Author's note: Jinx is Subject#7, KF is #6, Robin is #1. The others, somewhat arbitrarily, are Cyborg is #2, Beast Boy is #3, Raven is #4 and Starfire is #5. Sorry for any confusion, but, as the previous chapter, the transmittal letter from the psychiatrist, says, Robin wanted all names removed.
3 May 2008
Transcript of first evaluation session with Subject #7
(notes in italics added by David Silberman, M.D. all names have been deleted in favor of subject #'s or general desciptions per the City's agreement with the Teen Titans.)
(Titans Tower was an inspiring sight on this, my first visit. I think we in the general public don't quite appreciate the size of it because it's a half mile away in the middle of the bay. The boat to the island in the middle of the bay left me at the dock, from where I walked up stone steps and walkway to the main entrance, briefcase in hand. I wondered, momentarily, if there was a particular way that I should hold my briefcase to be absolutely sure not to seem like some villain from the Brotherhood of Evil or the HIVE in disguise. But I dismissed these thoughts as paranoia and rang the buzzer. The voice of, I believe, (Subject #1), answered in the same all business fashion I had come to expect from our negotiations. A few moments later, I could see (Subject #2) and (Subject #3) engaged in horseplay inside the building. The much larger Subject #2 mostly having an easy time of it, lifting slender (Subject #3) off the ground at will. (Subject #3) got himself free, responded to a prompt on his communicator and came to the door and let me in. I had seen (Subject #3) on television but it was still striking to see a young man who was a rich, dark green.
With minimal conversation, he led me up to the 14th floor. Both he and (Subject #2) regarded me like an enemy. I was barely out of the elevator and into the hallway and looking around at the giant common room, kitchen and communications center before (Subject #1) instructed the other team members that I was to be brought to a backup communications center room on the 6th floor. A red and yellow blur came straight at me and (Subject #6) seemed to materialize out of thin air in front of me. He said he would handle it and shepherded me into the elevator and then to the correct room on the 6th floor. He also regarded me very warily. He was a very striking presence seen for the first time with his looks and orange hair and tight red and yellow suit. He told me that this whole thing was ridiculous and that (Subject #2) would never hurt anyone. He said it was incredible to him that he and his teammates were regarded with suspicion by anyone in Jump City. I told him I was just doing my job. He led me into a good sized room furnished in italian leather furniture and cherry wood side tables but open in the middle with one small window looking out to the open ocean. I commented, innocently, about how tight his uniform looked. He seemed to take this as an insult and said nothing. He proceded to simply stare at me for a minute till his wife, (Subject #7), the first interviewee, appeared in the hallway. They shared a kiss and I could hear him tell her "Just be yourself."
(Subject #7) is a beautiful young woman with an exotic appearance, perhaps five foot eight and 120 pounds with very light gray skin, pink hair and pink cat's eyes. Her attire was a combination of revealing and prudish, mixing a very short hem length, lace and a plunging neckline with full arm and leg length under layers. If the others regarded me warily, she was positively hostile but not with any air of insecurity at all. She seemed very sure of herself at all times.)
DS: This session takes place at 2 PM on May third 2008, Doctor David Silberman and . . .
#7: (Subject #7)
(she produced a dollar bill from the cleavage of her black lace top and handed it to me)
#7: I've never been so sure in my life that I was overpaying for something. But (Subject #1) says we have to make this official. So, there.
DS: Um, thank you.
#7: Okay, let's get this fraud started.
DS: Um, why are you so hostile? I'm working with (Subject #1) and the rest of you on this to protect you from Captain Doyle.
#7: Yeah, you're practically part of the team.
DS: Well, I'm here to help.
#7: Oh please. What a load of shit! You're here because a stupid little girl whom (Subject#2) was saving from crashing debris at the downtown mall got confused about all his grunting effort to protect her from, oh, ten tons of falling concrete walkway. And you're here because the stupid little girl is the niece of a City Councilor, which explains the stupid part, and the resulting hysteria when her racist parents couldn't just tell her she was wrong to think the big black guy was trying to hurt her and to get over her precious little nightmares and quit spouting bullshit to the other little kids at daycare.
DS: That's . . one interpretation of events-
#7: The true one. Why else are you here?
DS: Well, according to the City, I'm here to determine if any of you are dangers to yourselves or anyone else.
(crackling sounds at this point on the recording were the result of (Subject #7) first creating a pink laser projection from one fingertip that she waved inches in front of my face, then seeming to toss a crackling ball of pink energy back and forth from her one hand to the other before making it disappear in a blinding flash of light)
#7: Do you think I'm a danger to myself or anyone else?
DS: Why do you try to antagonize me like that?
#7: Why not?
DS: Well, you know, some subjects try and show me their best face.
#7: What does it really matter? Anybody can make you guys buy almost any line of crap if they put it across artfully enough. At the Academy-
DS: the, uh, let me see here in the file, the . . uh, HIVE Academy?
#7: Yes. The HIVE Academy. We had a class there on duping you shrinks. A hundred fifty page manual with examples on how to fake it all, and more importantly than that, what to fake. Haha! There was-haha-there was one early graduate of the Academy who got caught and was facing some hard time. But they said that first they were going to have him examined by doctor Iggityblot or whoever the hell it was. So in his allowed time at a computer, he went online and searched for the name Iggityblot and found out what disorder the guy had written about. By the time Iggityblot came to talk to him he'd turned himself into the most amazing case of that same disorder and Iggityblot was excited as hell to tell the court that this guy should go to a hospital and not jail. And in the hospital he cracked Iggityblot on the head and escaped easily.
DS: Well, I mean, do you have any proof of that?
#7: He spoke to the class.
DS: Oh.
#7: And then there was that moron, David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer, the village freaking idiot who made up a story that he heard god talking to him through his dog and some shrink like you totally bought it.
DS: That was not a uh, not a proud moment in the history of the profession. But you . . you seem very emotional about this. Did you have a bad experience, yourself, with a psychiatrist?
(at this point, Subject #7's eyes briefly glowed bright pink)
DS: What was . . ?!
#7: You might say that. Believe it or not I went to a regular school for a while. The teasing and bullshit were non-stop right from the beginning. But, luckily for me, our school had a psychiatrist. They brought me in to see her and she told me right away. It was all my fault. They didn't discipline a single kid. They wanted me to color my hair and stuff. But my mama said she wanted me to feel celebrated for being just the way I was. The school shrink complained that we had to meet her half way. My mama asked what was coming from the other direction. What else was going to be done to make sure school wasn't hell for me? Annnnnnnnnnd the shrink couldn't come up with anything. Nothing. There was no second part of the plan. All the other kids could still be assholes. I was just supposed to conform and make myself a little smaller target.
DS: I'm sorry. You . . had a tough childhood, didn't you?
#7: Oh no. It just drove me to a life of crime and wanting to say fuck you to the entire society that put me down. No. Not tough.
DS: . . . Does your husband celebrate you for just the way you are?
#7: . . . Haha. Gods, doc. That was a clever switchback. You actually listened a bit and used something I said a few seconds earlier as a jumping off point after you didn't like the segues available from the last thing I said. Pretty good. I might have to break a sweat to verbally kick your ass. And, for the record, yes.
DS: Do you love him?
#7: Of course I love him. He's . . . he's a great guy. Leave it at that.
DS: Why marry at such a young age?
#7: Um, hello . . . . I just said . . . . and because it feels right. He feels right. On top of that, it had an almost politically incorrect appeal to it. Don't just shack up with him. Go all the way. He wanted to, anyway. He's that way, the hero sort, without the obnoxious edge to it. And it was so much the wrong thing, the white trash thing to do. It appealed to me.
DS: You like doing things that will piss off certain people?
#7: Well, marrying (Subject #6) didn't piss anyone off. Oh, maybe some fangirls who dreamed about marrying him and getting their hands on his speedster ass. But the same people who didn't want me to be part of their phony conception of society are probably aghast at the idea of marrying at our age. So, yeah, I won't deny that there's some ancillary benefit there.
DS: And maybe some of them didn't like you claiming one of their heroes?
#7: Oh, I know they didn't. A lot of people didn't. (Subject #6) was a squeaky clean golden boy. His suit's a bit too tight but the whole line of succession thing, (Subject #6) following (his Justice League mentor) totally appealed to the people who don't like me. Kind of smacks of inheritance, the super powers staying with the . . "right" people just like they think the money should stay with the . . "right" people.
DS: Some might have called your actions opportunistic.
#7: Don't hide behind indeterminate subjects. Call me opportunistic if you want to.
DS: Okay, you're opportunistic. You were fine with evil. Then a very attractive boy offers you another option and you read the big picture tea leaves just right and switch to the good side just before the Titans smash the Brotherhood of Evil in Paris.
#7: Uh, you do know that I helped do the smashing? I was part of that fight not just a beneficiary of it.
DS: Yes, you were.
#7: And, anyway, how would being morally opportunistic separate me from 99 percent of the population? Do you really think that John Q. Idiot walking down the street does good, on those occasions when he does so, out of a deep understanding of ethical dilemmas? Do you think blond girls giggling at the mall just thought of unusual wrinkles in Kant's categorical imperative or would they be more attuned to Mill's pragmatism or maybe Rand's rational self interest?
DS: If you know those names then-
#7: I know more than the names. But, do you think the average person knows much more than a fear of punishment at being caught doing wrong?
DS: That's a pretty pessimistic view of people.
#7: Maybe it is. But you know who today's greatest pessimists are?
DS: Who?
#7: Yesterday's idealists.
DS: Were you an idealist yesterday?
#7: Well, I didn't expect people to be morons and assholes. Mama taught me all the fairy tales and happily ever afters any other little girl's taught. Then I learned how horrible people could be.
DS: Did that justify being on the side of evil?
#7: At the time, it felt like that. I mean, how fricking high minded is a 10 year old girl supposed to be, fer chrissakes? If no one on one side seems to want to let me be part of the game and the other side likes and rewards me, was I so crazy?
DS: I suppose the positive and negative reinforcement you were experiencing would seem to lead you in the direction you went. So, what changed? Kid Flash?
#7: Ugh! Simplify! Simplify! Simplify! Everyone wants to simplify everything. Gods! I love him. I told you that. But it was not just him, okay?! That's gossip magazine thinking. The latest Flinx pictures inside!! The fastest good boy and the bad girl who went good for him, Page 32! Speedster and Sorceress make a little magic. See Page Six!! No!! It's not that simple unless you're a simpleton. Being on the evil side meant I wasn't experiencing the prosaic stupidities and prejudices of average people.
DS: Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
#7: Oh please. Wrong aphorism. I didn't grow more fond of them but maybe my anger at how they acted toward me diminished when I wasn't constantly exposed to them. And I saw some of the people on the evil side, some really sick sadistic fucks. There wasn't greater sophistication or more discriminating taste in them or a truer morality. There wasn't Nietzsche's Zarathustra there. There was just a joy in hurting people.
DS: You didn't want to hurt people?
#7: No. I didn't concern myself with 'em at all. I conceptualized people, put labels on 'em and thought of 'em as parts of categories and didn't look too closely at any individual ones so that I could feel fine after robbing 'em.
DS: So, maybe you're a nice person after all?
#7: Hmmph. No. The "nice" people are the ones who get walked on or crapped on and who just take it and move on. I fought back. Me? Nice?! Hahahaha!
DS: Are the other Titans nice? Is (subject #6) nice?
(Subject #7 pauses a long time)
#7: Nice is too dessicated an adjective to bother applying to individual, complex people. Only an impoverished vocabulary requires the use of the word 'nice'.
DS: What word would you choose instead?
#7: Well, even just . . "good" has more force to it than frigging "nice". Yes. All the Titans are good. (Subject #6) is good.
DS: And now that you're on the side of good, do the, what did you call them, the . . . prosaic stupidities of average people make you mad?
#7: I still have a temper if that's what you're getting at. I still have occasional . . . anger management issues. Fine. I admit that. But I don't hurt people. I help them, along with teammates. Even though they only say 'thank you' half the time and treat us like circus freaks, we help them. We don't hurt anyone. I don't hurt anyone. You've got records. Have I hurt anyone, anyone at all since I became a Titan? Hmm?
DS: I have no record of your hurting anyone since that time.
#7: Have I hurt myself?
(Subject #7 held her arms out so that her bare, unmarked wrists were visible to me.)
DS: . . . No. I see no evidence of that.
#7: So, we're done. Right?
DS: No, no. Not so fast. Part of what I'm supposed to do in an evaluation like this is determine, as well as I can, if you're liable to be a danger in the future. Let's talk a little while more so I can form a more complete picture of your mindset.
#7: Oh . . . yay . . .
DS: You said, that the people you help treat you like freaks. How does that make you feel?
#7: How should it make me feel?! It makes me feel like a freak. Duh. Every once in a while I give in to the stupid urge to be seen as normal. I know it can't happen. But I'd like to not deal with shit from the general public and so, a few pleasant encounters and I start thinking that maybe I'll actually accomplish the sisyphean task of moving in the public's conception to being a reassuring presence. And then some asshole we save will gawk at me and say that I look unhealthy or scary or unchristian or some ignorant shit like that.
DS: Do you think the public attitude toward you is improving at all?
#7: It's impossible to say. What I experience is a small sample of an ocean of individual attitudes. Maybe people seem ever so slightly better but there's no way to really measure such things. I mostly try to ignore it. And mostly I'm successful. If I'm at a museum with (Subject #6), I look at the paintings or the sculptures and talk with him. I don't much notice little girls whispering to each other. If I'm in a club with him, we talk and dance and if someone with too many drinks in her mouths off I probably don't hear it anyway. And if I'm with the entire team, I'm just one of seven freaks. Oh, maybe six. It's probably seldom that (Subject #1) gets lumped in as one.
DS: So, you think you're adjusted to the situation?
#7: Adjusted. Resigned. Whatever you want to call it.
DS: Back when you were an idealist, did you believe that you would find acceptance?
#7: No, I . . . well . . . it was more like I didn't realize I'd be totally rejected and harassed and hated. Our trailer was out on the edge of town with all these amazing fields around us. Gods! If-if you'd seen me as a little girl you'd have thought I was going to grow up to be (Subject #5). I was so completely girly girl. I'd go skipping through these fields running after butterflies and picking out the most beautiful flowers that I found, talking to imaginary friends and living fairy tale adventures in my mind. Of course the flowers wilted in short order but Mama just told me that that's what always happened with flowers. She was so . . . protective in a certain way . . .
(There was a very long pause as Subject #7 seemed to consider something in her mind for a minute or so)
I've often wondered, doc, whether that was the best thing that she could do for me or the worst. What do you think?
DS: Um, I'm not sure.
#7: Go on. Hazard a guess. You're gonna take guesses about all of us for the morons at the City Council. What do you think? Was it good for me that my mother sort of isolated me and extended the period of my childhood when I filled my head with thoughts of fairy tales and what was pretty in the world around me? Or should she have gotten me used to being a pariah as soon as possible?
DS: I don't know that I could really guess which was the best choice. I-
#7: Gods. What a frigging coward you are. Just give me a snap opinion.
DS: Okay. I . . . I guess I would have supported acclimating you to how things were as soon as possible.
#7: Ha! You maroon. It was a trick question. Where'd you get your diploma, off the back of a book of matches or online or something? Mama did the right thing. It was gonna be horrible no matter what once I encountered other kids. She let me grow up nurturing my own little reveries as long as she could. I can still remember the look on her face after I came home from my first day of school. I didn't even have to tell her. She could imagine it all, the kids in a circle around me, shouting and throwing things. I cried, like, one tear and that made Mama cry about a hundred. That's why, even though she left me, I didn't feel hate toward her.
DS: Your mother left you?
#7: Had to leave me with another relative when I was eight. She was getting sicker and sicker and my bad luck powers were destroying everything we owned.
DS: How did that make you feel?
(There was a long pause as Subject #7 raised one eyebrow in an expression that might be categorized as contemptuous and refused to respond)
DS: How did that-
#7: I heard you. Aren't there some blanks so obvious that even psychiatrists can fill them in?
DS: You don't have to get snippy.
#7: Just don't be so ridiculous.
DS: What about your father?
#7: Same as my mother. He left a year or so before she did. Couldn't take it.
DS: And then you went to live with a relative. You didn't stay around either.
#7: Um, no. I didn't wait for the villagers with torches to march to my family's double wide and set it ablaze. Grrrr. Fire bad. Yadda yadda yadda
DS: Huh?
#7: Metaphor! Metaphor fer chrissakes. They never came anywhere near our little double wide castle Frankenstein.
DS: Have you ever seen them again, your mother and father?
#7: Yeah. I've seen both of them. I don't do much more than talk every month or so with my father. (Subject #6) found him for me. And I see Mama all the time. He found her too. He's good at leg work.
DS: How's your relationship with her?
#7: Very good now. What could she do? I wasn't lucky enough to only get my powers when I was 11 years old, like Speedster. That would've been so much better. But things are mended. And she just loves him for helping get me over to this side.
DS: Alright, but, to backtrack, your parents left and you were dropped off at a relative's and life went further downhill and you started into a life of crime. Let's see . . . the file says . . . you were suspected in numerous robberies of ATM's that mysteriously self-destructed. Is that right?
#7: Yes. I was . . suspected of that.
DS: . . . and shortly after that and some other "suspected" crimes, you were recruited by the HIVE Academy. Is that right.
#7: Without acknowledging any particular event, yeah, that seems about right.
DS: What was that like?
#7: I told you already. It was a school, a school of a different sort but I found out that a whole lot of the people on the evil side of things were sick fucks.
DS: How different of a school was it?
#7: Well, they taught crime. They taught you how to commit small crimes and to engineer huge heists. They taught you everything about it. Casing places. Fencing things afterward. How to utilize your teammates. Fending off rival criminals. Faking the way you robbed places to make the idiot police suspect those rival criminals. Keeping off the radar of the goody goodies. Everything.
DS: Did you excel there? Did you have a specialty?
#7: Yeah. I was a top student. Besides my powers, I was an analyzer. That's why I was the leader of the HIVE Five after the group of us left the Academy.
DS: What's an analyzer?
#7: Hmmmm. How to explain it. Have you-have you ever seen that movie, Three Days of the Condor?
DS: The guy who read books for the CIA and everyone else in his office is killed while he's out getting lunch?
#7: That's it. He's supposed to read mysteries and thrillers and detective novels for schemes and tricks and see if they match up with anything the CIA's actually doing. Well, that was kind of my extracurricular thing at the Academy. Analyzing. I used to read all these books and try to find workable schemes and tricks in them. So, after we left the Academy who do you think was in charge of trying to come up with heists we could pull off?
DS: You.
#7: Right up until (Subject #6) came along. (Subject #1) kind of does the same thing here. (Subject #2), too. The idea of him hurting anyone and maybe being dangerous is so stupid it defies description. When I was with the HIVE, we used to have something we called the "ace", the ace in the hole. When we got in trouble in a fight with the Titans we'd shout, "Play the ace!" or just "Ace!". You know what that was?
DS: No.
#7: It was creating a situation that endangered spectators or bystanders. Because we knew, with total metaphysical certainty that the Titans would always stop and protect the gawkers by the side of the road. That's what Cyborg was doing and now you idiots are mad at him.
DS: Do you have to call everyone idiots?
#7: Do you want me to be honest or not? Gods! You bring me in here first of everybody-
DS: That was chosen by lot. Your representative wrote down six different sequences and put them into a hat. I picked out "Reverse order of joining the Titans". So you're first and your husband is second.
#7: Hmmph. That reminds me. The idea of anyone worrying about (Subject #6) being a danger to anyone. Ha! That's too much. If you can't figure out that you're wasting your time 30 seconds into your session with him . . . That's how whacked out this Captain Doyle whose bidding you're doing is. She hates metahumans, period. They told me, afterward, that at our wedding, she was trying to take pictures of who showed up, as though she was the FBI outside of a Corleone family wedding or something. You should have told them this assignment was ridiculous.
DS: I have a job to do. So, why don't you tell me about a typical day for you is like?
#7: There is no typical day. We get about a call a day, not all fighting supervillains. We help the fire department save people from burning buildings, and help the police stop normal crimes, too. But, hmm, typical day? Okay. I wake up when I feel like it, untangle myself from orange hair, get all tangled up in orange hair, go down and do a training exercise, have a late breakfast, read something or go to a museum. Late mornings in museums are wonderful. You can stand there alone and look at every brush stroke. I'm on a first name basis with some of the curators. Orange hair might be with me. He might not. I come back to the Tower. I might read or I might talk with (Subject #1) about some case. He was shocked to find out about all my "analyzing" at the Academy and how scientific things were there at times. At any time, I might go rushing out the door with the others in answer to a call. Or orange hair and I might . . . Then, at night, we usually all eat together. We might train some more afterward. I might want to go somewhere or orange hair might. Maybe one of the others. It's pretty wide open. There's not a hell of a lot of structure. We do training exercises about once a day and we have to carry communicators with us everywhere but that's about all the schedule there is.
DS: Do you like this life?
#7: Yes. Very much. (Subject #6) thinks it feels kind of isolating but he has a bit of yearning for normalcy. He thinks it's a bit snobbish, too. I understand where he's coming from but I'm fine with it.
DS: And where do you think you'll be in five years?
#7: Gods! Five years? That's practically an eternity in this game. Maybe (subject #6) and I will-
BRRRRRIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGGG!!
(A warning bell sounded and then Subject #1's voice was heard over the P.A. system "Titans! To the roof! There's trouble in the warehouse district! Looks like General Immortus!"
#7: Gotta go, Silberman. You can leave this room but you'll be locked onto this level till we get back!
(With that, she ran from the room. When they did return, an hour and twenty minutes later, I was escorted to the exit by Subject #6 without a word of conversation and a boat was waiting to take me back across the bay.)