“You’re late!”
“I got here as fast as I could.”
“Go assist the Technician.”
It figured. On the one day she actually looked forward to coming to work, there was stuff for her to do. It’d take some time before she could bring the gift to the Patient. At least she was being put to use. At the station, she was just barely able to hold casual conversation with the Technician, whose only mode of dialogue was to spout off the details of the latest test results.
“Checking results of Sample #3300 with Sample #1094586... no Compatibility.”
“Checking results of Sample #3301 with Sample #1094586... no Compatibility.”
Other than routinely check off the impotent samples, there was nothing else to do but listen to idle gossip. All around, she was surrounded by mothers talking about the latest exploits of their children:
“Remember the time you played peekaboo on yourself?”
“I’m never going to live that down, am I?”
“Playing peekaboo on herself?”
“She was nursing her baby while absentmindedly rocking an empty crib. When she checked the crib because it seemed lighter than usual, she saw no one was there, frantically looked around the room, and only felt relieved when she looked down into her arms.”
“At least yours was a short trip. Mine said he’d gone out on fanatical adventures that I couldn’t possibly understand. I didn’t say anything about the matter, since I’d already done fantasy plays of what he was talking about.”
“It’s so cute when they think they’ve found a private new world to themselves that we already know.”
“That was until I noticed little things that suggested that his travels were different from mine in ways I didn’t expect. For one thing, he frequently came home with bruises and haunted expressions that suggested he’d witnessed something sinister. And I noticed certain valuables were missing. One day, I’d had enough, and decided to confront him with a probing question, asking if he knew what happened to my vase. Almost immediately, he broke down, saying he was sorry, saying that the voice in his head kept provoking him into doing violent malicious acts, and this was the worst thing he could think of.”
“Obviously, this was not the same as my childhood experience.”
“A medical checkup later revealed the cause was a Demon that’d been embedded in his head. Ironically enough, turns out the Demon was doing these spiteful acts due to the voices in ITS head. It turns out my boy is Tri-Polar.”
“Have you tried removing the Demon?”
“They’re so symbiotically entangled together that the action of removing one would cause the death of the other.”
“At least you’ve got a reason for your boy’s behavior. MY kid frequently annoys me to no end. He wasn’t always like this - he was a sweet boy, but after his near-death experience, he came back irrevocably changed. “He doesn’t walk like anybody else. He doesn’t talk like anybody else. He doesn’t look like anybody else. It’s as if Death snuck in and took away all his best traits, and left behind a shell in the shape of my son.”
“You’re lucky. At least you have a reason for your kid’s behavior. If he could just be objectively evil, it’d be easier to hate him. But he doesn’t display the normal traits that’d make him worthy of an exorcism or mercy killing. There are days when I wish my kid WAS evil, just so I could have an excuse to kill him.”
One of the Mothers put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “We’ve all been there.”
“Not like this. I spend my every waking moment hoping something awful will happen to him, not of my own violation, not my own fault, that I’ll finally be free of the burden of looking after him.”
“Sounds like you need a visit from the Nanny.”
“He’s 30 years old. I’ve looked after him longer than I’ve been alive. When is it going to be MY turn to be looked after?”
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