[Mathsorcerer]

The path of a hero generally starts with the hero being introduced to the path he is destined to walk, followed by a rejection or hesitance to walk that path for fear of losing the comfortable life he has known, and finally being pushed onto the path through tragedy--some family members die, his village is burned to the ground, etc. These facts are well-known and documented thoroughly; because of that I won't discuss them further.

What about the path of the villain? Strangely enough, the path of the villain is very similar to that of the hero, with only slight alterations. Rather than having an elder guide introducing the path, the villain has led a more solitary life and has uncovered the path he is to walk on his own. When he first realizes what that path is and what it means, his human mind balks--the villain also initially rejects the path he is to take. Unfortunately, this leads directly to tragedy just as for the hero--the death of someone close, disaster for those around him, etc. After the tragedy, the villain resolves himself to his path and begins his journey.
What, then, is the difference? Fundamentally, there is only one difference: the hero winds up using his powers or knowledge for the benefit of others while the villain uses his powers or knowledge to benefit himself, often to the detriment of others.

My villain's path did begin with an older guide, even if he would not have recognized himself as such. He did it with a very simple question, too. He asked me, "What are you going to do after you use the treatment on yourself?"

Of course, that question means nothing to you--it couldn't, because you do not have an inkling as to what I mean. As such, I need to backtrack and give you a prologue.

My human name is irrelevant; I could tell you what it is but you would be unable to determine whether or not I am lying and thus the fundamental question would remain. My former profession was Medical Technology Assistant, which is a condensed version of "I used my BA double-major in Electrical Engineering and Anatomy/Physiology, along with a handful of computer certifications, to operate medical equipment being used by physicians for clinical trials and/or patient treatments". Sounds boring, doesn't it? Trust me--it was...at first.

Heroes are usually surrounded by a support structure and steeped in humanity and human relationships. I was not. My brothers were athletically gifted; as such, I didn't relate to them and they didn't relate to me. My parents pretty much left me alone because from an early age I didn't feel a need to relate to them. I did make a few friends but never felt connected to them, either. The only real emotion in which my friends and I engaged was competition, constantly trying to outdo or one-up each other. Sadly, although I was intellectually gifted there was always someone more gifted. This lacking on my part, this tendency to wind up in second or third place, began to gnaw at me on a subconscious level and became the first factor determining my ultimate path.

Girlfriends? Oh, yes, I had some; more than a typical geek, perhaps. Unfortunately, I couldn't relate to them and they couldn't relate to me. The only one that mattered could never figure out whether or not she wanted a relationship. I figured that there must have been something wrong with me or something wrong with her, or both; by the time I realized the truth--also irrelevant to you, so don't bother asking--it was too late and didn't matter any more. Next chapter, if you please.

College was blur with nothing meaningful except for a paper I did in my sophomore year science-fiction literature class on increasing intelligence. I scoured used book stores for old sci-fi books on the topic and located a dozen magazine articles that also looked into it. There was even one quasi-horror book by Colin Wilson that touched on the subject, written in a style similar to H. P. Lovecraft. It was also during that project that I first encountered rTMS--repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. This discovery would change not only my life, but the lives of many others.

[Mathsorcerer]

To make a long story short, my work on that paper led to my focus on the topic as a whole; I even wrote my honors thesis about it. That thesis led me to the W. H. South Psychiatric Hospital and the project they were undertaking into using rTMS for the treatment of depression and anxiety. The irony--someone who didn't really care about or have any real connections to people wound up becoming someone whose job it was to help people. Whatever.

Wiley and Opal--people don't name their children like that anymore, you know. Entire generations of classic names being lost: Herbert, Winifred, Wilbur, Iris, etc. Nevertheless, Wiley and Opal first brought it to my attention what was really happening. I had been longing to tweak the settings on the rTMS equipment just to try out the ideas that had been floating in my head since college, the idea that I could increase someone's intelligence.

Yes, that's a clue--that I could increase someone's intelligence; villains are very ego-driven. Some of them are even honest with themselves.

Opal was sitting alone in the lunchroom one day crying so one of the nurses tried to find out what was wrong. Fortunately, I was sitting at the next table so I overheard her when she said, "It's too easy now; I don't like it anymore." "What's too easy?” the nurse asked. She responded, "The crossword puzzle. They used to be hard but something happened; I think the man that writes them quit and someone new is doing them."

I had to see, so I came over, which was easily-enough explained as Opal was in the depression study. Sure enough--she had completed the New York Times Daily Crossword puzzle perfectly; I spent far too much money on the phone checking her answers to verify them, just to make sure.

Walking down the hallway, scared and excited because I already knew what it was that I now knew, I heard Wiley playing the piano. Strange--Wiley never plays the piano, but he was today. In fact, he was playing quite well and the tune was ragtime, much like Scott Joplin's music. I asked him about it and he told me he used to play years ago, but hadn't done so in a long time. I couldn't place the tune and neither could Wiley; we got a tape recorder, had him play again, and I went to the music department at the university--no one there had heard the song before. I let them keep the tape to research the song.

One week later, I got a call--that song did not exist, which is to say it didn't match any known published recording. When I asked Wiley about it he flippantly replied, "Of course not--I made it up." How? He wasn't a trained musician and hadn't touched a piano in years, yet now after only a month of depression treatments he could compose new music which was catchy and entertaining? The music department brought him in to record his song in their little studio and published it; Wiley is giving a recital next month, if you're interested.

The doctors thought the excitement was a little too much for Wiley, so they altered his treatment, which meant that I had to alter the settings on the magnetic equipment. Two days later is when it happened. Wiley was looking out the window rather sadly, when he turned to me very knowingly--I had never had anyone look at me thusly--and asked quite plainly "So, What are you going to do after you use the treatment on yourself?" and then he turned away.

I was stunned. That the idea had never before occurred to me was ridiculous--I could increase my own intelligence. The implications were, well, limitless. I was already highly intelligent, but now I could be even more so? The old science-fiction stories came flooding back, warning me in their quasi-paranoid way of the dangers of too much knowledge. I scoffed at them now as I had done then. The more I thought about it, the more resolved I became to do it--I would increase my own intelligence and then see how far I could go. I owed it to myself to do this.

The gauntlet had been thrown down. I would pick it up that very night.

[Ikin]

Awesome!!!

[The_Heroic_Loser]

Wow...I wanna write papers on heroes and villains when I'm in college.

[Mathsorcerer]

I hadn’t eaten anything all day long, just to make sure that I wouldn’t get sick. I drank only distilled water to make sure that I was properly hydrated. I didn’t bother with minimizing any other potential sources of error, such as my blood chemistry, because I didn’t feel like wasting time on such trivialities when my life’s goal was so close at hand. All that mattered was putting the magnetic helmet on my head and turning on the equipment. I couldn’t’ keep my hands from sweating. Ah, the rashness of youth and the cheerful innocence of inexperience.

Kaylisa, the other medical assistant, fitted me with the helmet and activated the equipment.

Nothing.

No sound, no light, no instant transportation into dimensions of psychedelic lights wherein I would become instantly knowledgeable about everything.

I felt tingly, for lack of any other word. Then I realized, almost without even trying, that if I focused on something it either dimmed or became more intense, it either moved farther away from me or closer to me. Not to say that I was instantly telekinetic; rather, things seemed to dim or become vibrant. I thought the lights dimmed and I could taste the roast beef and port I had for dinner in Lausanne years ago. I could smell the perfume my brief college fling wore. I felt the jellyfish in Galveston sting me on the leg again.

After what seemed like half an hour she turned off the machine and told me my five minutes were through.

The world became ashen gray and the memories slipped away. What happened? I certainly didn’t feel any smarter. In fact, I felt stupid for having not mapped my own brain function before beginning. I was trying to drive to an unknown location.

We spent the next several weeks coming in at night and mapping our brain functions to more correctly configure the equipment. The next experiment was hers.

Let me clarify something—Kaylisa and I are not “involved” and never have been. She shares a curiosity about what will happen and what the applications could be but she is too committed to her boyfriend Thad while I do not have the room in my life for emotional involvement.

Anyway, I put the helmet on her and switch on the machine—she gasps. Loudly. She tells me that she can feel—no, sense—the electricity. Her hair begins to stand up; hell, my hair began to stand up. I can smell ozone as she stands up, bends down, and puts one finger near an open electrical outlet on the power supply to the computer equipment. I saw it—a small spark jumped from the outlet to her finger, the lights dimmed, the computer rebooted, and the magnetic equipment spiked then shut down.

In the movie Full Metal Jacket the characters call it the “thousand yard stare”. This is what Kaylisa’s eyes were doing as I took off the helmet. She wasn’t looking at me, or anything; rather, she was looking inwardly but also seeing the outside world. “I can still feel the electricity” is all she said for several minutes.

I didn’t wait. I recalibrated the equipment for me and put on the helmet.

[Mathsorcerer]

I instantly understood. I understood that our brain is an electrochemical computer and that it has a built-in mechanism to detect and respond to changes in energy fields. Her energy field responded to electricity, so I concluded that it could respond to other energy fields because all forms of electromagnetic radiation are the same.

I looked at the machine and I knew how to increase its efficiency, how to increase the field strength of the magnets, and how to more accurately fine-tune the device. I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down my notes. To my surprise, I could visualize the magnetic fields as they were generated, just like in a physics book, an elaborate orthogonal diagram in three dimensions. An array of coils and magnets, more numerous than now but each individually smaller, could create attracting points to focus magnetic energy and induce the electrical currents in the brain. Possibilities began to form.

I also realized one thing—the life I had known was now over. Forever. Now that I knew that I could increase intelligence—among other things—I was locked into the notion that I must increase it, to refine the technique to unlock all the heretofore hidden aspects of the brain, and to increase that knowledge for its own sake.

Kaylisa chose normalcy and Thad over me, but that is her decision to make. I left her my number in case she ever changed her mind.

Wiley came to me the next day and said, “I’d ask you not to go but you’ll say no. You have important things to do…just don’t make it hurt too much, ok?” I considered what he had to say for a minute. “Will I succeed?” I asked, to which he responded “Yes”.

I looked at him again and realized what he had said. Poor Wiley—I must have inadvertently given him precognition and he had seen his own future. I can be magnanimous under the right circumstances, so later that night I managed to sneak the right combination of pills to him. It’s a shame about how some people seem to get better and then crash without warning. Pity.

I gave my two week notice the next day and didn’t look back.

Getting back to my original point…heroes and villains are very similar. The guide introduces them to the path and then death ushers them onto the walkway. However, villains have one thing that heroes lack—a vision, and the willingness to bring about their vision, whether or not others might wish to share in it.

I have a vision. The end results of that vision will bring about a world that is better than the one that we currently have, so even if a majority of people don’t share my vision then that is their shortcoming, not mine. Babies don’t ask to be born; similarly, humanity won’t ask to be catapulted into a new world but it will happen nonetheless.

Humanity has always relied on higher authorities to guide them. Perhaps it is time those higher authorities actually have faces and take an active role in directing the world. History will conclude that I am correct.

[Ikin]

I'm on the edge of my seat!

[Mathsorcerer]

He crouched in the shadows, waiting for his target and smoking yet another cigarette. He never minded smoking; it was the least dangerous thing in his life these days. "Hell, why not?" he always told himself, "I'll just have Lainey heal me like all the other times." The only real problem was the smell--it gave away his position once and almost cost him an eye.

The car pulled around the corner; it was a little too large and black, the kind typically of organized crime bosses and politicians. One, two, three bodyguards. There were always bodyguards and most of them weren't worth a pile of dogs____.

The cigarette left his mouth. He covered nearly 30 yards, rustling the grass no louder than the wind, before it landed. Running while bending over was always a pain in the a__, but whatever it took to get the job done is what he did. Fortunately, he was relatively short--only 5' 6"--so the car gave him some cover.

Five feet away from the car he jumped, touched the top of the car to push for extra distance, and landed between two bodyguards. Standing up, he launched a right fist into the neck of one guard while his left foot connected with a knee. One fell backwards gurgling wetly and the other knelt in pain. Slapping the back of the kneeler's head with an open left palm to force it down, the right fist curled into a hammer to connect with the back of his neck. Two down; one to go.

By now the mark was running and the third guard was pulling his gun. "G__d_____, why do you f_____s always carry f_____g .45s?" he snarled as the guy pulled the trigger. Twisting, hot lead grazed his shoulder--that'll leave a mark--as he spun and snapped a kick into the big guy's midsection. Flying backwards, the guard slammed into the building. He was dazed, but conscious enough to realize that he was being picked up by someone significantly smaller than himself.

"This, you ugly b______, is for shooting me!" as the guard was thrown into the side of the building, connecting solidly and leaving a wide, red trail down to the ground. "Never shoot me", he grinned, "it only makes me mad". Sometimes, he saved old movie lines just for such occassions.

He could have enjoyed it more if he had been able to have normal adrenaline surges like real people. As it was, he brain was stuck in an endless loop of concentration, a Zen-like state normally attained only by highly-trained martial artists. His own training was advanced, but hardly world-class...not that it mattered. Rather than having to concentrate on purpose, his mind was always concentrating. The demonstrations like breaking bricks was automatic to him. "Your 'chi' is always focused", he was told, "You will be considerably stronger than you appear to be, in many ways". Not that he would ever argue--that man always knew what he was talking about and was almost always right.

The mark had made it home. Large, solid oak doors in a well-made frame. One simple kick to break the door down--literally--and he walked in. "I don't care about you. H___, I don't even know who you are or why he sent me here. I don't really care, either. I'm a fairly simply guy--I'm a loaded weapon, I enjoy what I do, I do it well, and he's pointed me at you." Huddled in the corner of the closet, the mark was fumbling with a cell phone, easily taken from his grasp and crushed.

"I'll pay you anything! Please, no!"

He laughed and shrugged. "I don't need money, but I will probably take anything I see that might be valuable when I leave. Just give me the papers or I'll get to pull your fingers off. Slowly. One at a time." That calmed the mark down really quickly.

"Sure. Whatever. Papers. This way." The mark was scared, but knew a good deal when he saw one. "In the safe." He surrendered the papers, then some rings and pocket money.

"You know I have to ransack your house, right? You know I'm going to have to hit you, right? To make it look right."

The mark shuddered. "Just let me get a drink, will you?"

"Sure. Pour me a scotch, too, will you?"

A refreshing drink later, he asked the mark "You ready?" The mark nodded. He grinned, curled a fist, and launched a crushing blow at the man's chest. Sternum cracking, his heart was compressed against his spinal column, tearing it. Tough way to die, he thought.

Finishing his drink, he scaled the fire escape to the roof just as the police were pulling up. She was already there, waiting for him.

"What took you so long?"

"I needed a drink." He looked at his shoulder, still bleeding. "I'll need some stiches, too".

She nodded, then lifted them both into the night.

[Ikin]

Ok..... Now I'm confused

[Mathsorcerer]

Confused about what? I gave you a short story about a different character, which not only explains the slightly different writing style but also the dialogue and non-green color.