Chapter 4

"Take a seat and make yourself comfortable."

Dorothy watched as Duo sat down on the leather chair Indian style. She made a mental note of his interesting behaviour.

"Your world is a very interesting place." Duo said after a moment's observation. "Its very...colourful and bright."

"What do you mean colourful and bright?" Dorothy asked. "This laboratory is as boring as a room can get." She said and pointed to the white walls.

"There is more colour here than there is in my world."

Dorothy paused. "Your world?" She sat down in her chair opposite Duo and pulled out a notepad. "Do you think you could tell me more about your world? What is it like?"

Duo cringed visibly. "Its alright. You don't have to answer any questions you're not comfortable with and remember there are security guards stationed outside my office so you are not going to get hurt."

Violet orbs gave the room a quick once over before the braided boy spoke. ""I've spent most of my life in a dark place, a place where everything was black, a place where you can barely see your own hand when held in front of your face." Duo cocked his head to the side as he remembered his world. " Sometimes there is light but that happens very rarely so I guess you could say that my world is black and white."

Duo pointed to the orange highlighter that was on the desk. "My world doesn't have this colour." He reached out and picked up the highlighter.

"This is a beautiful colour. What do you call it?"

"Its orange."

"Oh. Well my world doesn't have anything orange in it. I think it's quite a nice colour. Maybe I can get Quatre to paint his room orange. I'm sure it will brighten the place up a bit. His cream coloured walls are a bit boring as well."

The thought of painting one of Quatre's room's bright orange was too much for Dorothy and she laughed out loud.

Alarmed at sudden hilarity shown, Duo quickly covered his head with his arms. "I didn't mean it like that...please, please don't hurt me. Please don't laugh at me. I didn't mean to say anything bad. Please...please I beg of you."

Dorothy schooled her smile and voice down to a serious nature. "Duo you know I wouldn't do anything to hurt you. Remember you are under full security. You have nothing to fear. I wasn't laughing at you. I was just laughing at the thought of painting Quatre's room bright orange."

"But...what's wrong with a bright orange room?"

Dorothy tapped her head and tried to think of a plausible way of explaining the situation to Duo.

"Well for starters, Quatre is a very sensible person and radical changes in his life such as painting his cream walls bright orange just doesn't suit his personality."

Duo nodded thoughtfully.

"Now, if you are comfortable enough to continue do you think you can tell me more about your world?"

"Um...okay."

"Are you sure?"

Duo nodded his head to affirm his decision.

"Good. Now I'm just going to put these on your head." She said and showed Duo the electrodes that he would soon be wearing. "They will not hurt you so you needn't be afraid. These electrodes will read your brainwaves and show me your thinking patterns. You think you can handle that?"

Duo nodded once again and Dorothy proceeded to attach the electrodes onto his head. Afterwards she connected the electrodes to wires that were hooked up a translator. Then she checked his pulse before going up to the switchboard. She was about to turn the machine on when Duo cried out.

"Wait!"

"Yes Duo?"

"This machine...it will only ready my brain waves read my brainwaves right? It won't do anything else?"

"Well the machine does do more than read them. It also interprets and prints them out onto sheets of paper so we experts can analyse them. The printer might be a little noisy but that isn't anything you should be afraid of, alright?"

"Yea, ok. I suppose you can start now."

Dorothy pushed the switch up and the machine started to hum. The mind control specialist then proceeded to take down notes from the readings that came up on the screen and Duo watched the printer publish page after page of scribbly lines with great interest.

"Duo I'm now going to ask you to close your eyes and turn a light on and off. The light will flicker at different speeds and this will measure how fast your brain reacts to changes in light."

Duo closed his eyes and was immediately surrounded by darkness.

"Ok. I'm going to turn the light on and adjust the flicker speed to fast, medium and slow at random intervals." Said Dorothy as she flipped the switch.

The braided boy's world went instantaneously dark and he remembered his origin. When the light started to flicker, it reminded the braided boy of the rare moments when light had shone in his dark world.

Dorothy watched the readings on the machine carefully. Something was wrong. The brainwaves printed weren't of those for a normal human person. Emotion lines curved all over the place. The patterns were inconsistent with some waves were extremely high while others were low and none of these lasted for more than three turns. The thought patterns were also all over the place and lasted for short periods of time. Was Duo ADD (1)? Was he emotionally unstable? And he was also missing the regular brainwave pulse that was consistent in all people. Dorothy knew that Duo was a creation of Heero's mind but would that make a difference? Was Duo human? There were so many unanswered questions. She needed time to think, some time to analyse the new information, somebody to discuss the current situation.

"You can open your eyes now." She said as she turned off the light. She then motioned for a security guard over. "You're free to go now. I'm going to have a doctor friend of mine escort you back to Quatre's home now as us staff members will be holding a meeting that is going to last the whole night. Is that ok?"

"Yea...ok." Said Duo and allowed himself to be led outside.

Dorothy waited ten minutes to make sure that Duo had left the building. She then walked to the phone and called Wufei.

"Hello Wufei. Look its Dorothy, I just finished doing an EEG (2) with Duo and I've found something abnormal."

"Yes well we knew from the start that there would be something unusual going on."

"Well what I've found may also concern Heero."

Wufei immediately turned serious. "Ok Dorothy I understand. I'll call a meeting right away. Come to my office in half an hour. I'll make sure that Heero is under supervision...Duo is still with you right?"

"Uh, no. I sent him home with a Dr Sally Po."

"Good. He needs somebody with him at all times." The Chinese man said and breathed a sigh of relief. "Now I'm going to have to hang up on you and call the rest of the group. Bring to the meeting all the data you have, graphs, paperwork, everything. Got it?" Wufei asked and disconnected.

The mind control specialist hung up and started picking up the data that the machine had printed out. "On it right away sir." She muttered to herself as she walked out of the room.

(1) Attention Deficit Disorder

(2) EEG An instrument that measures electrical potentials on the scalp and generates a record of the electrical activity of the brain