have tragic backstory, he causes tragic backstories!”

“Every set of aberrant behaviors has an underlying pathology,” Yuna said. “We identify the cause, we can treat the symptoms.”

“The cause is that he’s a bastard, you can’t treat that,” Vell said. “I get where you’re coming from, Yuna, and for literally any other human being I’d be fully on board, but this is Alistair Kraid! He has literally committed every possible crime.”

“Actually a town in Idaho recently passed a law saying feeding a cat a vegan diet counts as animal abuse,” Kraid said. “Haven’t gotten a chance to break that one yet.”

“I really do not know how much more obvious he can make it that he’s evil,” Vell said.

“I’m fully aware that he’s ‘evil’,” Yuna said. “I’m just willing to put in the work to get into his head to identify the root causes and work on a treatment.”

“The only thing you’re going to identify in his head are his plans to cook and eat you,” Vell said.

“Barbecue,” Kraid said. “Really need a good sear to get the most out of all that fat on her.”

“Okay, not just cannibalistic but rude,” Vell said. “You still want to try and help him after that?”

“It’s not just about helping him, it’s the first step on a journey to help all sorts of people with antisocial behaviors,” Yuna said. “Kraid is just the most extreme example. A perfect test subject.”

“I for one am looking forward to having the root causes of my trauma identified,” Kraid said. He made only the slightest effort to sound convincing, which made it all the more upsetting that Yuna was convinced.

“I appreciate the concern, Vell, but it’s unnecessary,” Yuna said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get this experiment underway.”

Yuna stood and started adjusting the two helmets as Vell considered his options. There seemed to be no way Yuna would back down now. He could always destroy the helmets, but he probably didn’t have enough time to do it subtly, and doing it overtly would cause too much trouble -not to mention the possibility that Yuna had backups, or could simply reconstruct them on short notice.

Vell looked around the room for alternatives, or any fellow neurology students who might be willing to support him. They had all abandoned their observation helmets, so in the worst case scenario, he didn’t need to worry about collateral damage, at least. None of the other students looked willing to intervene. Most of them were staring curiously at him. Vell’s forehead wrinkled.

“Oh god damn it,” Vell mumbled to himself.

After that moment of resigned revelation, Vell stood and grabbed Yuna by the shoulder.

“Fine, you can dig through his head,” Vell said. “But you’re digging through mine too.”

Yuna looked confused, and Kraid looked utterly delighted.

“But there’s only two connection helmets,” Yuna said.

“You can watch as a spectator,” Vell said. “Not like anyone else is using those helmets.”

Some of the other neurology students actively stepped away from the other helmets. Unlike the two primary helmets, they only allowed viewing memories, not accessing them.

“I like the idea,” Kraid said. “Maybe we can find out what happened to make Harlan such a coward while we’re in there.”

Vell ignored the jab and walked over to grab a helmet.

“And maybe you’ll learn something about Quenay from my memories,” Vell said. The other students didn’t bother to hide their excitement. Some of Yuna’s classmates took the visualizer helmet out of her hands and gave it to Vell.

“But- you don’t even know how it works!”

“So explain it to me.”

She explained it. The helmet allowed the visualizing machine direct access to a person’s memory, but, in order to avoid any unwanted intrusions, it relied on the wearer for direction. Anyone in the visualizer’s would have to focus on the memories they wanted to be seen. As a mere spectator, Yuna would have no control over any of the memories on display.

“And so let’s say hypothetically I want to focus on my memory and Vell wants to focus on his,” Kraid said. “What happens then?”

“Then it comes down to a contest of willpower, I suppose,” Yuna said. “But do try to cooperate, this will go more smoothly if everyone’s on the same page.”

From the way the two glared at each other, even Yuna could tell Vell and Kraid didn’t feel like cooperating. Even so, they sat down, put on the helmets, and hopped into a shared headspace.

Vell found himself in a blank white void, with no one but Kraid for company.

“Really?” Kraid scoffed. “Not even a waiting room?”

The white space immediately materialized into a dentist’s waiting room, complete with posters for toothpaste on the wall and a secretary poking away at a keyboard behind the desk.

“Much better,” Kraid said. “But why a dentist?”

“I think that was me, actually,” Vell said. “This is where I went to the dentist as a kid. You said ‘waiting room’, and I guess I remembered it.”

Kraid raised an eyebrow and focused on one of his own memories. Vell felt a slight mental tug, but put up no resistance for now. The scene shifted to what Vell could only assume to be Kraid’s office, given the gothic architecture and the human skull on the desk. Vell cringed at the skull until Yuna appeared on the scene.

“Interesting starting point,” Yuna said, as she looked around the office. If she noticed the skull, she was not bothered by it. “But not exactly an insight into your psyche.”

“Speaking of insights,” Vell said. “If this is a representation of our memories, shouldn’t we be seeing it through our own eyes?”

“Well that wouldn’t be as dramatic,” Yuna said. “Let’s get to business. Why don’t we start with something basic. How about...a childhood memory of your mother?”

“Ooh, mommy issues,” Vell said. “This’ll be fun.”