Mother and Child Reunion: pt. 1, It's Exposition, Charlie Brown!
It was a dark and stormy night. A crash of thunder jolted him awake; fell asleep in the lab again. He looked around to see if anyone had seen him but he was alone. Or as near as he could tell, anyways -- he wouldn't be at all surprised to find himself showcased in yet another of "Lyle Norg's Funniest Home Holos." It was just as well, he thought - he'd been dreaming about his mother again.
Strange, it'd been some time since he'd thought about her - consciously, at least. Deep down, some part of him never stopped remembering her... nor what she'd done.
Everyone thought he was just full of wishful thinking, harbouring some sort of romantic ideal of motherhood, when he said that he'd missed her every day of his life. They didn't understand; how could they understand, when none of them remembered their own births? They couldn't understand that he did remember his. He remembered the pressure and the pain, the shock of cold and stinging light, the warm green arms that enfolded him, stroked him... then rejected him. As a newborn, he understood nothing. He only felt that he had done something wrong, had disappointed his mother somehow. Ever since, he'd yearned to make it up to her.
He was named Querl and became a ward of the Council of the Revolt. Despite his repeated questioning, the Council refused to tell him anything about his mother, known to him only as Brainiac 4. They wouldn't even tell him her name, though he knew her family name, like his, had to be Dox. His own investigations proved fruitless, despite his skill at hackery. Sometimes he wondered whether that was the real reason he had been kicked off of Colu, not for the radical experimentation that they'd claimed.
He'd never stopped looking. Even his experiments with time travel had all been motivated by the search for his mother. Then he'd finally found her, in the least expected of places: The Dark Circle. She was their leader and she'd orchestrated some of the most heinous crimes in their century. And then she'd tried to kill him.
The worst part was that it all made a twisted kind of sense. Brainiac 4 - he still didn't know her name - had apparently been born incapable of emotion. She had become obsessed with her lack and had engaged herself in experience after experience in the hope of emoting. When the birth of her son stirred nothing within her, she had left Colu entirely and continued her quest offworld. Finally, she found an experience that triggered her to feel: Murder. When the killing of unknowns proved to be a reliable stimulus, she had followed the logic and hunted down her son. It had worked: The protracted torture of her own son had stimulated a wide range of emotions in Brainiac 4. He would never forget the sight of her, weeping and laughing, naming off everything she was feeling, and thanking him for it even as he inched towards agonised death.
He still wondered what had happened to Dr. Regulus. After his mother was institutionalised, her presiding psychophysician had contacted him and requested various brain activity and mentation scans. Despite his depression and his mixed feelings, Querl had obliged -- no ordinary Coluan would do. The only way to get a comprehensive picture of Brainiac 4's mentation was to compare hers to a similar brain. Querl was the only other living member of the Dox lineage, the only other 12th Level intellegence in the universe; it had to be him.
It must have been working because Dr. Regulus kept making requests. The telepath's report had been bizarre, so Dr. Regulus had sent for another, independent telepath, and then a third. The doctor's communications had intrigued Querl enough that curiosity and pity had superceded his hatred: His mother's inability to emote rendered her incapable of empathy with others and drastically impaired her judgement, rendering her insane; her brain did not function normally, not even Dox-normally; and her childhood seemed to be missing. There were memories of education, but nothing more -- no sensations, no faces, no experiences, just... black.
And then, Dr. Regulus had disappeared. The communications had stopped and Querl's requests for an update had gone unanswered. Shortly after, he'd received a letter from the institute, requesting that he cease contact with Brainiac 4, citing that it was disrupting her progress. And, good boy that he was, he'd complied. He'd turned her from his life and gotten on with things and hadn't really thought about her until now.
It wouldn't hurt to check on her, at least? Querl knew that his request for an update would be turned down, but he wasn't called Brainiac 5 for nothing. He beat his own hacking record by almost a minute. Strange, there was no trace of Dr. Regulus's records. Where were all the scans he'd sent in? Where were the telepaths' reports? For that matter, where was Dr. Regulus? Apparently, he'd never even been employed at that facility. Querl frowned, puzzled, then turned to look at Brainiac 4's current status.
'Released.' Querl's heart started to pound and he felt all the blood drain from his face. Released.' He felt faint and nauseated as he stared at the word. 'Released.' He checked the date and paled further, turning a sickly shade of yellow. "Who the sprock released her? Why the sprock did you release her?!" he shouted at the screen.
She'd be looking for him. He was the one being who could stimulate a range of complex emotions within her; she'd go looking for him again. I've been sitting here, merrily conducting my experiments, and all this time she's looking for me!
"Rokk, it's me.."
Rokk Krinn, a.k.a. Cosmic Boy, hiked his blankets up over his chest and glared blearily at the comm, "Do you know what time it is??"
"Yeah, time for me to leave. Rokk, I've got to go, if I stay here, I'll put the whole crew in danger."
"Brainy, what are you talking about?"
"My mother was released from the institution."
"WHAT?!" Rokk sat up, suddenly wide awake, "What the sprock? When?"
"Long enough that the only reason she hasn't found me here has been sheer luck."
"I thought you don't believe in luck?"
"I'm not in a position to disbelieve, at the moment. I don't know how often I'll be able to contact you without giving myself away. I'll have to keep moving."
"Ford Prefect time, huh? Alright, I'll see what I can do about getting you some back-up. Contact me when you get to your first destination; I'll get things moving on this end."
"Thanks, Rokk."
"Good luck, Brainy."