Author's Note: I've tried writing fanfiction before and every time I've failed miserably. This story too suffers from inconsistent verb tense and a rather dull narrative style, but I thought I may as well publish it anyhow since I figure it has a better story than anything I've tried to write before.

There'll be very little Ford in the first chapter, since I'm more than anything trying to establish the mystery of the series, but don't worry, he'll start being an actual main character in the second chapter.

Backupsmore University. The place where dreams and ambition go to die. Even the founders admitted it in a way when they named the place. There is absolutely nothing exceptional about it except for, perhaps, its lack of exceptional traits. Students mill around after class with dead eyes and stumble through the hallways aimlessly, lacking purpose or aim. Most of them are a product of their unfortunate fate, their lack of vigor an acknowledgement of their lack of a future, but others are different.

I call them the Soulless, because no matter what happens, their eyes never deviate from that pale depression. That time the principal broke his pelvis somehow? It had most students roaring with laughter or at least fighting to conceal smiles, but the Soulless just sat there and stared into the metaphorical void, as they've been doing ever since I arrived here. Once, I went up to one and poked him with a stick – he turned around to look at me, then the stick, and, having apparently decided that was enough of a reaction to convince me of his normalness (I wasn't), turned back around and continued to stare at his desk with an absent expression – not like he was thinking about something else and couldn't be bothered to notice the real world, more like he wasn't there at all. I was justifiably disturbed but, at the same time, vaguely fascinated by the Soulless despite the absence of any kind of trait or behavior to observe or be fascinated by. Being the intrepid and shamelessly rude person I am, I continued my studies into them.

My first test was simple – I wanted to test if they were zombies, as sometimes they moaned as zombies do, so I threw one off the roof of the school. As I had predicted, he got back up as if he hadn't been thrown off a fairly tall building and continued to some unknown location. Just a month ago I'd seen a similar situation – that time, a Soulless had walked into a street, been hit by a bus, got crushed by the wheels of the same bus, and was then run over by numerous other cars until rush hour was over. As at least an hour had elapsed since the first collision, quite the crowd, including me, had gathered and watched with morbid interest as he picked himself back up, looked around, said "ouch, that hurt, I need to go to the hospital" in possibly the most monotonous voice one could say such a thing in, and walked off. Most of the crowd, apparently pleased by his response, walked off, but I stayed there in shock and disbelief, wondering what exactly just happened. In any case, what I'm trying to say is I was at least 80% sure he would survive the fall, so it wasn't as if I had thrown him off knowing he might die.

My second test involved a bit more complexity – I wanted to see how a Soulless would respond in a social situation as a person of focus. Creating the impromptu party in Mr. Sleeper's class was easy enough (one only needs a radio, some confetti and beer, and a disco ball for good measure), and while making Farley, the only Soulless in the class, the "life of the party" was rather more difficult, after a few tries I was successful (and it only took a few fireworks and a single stick of dynamite too). At first, Farley only turned around as Soulless do as some kind of acknowledgement of the presence of other people, looking a person at the forefront of the crowd in the eyes and then promptly directing his gaze to another, but once the chanting started, he stilled as if realizing he'd need to actually demonstrate some capacity for social interaction to continue to pass himself off as a regular person (not that he'd put much effort into doing so before, but most people at Backupsmore were predictably and yet still incredibly unobservant when it came to any form of abnormality that wasn't directly related to them). So he pulled the ends of his lips up through liberal application of his facial muscles and contrived to force the rushing of blood to his face, indicated by a light discoloration of his cheeks from pale white to slightly red. It would be obvious to anybody who wasn't highly drunk (but most people at the party were) that he was neither genuinely smiling nor blushing, but nevertheless people still laughed and teased him, saying things like "Farley, what a joker, eh!" and "Farley, you've got a beautiful face, you know that?" and punctuating their statements with slaps on the back, howls, and occasional attempts to squeeze Farley's cheeks. But though Farley was undoubtedly the center of attention of that particular party, I was unable to gather much data regarding the Soulless' more complex social reactions due to the utter inability of Backupsmore students to recognize irregularities in manner and behavior in others. No wonder the Soulless are able to pass off as normal students, though. That's one mystery solved, at the very least.

I decided I'd need the help of a professor to observe a Soulless actually interacting with someone. After all, it seemed obvious enough that the Soulless, for whatever reason, wished to stay at Backupsmore – perhaps it's simply a safe environment in which such visibly abnormal entities can flourish, or perhaps there's a more sinister reason. But in my third test, I only wanted to see the full extent of a Soulless' capacity to function as a normal human would. And so, after class, after most of the students had left save for a Soulless named Neon and me, I approached Neon and, once in close proximity to her, promptly fell over with an overly-dramatic scream that, as expected, drew the panicked attention of the teacher.

"Are you alright?" He'd inquired as he'd helped me up. I feigned distress and fright as I pointed hesitantly toward Neon's sluggishly moving form (the Soulless always rose from their seats and left slowly enough to literally be beat by a snail – I'd tested it) and said, "We-well, Mr. Hollah, I-I was…" I paused slightly for both dramatic effect and to raise the ostensible authenticity of my discomfort. "I was knocked over by Neon!" I thought my performance rather convincing, but just in case I'd chosen one of the most sympathetic teachers in the school. Once, he saw a group of 12 homeless child and raised them all. They'd grown up to be mostly successful – one, actually, was a Nobel Prize winner. Expectedly, I felt his hand gently place itself on my shoulder and, feeling it was safe enough to lift my head from where I had buried it in between my palms, I looked up to see him sternly glaring at Neon. Such an act probably wouldn't work on a professor normally since the accused student would vehemently deny whatever they were being accused of, but Neon only looked at Mr. Hollah with those same blank eyes. At the very least, she'd stopped moving, which was as much of an indication as I could hope for from a Soulless that she'd noticed something had happened.

"Neon, I expected better from you!" said he, frowning intensely at her still figure. Leave it to Mr. Hollah, I suppose, to know the name of the silent girl who sits in the back of his classroom which housed an average of 100 students per class. "Why would you do that to Sam?"

"Um," she began slowly, "sorry. Sam."

Mr. Hollah shook his head, but I could see he was pleased by Neon's "apology".

"Please, Neon, you're usually so much more well-behaved! I don't want to hear of another incident like this, you understand?" he said rather strictly.

"Like, yes," she replied, and then, a second later, added, "Dude?"

Mr. Hollah only nodded his head as if satisfied with the six words Neon had said and walked away triumphantly. I stared at his back, a slight feeling of betrayal mixing with a building frustration and exasperation, and I made as if to stalk away, convinced that was all I would learn from that particular test.

But then I felt Neon tap my shoulder. As one would expect, I jumped higher than the cow on the moon. It was only with much trepidation and wariness that I turned around to face her, but Neon had no ominous warnings, no dire threats to scare me away from further investigation of her kind. Rather she only said, "Like, not cool, man." And then walked away at a rate slightly faster than her normal pace. I guess that was her way of implying disgust or contempt or anger over my actions, but I had long since inferred that Soulless couldn't feel such emotions. It simply wasn't for them.

It occurred to me that night that I simply wasn't capable of engineering a situation severe enough to motivate the Soulless to actual action. I had been a coward, trying to get others to aggravate them or get them to do anything besides look like living death, but if I truly wanted to learn more about how they acted when their sturdy equilibrium was disturbed, I myself would have to be the cause of that disturbance.

I was desperate and, to be honest, at that point quite obsessed with the Soulless - I can only say my growing fascination with them can be at least partly attributed to the relative dullness of the rest of Backupsmore. And so, in my unstable mental state, I took to the streets with a plastic knife from the cafeteria and cornered a Soulless in an alley in the area surrounding campus. So hungry was I to elicit some kind of response from them, in fact, that I didn't even stop to ponder the glaring abnormality in the Soulless' behavior that night – the Soulless never strayed from campus, they barely went out at all, even at night. So while I waved the knife around in what I thought might look like a menacing way at the Soulless, I left completely unacknowledged the approaching shadow from behind, in a truly sinister way wielding a syringe that was promptly plunged into my neck.

I woke up to a room with only a single person (excluding me) in it, hunched forward on a wooden chair similar to the one I found myself bound with rope to. I had always had vague sentiments of fear and anxiety regarding my investigations, but never before had I realized just how much I'd doomed myself.

Because when I looked up, squinted slightly in the dim light of the windowless room, squirmed despairingly in my bonds, and finally examined the face of that person sitting so calmly it couldn't be anyone but the mastermind behind the Soulless, I realized something.

I didn't have my glasses. The blur of tan that I assumed was his face furrowed the little yellow blobs I intuited to be his eyebrows, but for all I knew it could've been his hair.

"Aren't you surprised at all?" asked a very familiar voice.

"Could you just hand me my glasses?" I asked in the politest tone I could force. "I just, I can't see anything without them so-"

"Ah, crap, that's right." The blur shifted slightly so it was closer to the gray trapezoid occupying most of my field of vision. "Sorry about that, I took them off right after I knocked you out so they wouldn't fall off while I was tying you up, and, well, it was just one big process so I forgot, and…"

"It's fine," I interjected. "I know kidnapping's probably a very difficult process. I mean, you have to plan where to incapacitate the subject – also, very impressive how you lured me into the alley – and then pick a sufficiently bare room to have the subject wake up in, and then you have to wait for some-"

My vision suddenly sharpened to its normal level of perception as the glasses were placed atop my eyes, and I couldn't stop my gasp as the figure who put them on me stepped back.

"Mr. Hollah!?"

He nodded his head and sat back down with a slight sigh. "Yes, it was me. I was the one who created the Soulless." With slowed, almost reluctant movements, he began reaching for the back of his chair.

"But why?" I asked evenly. I figured if I was going to die here, I may as well get the answers I, indirectly or not, risked my life to obtain. "What is their purpose? And – wait – you call them the Soulless too?"

He paused his arm movement momentarily. "Well, it seemed like an appropriate title. They don't look like they have souls, do they?" Mr. Hollah didn't seem particularly happy about that.

"But you're such a-"

"Kind person?"

"I was going to say pushover, but, yeah, sure, kind person."

If Mr. Hollah had previously moved as a Soulless would, his movements, however, not slowed by some notion of soulless-ness but rather by resignation and genuine sadness, it seemed now I had incited in him a more active passion that caused him to address me with no small amount of anger – not anger at me, though.

"I didn't mean for it to happen, okay? I just wanted to do something good for the world, but in the process I screwed over the lives of 12 innocent people. And do I regret it? Of course! But I can't go back now, and there's nothing I can do to help them-"

"Ok, ok," I interrupted, "I get it, you didn't mean it. But-" I eye his hand now midway to the back of the chair "-that doesn't mean you have to get rid of me. I can keep a secret, promise. I'll stop investigating the Soulless. You don't have to do whatever villain-y thing you're about to do."

"Oh, but I'm afraid I do." He reached toward the dreaded chair back with renewed vigor and pulled from it some old metal contraption. "Behold," he said with hushed voice, looking at the device with some mixture of sadness and reverence, "the happiness extractor."

The device was clearly ancient, rust covering antique metal parts, the thing itself shaking slightly as Mr. Hollah moved it from its resting spot behind the chair. "A family heirloom," he explained, "passed from generation to generation. 'Course, most of my family was too afraid to use it, so I'm afraid its effects were mostly undocumented before I got ahold of it. Perhaps, if I'd known more about how to use it, then…" he trailed off as he shifted the device in his hand to point towards me.

"Woah, woah, wait a second," I try, vainly, to raise my hands. "If all it extracts is happiness, then why the heck are all the Soulless so unresponsive? And immortal? How does a 'happiness extractor' allow one to survive being hit by a bus and thrown off a building?"

He pauses, surprise evident on his face. "Immortal? Thrown off a building?"

Though not one to be easily surprised, his response is enough to make me narrow my eyes. "You mean… you didn't know about it? The immortality? I threw one off the roof of the main building and he got back up like nothing had happened."

"I…" he paused slightly, looked thoughtfully at the happiness extractor, and then shook his head. "Nonsense. Stop trying to stall the inevitable!" And with that, he re-aimed the extractor at me, his hands fiercely gripping the bent handle.

"So what if you steal my happiness?" I yell at him, now tugging desperately at my bonds. "I'll still know all about the Soulless! I can still tell everyone about them!"

He keeps the extractor aimed at my head, but he stills slightly. "Don't you think I've done this before?"

I stop fighting against my bonds. "What?"

"November 24, 1964, a student confronted me, told me he'd seen me use the extractor on his friend and he was going straight to the principle to tell him of my misdeeds. I panicked, the only thing I had on me was the extractor – but once his happiness was gone, it seemed so was his reason to let everyone know about what I had done. I- I don't know exactly how this thing works, but what I do know is whatever it does, it stops people from exposing me. And that's-" his hand trembles slightly, "-that's enough for me. I'm sorry, but I can't allow you to live freely now that you know."

I could see the barrel of the device warm up, and I couldn't help but look away as the glow intensified, as I prepared myself for whatever horrifying thing would come next. I thought about all I hadn't done in my life, how I hadn't even told my family I loved them as one is supposed to some unspecified time before death, how, if I thought my future dim before, it could only get worse after all my happiness was extracted. Perhaps I was being a little dramatic – I wasn't actually being killed – but I'd seen the state of the Soulless, and if that unending depression, or rather complete lack of emotions was what awaited me, I figured he may as well have been holding a gun.

But instead of the buzz of the ray, I heard a resounding clunk as if someone had smacked another someone's head with a heavy dictionary (that's exactly what happened) and the slight thump of a body hitting concrete. And then there was a pair of hands tugging my ropes loose, and as I let out a sigh of relief and unsteadily stepped onto the floor with wobbly legs, I saw a guy about my age with brown hair, clutching a dictionary tightly with both hands and looking down at the body slumped below him – that of Mr. Hollah.

"Thank you." It is all I am able to say then, my mind preoccupied by a chaotic whirl of questions and thoughts. "I thought for sure I was going to become a Soulless."

"I'm just glad we made it in time." The man gave a slight, hesitant smile, before dropping the dictionary on Mr. Hollah's head (with a resounding plunk that almost made me wince) and outstretching his hand toward mine. I absently noted he seemed to have one more finger than usual as I grasped his hand in mine.

"This is my associate, Fiddleford McGucket," he inclined his head toward the short man in jeans and some painfully bright shirt who had freed me, "and I'm Stanford Pines. A pleasure to make your acquaintance."

I shook his hand.