1409/Dr. Mario Is Not A Real Doctor

Dr. Mario Is Not A Real Doctor
Date of Scene:	11 July 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Cypher, Beast

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Cypher has posed:
Ramsey, Douglas. Age... 18? He looks terrible. Unless your previous point of reference was when he was dead. Then he looks fantastic. Aside from an incident where Iceman snuck him out and the occasional trip to the kitchen, Doug has been behaving himself, resting quietly in the Medbay with the occasional visitor.

At the moment, he's working with a microcomputer that Jean brought him, studiously assembling the little thing with the toolkit she provided, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. His skin is as white as chalk and threaded with slender black veins, his eyes glow a dull red. Physically, aside from his pallor, he is in the rudest of good health... uncanny.

Beast has posed:
It is strange but almost the entire time Doug has been here, he hasn't seen a particular mutant once. And considering what is going on one would think that the X-Men's preeminent scientist would have stopped by. But he hasn't.

Actually, Hank /had/ visited, but only when Doug was asleep or in some other version of unconciousness, collecting sampled and arrangeing teh machinery that is displayed around DOug, registering his vitals and other more esoteric things which very few people (Except maybe Doug himself) would understand.

But he hasn't visited. Not until now. Because Hank McCoy is a coward.

People would tell him they understand why he hadn't visited the young newly returned student, even forgive him, but he couldn't forgive himself. Doug Ramsey /died/. He died /three/ years ago. He saw the body. He did the damned autopsy. And for three years he had rested at the bottom of a grave, naure reclaiming his star-stuff like she is apt to do.

But he is not dead now. And that is hard for him to accept. He wants to be happy that one of his old students, one of his FAVOURITE students, has returned but... He is wary.. He is confused.. He is /suspicious/..

He is a /coward/.

But now.. now he needs to man up. And the door to the med lab slides open revealing Hank standing there in his Oxforrd tweed and labcoat.. blue feet bare as usual... his spectacles perched on the edge of his leonine snout. HE studies Doug for a moment then tentatively steps in. "Douglas.." he intones, softly. "I hope I am not intruding."

Cypher has posed:
Doug looks up, and then he sets the computer aside. His eyes have that dull red glow, but his expression brightens, considerably. "Doctor McCoy!" He says. He sits up. "You're not intruding!" He leans forward, ever so slightly. He's wearing an oversized Xavier's school t-shirt and a pair of baggy sweatpants, and the remnants of tonight's meal -- broth and jell-o and a glass of orange juice are on a tray next to the bed.

He looks up, and says, "I guess I look pretty terrible, don't I?" But then he's reading Hank's expression. And he immediately verbalizes a response to what Hank *isn't* verbalizing... but it's written all over Hanks' face. So to speak. "You're not a coward, Doctor McCoy. This is frightening. *I* am frightened." He looks at the black veins threading through the palms of his hands. And then he says, "I keep expecting to just... fade to black, or melt into a pile of slime, or something. But I'm still here." He gives a wan smile, his blond hair hanging over his face.

"You're not a coward." He repeats.

Beast has posed:
Hank has closed most of the distance between himself and his patient, but comes to a complete halt when Doug finally answers him. Truly answers him. Answers the nagging painful guilt in the back of his mind. He closes his eyes a moment and takes a deep breath.. another.. as if trying to find his center.. The center between science and.. belief? The balance between man and the eevr present Beast within him that rallied and roared when it lost one of it's 'pack'.

And then he reaches up, pushing teh spectacles up slightly as he rubs an eye... and then pinches the bridge of he cat-like nose. "Forgive me.. must be some dust.." he says, his usually deep baritone a bit husky... THen he lowers his paw and finally closes the distance to nothing, standing at the edge of his bed.

"If I had any doubts as to what... who you were.. now I don't." he promises. "I mean, yes, /rationally/ I do. Scientifically I do. But not.. not.." he tries to give it words but he can't. Because this is one of those times that even his vaunted vocabulary can fail him.

He looks down at those black veins that Douglas traces and shakes his head. "Lets table the.. philosophical discussions for now, Douglas. What is important is that You are here, now. And Yes, you have looked better but..."

He looked a lot worse once as well...

"In any event.." he pulls the tablet from under his arm andfingers the screen on. "We'll figure it out. One way or another. And it will /not/ include you fading to black." And his voice becomes a bit more feirce this time.

Cypher has posed:
Doug tilts his head. "I've looked a whole lot worse." He agrees. "It's funny." Doug says. "I swear, sometimes, when it's really quiet and there's not a lot of other things around demanding my interpretation, even through the psychic screen that Professor Xavier installed in my head, I swear I can hear it talking to me, Doctor McCoy. And it's always saying the same thing:

"Live. Live. Live. But life that grows unchecked is Cancer." He lies back, slowly.

"I almost feel like--there's got to be a way I can communicate with it. Is that crazy? If I could--" He sighs, frustrated for a moment, and lies back, sinking his head into the pillow.

"It doesn't help that there are a lot of different thoughts competing for my attention. I like the MedBay, because it's still, but when I snuck out to take a walk a few days ago I could understand every single bit of birdsong going on around me. It was..." He pauses, and then breaks into a boyish giggle. "Filthy, it was filthy!" But then he sobers up again.

Then, he reaches out to take one of Hank's massive blue paws in his hand. "I know you can help me figure this out. You can do anything."

Beast has posed:
Hank 's face almso crumbles.. almost.. as the young man explains his dilemnas.. his feelings.. And as Doug pats the large blue paw Hank pulls up a tall stool and sits on it. Not perches, as he is usually apt to do, but /sits/ like a man.. not The Beast.

"It is the same reason I like my lab. Oh some people find it noisy in their own way but it is peaceful.. at least to me.." he tells him. "And for the record, most non-sentient creatures have filthy minds. "Eat, Sleep, Protect, Procreate..." he grins as best he can, though it's not as much of a joke as he wished it were.. He has those same urges, always warring with his human mind.

He checks the tablet again, going over real time readings for a second, then sets the tablet in his lap. "Anyways, Maybe you /can/ communicate with it. This.. thing.. is pretty well ingrained into your organic structure, Douglas. I won't lie and say you it's harmless.. I just do not know.. but.. I wouldn't say it is like a cancer. For one, it is not as uncontrolled as you may think. From what I can discern it has effectively rebuilt you. If it were some uncontrolled process it would have just... converted your biological components into, well, whatever. But it hasn't. Yes, it has infiltrated you at a molecular level but with /purpose/, not.. not with mindless chaos. It has /systematically/ rebuilt your most base level biology, filling in any gaps that it cannot replace with it's own."

He sighs deeply. "So yes, it is very much a /part/ of you but.. you are part of /it/ as well. You give it a map, if you will.. a blueprint to follow. And a blueprint is a form of communication. So if it can follow one form of communication, and seems to be acting with /intent/, then why not be able to communicate another way? We communicate with our bodys all the time, on a sub-concious AND concious level."

Cypher has posed:
Doug was always quick on the uptake, and his immediate response is, "So how do we bridge the gap? The techno-organic virus converts matter into techno-organic matter that Technarchs can drain the energy from... I suppose I was infected before I died, and would've died anyway. But Warlock's a mutant himself, in a way... and my infection came from him. So maybe..." He laughs. "One last gift from my Self/Friend," he says, "Even though he didn't know it. A 'Cheat Death' card? Oh, *Lock*." Tears glisten in Doug's eyes.

Then he brushes them away. "Anyway. I need to tell it that it's fulfilled its purpose, and that it can STOP. It's--" He hmphs. "Warlock and I used to speak in binary all the time. Maybe..."

Beast has posed:
Hank is saddened as well. He remembers Warlock quite fondly, having spent much time with him, both in Doug's Company and just with the alien hismelf. "Techno-organic matter is a tricky system, Douglas, and the process the TO Virus employs to convert purely organic matter is a magnitude MORE tricky." he reaches over and pats Douglas on the shoulder. "Even if this gift as an accident, that doesn't make it any less special. This is what he would have wanted. You, alive. He protected you while you were both living. Perhaps he cared so much that his mutation allowed him to imprint that selfless need to protect you, that drive to save you, into his viral structure...."

He then perks up a bit and nods quickly. "Yes.. yes you did. And what a pain that was for even ME to follow, and I /know/ Binary." he says, then grins a bit. "Maybe that is the key, Douglas. Or at least the base of finding a way to tell it to stop."

Cypher has posed:
Doug pauses, and then he looks around. He looks to Hank, and then back at the equipment. "Ones and zeroes..." He taps his chin. "Doctor McCoy, do you think maybe we could use some of the equipment in here to send microsignals through my body? Maybe a computer set up..." He looks to the Microcomputer Jean bought him, "So that I can communicate to it verbally in binary, and then..." He says, "You're the doctor! I'm just a computer nerd."

"Could we do that? At least, try it? The Techno-organic virus is really just incredibly sophisticated microcircuitry..." His expression has brightened, palpably. He's beginning to how the idea might fit together, though Douglas doesn't know enough about the way things like electric signals in the nervous system work to bridge the gap.

...But Hank almost certainly does.

Beast has posed:
Hank is already on it, wheeling the stool to a bank shelf of portable equipment and grabbing a case off the bottom shelf. "It is sophisticated, yes, but it still adheres to basic phsycis and the /principles/ of any programming substrate be it technological /or/ biological." he states as he opens the case and starts putting components on the small table next to Doug.

"It is all about electricty, my good boy. And the T/O matter is just circuitry on a nano-scale level. Better, it is adapatable, able to reconfigure itself. Now when we are trying to read the elerical impulses of the brain we use an electroencephalogram... This is a bit more advanced.. SOrt of a stepping stone between an EEG and the Cerebro interface. It is called a SQUID." He pulls out a collapsable wireframe and unfolds it into a helmet-like shape and places it on Doug's head.

"A superconducting quantum interference device, basically an array of very sensitive magnetometers used to measure extremely subtle electromagnetic fields, based on superconducting loops containing Josephson junctions...." he trails off as he runs a cable to the handheld device... then synchs it with another tablet which he hands to Douglas. "Unlike an EEG, the Squid transfers signals TWO ways. So it should allow you to read the impulses from your neural net, and the T/O matter within, displaying the readings on teh tablet. Then you can feed back impulses the same way, by entering the paramters in the interface."

Cypher has posed:
Doug Ramsey closes one eye when Hank puts the device on his head. "Okay." He says. "Turn it on." He waits.

Then his eyes begin to flick over the readouts on the tablet, and he tracks them, softly mouthing to himself. Then his fingers dance over it, putting in response.

A moment later, there is response on the readout. A point of connection, Cypher -- for in this moment, he is Cypher, the nexus point of communication -- is making with a techno-organic virus inside of himself. "It's talking to me, Doctor McCoy." He says. "It's telling me that it was activated and..." He smirks, "It wants me to be 'on', because when it was activated, I was 'off', an undesirable state to it. It's informing me in no uncertain terms that its source program wanted nothing more than for me to be... on." His fingers dance along the tablet. More conversation, a back-and-forth.

He's telling the virus its job is done, and giving it a command in binary. He exists, it is inside him, ergo it only needs to exist. He asks it to go dormant. And he asks politely.

As they converse, though he remains pale, a pinkness creeps into Doug's pallor at his cheeks, and the veins slowly recede, vanishing into the skin. The dull red glow in his eyes fades away to baby blue.

Finally, he closes his eyes, and sets the pad down. "It understood." He says. "It's going dormant. I exist, and it exists as a part of me, and so its directive is complete."

Beast has posed:
Hank fell silent the moment he activated the SQUID and scoots back next to Doug to watch, not saying a word. Yes, he is very apprehensive about this. This si not being done in a controlled environment.. Well, it's FAIRLY controlled as this medlab is in the 'secret' base beneath the school and he designed it and all that but.. really, he should have taken more samples, run more tests. But deep down inside, deeper than the scientist and the beast is his /belief/ and he NEEDS to believe this will work... And he won't let Douglas do this alone.

YOu have really acheived contact?" he asks as Doug begin explaining what he has found out, but then chides himself for even questioning the lad. Besides, his other equipment is takingr eadings and he can check on them later..

When the teenager explains what the 'source code' has done, and that he si asking it to go dormant, well.. he crosses his claws... and then perks up as Dougs colour hets better. He quickly picks up his own tablet and checks the readings, astonished with what he sees.. "Yes.. yes, you are doing it. You /both/ are doing it." he says with excitement..

Then the readings level out, in a good way, and Doug settles back.. And Hank looks relieved. "Oh Douglas.. That is excellent. Godo work, my boy. Good damned work!" he says, not caring if he curses.

Cypher has posed:
Doug Ramsey sets the tablet down, and then reaches up to remove the Squid. "Doctor McCoy..." He says, "I don't know if I'm the real me. How do you know what you are when the person you were died?" He looks down, at his hands, and flexes them. "What am I going to do, what about my parents, what about my LIFE--"

He's weeping, as he suddenly embraces Hank. "But I'm alive! I have no idea what I'm going to do, but I'm alive..."

He closes his eyes, and buries his face in Hank's shoulder. He sniffles, audibly. Then he says, "Ugh. I'm such a mess." But his eyes are shining, and he's beaming. He'll learn to live again. ...Though as a curious note, he was fifteen when he died. And he looks 18 now. Very curious...