"O, am I 'oing to wiv oh wha

"O, am I 'oing to wiv oh wha?" Max asked Normal after work. She'd been upset to not see Logan's Aztec out front, but who the hell cared about him anyways. She had test results to get and a Logan-less life to lead. Maybe Normal would have good news and she would spend the next several nights celebrating at Crash with her friends. Her REAL friends.

"Please do not try to speak with the thermometer in your mouth," Normal replied. "It will affect the reading." Then he correctly translated her. "I believe you are going to live, it's the quality of life I'm concerned about." The thermometer beeped, and he took it out. "At least your temperature is normal," he commented.

"So you got some answers from all those books you were digging through?" she asked, glad to have the dumb thing out of her mouth.

"Not really," he replied, flipping through her chart. If he didn't give it to her soon, she was going to kill him. "But they did give me some ideas."

"And?"

"I don't think your problem is accidental," he replied matter-of-factly.

"If it was on purpose they wouldn't have been dissecting us to find out how to stop it," she snapped, remembering far more clearly than she wanted to the sight of Jack on a surgical table.

"They were dissecting because they were rank amateurs, and didn't know how to do a job properly," he replied in the same unflappable tone. "You weren't supposed to have seizures, you were just supposed to not be happy unless you were at Manticore."

Max stared at him doubtfully. "Lydecker wasn't exactly concerned with our happiness," she informed him. "As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure his goal was to make us miserable."

"How old were you when you escaped?" he asked.

"Nine or so. I don't know my real birth date."

"You were a little young then to actually need the serotonin."

Max glared at him. "Yeah right, we were just better at hiding the seizures then."

He sighed, and she had to restrain herself from hitting him. He might be Dr. Wonder-Boy, but he was always Normal. "I meant the other effects of serotonin. It also helps you keep you emotions regulated. People who have certain kinds of mental illnesses suffer from a lack of serotonin."

No Max was starting to understand. "They made us so if we left Manticore we were supposed to be all mental so we'd want to come back."

"Except they screwed up so that you don't process the serotonin properly, thus causing the seizures," he said. "I think that you used to make enough, it's just you excreted it rather than use it. With the implant though, you aren't making as much as before, so that's why the Tryptophan isn't working like it used to."

Max blushed. She was discussing her bodily excretions with Normal. "So, they wanted to do it to us. Makes sense. We'd all have to come running back for our meds to keep our heads on straight and be good little soldiers. How do you fix it?"

"Since the Tryptophan still does work to a point, I'm going to keep you on it, but I want you to start taking another drug called Depecote to help." He took out a bottle of pills and handed it to her.

She took the bottle gingerly, as if it were a rattlesnake rather than a plain brown bottle with a childproof lid. "What's this going to do?"

"Depecote helps with both epilepsy and some mental illnesses like manic-depressiveness. It should help to control the seizures and balance out the serotonin levels so that the seizures don't come on as often." He paused, and then smirked. "It may have some effects on your personality and moods, but I'll write a note to your boss to let him know that this is better than the alternate."

"Thanks," she said sarcastically. She looked back at him, a little worried. "What kind of effects on my personality, because I like what I got just fine."

"Well, it can cause sudden mood changes, you may sleep more or develop other odd sleeping patterns…" he trailed off. "Never mind, it's not like we'll be able to tell a difference as long as you don't decide to become schizophrenic on me."

"That one of those alternative problems?"

"Yes it is," he replied. "So if you do start hearing voices, or develop a religious mania, or aliens tell you to do things, please keep it away from the job because voices in your head cannot get signatures on packages." He was expecting a sarcastic reply, but Max had gone dead quiet, looking at the ground. She raised her face up, and he was shocked to see tears in her eyes.

"Religious mania?" she asked. "That can be because we're low on serotonin?" She sniffed. "All he needed was a dose of Tryptophan," she muttered to herself. She jumped off the table quickly, startling Normal. She grabbed her jacket and ran out of the room, promptly falling over Logan waiting for her in the hall.

Logan caught her easily, trying to keep her on her feet. He immediately saw the tears starting to fall down her face. "Max, what's wrong?" he asked worriedly. She couldn't talk; she pulled away from him and ran down the hall and out the door.

"What the hell did you say to her?" he demanded of Normal who was staring at the fleeing Max with the same confusion.

"I told her she could be fixed," he replied. "Guess she didn't like hearing that."