damned_institute | Dayshift 39: Doctor's Office 1 (Dr. House) [2nd Shift]

Entry tags:

brainiac 5,
house

Dayshift 39: Doctor's Office 1 (Dr. House) [2nd Shift]

House's office was empty this morning, but not because he was absent from the Institute entirely. If anything, it looked like he'd bailed for some breakfast and hadn't come back; his laptop was on and was running some big download while the rest of the desk sat in its usual disarray. A couple of new-looking books on some specific aspects of neurology, psychology, and pharmacology were laying amongst the clutter, and if someone had been so inclined as to open one of the books, they would have seen "Property of J. Wilson" scrawled in sharpie on the inside of the front cover.

It looked like House had given up on getting information out of therapy sessions and had decided to mull over his thoughts with either some other member of the patient body or over a breakfast sandwich upstairs. Either way, it was doubtful that the Landel's staff would let even the bad boy of Princeton Plainsboro get away with missing a session.

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The door opened onto a surprisingly empty - and messy - office. Brainiac 5 glanced around and arched an eyebrow questioningly at the nurse who had escorted him here. However, judging from her exasperated expression, she didn't know where the doctor had gotten to either.

"You just wait here then, Michael," she sighed. "I'll go and find Doctor House. Now just sit quietly and don't touch anything."

Brainiac 5 nodded and took a seat, by all appearances intent on waiting patiently until the nurse returned. That of course changed the moment that the door closed behind her. He wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to try and learn more about his captors and their institute, and while the computer on the desk was definitely dated and cumbersome, it was the first he'd seen that appeared to be functioning. The books got a cursory glance but didn't seem to be particularly interesting, so were duly ignored. Instead the Coluan boy focussed his attention on the computer, minimising the download window and rapidly scanning through all the file and folder names he could locate, trying to see if there was anything worth looking into in more detail.

Braniac might have been able to catch the names of some folders on the desktop – like "Patients" or "Videos" or "Lurkin' Lovers 3" before the door was shoved open with the end of a cane.

House paused just before his mouth widened into a smirk.

"Silly kid," he said, making his way over towards the patient. "Thinking I'd actually be dumb enough not to put a lock on my pot of P2P gold."

Brainiac 5's attention was jerked up by the door opening to admit a man he assumed was 'Doctor House', though he didn't move away from the laptop just yet. He was both interested to see how much he could get away with looking over and, in a strange way, stubborn. This was the first piece of functioning, albeit primitive, technology he had seen since arriving here. It could contain important information and he was not going to be moving away from it if he could avoid it.

"P2P?" he asked, confused by the term and also trying to buy himself some more time. As carefully as he could, Brainiac 5 manipulated the arrow on the screen over towards the icon marked 'Patients'. "I'm not familiar with that term."

"Metallica is," House replied. He pulled up his cane and pressed it against the back of the laptop's screen, closing it. He stood for a moment and watched the kid, as if sizing him up.

"What are you familiar with? And just letting you know, but phasers and tricorders? Won't be a good answer."

Brainiac 5 was rapidly becoming more and more confused. Metallica? Phasers and tricorders? The doctor wasn't talking much sense, though his actions with the laptop were clear enough. Reluctantly he rose and looked up at the older man.

"Phasers and tricorders don't mean anything to me," he stated. "But much of your slang has changed by the thirty-first century. I wouldn't expect you to be familiar with many of the terms that are everyday items in my time."

He watched House carefully as he spoke, interested in gauging what kind of reaction his words had.

"Right, thirty-first century." House nodded. "Way after Shatner, for which I'm sure your advanced species is very grateful."

He placed the cane back down against the floor and leaned on it. This kid took himself way too seriously, but whatever: at least that meant he'd be self-righteous enough to babble on about the injustices being done to him.

"So let's talk in current terms, then," House said, tilting his head. "I'm assuming you've got boogeyman stories for me too?"

That... wasn't the reaction he had been anticipating. Brainiac 5 tilted his head in confusion. "Shatner?" he asked. "Is that a notable person from Earth's history? Much of the information from this time period was damaged during the Great Crisis, so it's likely the his name was forgotten."

Again House didn't seem particularly bothered by his claims, though Brainiac 5 was beginning to suspect that the man was merely humouring him. His eyes narrowed slightly.

"Boogeyman stories? Are you referring to what I've been told about the nights here?"

"He thinks he's notable, but to you and me, he's just another fat guy." House responded to the patient's question as he slowly sat down in the chair usually occupied by his visitors. He immediately narrowed his eyes when the kid claimed to have only been told about the nights here. Had he actually been spared the drug cocktail or had he just arrived recently? House hadn't bothered with this particular patient file; it seemed like they'd all been heavily doctored by the man upstairs anyway.

"Yeah, the nights," House replied, leaning his hands on the top of his cane. "You know – monsters, experiments, people's minds getting sucked out of their bodies... all that Lovecraft stuff."

House sank into the chair clearly intended for the patients here, leaving Brainiac 5 momentarily uncertain what to do. He had expected the doctor to take the chair he had, up until recently, been occupying but apparently that wasn't the case. It was beginning to look as though House was going to be doing a lot of things during this session that would go against what he had anticipated. Eventually Brainiac 5 lowered himself back into the chair he'd just vacated, though he was clearly still largely uncertain about what was going on.

"I've heard people claiming things like that," he agreed cautiously. "But this is, after all, a mental institute. Wouldn't such claims from patients be the reason they're here?" He knew that wasn't actually the case, at least as far as his limited experiences had been (though the mention of experiments was news to him), but it was interesting to see what the doctor would think of it all. Logically, he was most likely in on the entire scheme, but it was always possible that he was in the dark about things.

It would also be interesting to learn more about which was the truth.

The kid looked like he was off his guard. Good. He also seemed to be asking more questions than he was giving answers. Bad.

"Hey, hey, I'm the doctor here," House said. He glanced over at the other side of the desk as he reached into his coat for his pill bottle. "Contrary to popular belief, owning a cushy swivel chair does not a competent professional make."

He tossed back a couple of vicodin and then brought his eyes back to the kid.

"So." He nodded at him. "How'd you get here?"

Brainiac 5 blinked in surprise at the reprimand, but didn't say anything just yet. He could have easily pointed out to the man that he was a twelfth-level intellect, one of the brightest minds in his time and no doubt was more skilled in a wider range of professions than the doctor was, but that would most likely only be met with the argument that he was delusional like so many others here, and there would have been no way to prove he was correct, so he would rather avoid the argument entirely.

Instead he watched with interest as House hooked his coat and removed a pill bottle from one of the pockets, tossing back a couple of them with the ease of habit. "You're on long-term medication," he remarked. His eyes flicked to the cane and then to the man's legs. "Pain medication?"

The question would possibly earn him another reprimand, but he was curious about House, and if there was anything that might be worth learning more about from him. The next question was, again, not what he was expecting however.

"Through the door," Brainiac 5 remarked dryly. "As you no doubt would have noticed had you been present at the time." He paused, then reluctantly continued. "But I imagine you mean to ask me how I came to be in your facility. I'm not able to answer that; I don't recall any of the exact events that led up to me waking here. Though I imagine you already know more about the subject from my files than I do."

"Wow," House said, shaking out his head as if in amazement. "A guy walks in with a cane and you think his pills might be for pain? What planet are you from?"

House paused, then rolled his eyes back towards the kid.

"Oh, right, I forgot: you're from a galaxy far, far away. And yeah, you probably don't remember getting brought here because you were probably drugged." House narrowed his eyes. "I'm asking you what you got diagnosed with, not how you got tossed in the back of a truck."

Brainiac 5's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Colu, actually," he said icily.

He knew that considering their location and the current situation, it was highly unlikely that House would ever believe him unless he could provide some sort of proof - also unlikely considering what had been done to him here - but there was also the possibility that he had already been told about Brainiac 5's 'delusions' to an extent, and mentioning his homeplanet might enable him to learn more about what those supposed delusions were.

"And I don't believe anyone has seen fit to tell me what I've been 'diagnosed' with or why I am here. The staff have been particularly difficult in that respect." He smirked and it was just a little too condescending. "Though I have to wonder why you're asking me, aren't you supposed to be the professional here?"

House arched an eyebrow at the kid. Colu. Right. This kid would've been a riot if his staunch beliefs in his own delusions hadn't been creating a culture barrier between them. When the kid tried talking down to him, he just responded with a smirk.

"Someone's finally asking for your side of the story and you treat them like the village idiot?" House drummed his fingers against the top of his cane and gave an expression of mock-sadness. "I guess that means a frontal lobotomy won't help anything."

"A frontal lobotomy?" Even if he had been trying to, Brainiac 5 wouldn't have been able to mask his shock at the notion. "You mean to tell me that people still use that outdated practice?"

He probably shouldn't have been surprised by the suggestion, considering what he had heard of this place already. While he was still somewhat disinclined to believe everything he'd heard discussed - the notion that everything in this place was intent on killing them during the dark hours seemed to be largely the product of paranoia, for instance - if even some of the stories of experimentation were true, then it was entirely possible that House had something to do with that.

It might be beneficial in more ways than one to at least indulge the doctor's request about his 'side of the story'.

"Very well," he sighed. "As far as I am aware, I was somehow abducted from my location near my homeplanet, Colu, in the thirty-first century and brought here, where I awoke in a human body and with no recollection as to what had happened to me. I theorise that my mind was actually copied from my original self and that it was then uploaded into this body, though I have yet to find a reason why someone would go to such lengths."

He fixed House with a challenging look. "I believe this is where you will inform me that I have no proof of these events and am therefore delusional. So if you'd like to assume that as already said, perhaps we can simply finish this meeting, unless you actually have something of interest to tell me."

"All the time," House replied to the kid's horrified response. "Especially on people who can't take a joke."

And then the kid started rambling on about this "Colu" place and the "thirty-first century" again. On top of that, he thought he was uploaded into his own body? What sci-fi series was he mimicking now; the Matrix?

Actually, that was a pretty good question: maybe this kid was some kind of über-fanboy with a penchant for the scientifically improbable, in which case there wasn't much of any hope for him and there wasn't any hope for getting information out of him.

House widened his eyes in exasperation as he let out a sigh.

"Nope," he replied to the kid's last comment. He glanced up at him. "You wanna leave, go ahead and leave."

Brainiac 5 blinked and drew back in his chair, clearly taken aback. Had the doctor just told him he was free to leave if he wished? That didn't make any sense, and he was automatically suspicious. They were either playing with him, or there was some reason that they didn't want him here.

"Then why was a brought here if all you're going to do is listen to what I tell you, refuse to believe me, then allow me to leave without telling me anything yourself? I would think you'd at least try and convince me somehow that I was in this institute for a reason. Or don't you know why I'm here either?"

He stopped and considered everything he'd learned from the staff so far. "After all, all I have been told thus far is that my name is apparently Michael. It's not very convincing on it's own."

[ Thanks so much for your patience. D8 ]

"Well, Michael," House replied in a mocking tone as he started standing from the chair, "if you'd been paying attention to anything I was asking instead of whining your way through the conversation, you would've noticed I'm trying to get information, not shove it down your throat. Personally, I don't think you came in here crazy, but personally, I also don't think ghosts exist."

He stood up and leaned heavily on his cane, as if thoughtful. He shrugged.

"But I already figured out enough. So, again, if you want to leave..."

"Didn't it occur to you, Doctor, that perhaps I am equally interested in learning more about this place and my current situation?" Brainiac 5 shot back, clearly annoyed by how the conversation was going.

"And I could have easily told you that I didn't 'come in here crazy'. I came here against my will, having been abducted from where I was needed, and that I'm no more insane that you are." He rose from where he was seated as well, crossing his arms and glaring up at the older man.

"But, if you're telling me that you have no information of interest to me, than I see no reason for me to remain here."

[ IT'S NOT OVER YET. >:| ]

"Apparently, you're not too interested if you're yelling at the person who you want information from." House glanced off for a second, as if puzzled by the enigma, and then gave a pointedly goofy chuckle as he looked back to the kid. "I mean, I know I make it look cool, but you have to get some street cred first. As in, a medical license."

It was way too obvious that while the kid was saying he should leave immediately, he was pretty keen on getting something out of this exchange. Seeing how unreceptive he was, however, didn't really endear House to the idea. Instead, he widened his eyes a little in exasperation and gestured at the door.

"Well? Go."

This wasn't the way he'd imagined the exchange playing out in his mind. Brainiac 5 was used to being treated as an equal, if not intellectually superior, in such conversations. He was a twelfth level intellect and fifth of the Brainiac line, and those things would have commanded a level of respect in his own time and dimension. Clearly that wasn't the case here.

He stared at House for several moments, debating his options. While he was annoyed by how the doctor was treating him, the information he had was potentially useful and might contain hints of how he'd been brought here and what had been done to him.

"Very well," he said eventually. "I suppose I should apologise for my... outburst. But I'm certain you can see my difficulty. I want to learn more about what is going on here, but it isn't exactly easy in this situation. Even minor details like the cover story invented for me would be potentially useful."

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Dayshift 39: Doctor's Office 1 (Dr. House) [2nd Shift]

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