Flowers

by Lucy Hale

A retelling of Flowers for Hobbes, from Bobby's POV.

Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence.

-- Henrik Tikkanen

If I ever meet the guy who invented this square piece of shit, I'm gonna shoot him. No explanation, no warning. Just pull out my gun and let him have it right between the eyes.

Maybe I should just shoot the Keeper for giving it to me. 'Bobby, why don't you stop hovering? Here, play with this. I'm sorry it's not a shinier distraction.'

That woman's starting to get way too sarcastic. Spending too much time with me and Fawkes.

It's pissing me off that I can't figure this out. I don't get how it's supposed to be a game. You turn the thing, the things move, and the colors are all suddenly supposed to match, right? Something like that.

Wonder how much drugs Rubik was taking to come up with this.

"Hell with this." I sit up, glare at the thing in disgust, and toss it over my shoulder. Let the boss gripe about it. I'm kind of in the mood to argue with someone. Even someone I never win against.

Sure enough…"Hobbes."

I look at him blandly.

"Try not to damage Eberts."

Eberts? I turn around. Oh, hell, I didn't even hear him come in. Guess I was too focused on the piece of crap in cube form I was just playing with.

Huh. I must have come close. He's all bug-eyed. Shame I missed.

Fawkes suddenly rises from his slouch beside me and stands up. "Oh, come on, man!"

Eberts gets his freaked eyes off me. "What?"

"This is embarrassing. You know? I…my junior high school had better A/V equipment than we do."

Jesus, he's griping about the film projector Eberts rolled in with him. Granted, it's a little old-fashioned. My poor little middle school in Brooklyn had something like it, and that's saying a lot. Still, is it really worth the energy to bark about it?

Maybe he's so bored he's gotta gripe. There must be some reason he does it so much.

"Oh, I'm glad you noticed our need for a budget boost. Luckily, we've just been handed an assignment that will solve the problem. If we can deliver."

Ahh. The job. "Deliver what?" I ask.

Eberts answers bland as always. "Last month the Noble Sperm Bank was burglarized."

Uh. "What's that? Noble? Sperm?"

"Nobel. As in, the prize."

Condescending old man.

Eberts keeps going. "The Nobel Sperm Bank is a non classified government project that draws from the crème de la crème…"

I smirk. Darien smirks. We're good at that.

Eberts realizes what he said. "…so to speak…" He looks at us blankly. "…of America's scientists and professionals."

"Bunch of Nobel laureates have donated. Hence the name."

Nobel Sperm. Okay, this brings up some questions.

Eberts cuts me off before I can ask, though. "These spermatozoa are cryo-preserved and locked in the city facility."

"Until now. Little guys were stolen. You two are gonna bring em back home."

Darien's expressionless. "Can't wait to put this job on my resume."

I nod, looking at the Official, pretending to be serious. "Counter-terrorism. Sperm retrieval."

The Official doesn't look amused. Darien actually gets down to business. "Why are we getting this case a month late?"

"Political correctness," the boss answers.

Eberts keeps it going. "The case was first assigned to the US Customs Department after the Nobel sperm were determined national assets."

Darien and me turn to him right as the boss keeps it up.

"Pro-life activists than pressured FBI to take the reigns--"

"--because the sperm may now be embryos, which technically means they're people. So it became a kidnapping case." Eberts again.

"Course, that didn't fly with any other group. So--"

"--the FBI handed it to us."

"And here we are."

We're getting neck cramps looking back and forth. I missed the entire point of whatever it was they just said.

Sounds like Darien did too. "Do you guys practice that? When we're not here? Cause…" He looks at me.

I nod. "I think they do."

"The timing is…" He flashes his approval. "It's good."

"Eberts." The Official still isn't amused. The guy needs to take a knife and whittle a chunk or two off the stick up his ass. If you ask me. "Run the background data."

"Now. You'll be dealing with very delicate elements here." He starts fumbling with the projector screen. "They will have temperature requirements--" The screen falls.

I'm getting fairly annoyed by this. Darien looks disgusted, though I notice my six-foot-whatever partner makes no attempts to help.

The Official helps out in his own way. "Think tall, Eberts."

Eberts gets the screen set up. "I've got it. I'm fine."

I wonder…he's a smart guy. Is he ever irritated at having to do crap like this, getting laughed at by schmucks like Darien and me?

He starts the film. Corny fourth-grade video music starts up.

And I'm back in third grade, listening to some bland narrator talking about the journeys of life as they show some microscope shot of something. Sperm?

Never had any urge to see it that close up. Thanks, boss.

Darien gets up. He heads for the door without a word.

I go with him. This is a little too much for even me.

Out in the hall, he shakes himself a little bit. "Wow."

I smirk. One of my easiest expressions. "Yep."

"They think we're that dumb, but they trust us to save the world. It's funny, huh?"

I shrug, and we head down the hall.

A moment later I realize I left that cube of the Keeper's on the floor in the office.

I'll go back for it, later. I'll take it home. Maybe use it for target practice.

***

Sperm banks look a lot like doctor's offices. I didn't realize. I don't know what I was expecting -- more like a real bank, maybe. Though I guess that's dumb.

The doc, whatever his name is, and Darien are walking in front of me, talking about something or other. Maybe the case. I'm a little too distracted to care right now.

I come up close to them. "Doc, let me get this straight. Famous people really come in here to--"

"Have their privacy respect?" Okay, Doc isn't in a good mood. "Yes."

"No. Seriously." There's my partner, backing me up. Good. "I mean, you really think these guys have smart genes?"

"There's a gene for everything."

No, no, no. Off topic. "Doc?" I clear my throat slightly. Let him know Bobby Hobbes is a man to be taken seriously. "Guy comes in, wins the Nobel prize, you say 'congrats, here's a cup, there's a room. Go in there and you know…" I grin, nudge him. Laugh. "You know? You know. Do what you gotta do?"

The doc looks at me for a minute. "The old cryo-vault is in here." He moves past me.

Jeez. Who the hell is this guy? He's a frigging sperm doctor. Can't let him think he's too great. "Oooh, the old cryo-vault."

"The old cryo-vault." Darien smirks right back at me as we follow Mr. Great Sperm Man into the vault, making fun of his stupid ass all the way.

The vault's not what I expected either. All kinds of little cups attached to hoses for some reason. It's kinda cool. "This is wild in here, huh?" I say, 'cause it is. "Man, if these walls could talk."

"I think they'd say 'ouch'."

Ouch? I follow Darien's gaze, and see the big melted hole in the wall. Oh. Ouch.

"That's where the penetration took place."

For a sec, we give that statement the silence it deserves. Darien looks at the doc, I look at the doc. The doc looks at us, as if annoyed by our immaturity.

Well, screw him. "Thanks, doc."

Darien's over examining the hole, and he mumbles something I don't hear.

I go up to him. "Wow. Burned a hole right through the vent shaft, huh?" It's weird. Melted and orange. I never seen nothing like it. "What is that? Acid?"

"Nah," Darien says real quiet.

"No," comes the doc's voice. "Police forensics said it was a--"

"Destabilizing catalyst."

Darien?

"That's right. How did you know that?"

I look at him. "How'd you know that?"

Darien looks right back at me. "I'm smart."

I hope I look unimpressed enough.

"Yeah, no, it's pretty cool. It softens the metal with a chemical reaction." Darien's back to playing with the wall hole.

"Hmm."

"No heat build-up at all. You just push your way right through."

"No heat build-up. Push right through."

Darien looks at me again. I hope he can see the sarcasm, 'cause I'm sure laying it on thick. "That's right."

"Ingenious," I say, 'cause it kinda is.

"Thank you," my smart-ass partner answers modestly.

"Where's this coming from?"

"What do you mean?"

Now he's playing dumb. "How do you know this?" I clarify, 'cause that's what I mean.

"Oh. I know the dude who makes it."

Somehow I'm not surprised at all. "You know the dude."

"That's right."

"Friend of yours?"

"Well… Not exactly."

****

Turns out Darien doesn't like this guy we're going to see, Manny Merrick, at all. They used to be pals, or something, but Darien doesn't seem to have much faith in his old thief friends.

Good. The kid ain't as dumb as I thought.

This guy is some genius type burglar, according to Darien. I argued when he said that, saying if he was so smart, how come he knocks off houses for a living.

But we pull up to this big house with a fancy security system, and I see the guy must be smarter than I thought.

I wait outside for Darien to fool the security system, and hang out in the van until I get his phone call. A moment later I'm out of the car and following him. Darien's kinda reckless. He'd appear in front of this guy and take him on before I can get up there to back him up.

Sure enough, I come up just in time to catch this guy Manny as he tries to run.

I stick my gun in his face, which, as usual, is successful in making him stop. His hands go up and he stares at the gun. I wave it, motioning him back. "Be nice."

Darien's further in the room. "Uh, look, Manny. Evidently the stuff you stole is worth a helluva lot more to the government than whatever you're gonna get for it on the black market."

I get in the creep's face. "Where's the white stuff?" He flashes the confused innocence look that scum like him is so good at. "The sperm," I restate.

Now comes the patented you-must-be-nuts laugh. I heard that one a hundred times. And sure enough, he follows it with the "I don't know what you're talking about" riff. Classic.

Darien's at his table holding up some bottle that looks like bug spray. "Hmm. Maybe this'll jog your memory."

Manny's looking upset. "Okay, okay. Alright, stop it."

Darien sprays something white on the table.

"Stop it!"

The table where the white stuff is melts. Right there, in front of my eyes, it turns orange and goopy and falls to the floor.

I try not to look too impressed.

Manny just looks annoyed. "I can't believe you, Darien. We're friends. We were lifting buddies, remember?"

"That's funny," Darien replies, though he's not laughing. "The only thing I seem to remember you lifting were my fingerprints off some free weights. And then planting them at the scene of a job you pulled. That provided me with some quality time to really think about our friendship." He gets right up on Manny, and though I haven't seen Darien get violent all that often, I can read the signs in his stance. "It was about fifteen months, actually."

Fifteen months in jail? For this scum? Hell, I'd slug him, too. Instead I just wait for Darien to drive a fist in the guy's stomach, then I grab him by the hair and jerk him up to face Darien again.

"Smarts, huh?" I'm not impressed by this creep.

Manny doesn't talk. Darien shakes himself out a little. "Here we go. One more time." He hauls back like he's gonna hit him again.

Manny folds. "Okay! Guy named Gallison…"

I let him go. Darien drops his hand and just looks at the guy.

Manny keeps going nervously. "…commissioned the job. Dr. Gallison. He's a university professor. I did the job for scale with the understanding I'd share in the profits."

"Nice," Darien answers. I guess he'd know.

"What profits?" I ask, 'cause I don't know.

Manny gets kinda quiet. "He's gonna turn people into geniuses."

I frown, glance over at Darien. He looks thoughtful, returning my gaze for a minute.

Manny breaks the silence nervously. "So what now, Fawkes?"

Darien turns back to him. He tries hiding it, but I can tell he hates this guy's guts. "Hobbes, what do you think?"

I shrug. Darien's my partner, I'll tell him what he wants to hear. "I figure breakin' in to the bank, stealing a bunch of rich guys' stuff….I figure we could get him maybe fifteen months for it."

"Fifteen months." Darien grins at me, then at Manny. "That sounds fair."

Manny groans and shuts his eyes, slumping.

Guess the wonderboy never thought he'd do time. What is it about smart people makes them think they're untouchable by us common folks?

***

The campus of the U is interesting to me. All the kids walking around, talking and laughing, carrying books. It's strange. I never knew this kinda thing. Even if I had, I wouldn't be one of these kids. I wouldn't be out there playing frisbee and enjoying the sunshine. I don't know what I'd have been doing.

"You ever go to college, Fawkes?"

Darien's looking at some map of the campus, trying to steer us to this Gallison guy. "Uh. Yeah, a coupla years. Why?"

"Yeah? Kicked out?"

"Dropped out," Darien answers. "'After your brother gets his third PhD, above average has a tendency to lose its luster."

I nod, 'cause it makes sense. "You hit the streets after that? Stealing hubcabs and whatnot?"

He smiles a little. "Yep. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. At least, that was kind of the idea. How 'bout you?" He looks around, looks at the map, and points us the right way. "Where'd you go to school?"

"School of life, my friend. Theater of war."

"You mean you didn't even graduate high school?" Darien's surprised.

"Hey!" I glance over. "I was accepted at West Point, there, Gilligan."

"West Point, huh?"

Hey, if the guy's interested. "That's right. I turned 'em down. Told em I wanted to see some action first."

He grins at me. "That's right. Amen, brother. Be all that you can be."

"Now you're talkin'."

Darien pauses and gets our bearings again. Normally I'd grab the map from him and lead us myself. But I'm kinda caught up in the world around us.

"Ah, here we go." Darien starts us around a corner.

"You know, according to menso I'm a genius," I can't help saying, looking around at these brat kids and their happy little faces.

"It's Mensa."

"Yeah. Whatever."

Darien, believe it or not, looks dubious. "Are you telling me you belong to Mensa?"

"Well, not officially."

"Right. But in your heart, where it really counts."

"Hey, man, I took that online test. Kicked its friggin butt."

"Really? And you didn't join because…"

He's got me there. "Because…because…"

You know the funny thing here is I know what I want to say. I know what went on with me and that test. But I have to fish for the words. I hate that.

Darien helps me out in his own sarcastic little way. "It was confusing? Hard?"

"Whatever."

"You were busy," he offers.

"Hey, man. You know what?" I stop, and he turns to me. "Screw menso."

"It's Mensa," he takes no small pleasure in reminding me.

"Whatever. Elitists." Yeah, that's right. I know some big words, jerk. "Intelligence is experience. It's about effort. Thomas Edison said 'Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.'"

There. Take that, quote boy.

"Oh, and you've got the BO to prove it," Darien comes back intelligently.

It's funny, 'cause no matter how he looks at it, I figure I won this argument. So I can be magnanimous. He's a friend. "Hey. Jealousy is a very ugly emotion, my average friend."

He starts for the building, and glances back at me. "Above average, thank you very much."

Yeah, Fawkes. Believe what you want. Course, being a last-word freak, I gotta get back at him. "And I smell sweet as a honeysuckle rose, there, Penelope."

***

So I'm trying to fill in my mental midget partner about Oedipal complexes in certain television characters, and I know I sound like a clueless moron. I sound like one of those guys that talk for hours and hours about something they never seen before, but I make Darien laugh. Darien always laughs at other people easier than he laughs at anything else, so I let him laugh at me now and then. He's a pal. Why not?

Anyways, we get to Gallison's room and open the door, and there he is with a needle in some slacker kid's arm.

Humor leaves us.

"Excuse me, you've got the wrong room." The doc's not worried at all. Must be another of these smart guys who thinks he can't be approached by inferior types like us.

The attitude doesn't bother Darien, who pulls his innocent good guy routine. "Oh, no no. It's cool, we're good. You're the bad guy, right?"

The doc looks at us sharply.

I flash my badge. "We're Federal Agents."

Gallison pulls that needle out of the kid and jumps up, grabbing a case and heading for the window.

"Well I guess that's a big yes," Darien states flatly.

Stupid. For a smart guy, that was really stupid. I'm after him in a flash, and Darien keeps his eye on the kid in the chair as he tried to get up.

The doc drops the case out the open window and tries to take a swing at me.

We're fighting a minute later. I'm trying to take him on, avoiding that syringe still in his hand. I hate needles. Really wretchedly hate them.

I grab his arm and slam it against the wall to keep the needle out of my way, then quickly and efficiently tie him up and take him into custody, where he confesses his evil plan, the sperm are sent to their cozy cryo-cell, and we go home happy.

At least, that's the plan.

In reality, my hand's a little too high up on his wrist, and he's holding that thing too tightly. It breaks, and pain slices down my arm from my palm.

I just stand there for a minute, keeping him pinned to the wall.

Next thing I know Darien's right there beside me. "Hey. Hey, you need a hand here, man? I mean, this is kinda taking a while."

"Fine." I forget my hand momentarily and sock the doc in the stomach. Doc's got a glass body, like most science types, and I can turn him around and force his arm behind his back easily.

Darien follows as I push the guy against the wall face-first. "Now, see, that's a nice…that's…" He pauses. "That's bad."

I follow his eyes to my hand. Crap. Lotta blood. I open my fist gingerly and see the dark blood of the puncture wounds.

"Aw, crap," Darien says, looking concerned. "That looks bad."

I swallow and try to hide my sudden worry. This is bad, and I'm not exactly sure why. "It's just a flesh wound," I answer Darien. I don't sound very convincing, and I can tell by Darien's expression that he's not any less worried.

He tries to meet my eyes, but I pull the doc away from the wall and towards the door, ignoring him.

****

I get the Keeper to bandage my hand. She does it almost reluctantly, asking questions about Darien the whole time.

I let her know that the guy didn't have to go invisible, he's fine, et cetera, but she doesn't let up. Turns out Darien hasn't checked in with her yet.

He must be with the Official questioning the doc.

So when I'm done with her, I go down to the rubber room and stop in to see what's going on.

I'm feeling really apprehensive, and I don't know why.

Darien's watching the Official interrogate the doc. He doesn't even glance back at me.

"You don't need to threaten me," the doc's saying.

"Damn right I don't," the boss answers.

Darien speaks without looking back at me. "Hey Hobbesy. Check out the Official. He's really grilling him."

I swallow. "Is he resisting?"

"Nah. Not really."

"It's not complicated. If our species is to stop regressing, natural selection must be replaced with artificial selec--"

The boss cuts the doctor off. "I don't care about your philosophy. I just want to know if you used up everything you stole."

The doc leans back, looking all smug despite the fact that we've got him. "I used four samples to create the retrovirus. The rest is locked in a freezer in my lab."

He goes on to answer the Official's questions, rambling about genes and DNA in sperm and chromosomes and stuff like that. He must be talking down to the boss, 'cause even I get what he's saying.

Turns out the doc's game is extracting the intelligence part out of the sperm. "Attach it to a viral vector and inject it into the subject's bloodstream. The retrovirus spreads the gene, grafting it to the chromosomes on existing brain cells."

I look down at the bandages on my hand. It hurts, and I can feel that disgusting throb of blood. Still, it isn't bad. It's not.

So why do I feel so bad about it? I have this bad feeling that something's really wrong.

I look up at the doc, who's rambling about genius. My hand clenches into a fist.

Darien turns to me suddenly, laughing strangely. I realize he was saying something while I was lost in thought about the doc.

His eyebrows go up when he sees I'm not even smiling, and he gestures back at the doc with a familiar can-you-believe-this-guy expression.

I know what he's waiting for, but the best I can manage is a little smile. I don't know what he said, and I'm not really in the mood to laugh right now.

****

We go back to see the Keeper once the Official's done grilling Gallison. She gives Darien her standard rant, pissed that he didn't stop by here first thing.

Darien's all curious about the process the doc was talking about. "So then he injects it into these students, and they're supposed to become geniuses. You think it could work?"

The Keeper looks thoughtful.

I'm back against the wall behind them. I don't really have much to do with them when they're locked in science speak. I don't have much to do with them anyway. Not down here in the lab. All I do down here is wait.

"It could work. In fact, it probably does."

I look down at the floor, silent. I can't add nothing to talks like this, but I'm more interested in listening all of the sudden.

Darien's voice sounds out quietly. "So…why…I mean, if it's that easy, why aren't scientists doing it to everyone?"

"It's extremely dangerous," she answers simply. "Gene splicing is supposed to occur in a fertilized egg, not an adult. Actually, we should track down those people he infected, right away."

Infected.

It hits me real quick, as I rub the bandages on my hand.

I may have been infected. That's what I've been close to realizing since that fight. That syringe was filled, and I got cut.

I start towards them, suddenly needing to be a part of this conversation.

"Hey, you know, that kid he was with, we had to let him go."

"No."

"Well. He hadn't done anything wrong."

I look down at my hand again. I swallow, hard.

The Keeper sighs. "That's not good."

"Claire." They both hear me. "I think I got a little infected."

That grabs their attention. She looks at Darien for a moment, concerned, then moves around the bed to me. I hold my hand up, and she looks at the bandages she recently put on my hand.

Darien sits up and looks too, as if seeing the bandages tells them anything.

The Keeper doesn't quiz me. Surprisingly, she takes my word for it. "I need a blood sample."

She heads for her needles.

"Wait a minute." Darien looks after her, than turns to me. "I thought it was just a flesh wound."

I look at him, surprised he doesn't get it. "From a glass shard from the test tube with the retrovirus in it. I got a little exposed here."

She comes back with her needle. "Well. Better you than Darien."

Something in me isn't very surprised to hear that, but the rest of me speaks at the same time as Darien. "What?"

She nods. "Yep. I've examined Gallison's brilliant little virus. If you'd been infected instead of Hobbes, you'd be dead already." She turns to me. "Get in the chair."

I obey, and some part of me that's getting a little more alarmed with every passing second has to act like there's nothing wrong. So I flash a leer at her as I'm settling down. "Ooh. I love it when you take charge."

She ignores me, as she should.

"Um. Why would I die if I was infected and he wouldn't?"

She smiles. "Oh, come on. Why else? Quicksilver gland."

Darien frowns. "Oh, enough with that little bastard." Irritated, he moves away from the bed.

She starts fixing the tube around my arm. "Yep. The Quicksilver gland uses more nerve cells."

Huh. That makes sense to me. It's not that complicated, but I speak up this time like I usually don't do. "Right. New gene would reappropriate the nerve cells for other functions. Communication between the central nervous system and other parts of the body would shut down." I look to her for a nod of agreement.

She stares down at me, not replying.

Maybe I was wrong? I think back through what I said. Nope, it makes sense. I maybe shouldn't have said anything?

Darien moves back to my side. When I look over at him, he's staring as well.

He looks concerned. Maybe he didn't realize the danger he was in. I'm quick to reassure him. "Don't worry, kid. I'll watch your back, any day. We're partners, right? It's my job." I glance back at the Keeper.

She's wide-eyed. "I think the gene might already by reproducing cells."

After an hour? "Unlikely," I answer.

"No, Hobbes, you are sounding smarter."

I turn to Darien, surprised. This was easy stuff. This wasn't Ph.D. science here. "Oh, I'm smart. You don't think I'm…I'm smart."

"No," the Keeper answers, "he means smart like me."

I grin at that. "Oooh. Are we feeling a little threatened there, Keepy?" God. Speak up one time and they all panic.

She smiles at that. "Well, you'd have to act your age first." About that she doesn't look worried in the least. She sticks me with the needle and starts sucking my blood.

I grin up at her, responding to the words and the needle with a rather lascivious little "Ow."

The Official comes in suddenly and moves straight to the bed. "I want you two to accompany Dr. Gallison back to his lab." Not a wasted breath for greeting or comments about our job today. Figures. "Make sure he shows you where the sperm is, along with all the project files. "

Darien's all over that, it seems. "You got it. Let's hit it, brainiac."

She finishes up with my arm and pulls the tubing off. I stand up and follow Darien.

As I pass the Official, I smirk suddenly. "When I get back I'll balance your budget for you."

I'm not sure why I say that. Maybe their behavior is convincing me that I'm actually getting smarter every second. But I love the puzzled look on his face as I follow Darien out the door.

***

Darien wants to stop by his apartment. He leaves me in the van with the doc for only a couple of minutes, but it's long enough for me to ask a few questions.

Surprisingly enough, even to myself, the questions I ask aren't what I'd have thought I would.

"Hey, Doc, tell me one thing."

The guy gives me a disdainful look. Gives me one of those superior stares I hate to get from smart people. But he does look, and he answers me. "What, Agent Hobbes?"

I'm kinda surprised he knows my name. Of course, he also knows his precious retrovirus is doing its thing in my body, so he's got a vested interest. "Why'd you start this work?"

His brow furrows. "What do you mean?"

Huh. I confused the smart guy. "Why screw with people like this?"

"Agent Hobbes, surely even you can appreciate the benefits--"

For some reason, I know what he's going to say before he says it. "Appreciate the benefits of genetic improvements in intelligence without the dangers of injecting embryos. Yeah, yeah. I get why you'd want to experiment with full-grown people instead of unborn children. I get that you're too impatient and fame-hungry to wait until a child has grown enough to sufficiently gauge its intelligence. And I get why you think everyone in the world should be super smart."

He smiles slightly. Cocky, like he and his virus are solely responsible for my being able to come to conclusions.

That irritates the hell out of me. Retrovirus or no retrovirus, Bobby Hobbes isn't a moron. I know which way's up, and I could talk in complete sentences before he sliced artificial intelligence into my palm.

"So what is it you don't get?"

"I don't get why you did it. A lot of people in the world think other people are too dumb for their own good, but they don't go around trying to genetically alter them."

Gallison smiles at me. "Agent Hobbes…a lot of people in the world aren't in my position. You're right -- most people do have some amount of contempt for their fellow man. Either people aren't intelligent enough, or they don't have enough heart. Or maybe they're too happy, or too sad. But those people can't do anything about it. I can. I have. Why sit around wishing to be smarter, wishing you could learn easier, when there is the capability in science in these times to make it happen?"

I study him for a minute, disturbed. "So what's next? If we hadn't busted you, and this thing wasn't over--"

"It's far from over, Agent Hobbes. If I in my position as university professor have gotten this far, imagine how far scientists working for our government could go, if they're not there already."

That bugs me too, mostly because I know how accurate it is. This doctor has given Uncle Sam ideas he didn't need to have, and if we didn't already have people working on Intelligence in a Needle, we do now. "So…what? What's next? Do you work on the other things? Do you shoot people up with some virus that makes them more caring, or more happy? Less happy? How far do you think you can go in trying to standardize conscious behavior and capabilities?"

"I think we could go very far indeed." Gallison's righteous in his superiority. "And what's more, I think that despite your apparent misgivings, society as a whole would be very open to trying out those viruses."

"I think you're wrong, doc."

"Please. It's the perfect solution. People in this country, in probably the entire world, are both lazy and ambitious at the same time. They want the money, the intelligence, the power, but they don't want to work for it. I could offer it to them in one injection."

Jesus, I'm sorry I started this conversation. There's no winning arguments with guys like Gallison. He's too damned smart. He probably can't even conceive that he may be wrong about anything.

"See, doc, you know a lot of stuff. You know probably most everything a person could learn from a lot of school and fancy reading. But there's a big problem with you and people like you making decisions about other people."

"And what would that be?" he asks, condescending to listen to my opinion.

"Your problem is, you can't learn people from a textbook. You know patterns of behavior, and history, and cause and effect, but you don't know people. People are funny, doc. You get three kids taking the same test in school tomorrow. Two of those kids would pick up a cheat sheet in a minute if they could. They'd memorize the answers and not worry about it again. But that third one would pick up the textbook and study. Because a few people actually consider it important to learn things. Some folks consider knowledge a prize they earn."

I'm getting hot under the collar now. Warming into my subject. "And you know what else? There are people in the world who don't consider knowledge to be some great thing. No one would be dumb if given the choice, but a lot of people are happy the way they are. What do you know about people like that? What would you know about the people I grew up with, working twelve hours a day, coming home to some slum in Brooklyn. Going to bars, bullshitting with their friends, talking about politics and money and things they will never, ever be able to effect? You don't know shit about them. Those people would laugh in your face if you offered them a needle that would give them more brainpower."

"Agent Hobbes, despite what you think, research shows that--"

"Research can kiss my ass, doc. I know those people. I am one of those people. My father would have taken one look at you and walked away, wouldn't have given you a second thought. You want to know why? 'Cause most people know they don't have it that good. Most people are middle class working stiffs, and they struggle to make ends meet and pretend that they're happy. They have their friends and go out to fancy restaurants once a month or so, and they make it work for them. But they know, deep down, that they're the laughing stock of you smart guy scientists, of the doctors and lawyers and rich old farts of the world. They know they'll never change the world, they'll never have an impact. When they die, they'll be buried, mourned by a tiny group of people who also won't ever matter, and then in a month they will be forgotten. You give them the smarts to realize all that, and see the futility? You give them the brains to see how little point there is to the grunt work they pull every day? Suddenly their self-made contentment is gone in a puff of science. They got nothing to go on for anymore."

"Agent Hobbes. Are you implying that intelligence will make normal people suicidal?"

I shake my head, irritated. This guy has no respect for people, and he shows it with every assumption he jumps to. "No. I'm saying it will make them miserable. Leave things alone, doc. They are the way they are for a reason, and it ain't for guys like you to change."

Gallison opens his mouth like he's gonna argue, but he shuts it again and stares at me for a minute.

I think maybe my point got across a little.

"Tell me. Where in this scenario does that leave you?"

Nope. He didn't get the point. He's just studying me like a lab rat again.

I can see suddenly why Darien is so squeamish and oversensitive about this. Being treated like an experiment is demeaning.

"Tell you the truth, doc, I got no idea. Right now I don't feel any different. It's…it's easier for me to talk, a little. A day ago we'd have sat here in silence, or I'd have slapped you around a little. Whatever. But I know what you're hoping for in this experiment, and I know it's gonna change for me. Things are gonna be different, aren't they?"

"Undoubtedly."

I nod. It's scary to think that, but then, it isn't like the smarts running through me now are killing off other things. I won't be a different person.

I'll still be me. A better me. A more talkative me, if today is any example. Maybe it won't be that bad. If this is indicative of my future -- not having to scrounge for words, not having to stumble over my own lips -- than I could just maybe get used to it.

Before I can answer him out loud, the front door slides open and Darien slips into the driver's seat. He tosses a large book on my lap and grins.

I look down. Read the title. Laugh. "Are you serious?"

"Come on. What's a little bit of brain teasing between friends? I want to know if I should be worried my partner's getting smarter than me."

Behind us, Gallison laughs slightly.

That sound makes me frown. Gallison knows, and I suspect, that it's inevitable I'll become smarter than Darien. A lot smarter.

Darien doesn't suspect much, though, and I'll leave him to his happy brain teasing.

****

"Alright, check it."

"Come on." I roll my eyes and keep walking. I figured he'd wait until we were done with Gallison to start this, but here he is, book in hand.

"'Kate traveled 135 miles in four fewer hours than it took Christine to travel 945 miles.'" Darien glances at me.

"Right."

"'If Kate's speed was three times that of Christine, what was the speed of Christine?'"

What is this? Must be a brain teaser book he picked up in elementary school, 'cause I don't even have to think about the answer. "Distance of Kate over twelve minus Christine's distance over four."

Darien laughs. "Man, this is cool."

I resent that, a little. The answer came to me swiftly. It's so simple you can visualize the formula. But he's acting like I'm a frigging chimp who suddenly learned how to talk. "Come on. It's kids' stuff."

"Alright. 'A man has to get a fox, a chicken, and a sack of corn across a river. He has a rowboat. He can only carry him and one other thing. If the fox and the chicken are left together, the fox will eat the chicken. If the chicken and the corn are left together, the chicken will eat the corn. How's the man to do it?'"

"Come on." Another back-of-the-cereal-box riddle. "Man brings the chicken over, leaves the chicken. Comes back, gets the fox. Leaves the fox, takes the chicken. Leaves the chicken, takes the corn. Brings the fox to the corn, comes back, gets the chicken, brings it home. Bing bang boom. Happy?"

"Yes!"

I can't help a grin. His excitement's a little contagious. "I'm the king."

"No no. You are the king of the smarty-pants, my friend."

For a minute we're the same as ever, grinning partners. We slap hands, and it's us and them.

Funny, I hadn't noticed that before. At some point, despite Darien's inclination towards martyrdom, he's allowed me to slip in to his misery circle. He's come to accept me as an ally in his fight against the world.

I must have been responding to it without realizing. I can see why -- I've considered myself a loner for a long time now. I guess I've just been looking for someone who can understand.

I didn't notice that until now. Until this experiment and retrovirus has suddenly made me different, and made Darien behave differently towards me.

"Hobbes." Gallison speaks up. "Do you feel any increased grasp of spatial relations?"

"Shut up," Darien and I say together.

Partners.

"Just shut up, man," I add for good measure.

We turn and head for the building his lab is in.

Darien speaks up suddenly. "Alright, how bout this one? Uh, 'there's only one other word that you can make out of the word insatiable. What is it?'"

It bugs me. It throws me off, his treating me like the test subject. It messes with the whole partnership vibe.

I express my opinion with a lack of subtlety. "Banalities, which is what these questions are."

"Doesn't matter how smart you are if you can't think for yourself."

I turn to Gallison, surprised he even wants to voice an opinion to two apes like us. "I beg your pardon?"

"You do as you're told," he goes on. "Both of you. You should see the bigger picture, realize that you're slamming the door on discovery."

I'm all set to answer that, but Darien does it for me. "Alright, why don't you do me a favor and cut the crap, doc? Okay? You're about do-re-mi, not science."

That's right. "That's right," I repeat out loud. "You were set to sell intelligence on the black market, am I right?"

"Probably to dumb, rich people."

"That's it." I glare at the doc, reminded of our conversation in the van.

He starts to argue. "Progress--"

And I cut him off. "Hey, didn't I tell you to shut up?"

He gives me a look, a little shake of his head. Like he's sad I don't know any better yet.

Darien's shut the puzzle book, and now Gallison's sulking. So we're quiet as we finish the trip to his lab.

I lead the way in, and stop right in the doorway. There's a woman, a student, in the room. She's on her toes, reaching to finish some equation on the board. Her hair's a mess and her clothes aren't exactly suited for public decency. I notice all that in a split second, already sure something's wrong here.

"Melanie?" Gallison sounds shocked.

She turns, sees us. Takes a step back, and I hear a crunch. I look down, and see that she's barefoot, crunching her feet on broken glass. Beakers? Doesn't matter. There's blood on the floor, and she leaves more as footprints when she moves.

She doesn't seem to notice the pain. "Hello, doctor."

"Huh," Darien says quietly. "I'm thinking maybe she's one of the test subjects."

I look around at the same time he does. I see the equation she was working on, and the others cluttering the boards and the walls. The writing is untidy, sloppy and hurried. Whatever she's trying to figure out, she seems almost desperate to find the answer.

Or maybe there's no answer to be found. Maybe she's just got too many numbers inside her head, and she has to get some out.

That thought, coupled with the indubitable fact that she is a test subject, leads me to start getting very nervous.

"What are you doing here?" Gallison asks her.

"I came here to say goodbye. To thank you." There are tears streaking her face, but her voice is calm. "To tell you I'm grateful."

"Grateful?" Gallison sounds confused.

I glance at him. His eyes are wide, shocked. This is a part of his experiment he didn't foresee. He sees the state she's in, and he seems to realize for the first time that there isn't a reaction here anyone should be grateful for.

"For helping me. Helping me to see so much." She's in a weird state, almost happy, unbearably sad. Crazed, but quiet and calm.

I can't help but ask. "What do you see, Melanie?"

She smiles and walks a few steps without pattern or destination. "More than they'll allow us to."

"Hey, look, Melanie. We're here to help you." Darien speaks up, ever sensitive.

She laughs, as I want to at that statement. "You can't even begin to comprehend what's wrong with me." And I know she's right.

I can feel it. In me. Things are changing. Getting clearer, suddenly. Like there was some kind of fog I never knew was there, and it's lifting a molecule at a time.

She looks at Gallison, her laughter fading. "Or is it what's right?"

I can see the bitterness, the same I feel towards this experiment. Could she feel the same thing? Can absolute knowledge have shown her that knowledge itself isn't as important as she thought?

I slide forwards a couple of steps slowly. She's my possible future, and I have to know we're feeling the same thing. "Melanie. I was engrafted with the gene." I hesitate. "Now I can't…really…articulate it, but I think I know what you're trying to say here."

I can feel Darien's eyes on my back. He's worried about me suddenly. He probably just realizes that the cute new Bobby might have some bad side effects.

My eyes stay on Melanie, though. She looks at me, accepting my words but not accepting that I can know what she feels. "You haven't begun to see."

"See?" I repeat.

"You will." She says it with absolute certainty, and it's not a blessing she's giving me. She speaks the words like a curse, and I am scared shitless suddenly that she's right. Whatever it is she sees, I don't want anything to do with it.

She moves to the counter she's closest to and lifts a beaker. It's got some clear liquid in it, and I somehow don't think it's water. "And I'm sorry," she says to me. Her eyes go to Gallison as she moves away from the table, beaker lifted in her hand. "Aren't we, Paul?"

He looks at her, and I'll be damned if he isn't genuinely sincere. "I'm sorry."

She doesn't look happy at the admission. "So was Nobel. That's why he created the peace prize, because he was sorry. Sorry for all the lives lost due to his supreme accomplishments."

Those words -- supreme accomplishments -- strike me right in the intuition. Nobel's supreme accomplishment is something every clown feddie agent like me knows about and has worked with. He developed a safe way to use nitroglycerine in dynamite.

My eyes go to the counter she got the beaker from. There are three bottles prominent. Glycerol. Nitric acid. Sulfuric acid.

Crude. Dangerous to mix, and unstable as hell. But it's got irony to it -- it's exactly the ingredients Nobel first used.

My eyes go to her as she holds the beaker higher. Her voice, when she speaks, is bitter and final. "Knowledge is power."

The facts come together, and I know she's about to kill us. "That's nitroglycerine," I say in warning, diving instantly to my partner, knocking him the hell out of the room.

Gallison jumps for her, but she lets the beaker fall.

The explosion is big, and it throws Darien and I in the air and into the hall.

We're stunned. I get the wind knocked out of me, and the inevitable panic is stifled by the knowledge that I'm not hurt, it's shock, and it's happened before.

I raise myself up on my arms, peering at the burned husk of the lab. Melanie is dead, as she no doubt wanted to be. Gallison is dead. Killed by his own harmless experiment.

There's irony there a foot thick, but I don't choose to think about it.

I glance over to make sure Darien's okay. He gets himself up more slowly than I do, his eyes wide and shocked.

Innocent. Darien's face shows that he doesn't get it. He doesn't know what Melanie could have seen to make her choose death.

I suspect. I suspect, and guess, and fear.

****

The hours go by slowly tonight.

Every single minute, something seems to me to be different. Everything I look around at has new levels of meaning, new symbolism and placement.

Every moment my mind is racing, recalling endless things I've learned, forming them in new ways in my mind that make sense to me now like they never did before.

Things are changing. Constantly, so fast I can hardly keep up. There isn't enough to keep my mind occupied in my apartment, and so my thoughts wander to myself, to the abstract. My own life, my outlook, my patterns of behavior. Where I'm going. How far away I am from where I meant to be.

I am nothing. It is a startling realization, and at the same time it seems so obvious I'm amazed I was ever content.

I am a piece to a puzzle. A small, unimportant detail that people use at their will to accomplish their goals. There are hundreds more like me in this field. Men smarter, younger, already moving up to take my place.

I am a foot soldier in a war that no citizen realizes is being fought. The side I fight for is the underdog. This Agency I've saddled myself with is insignificant in its own field, to its own country. Were it not for Darien Fawkes we would be nothing.

With Darien Fawkes, we are little better than nothing. We are still underdogs. Fawkes and the experiment in his head are wasted on our Agency. They use him to hunt down snipers and alter votes in foreign countries. Nothing. Nothing that couldn't be done by other people.

At the same time I'm thinking this, my eyes are wandering over my apartment. I can maintain my line of thinking, dismantling the Agency and the stupidity I was so blind to a day ago, and another part of me sees so clearly how my life outside is a joke as well.

I keep locks on the doors. What for? I'm sure I have enemies out there, which is logical given my field, but why should I hide them away? Why stop them from coming?

I have to face them. If someone wanted to kill me, they could do it easily on the street during an assignment. One good shot from a sturdy rifle from a rooftop somewhere.

Death is like life -- inevitable and pointless to worry about. It may happen anytime. I drive myself to distraction day in and day out, I use up brain power and emotional energy worrying, when I could be donating that energy to so many other things.

I turn on my TV, trying to slow my thoughts down.

It's strange. There are cycles, and I can predict them now. Cycles in my thinking. I can look around, see so much, realize so much I never saw before. Understand so many things at once that it all clouds up my head, and I'm sure I'm going to get confused, jumbled, maybe even saturated to the point where I can't understand anything more.

But just when I'm almost ready to scream for it to stop, everything clears up. Everything makes sense.

And then it starts over again, as things suddenly change shape around me.

The television isn't enough.

I pick up one of my seldom-read books and flip through. Mindless waste of paper.

I grab the biggest book I can find. A dictionary. Coffee table book, Hobbes, isn't it? Something to be placed for decoration, to give false impressions about myself, but not to be read.

Knowledge is power. Melanie's last words, and I see now she was right. I see what a waste it is to not learn everything you can.

Why walk around in a daze, wondering how things work? Not questioning your life or the things you are taught? Why not study, and learn, and trust your own opinions over other people?

It makes no sense to me, the way we live. The way I live. How could I be happy with my job, my life? How could I be content to perform my mindless duties, risk myself, my body and mind, the only things I have that really matter, to the vapid and futile jobs at the Agency?

The dictionary is a snap. The words flow past my eyes straight into my brain, where they file themselves and wait to be called upon and used whenever I require them.

All those times I tripped over my tongue, trying to find the words. It could have been so easy to stop it.

I shut the heavy cover of the dictionary, and lust for something new to fill my head. Something I never took the time to learn before. I have to know it all. I hunger for it, for everything I've denied myself all these years.

Gallison…he might have had the right idea. He was a smug bastard, to be sure, with no real grasp of the human psyche, but he has given me this.

Melanie wasn't strong enough to handle what she saw.

I am.

I hunger for more, for a glance at the world outside that I now control because I understand.

I go to the door, and leave my apartment. It's too confined, and I have too much time to spend tonight, thanks to my benevolent boss granting us hours off.

It's hard to explain the sensations of being outside, looking around at everything. If the world of my small apartment seemed to transform, I've never even seen this world I'm in now.

The people -- yesterday they were bodies to suspect, to protect, to defend. Today, they are just bodies. They are mindless bags of skin rushing off in a useless pursuit of happiness. They are happy in their ignorance, and they can't even begin to recognize the world around them.

I go to the library. What better place?

I find a row of encyclopedias. Blue and white, thin and basic, but it satisfies me for now. I flip through, page after page, scanning words, taking in pictures in a fraction of an instant and filing it all away in a brain that seems suddenly limitless in capacity.

A through Z, cover to cover, it takes me less than an hour. And I know things I didn't know before, but it isn't enough. Not nearly enough.

I wander through sections. History, reading a quick novel on the siege of Vicksburg, then another, a study of violence and politics, Andrew Jackson and Richard Lawrence, McKinley and Leon Czolgosz.

I browse art, memorizing dissertations in books about Michelangelo, da Vinci, Raphael. Names I had only known before from a children's story about ninja mutants. They become artists with schemes and patterns, with dissectable and almost predictable brush strokes.

Religion. I study the Koran, the Talmud, the Bible. The writings of the Elders of the Mormon Church, the Watchtower tracts, the books of bloody wars fought in the name of this many-named god who is the same thing to all religions.

Psychology. Ah, now this is interesting. I can now understand those diagnoses I've been labeled with for all these years. I flip through texts. Popular self-help books. Thick and plain books with large paragraphs and no pictures; just the kinds of books I would never have read before. In another hour the whole of the human psyche as interpreted by these learned men is open and understandable in front of me.

The library is closing. They flicker the lights, dim and then bright again, as if this was a bar and the occupants would be frightened away by the sudden enlightening of their surroundings.

I have to leave. Where else is there to go?

I drive to one of those marts that sell everything and stay open all night.

I browse through the books, but what they have in supply is the same innocuous, pointless trash the Bobby Hobbes of two days ago would have picked up. Westerns and foolish romances. Tawdry fiction that couldn't begin to come close to inspiring the thoughts and dreams of the greater works of literature.

I pass by the toy section, and my eyes catch on a familiar multi-colored cube hanging from a display.

I smile to myself slightly, and wander over. I grab the Rubik's cube. A mere look over it tells me this thing is child's play, and yet I can remember myself struggling with one not twenty-four hours ago.

Something about that irritates me, and I sweep the five cubes hanging on the display into my cart. I grab a couple of triangular shaped, similarly structured games and take those, too.

I am not the Bobby Hobbes that couldn't figure these things out. I'm not the man who couldn't speak without incurring the wrath or pity or disgust of other people. I am not the annoying pest so many people looked to me as being. Even if the Bobby Hobbes of yesterday was that man, I am not now.

I have to know that. I have to know this pattern of thinking isn't some illusion brought about by sheer suggestions. I can't believe this is just psychosomatic, wishful thinking about that syringe and retrovirus.

I have to learn. I must discover what limits I can reach. I have to know more.

I stop in front of the electronics aisle. Rows of televisions stare back at me. I look them over and nod to myself slightly.

I will learn. I'll learn to see everything Melanie saw, everything I am capable of seeing. If it kills me, I will learn.

****

I don't know what brought me to this bar. I'm certainly in no mindset to be around so many other people.

At first, the entire setting seems smokier and darker than normal. The one thing I had liked about this bar was the bright, almost cheerful setting. Tonight it seems very much like any hole-in-the-wall bar.

Some entering crowd of people propels me further in, and I give up fighting the rush and let myself be carried up to where the bartender seems to be waiting for me and me alone.

"Martini, up. Top shelf. Olive."

The guy gives a serene nod and turns. An instant later, he turns back to me, drink in hand.

I take it, turn, and face the rest of the bar. Through the haze and darkness, I see that no one here is familiar. Strange in a place where I'm a regular.

But just as I find myself thinking that, the door opens and some woman comes in. Her eyes are drawn to me, and pouty red lips flash a grin. "Bobby!"

I smile and nod politely, though I can't remember every having seen her before. I want to simply say hello, to be polite, and stay within my solitude, but when I open my mouth, I find I can't control what comes out. "Hey there, kitten. Long time no see. What brings those long legs of yours to a dive like this?"

I am astonished, and helpless against the words. Despite the turmoil inside, though, the grin stays plastered on my face.

She smiles, oblivious to my distress. "Maybe I keep coming here hoping you'll show up." She gives one of those blatantly catty laughs.

It disgusts me. These bars, the people in them. The fact that so many find they have to seek out dark corners and alcoholic oblivion to simply find a release and a social setting where they feel comfortable.

"Well, baby, you found me. Buy you a drink?"

This woman. Five seconds after seeing her, I know I could have her if I wanted. I wouldn't even have to ask. She displays her attraction like a peacock flashing its feathers. She will reek of liquor within five more minutes, and when I leave her here, she'll find the next available man.

Disgusting. A young woman, probably pretty beneath the caked layers of color on her face…

"Thanks, Bobby! I always did love a thoughtful man."

Hamlet's disgust with women comes to my mind, inexplicably. God hath given them one face, and they make themselves another. Jig, amble, lisp. Blatant, sickening displays.

I wouldn't argue that society's message to women is to find a good husband and let him take care of you. Women these days don't feel right without a man by their side. To the point where they let everything rest on their ability to find a mate.

"Thoughtful's my middle name. Yo, barkeep! This young lady's getting thirsty."

If this woman had put on these too-tight clothes and put these colors on her face, and not found someone to buy her a drink, it would have crushed her self-esteem. It would have made her feel bad that the snakes in this pit don't hunger for her.

Why? Jesus, it makes no sense. And why would these men lust so openly for the pathetic, needy husks women are when they get to these places?

"So…Bobby. You live close by?"

I can no longer pretend this conversation I'm participating in doesn't bother me. I want to shout at her, to wipe that interest off her face. I want her to recognize that I'm different. I don't belong here, not anymore.

"Bobby?"

I'm not that Bobby! Bobby is gone! Dammit, why isn't it clear to her? I'm another man now!

But Bobby must be alive somewhere, because he's the one who answers. "I live close enough, angel. What did you have in mind?"

Stop it! I want to shout, to rail against this disgusting thing I'm involving myself in. This Bobby, this man I was yesterday, he disgusts me. He annoys me as he annoyed countless others.

I can't like him. He's too complacent, too happy in his narrow little world. He thinks he knows so much, when in reality he's more blind than the people he wants to protect.

In that moment, I shut my eyes in an attempt to block out the smoky air for a brief moment, and when I open them again I'm a few feet from where I was.

I'm staring at me. No. Not me. Bobby. The old Bobby. The one who is at home in this horrible place. The one who knows nothing about anything.

He is the same person I see in the mirror. His eyes are blank, almost vacant. His grin is a leer, his entire body leaning towards that woman as though she's the sun and he's a flower, soaking up her warmth.

I look at her, and see nothing. I see the act she puts over herself. I see the person she pretends to be because she thinks it's what men want, and I see me -- Bobby -- falling all over himself to get her into his bed.

It's a game. A joke.

"Bobby?"

The voice is familiar. I turn around, and see the confused eyes of my partner. "Fawkes."

Darien is looking at me, not the old Bobby. He seems baffled. "Bobby, you don't look right. You're…different."

I smirk. "Different." Understatement.

"Is it you?"

"Yes, it's me." My voice sounds calmer than normal, even to my own ears. "Fawkes, you wouldn't believe the day I've had."

Darien studies me for a moment, then shakes his head. "You're not the Bobby I want." He moves past me as if I were a stranger.

I watch him go, surprised, and see him approach the other Bobby.

They greet each other, and Darien relaxes in the face of this Bobby.

Darien relaxes. Darien is no longer disturbed in the face of that vacant and brain-dead waste of life that is the old Bobby.

My eyes narrow from more than the smoke.

****

Of course I realize it was only a dream. The instant consciousness strikes me, I realize what it was, and I interpret it easily.

The conclusions I come to, the realizations that hit me…they're like many of the changes of the last day. They surprise me, but they seem so obvious.

Darien, the old Bobby, the Agency. It's all a sham. A lie. A deceit perpetrated by all the players, to give themselves exactly what they want.

Amazing. Darien is always a rebel. He would be lost without a cause to be fighting. That's why he so easily plays the martyr here. That's why he continues to resent us for what his brother did to him. That's why he stays, probably why he got himself involved in this in the first place. Darien would be nothing without something to bitch about.

The Official, he would be nothing if he weren't able to throw his weight around. If he didn't have command, even over such a small and ragtag group, he wouldn't know how to live.

Eberts needs strong people to support. The Keeper needs new science, new experiments and ideas.

And Bobby…Bobby needed to belong to something.

They're disgusting, the lot of them. Always griping and bitching and threatening to walk out of the lives they themselves created. They all put themselves there. Darien would never leave, because then what would he fight? The Official would shrivel and die if he weren't allowed to feel important. The others as well.

Bobby…

It doesn't matter what Bobby would do without the Agency. Because I am not Bobby anymore. I'm beyond him. I'm more than him.

Bobby needs to belong, to take orders and be a fighter and feel important.

But I don't.

That's why I'm not going in to work today.

****

There's a knock on my door early in the morning. I know it isn't Darien. Not yet. I'm not even late yet.

So I go to the door and open it. No fanfare, no guns or cautious checks. I just open the door, ready to face anyone. "What?"

Two young men in matching black slacks and white shirts stare back at me.

There's a pause, and one of them speaks. "Sir, we were wondering if we could come in and talk to you for a few minutes about your faith."

My eyebrows fly up. In the realm of my mind, emotions come and go. Amusement, irony. Disbelief, anger, and amusement again.

I open the door slightly, not chasing them off. "What about my faith?"

They seem surprised by the question. No doubt they're used to doors slamming in their faces. "Uh…well, sir, we have some literature for you to read, that…" He goes on.

I'm not listening. Inside my head, in the small, annoying portion that still hold remnants of Bobby Hobbes, a voice is whining that they aren't supposed to let solicitors into the building. Another part of me hints that this could be a deception. Another part is calling to mind the library yesterday, and what I skimmed about the Jehovah's Witnesses.

When I open my mouth to talk, I'm not sure if he finished what he was saying or not. Nor do I care. "You don't come to doors like this because you're interested in the faith of other people. You do this because you're scared shitless that your own lack of faith is going to send you straight to some hell they fill your minds with in that cult of yours."

Two pairs of wide eyes blink at me. The one kid's mouth shuts, and I know then that I must have interrupted them.

I don't care.

"Look at yourselves. You're normal people, with the same human nature as the rest of them. You have flaws, and you commit sins. You go home and yell at your girlfriends and curse with your friends. You've probably smoked a few joints in your life, lied, stolen, cheated. And even if you haven't, if you really are the good upstanding people you pretend to be, what then? You come to these doors and knock and give your routine statement about talking about faith, and doors get shut on you. People, the people who aren't as kind and moral as you, they slam doors, they curse at you for waking them up, or taking them away from dinner. Or interrupting their waste of time little lives. And this happens so often you get angry. Despite the loving forgiveness of your God, you curse back at them, if only in your mind. You don't hope those people get saved. You hope they die and go straight to hell, where they'll burn forever while you watch from your safe haven with the loving God in your books and laugh at them as they roast."

My voice stays calm and flat, and the small part of Bobby Hobbes that I can't exorcise quite yet is as shocked as these kids look.

"I…" The kid holds up a pamphlet half-heartedly, looking like he swallowed his tongue.

I glance at the thing in irritation. "What? You want to recruit me to your absurd little faith? Thanks but no thanks. You want I should dress in a nice little suit and go with you, door to door, to proselytize other weak-willed shmucks?" I grab the pamphlet, annoyed but deathly calm. "Don't waste your minds on this garbage. You want something to read, read Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. Robert Lifton. You'll like it. It's about how brainwashing patterns used to torture prisoners are being echoed today in cultic groups like yours."

"We should…sir, please--"

Punk wants his book back so he can beat a hasty retreat and not have to listen to dissent. Figures. "You want to talk religion? Let's talk. Didn't your prophet say that your almighty little God had come back in 1874? In the character of a bridegroom, if I recall correctly. And I seem to remember the time of the gentiles coming to an end in 1914. Isn't that what you said? Dammit if I don't look around these days and see a hell of a lot of gentiles walking around. Of course, you also predicted that all governments would be overthrown and dissolved by 1915." I shake my head at their surprise. Perhaps they haven't come across anyone who's actually read these things they are supposed to hold sacred. I doubt strongly they've ever read it themselves. "At the end of the day, boys, you're just another couple of sinners who don't know any better than the rest what the hell's going on with life. Accept it and grow up. Just don't expect me to listen to the tracts and lies of conversion you people worked so hard to develop."

I slam the door shut in their face, crumpling the pamphlet and dropping it right there by the door.

I turn, and for a moment I regard the inside of my apartment. My newest acquisitions are lined up in a row in front of my table, and I reach for the remote, flipping them on.

Five different channels pour out at me. Information about the relevant and the banal, the correct and the incorrect, flow out into my head, setting me at ease.

I move to the couch and settle down, watching and waiting.

Inside my mind, Bobby Hobbes is starting to hate me. As much as I have grown to hate him.

****

When the TVs aren't enough, I cast a small fraction of my brain to the toys I bought the night before. They are simple, as I knew they would be, but it serves as enough of a distraction that I don't feel underwhelmed.

I don't turn when the door opens and my partner comes in.

Darien is quiet for a minute, and I know his little brain is going a mile a minute as I finish the last cube and set it down calmly. "What's going on?" he asks finally.

"Shhh."

"What are you--"

"This is interesting. Shhh." I watch. I listen to the voice of a pasty English anthropologist drawing completely erroneous conclusions about the Maori tribe that he's visiting, and I pay slight attention to the dumbed down explanation of the division of cells in the growing fetus of a child. I watch some silly cop drama, some Sherlock-Holmesesque mystery that I had solved before the credits stopped rolling. I watch the summary of the latest crisis in the Mid East, and I'm disgusted by the amount of time and energy we've wasted in that land.

I think Darien might have spoken again, but I didn't hear. I tune in as he starts again. "Look, when you didn't show up for work we didn't know where you were at."

That's hardly worth a response. "Obviously you did, you wouldn't be here."

"You didn't answer your phone, Hobbes." Darien is whining again. Griping, implying insensitivity in my activities. I suppose a fraction of him might actually think something's wrong as well, but I suspect what bothers him most is unpredictability in a man he thought he knew.

The Eton educated anthropologist states an absurd hypothesis about a certain decoration that the women are wearing, and I have to laugh.

Darien speaks again. Of course. "Hobbes, come on. You're scaring your partner. What are you-- "

I laugh again. The language they use on the most scientific of television shows should disgust three-year-olds. It's no wonder the world is so complacent in its ignorance if this is how we're used to being talked to.

Darien's presence is becoming annoying. I realize he won't be going away.

I glance over and see the look on his face, and I want to laugh again. I don't. Darien is starting to disgust me. He isn't worth the amusement. Instead I reach for the remote and reluctantly shut off the distractions keeping my under-worked brain occupied.

I stand, and there is no shortage of confidence in my bearing. I know what's going to happen now. I can predict the very words that will be said. But for Darien's sake, so I don't scare him too badly, I feign curiosity. "Where are we going?"

He stares at me. "Bobby, we're supposed to be at the Agency. The Official's ready to rip you a new one, and you're starting to worry us--"

I cut him off before I can hear more of the insincere platitudes that my oversensitive partner thinks everyone wants to hear. "Let's go."

****

The ride is quiet. I look out the window of the van and let myself get lost in my brain for a while.

There's no good way to describe what its like. I see things in a way now that I could never have imagined before. The world is an endlessly fascinating thing. The things I thought I knew, things I comprehended about the world, are so morphed now that it seems like I've opened my eyes for the first time.

Everything is there -- the knowledge, the awareness -- but no one else grasps it. Bobby Hobbes sure didn't. He should be thanking me for sweeping my intelligence on him, instead of sitting in his tiny corner of my mind and sulking.

Darien doesn't talk. He is obviously worried and scared of the man I am. He's met me, and he knows Bobby is disappearing as fast as Quicksilver.

He doesn't like me, but that's no great surprise. Bobby Hobbes was his partner in foolish misery. The man I am now is beyond that.

We get to the Agency, and Darien leads me nervously to the office of our employer.

I can hear Eberts on the phone as Darien opens the door, and then the Official asks for me. I come in, lean against the door frame, and regard this part of my life.

The Official, unsurprisingly, is looking to throw his weight around. "Hobbes, where the hell were you?"

I look at him for a moment, and find it impossible to believe that I ever answered to this man. That Bobby Hobbes would let himself be a slave to him. "At a place you'd never understand." I speak calmly, certain of the reaction my words will cause.

He is irritated, sure enough, but he hides it. He doesn't concentrate on the meaning of what I've said. As is his custom, he focuses on the banal. "Well. You were there too long. Now you're late. Make a note," he says behind him, to where Eberts is standing.

Eberts reaches into his jacket. The consummate servant readies to take his master's notes.

Darien, rightly enough, tries to get the meeting on to business. "Alright, so what's the word?"

I move into the office as Eberts answers.

"Linda Keller, Scott Selfon, and Jaime Monger have not responded to any of the calls we've made."

I go to the window and look out into the bright daylight for a long moment. They amuse me, these petty little men talking about those few other souls enlightened as I have been as though they could understand the first thing about us.

"Those are the student lab rats, right?"

"Right. Track em down, bring em in."

This is to be our assignment? My assignment? To allow this man and his Agency to silence the few who see as I do? "Maybe they want to be left alone," I say calmly.

"Excuse me?"

"They've committed no crime. They should be left alone." I turn to the Official. While my words are nothing more than a token argument, my entire being radiates challenge. And he responds, whether he realizes it or not.

"Hobbes, they may pose a threat to society or to themselves. It's for their own good."

Or perhaps they pose a threat to the status quo of this little world, where you are in charge and you are important. "I disagree," I say simply. My challenge to him increases as I turn from him, looking back out into the sun.

There is Bobby Hobbes. In the reflection of the glass, I see him. I don't react to it, of course, knowing it's a trick of light and my own subconscious. It's not real. He's not real. He's dead. Gone.

But at the moment he's looking at me with anger and helpless fear in his face.

I smile calmly at the sight, knowing what it represents. That tiny bit of Bobby still inside of me knows that I am ruining his feeble little life. He knows what I'm going to do, as I knew before I let Darien bring me here.

Bobby Hobbes may be meant for this job and these people, but I certainly am not.

"Don't worry," the Official is saying as I look out into the eyes of the man I was. "You're not going along. You're to report to the Keeper."

I regard Hobbes for a moment, tilting my head slightly to study him. The dull eyes, the perpetually confused state of mind. It's amusing. "For my own good?" I finally deign to answer my esteemed leader.

My hand absently plays with the blinds, momentarily shutting Bobby out, then letting him look back in as I cut him free from this life.

"For an examination." The Official's answer is tense. He is rising to the challenge.

I answer accordingly. "I have better things to do with my time."

There is a pause. Bobby is beginning to panic, and I just smile out at him. He'll never know what he could be. He'll never understand what I am.

A voice breaks the silence, and I'm not surprised to hear it's Darien. He senses the tension in the room, and he foolishly thinks he can divert attention from it. "Hey, Eberts. You got the file on those kids, right? I was thinking maybe we could take a look--"

"Hobbes. That was not a request."

I knew the boss wouldn't be cut short like that. I give one last, long look at Bobby. "Well, this is a refusal." With a snap of my wrist, I shut the blinds on Bobby, and on this Agency, for good. "No."

"No?"

Eberts responds to his master's tone. "Oh, no."

It is enough for me. That answer, that refusal, should be enough to show the Official that I am not willing to play any more. I head for the door. My job here is done. Permanently.

The Official comes out from behind his desk, but I'll beat him to the door.

Until Darien lets his long legs carry him to the doorway, directly in my way. "Hey, guys, guys, guys. Come on. I mean, look, let's just calm down here, okay? We're on the same team, you know what I'm saying?"

Poor Darien. Always trying to make the world as bland and laid-back as he himself is. Pity it never works.

But I don't have time for him now. I obviously need to spell out my retirement from the Agency game, and there's only one man I have to talk to for that. "You have no real power."

The Official stiffens. "What?"

I am calm as I speak the words Bobby Hobbes has never let himself think. "You're a bureaucrat. Your power trickles down through the system. You're a paper pusher. A desk jockey. A toothless tiger." There is amusement in my tone and in my bearing as I look down on the man Hobbes admired.

"Hobbes, one more word out of you and you're out of this organization."

Does it take so much to make these people see? Are the whole of humanity really so blind to the obvious? I give him better than he wanted, hoping the point will be made. "Here's two: I quit."

I pull out my badge and shove it into his chest, and move out silently past Darien, who must be too stunned to stop me.

Pathetic. These people are so sure they know everything about their world. One little thing comes along that they didn't expect, and they are struck dumb.

The Keeper comes towards me from the stairs to the lab. "Oh, Bobby! I was --"

I walk right by her. She is smarter than the men back in the office. She simply turns in surprise to watch me go, not bothering to come after me or force me to explain myself.

Of course, she doesn't have to. Darien comes racing to my side suddenly, from where he must have recovered from his stupor. "Hey!"

I keep moving, but he stops in front of me. Blocks my way. Again.

"Hey! Hey, hey, hey, hey! What the hell just happened? Huh? You can't just quit."

In an instant, everything there is to know about Darien Fawkes flashes through my mind. Every ounce of his psyche is laid bare before me, and it makes me almost sad. "You know what your problem is, Fawkes? You're defined by your limitations. 'Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours.'" Throw a quote at him, and perhaps he'll understand what I'm talking about.

I start to move past again, but his hand falls on my chest to stop me.

He is angry. I seem to make a lot of people angry these days. "I wish…you could just hear yourself right now."

The old Hobbes has stopped complaining. In fact, my actions in quitting this Agency must have made him grow up a little.

He is wondering, now, causing me to wonder, if perhaps Darien might be made to understand some of what I now am.

I speak again only to find out. "I always knew I was too intelligent for government work. You're nothing but a cog in a machine and…well, the pay's a joke." The old Bobby smiles a little at that. He knows I'm right. He's starting to come around. Perhaps I won't have to hate him so much after all. I look at Darien, trying to make him understand. "But now I'm more."

He tightens his mouth in irritation, trying to mask his feelings under that smug, smart tone he uses. "Yeah. Yeah, a guy who's finally as smart as his ego always hoped."

I grin, and the old Bobby grins with me. "Smarter."

He doesn't stop me physically as I try now to leave. But he stops me with words.

"Look, would you just stop? Okay? You're not thinking clearly here."

I turn back to him quickly. Don't do that, Fawkes. Don't let yourself think I'm the deluded one here. "Oh, I'm thinking very clearly, Fawkes." Understand this, Darien. Perhaps it is possible for one person to be right and everyone else to be wrong. "For the first time I can see that I've sabotaged my career and my personal life for…insecurities I may have had about my abilities. But I see past that now."

"Well, Hobbes, the thing you're forgetting here is…they're not your abilities."

The old Bobby reacts to that slightly. Darien has misinterpreted my words. Oh, the level of my intelligence is surely not natural, but Hobbes was never a dolt. He was intelligent before this, and both the new me and the old him resent the constant assumption that only a retrovirus has given us any kind of brain power at all.

Still. If I argue semantics, we'll be here all day. I stick with the argument that will be clearest to Darien. "Were you born with the Quicksilver gland? It's a gift, Fawkes. It's a beautiful gift. I have this gift now." I look up at him, wanting. The old Hobbes and I are in agreement -- we want him to understand. We want someone else to understand, and to be as happy for us as they should be.

Darien takes a moment to answer. "Yeah? Yeah, well I'd like to be free of my gift, friend, okay?"

Whining. Martyrdom, and a deliberate refusal to hear my side. It saddens me, and it upsets Bobby, as we both are in agreement that it's time to go.

"Look, look, look. Would you listen to me? Listen to me, okay?" Darien gets me to stop again. He meets my eyes earnestly. "The Keeper is working on a way to reverse this thing."

The old Bobby would have rolled his eyes and laughed in Darien's face for this naïve assumption. "I know how to reverse it, Fawkes." I try one last time. "I don't want to reverse it. I understand things now. Things that you'll never, ever, ever…ever understand."

My sympathy for his ignorance must show through, and he looks disgusted by it.

I know then, absolutely. I know Darien wants nothing to do with me. He wants his Bobby back, as happened in my dream. He wants the miserable slob he knew before. He doesn't want me as I am, he wants the me that fits into his own view of how his life should be.

And I know by that that he never really must have valued me, in any form. Not the real me. I speak plainly, a few words for the old, now voiceless Hobbes. "No one ever respected me here, really. No one ever really cared about me here." I look at Darien, so he knows his petty, selfish reasons for stopping me are understood. "No one."

I walk away. And he doesn't try to stop me this time.

****

It's too much.

My mind is beyond knowledge now. If there is anything in this universe I haven't learned, or guessed, or figured out, it must not be important.

But there's no where else to go, and my brain is left to untangle everything, to put it in order and make sense of it. It's time for this highest level of brilliance to ascend yet again, and I don't know where it will go.

My thoughts are rushing around as fast as they ever have, and I try foolishly to separate myself from it. I sit at one computer and start typing and figuring.

But that isn't enough. I call up a program on my newest computer with my right hand, and keep writing feverishly with the left.

I figure things out, write them down, and erase them. The great mysteries, and some not so great. The gland in Darien's head? A piece of cake. Kevin Fawkes was smart, but he was no match for me. I can unravel his research in seconds, and in mere moments I can work out the injections, the incisions, everything that is required to get that gland out.

If Darien had had more use for me this way, perhaps I would have saved the conclusions. But he is no longer a part of my life, so I erase my findings along with the ones before, and I set my sights on a new solution to an impossible problem.

It's not enough. It's never enough. I've read, studied, I'm left with nothing that can equal my hunger, nothing except what's already in my brain. I can't devour my own knowledge, but there isn't anything left for me out there. It's not enough.

I feel every second as if it were an hour. I can think through entire theories in moments, and time passes so slowly that every new second without some fresh stimulus almost hurts me physically.

And then there is a slight sound behind me, and though I can see in the reflection of the screen that no one is there, that hardly proves a thing.

I stand up slowly, and whip around to jump at Darien before he realizes I'm on to him. I grab him, twist his cold invisible body around, and throw him into the coffee table behind me, which shatters.

"I do not want to be disturbed!"

I hear the rage in my own voice, and it scares me. I'm getting out of control. This body, this world, is not enough to keep my brain occupied, and it's starting to strain me. I gather my control and stare down at the empty-looking floor. "You will leave here, now. I will be left alone."

There's a slight noise. Darien has stood up, and I try to track him blindly.

"No," he answers my command in that flat tone of his. "Afraid I can't do that. For your own good."

How much I loathe those words. How dare these pathetic, drooling, brainless heathens assume to know what is for my own good?

I slowly start backing up, towards my kitchen. I need to see my enemy.

"I'm beyond good." I speak as I walk, knowing it will distract Darien. "I'm beyond evil. I deal in truth now; truth only." I reach behind my counter, and there, on the shelf, is the bag of flour. "And that doesn't leave much room for you!" I race back out, throwing flour into the air everywhere. Darien erupts into coughs, and a shimmer of powder now coats his body.

The moment I can see him, I'm on him. The flour hits the floor and Darien follows it. I land on top of him, and in a flash of irony that part of my bored brain appreciates, I bring my hands to his throat. "Get out of my life!"

Choking, hurting. Not trying to kill, because there would be no point to that. But trying to hurt Darien as he's trying to hurt me. As he once hurt Bobby, in this same position.

"Now," Darien wheezes out through his coughs. I realize something's happening I didn't predict. "Now!"

A flash of motion, a tug at my shoulder, and I straighten bolt upright. My hands slide off Darien, and the numbness slides down my arm and slowly into the rest of my body.

I don't even have to guess. Of course it's the Keeper, and of course she's got one of those dart guns we keep around in case Darien doesn't reach the counteragent in time.

I get to my feet and move to her, irritated that I didn't foresee her presence.

"All you had to do was ask," I hear a voice say. A moment later I realize it was mine. No. Not mine, Bobby's. The old him.

I lose my balance and fall into my chair.

Bobby, from his small corner in my head, smiles as the apartment around me gets lost in darkness.

****

My mind jumps into focus all at once. It's like being in a dark tunnel, and emerging into a world so bright and vivid with colors and movement and sound that you find yourself losing all perspective.

I go from numb blackness to a white world of silence and padded walls. But my brain, my brain is going a light year a minute.

I sit up. I feel the strange restriction of a straightjacket around me, and I blink at the walls of the padded room in the Agency.

If they leave me here, I'm as good as mad. With my mind working at super speed, needing constant information to feed its insatiable hunger, the silent bare walls will drive me to insanity, and soon.

I know now why Melanie wrote on the walls.

It's starting to unravel now. The bastards here could never value or understand what I am, so they have to destroy me. If they don't kill me, they will simply arrange for the old Bobby to take my place. Which is possibly worse than death.

I can't go back to that. I can't go back to blind stumbling in this world that I now know so well. I can't lose what I've gained. It's too important. Too vital to the world.

I'm vital. For once in my life, I am something to admire, to imitate. If I lose that, than I die. Maybe not this body, and certainly Hobbes is sitting in wait, ready to pounce the minute I start slipping. But me, this new person, this man I've become, is dead.

I have to stop it. I can't let them win.

If I'm right, and I have no reason to assume I'm not, they haven't found the enzyme. The Keeper is the only one smart enough, and she would need months, maybe years.

So the only way to kill me is to win my cooperation. And they'll never do that. Suicide isn't in my plans.

The door behind me opens with a muted swish. I sit up slightly straighter, waiting to see whom it is. The Official, to bark and order and piss and moan without result? The Keeper, to plead the interests of science and give me the cold medical facts?

Neither. It's Darien. The third logical choice.

He's holding a chair. He comes around to face me and sets the chair down. His eyes lock on mine. "Huh," he says as he slumps into the chair, letting it fall to tilt against the wall. "You know, I've found with the straight jackets that if you…roll your shoulders a little bit, you actually get a little slack." He demonstrates.

I ignore him.

He shrugs. "Just an option. It's there if you want it, if not…"

I don't move. I will not do this. I won't play guessing games over whether or not they can end this, and I won't let my bleeding-heart ex-partner try to talk me into something I don't want to do.

He sighs. Shifts. He's much too energetic to enter into a staring contest with me, and after a moment he gives it up. "So, Hobbes. I'm gonna have to ask you to tell me how to stop the affects of the retrovirus."

And then I know. They don't have it. They don't know the cure. Just as I suspected.

That lets me relax enough to answer him. "Since I'm not going to do that, I suggest we conserve our energy, and you let me go."

"Uhhhh…" Darien lets the chair drop forward and scoots in closer to me. "No."

"Than you can waste your energy while I conserve mine."

Something flashes in his eyes. I almost smile. That's right, Darien. All I have to do is wait. Either I will find a way out of this trap, or I will go mad from the quiet around me. Either way, I'll be gone. Somewhere where you can't touch me.

As if reading my thoughts, Darien speaks again. "You know that the other four test subjects are gone, right?"

I smile at that. Yes, they're gone. And if you knew to what, you'd be so horribly jealous. "The tone in your voice implies that they're dead. They are far from dead, Fawkes."

"You don't care if that happens to you?" he asks, full of self-confidence and hasty conclusions.

"I don't expect you to understand," I answer simply. Even if I could describe it, he would never understand. And he doesn't want to understand. He wants me to do what he wants, so he gets what he wants. Darien Fawkes is so completely self-absorbed.

"You…well, no, no. Go ahead." He sits up and crosses a leg, the picture of complete attention. "Why don't you try me? Shoot. Go ahead."

So I do. It gives me something to do as my mind slowly starts losing its grasp on the world. "There's a core difference between us. Biological determinism versus biological potential."

"Oh." He is, predictably, confused. "Actually, you are gonna have to clarify that a little."

"It's the difference between a man who will sacrifice everything to propagate himself and a being who will sacrifice himself to what is larger than self." I gaze at him openly, knowing he won't for a moment listen to what I'm saying. "You are a man," I try to explain. "I am a super man."

"You're Superman." As blank as his voice is, you can practically see the sarcasm.

I shut my eyes briefly, not surprised. No surprise that Darien chooses to misinterpret my words for the sake of a cheap laugh, rather than attempt to understand the point.

"I'm the Invisible Man," he continues. "Wow, if we could just have Superwoman we could really party, know what I'm saying?"

It saddens me. "You can't even begin to fathom the concepts and ideas that are dancing on the horizons of my mind," I tell him frankly. Even as those horizons are starting to crumble at the edge.

"Yes! That's…that's what I'm trying to say here, Hobbes. I mean, what is the point of knowing the answer if you can't tell anyone, you know? What's the use of being God if all your buds are human?"

And now Darien is delusional. Does he truly think my inability to make him understand is worth me giving up this gift? Does he so overestimate his importance in my life?

I'm quick to dispel that belief. "Friendship is an illusion, Fawkes. A cultural expression of the pack mentality. For survival."

He looks stung. "What's wrong with survival?" What's wrong with friendship, he is saying silently.

Oh, Darien. "It's just another illusion. The weak survive, the strong evolve. I was dead. Now I'm alive." I shut my eyes again, and can almost see the thoughts charging around my brain.

Forget Fawkes. Forget sanity. I could shut my eyes, keep them shut, and lose myself in this world I've created. I can fall into my head and stay there forever. There is more to be found and explored in my mind than in any other person alive today.

"Yeah?" Darien breaks into my longing drift towards oblivion, pulling out a familiar syringe with equally familiar contents. "You ready to die again?"

"We both know that can't harm me now, Fawkes."

Darien seems unconcerned. "We both know it'll kill me, right?" He pulls off his coat and lofts the needle over his leg. "It's pretty simple here. To save me, you're gonna have to tell me how to stop it."

He lowers the needle to his leg.

"Fawkes…" Enough stupid parlor tricks. I will inevitably call your bluff.

Just as I think that, he pushes the needle into his skin, bracing his finger over the plunger.

Something in me, the old Bobby, maybe, is getting slightly panicked. I'm not truly worried -- Darien would never sacrifice himself like this. Not for me.

But there could be an accident. He could infect himself without realizing it. Stupid man. I have to talk him down now. "Fawkes. I will not do that."

But he's certain. "Yeah you will. Yes, you will. You would die for me, Bobby." He meets my eyes, no doubt clouding his expression.

The absolute confidence in those words makes me pause.

"See, that's what I know. And not 'cause it's your job or your code. It's 'cause I'm your friend. And if you think that's an illusion than you're just plain ignorant."

The old Bobby shouts inside me, shouts for Darien to play it safe. The old Bobby knows I won't give in to this. I refuse to be won over and destroyed by this man when I know, as much as I know anything, that he would never go through with it.

"You're making a big mistake," I tell him flatly.

"Uh uh. See, you don't know everything, Bobby." His eyes are sad. His entire being defeated. "In fact, I'm pretty sure there's…there's one thing about me you don't know."

My brow furrows. Impossible. I've read the most complex psychological texts in the universe. I have pondered every theory about the human psyche I could find. And I know Darien Fawkes.

Darien depresses the plunger, sending the virus into his bloodstream.

Simple and quick as that, he shatters my line of thought. Shatters my perception of him.

He pulls the needle out and drops the empty syringe on the ground, his attention now away from me and onto himself, where I'm sure he's as shocked as I am over what he just did.

There is no way he just did that. There's no…placebo. Of course. It was a placebo. Maybe the counteragent, simply turned a different color to fool me.

But as I tell myself that, I can't help but see the fear and panic growing on Darien's face. This isn't the reaction of a man trying to win the sympathy of an old friend. This is the true fear of a man scared of death and knowing he's dying.

Darien injected himself. He is dying in front of my eyes.

But…why? Is it so important to him to win this argument?

Bobby, in my head, is howling. He is almost hysterical. He knows, I think. He knows why Darien has done this.

Darien Fawkes is nothing to me. The gland is an interesting experiment, but it's no huge loss if it dies with him today.

He can die. It's him or me. Darien the ex-con punk thief, or the person I have become.

Bobby is shouting inaudibly to me. He is railing, frantic to help his partner.

His partner. Darien. Unpredictable as I would never have believed. Darien, dying right in front of my eyes.

Darien, making it known, silently but incontrovertibly, that he would die for Bobby as quickly as Bobby would die for him.

And suddenly, for the first time the old Bobby and me are in complete agreement. We can't let this happen.

I don't know why. I couldn't explain it, much as I can't explain everything else I've learned. I just know that a world without Darien Fawkes in it would be darker, and to be the man responsible for his death is an impossible fate, and I won't be saddled with it.

It's simply unacceptable to let him die.

Still, turning to the mirror, where I know they're watching, is the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

"It's an intermolecular lyases enzyme. Molar ratio of three to one. Linoliec acid and glucoside. Reaction temperature - 200 degrees. It'll block the genome. The new neural cells will atrophy and die."

Atrophy and die. I will atrophy and die. I will die. It will all be lost. All the knowledge, the power, the solutions. Left alone, I could become more than any human has ever dreamed. But now I'm dying. I'm dead. I've helped them to kill me.

God, I don't want this. I don't want to die. I can't go back to walking around confused and feigning cockiness. I can't live in the shadows now that I've seen the sun.

I turn back to Darien, and I know I'm in tears. "I can't believe you did that, partner."

Darien isn't thinking about me at all at this point, and rightly not. "Neither can I," he answers honestly. Then a shout: "Claire!"

The door behind me opens, and the Keeper bursts in. "I can synthesize that enzyme!"

Darien jumps up as if burned and is to the door in a flash. "Will you get this crap outta me!"

They run out, yelling and hurried. The door shuts. I am alone in my prison, alone to wait out the time of execution.

I look at the white walls, at the abandoned wooden chair and Darien's jacket, and I find myself hoping that the silent walls will drive me insane before Darien and his Keeper can return.

****

My head spins as I wake up. My mind feels strange. My thoughts are sluggish, different.

My eyes open, and I blink out at the lab. Three familiar faces come into view, and the torrent of information I have now come to expect doesn't come.

Oh, Jesus.

But instead of sadness or rage, I just feel…kinda crappy. "Wow. How long have I been asleep?"

Instead of answering, Darien stands and lifts a familiar book of puzzles.

"Fawkes?" Unnerving, the quiet is.

He speaks slowly. "'If Tom has three times as many apples as Susan, and Susan has one fourth as many as Joe, who's got four, how many does Mary have if she has two more than Tom?'" His eyes come up to me.

What a jerk. Here I am bounced around from genius back to me, and he's rubbing it in my giving me frigging word problems.

"Um. Okay. Uh, Tom's got…" I shake my head, a little lost. "Uh, what was the chick's name?"

Everyone laughs, relaxes.

"What was her name?" I ask again almost as a throwaway question. I want to know, I want to figure this out. I want the answer to be as easy to reach as it was yesterday.

Darien shuts the book in relief.

"Welcome back, Bobby." To my surprise it's the boss who talks first, patting my leg. He holds something out to me.

My badge. I can't believe I tried to quit this place. Jesus, what the hell was I thinking?

"Hey, thanks, Chief."

The Official turns to leave, but that's great with me since the Keeper replaces him beside me. "Oh, so listen, Bobby, I'm going to need to see you later on for some tests, okay? Just to make sure you're…really back to normal."

I give a grin just short of a leer. "I'll play a nice game of doctor with you anytime there, Keepy."

Darien comes back to the bed after dropping the book on her desk. "Well, I'd say he passes."

She gives that look of affectionate annoyance that she's so good at. She'll give in one of these days. I know it. "Brilliantly," she answers Darien dryly before turning and leaving us alone.

"You look good today," I call after her with a grin, 'cause she does. "That's a nice dress."

"I like those boots. You see those?"

Darien's words bring my focus back to him. And I remember him shooting himself with the substance that would kill him. "How you doing? You alright?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm good. Yeah, she was able to block the gene before it hit any of my cells. Or something." He waves it off. "How about you? You remember anything?"

I think back at the last few days, and it's like a movie I saw long ago that I can barely remember. "Yeah," I say slowly.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I just…I don't understand it, you know?" The words are garbled, the faces are blurred. It feels like if I squint hard enough it'll come into view, but I know it won't. "It's like everything that I knew is forever right there on the tip of my tongue."

He looks confused, and I try to think of the words to explain it better.

But I must have judged too soon. He speaks before I can rephrase my words, and there's a kind of knowledge in his voice, like maybe he does know. "Yeah, well, you know, that's probably where you should leave it. Why don't you get some rest, alright?"

Darien heads out. One last friendly little smile and he leaves.

But I have more to say. "Hey, Fawkes?"

Darien comes loping back silently.

"Listen, man. I just want to say, you know, what you…" I don't know why this is so hard. I'm tripping over my words again. "You know, what you did back there…"

He rescues me from floundering. "I'd do it again."

It's no hardship for me to answer that, at least. "Count on the same thing here, my friend."

I hold up my hand, not even sure why I'm doing it. He clasps it briefly, and we meet each other's eyes. Without another word, Darien turns and goes.

I settle back against the lab bed, my head still spinning slightly. A slight smile tries to cross my face, but I'm too out of it to be grinning.

Still, it's been a strange day. It's been good. Great, even. Hell, it's always good for a man to know his partner is willing to die for him. It's a security blanket, kinda. Makes a person feel better about going into the field with that partner.

I knew Darien was starting to get used to me. Figured he even liked me a little bit. But I had no idea he was willing to shoot poison into his veins to save my life.

I've always been willing to die for him, but it's different. I'm an agent, born and bred. It's just accepted that the man you go out into the fields with must be protected. Even when I didn't like Darien, I'd have jumped in front of a bullet for him. It's my job.

Now it's more than my job. Now, he'd do it to. Whether or not he likes this Agency or that gland at all, he's willing to walk into hell for me.

It's a nice thing to know, and it makes me feel a hell of a lot better about where I am right now.

Jeez, I must be more tired than I thought. I can't keep my damned eyes open.

I just hope when I wake up I'm not even dumber than I am now.

****

Epilogue --

I can't sleep.

Fortunately, I've got a pretty good bead on what the problem is. I keep thinking, worrying. I'm actually a little scared that today didn't happen, that it was maybe a dream.

I pick up the phone and dial. He should be home by now, shouldn't he?

I shouldn't have left the Agency without making sure.

"Hobbes." His voice is thick and rough.

"Damn, Bobby, I'm sorry. I woke you up?"

"Naw. What's up, partner?"

"I…uh…" That's a good question. "I just wanted to check up on you," I say honestly.

There's a pause. "I'm good," he says finally, but he doesn't sound right.

"You sure? You've been through a lot the last couple of days."

He laughs, but it sounds forced. "No big deal. I can barely remember it."

He's lying to me. Surely he knows I know him better than that now. "Bobby…"

"What?"

"You want some company?" My voice is quiet, sincere. Still casual, though. Don't want to back him into corners or anything. Bobby Hobbes is one easily cornered tiger.

"What? Now?"

"Yeah."

"Sure. If you're bored. You know where I live now, come on over."

I sit up in bed, shaking my head to clear away any illusions I might be getting to sleep tonight. "You want me to bring some Chinese or something."

He laughs, and I'm kind of happy to hear that it sounds a little more genuine. "Do what you want, Fawkes."

I hang up and slide out from under the sheets.

*

I knock on the door this time, just for the sake of propriety.

I hear footsteps, a bolt sliding open, the door unlocking. It creaks open, and Bobby lets me in. "Evening," he says with a casual smile.

I return the smile and loft the bag of take-out. "You wouldn't believe it, but not many Chinese places are open at two in the morning."

"No," he answers in mock-surprise, shutting the door behind me.

I take a few steps in, and see that a couple of things have changed. There's only one television in the room now.

Those toys he was playing with last time I came, the Rubik's cubes, are still there. They're all no longer solid-colored.

He's been trying to figure them out again. For some reason that kind of bothers me.

He grabs the bag from me before I can say anything. He follows my gaze to the coffee table, but doesn't say anything about it. "I'll throw this on a coupla plates."

"You mean you don't just scarf it out of the box?" I ask in return.

He snorts and heads into the kitchen. "Just because I'm a bachelor these days doesn't mean I have to live like one."

"I'll say." I wander after him, into the kitchen area. "Nice place, Bobby. Not what I would have thought."

He laughs at that quietly. "No guard dogs and racks of guns, you mean?"

I shrug. "Something like that." I lean against the counter, absently pulling spices out to see what they are. "Paprika? I never would have believed that Bobby Hobbes owned paprika."

He grins at that, pulling out plates and silverware. "I'll have you know I'm a helluva cook."

"Yeah? I can boil a mean pot of water too."

"You doubt me?" He looks surprised.

I grin and shrug. "As much as we eat out?"

"Alright, smart guy. You go sit down. I'll whip this Americanized crap into shape, and let you taste some real Chinese food."

"Yessir, Mister Iron Chef, sir." I reach over and scoop up some rice with my fingers and shove it in before he can stop me.

"Hey!" He slaps at my arm. "Go. Sit."

I move away into the living room, plopping down on the couch.

This is what I needed, I think. I needed to make sure we were still partners. I know we exchanged all kinds of deep, solemn words about dying for each other, and that's important for a couple of partners, I figure. But just as important, to me anyway, is that we have the old ease back. The banter. The stuff that puts us in sync.

I like going back and forth with Bobby. The Keeper told me once we were a step away from being an old married couple, and that kinda made me notice it more. We do have a thing going. I can practically read his mind. God knows we finish each other's sentences enough.

It would really hurt if that was gone now, because of what I made him do.

My eyes drift down to those unsolved cubes, and I pick one up, toying with it absently.

I feel guilty. I know if Bobby had been left the way he was, he would be dead or catatonic by now. But that doesn't make me feel much better. The thrill in his eyes as he first started figuring things out so much easier, and that almost awed tone of voice as he tried to explain to me what it was like. He was happy.

Still, towards the end that happiness was melting into some contemptuous kind of attitude that was probably telling him happiness didn't even matter. He was bitter and cold, and I couldn't stand that.

He told me that friendship was an illusion. Looked right in my eyes and said that, and I knew I couldn't let my best friend go on thinking that way. That was somehow more important than getting rid of the intelligence and the out of character behavior. I didn't mind him quitting the Agency half as much as I minded him meeting my eyes and telling me that what I felt was an illusion.

He truly believed what he told me in that corridor. It hurts me to think about it, because he believed it. He believed that no one in the Agency ever cared about him or respected him.

Thinking about it later, I realize he had no reason to think otherwise. Bobby has always accepted our treatment, probably because that's what he was used to. The Official, Eberts, the Keeper, they treat him like an annoying pest they had to keep around just for my sake. The Keeper's one moment of real humanity towards him happened when she thought he was dead. He stood there unseen and heard her voice her opinion about what a miserable, lonely man he must have been.

I wonder if that hurt him. I mean, if someone made the assumption that I was miserable and lonely, I'd have been pissed as all hell. Even if it's true, it sucks to hear it voiced out loud like that.

I'll bet she changes after this. Now that she realizes what Bobby thinks about the way he's treated, I'll just bet she makes more of an effort.

It's no mystery that the other people at the Agency treated him like a joke. But what bothers me the most is how he looked right at me when he said it. Looked right at me, as if making sure I knew he was on to me. Telling me he knew I didn't have the slightest respect for him, and I couldn't care less whether he lives or dies.

Was it true? No. No, it wasn't. I like Bobby. I have for a long time now. At first, yeah, he was annoying and a little frightening. But we're partners. He's come to my aid more than once when he didn't have to. He's pushed me out of the way of cars. He's saved my life over and over again. Of course I like him. Of course I respect him.

I just never thought about proving that to him. I never bothered to show him how I felt.

Must be a macho thing. I never thought about telling him straight out, and I never figured he'd be missing it if I didn't tell him. I just assumed he'd know, even though I spent half the time making fun of him, and the other half going behind his back, trying to do things on my own.

Jesus. I suck.

And I have to make sure he knows things aren't like that. That's gotta be why I had to come over tonight.

Interrupting my thoughts, he appears with a couple of plates. Despite my disbelief over his cooking abilities, they smell frigging wonderful.

"Alright, Mister Critic. Dig in." He proudly drops the plate on the table in front of me.

I obey, and at the first bite my eyes get big. "Holy Lord, Bobby."

"Oh, it might be a little spicy," he says blandly, taking a bite of his own.

Spicy, yeah. But I love spicy. "This is great!"

He shrugs. "I know."

I laugh at that, taking another bite with relish. "That's it. I want this every night."

He sits back and puts his feet up on the table, picking at his food.

I notice that. I'm probably hyper-aware of everything he does right now. I slow down eating, which is a challenge, and I sit back. "So, Hobbes."

He glances over, eyebrows going up.

"Are you okay?"

He looks away, snorting slightly. "You didn't believe me on the phone? I'm fine, Fawkes."

I shake my head. "Didn't believe you then, don't believe you now."

He looks over again in surprise. "Why not?"

I set my plate down, facing him a little more. "Because you're lying. I shouldn't believe you when you're lying, right?"

"Fawkes--"

"Come on, Bobby. We're friends, right?" I look right in his eyes, searching.

He shrugs. "Sure. Of course."

He seems to believe it. I study him for another minute.

He heaves a breath. "Look, I know what I said yesterday. And I got no clue why I said it, okay? It was like another person was talking for me, you know?" He hesitates. "That person didn't seem to like any of us very much."

I nod. That much was obvious. "We're better off without him. You know that, right?"

He shrugs again.

"Bobby?"

He sits up, dropping his plate on the table. He grabs one of the cubes, looking at it for a minute in silence. When he speaks, his voice is quiet. He sounds like he's talking to himself, not to me. "I can remember…I don't remember how my mind was working, but I remember it did work. This was a snap." He idly shifts a few rows of the cube, to no obvious affect. "Something like this was nothing. I remember how that feels. I remember…" He shakes his head and blinks down at the toy. "I've been waiting, since the minute I woke up in the lab. I kept waiting for something, and I wasn't sure what it was until after I got home and picked one of these things up."

He pauses, lost in his thoughts.

I don't know what he's waiting for. "What was it?" I ask him quietly.

He glances at me, looking surprised that I'm actually listening. He smiles a little bit. "I'm waiting for my brain to kick in."

I breathe in slightly. He looks so sad, though he's trying to hide it.

"I picked this thing up, and just sat there for a long time, waiting for that magical part of my head to kick in and tell me how to solve it." He looks back at the cube. "I can't do it myself. I can't remember everything I learned about the world. I look at things, and I know, I know how they work. But I can't remember…I can't get the words straight in my mind. I'm not smart enough to understand it."

He looks over at me suddenly, and there's a strange look on his face. He looks away fast, but he's completely tense now. "Fawkes…shit."

"What?"

He drops the cube back on the table. "I did a lot of stuff the last couple of days. Figured things out, you know? If I could remember any of it, I could…" He shakes his head. "I could do anything. It's ridiculous. I had everything figured out. Everything. Things you got no concept of. And it's so frigging frustrating that I can't…" He trailed off again, looking like he was having a hard time sorting out his thoughts and finding words to match them.

Poor guy. I can kinda figure out how he feels. It's frustrating enough when I try to think of some quote or something, and it's right there on the tip of my tongue. I can almost imagine how much he must have learned. To have all the knowledge inside him, and not be able to get at any of it…

It'd drive me crazy, I know that. I wonder what it's doing to him.

Again, I feel so damned guilty for what I made him do. Maybe it would have been better for him if I had let him go.

But I'm too selfish. I couldn't let my best friend be taken over forever by that stranger.

I hear mumbling, and realize he's said something. I look over, shaking my thoughts away. "What?"

He keeps his eyes on the wall in front of us. "I figured out that gland," he repeats more clearly.

My brows furrow. "What do you mean?"

"I mean…it seemed like an interesting challenge. No one could figure out how to get that gland out of you, so I thought I'd try." He rubs his face tiredly. "It took me about ten minutes."

I swallow, sitting up straighter. "You…you found a way?"

He nods. "It was easy. Ten minutes at my computer, and it was solved." His eyes move to me, solemn. "Don't get your hopes up. I erased it."

I swallow harder, a cruel hope rising and being crushed again in the span of a second. "Erased it."

"Darien…it didn't matter. Not then. I didn't care. Only reason I even thought about it was so I'd have something to distract me for a few minutes. It's just one of those…" He shakes his head, rubbing his eyes again. "I have it, Fawkes. Somewhere in my head, there's the answer. I could help you. I could help them fix the problems with the gland, stop the madness. I could make more, implant them. I could get you off the hook. You realize that?"

I don't know how to answer. The reality of those words is apparent. He could have helped me. If he had just written it down, saved it on a computer…

But he didn't. He didn't want to. He didn't care. So I'm stuck.

I saved his life. Shot myself with that retrovirus that could have killed me, and he didn't care enough to write it down.

I look away from him, looking at the wall without seeing it. I could be free now. It had taken that Bobby ten minutes. Ten frigging minutes to save my life.

I feel a shift, and when I glance back he's getting up and taking his plate to the kitchen. I watch him drop the plate, still full of food, in the sink. He stays where he is, leaning against the counter.

I turn to the wall, my thoughts trying to reconcile themselves.

Okay, so it wasn't Bobby who didn't care enough to save that information. It was that thing that Bobby had turned in to. That other person he became.

This Bobby cared. This Bobby was probably gonna drive himself nuts that he didn't have enough control to save what he'd learned. They weren't the same person. Not at all.

Still.

No. No still. Despite what Bobby in any form had said about friendship, and no matter that some Bobby had erased the solution to this gland problem, Bobby in both forms had been willing to die for me, and they had both proven it. That new Bobby, the one who said friendship was an illusion, was dead now to save my life.

And I'm left with this Bobby, who's left to deal with the aftereffects of the other Bobby's actions.

Think about it too much, I just know I'm gonna get a headache.

So I stop thinking about it, ashamed I even considered taking this out on Bobby. I stand up and head for the kitchen, dumping my empty plate into the sink. To do that, I have to lean past him, and I stay there, studying his profile.

His eyes are shut, his head bowed. He looks pretty upset.

Thanks to me. Fuck. "Come on, Bobby," I say quietly. "You want to talk about this?"

He breathes out in something that could have intended to be a laugh. It comes out little more than a sigh. "Why?"

"Why not?"

He glances over, his eyebrows raised. "You know if I were you, I'd be pretty pissed at me right now."

"Why's that?"

He shoves away from the counter. "Damn, Darien. Have you not heard a word I've said? I could have saved you, and I didn't!" He moves out of the kitchen, stalking back to the living room. "I could have done so much. I was so much more than I am now!" He picks up one of those cubes and holds it for a second. "You realize how much it's getting to me? Everything I look at, I know there's more than what I see. I look at this frigging toy, and I know how to solve it. I look at you, and I know how to cure you! But I can't! It's all in there, but it's in fucking Greek or something!" He clenches his hand around the cube, and a moment later he rears back and throws it into the wall.

The cube cracks a hole in the wall, then falls to the floor.

Bobby stands there for a minute, looking at it. "Damn. Now I gotta get some plaster."

I move out of the kitchen, a little edgy. "Bobby…"

He turns to me. "Sorry." He smiles slightly. "Close to med time."

I ignore the sarcasm. There's really only one thing I can say right now. "I'm sorry."

He reacts in surprise. "For what?"

I shrug. "My fault you're not super smart anymore. I forced you into giving it up. Maybe I should have let it go."

"No." He smiles wryly. "That's the strange thing. I'm glad you did what you did. I'm glad we're partners again. Guy like me, I'm meant to be just what I am. I just wish the whole thing had never happened. I guess ignorance is bliss, right? I know that there's all this stuff I don't know, and that's what stinks. If I just didn't know the stuff I didn't know, I'd be fine." He shuts his eyes with a laugh and shakes his head. "That made no damned sense."

"No, no. It makes sense. Scary, but it does."

Bobby meets my eyes, and smiles. "Yeah. Well, nothing we can do about it now. I'm sorry as hell for what happened, and I wish that other Bobby had saved a few more files on his computer. But I can't change it now."

I come closer, smiling back as much as I can. "And I can't change sticking that needle in my leg."

He nods. "So there ya are. Guess we gotta learn to live with it."

"Huh." I meet his eyes, and I figure I understand what he's going through. Well, no, I don't understand it. Can't. But I know how bad he feels. And he probably knows exactly how bad I feel.

I think, for us, that's a big part of what this whole partnership thing is all about. Partners in misery, and all that.

And you know, for some reason the fact that he's my partner in this along with everything else somehow makes this a lot easier to handle.

I just hope he feels the same way, otherwise this thing that happened to him will probably drive him nuts.

"So. Bobby. Are you okay?"

He laughs. "How many times you planning on asking me that tonight?"

I shrug. "Until you answer me."

The laugh fades, but the grin remains. "I got no idea, Darien. I don't think I'm that great right now, but I'm not that bad. I just got to get used to being me again." He looks at me. "How 'bout you?"

I reach his side and clap him on the arm. "Me? I have to get used to having you back, too. No picnic either, but I think I'll be fine."

He laughs. "Smart ass."

"I'm just sorry…" I don't finish. We've done enough of that.

He nods. "Yeah. Me too."

And that's all it takes. He grins, I grin back, and we go sit down and watch some TV.

The End