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 Malign Hypercognition Disorder and You.wmv "Archimedes's solar lens. Leonardo Da Vinci's helicopters. The Mecha-Brain of Albert Einstein. Since time immemorial, great genius has gone hand in hand with the desire to conquer the world. But for all their scientific genius, these greats of history could never answer the ultimate question: why? Until now." "Malign Hypercognition Disorder, also known as 'Mad Science Disease' or 'MHD', while rare, is thought to be behind as many as ten percent of supervillainy-related incidents. It's associated with high levels of scientific and intellectual achievement, but also difficulty forming emotional attachments, lack of empathy, compulsive behaviour, and megalomania. Sufferers are driven to demonstrate their superiority through grandiose displays of power to silence the fools, FOOLS, who doubted them." "Hello, my name is Daniel Yu. At ten years old, frustrated by the lack of recognition given to me by Mrs. Parkerson's grade 5 science class, I took on the alter ego of 'Mechatronic', and attempted to use my robotic expertise to take over the world. As Mechatronic, I temporarily launched New Arcadia into orbit, replaced the city council with robot duplicates, and of course, set off the great nano-spider plague of X7. But my greatest and most challenging scientific achievement was becoming the first sufferer of Malign Hypercognition Disorder to recognize their own symptoms." "Malign Hypercognition Disorder is a dangerous illness, but with great investments of time and scientific effort, I, in partnership with Dr. Selina Garrity, am proud to announce the first pilot study designed to harness its power while suppressing its dangerous side effects. Through cognitive behavioural therapy and certain experimental medications, I have once more regained my ability to recognise others as persons whose thoughts and feelings should be relevant to my decisions, all the while keeping my superior intellect and scientific knowledge intact! Truly, there is no force science cannot CONQUER!" "To silence the doubts of any FO- any sceptics on the effectiveness of my treatment, I have been enrolled in the Hero Training Academy. There, my actions will be able to be compared to those of this generation's best and brightest future heroes. And then I, Mechatron, will have proven myself to be the GREATEST SCIENTIFIC GENIUS who has EVER LIVED!" quote:The Reformed quote:Who mentored you in supervillainy?  Heh, the old Mechatronic would never acknowledge needing something as mundane as a 'mentor', but I've got enough clarity to understand that my first guide into the world of supervillainy was The Illuminate. When I was first starting out, I tried to take over his gang. We were both tech experts (though my stuff was better!), but to my surprise he just rolled over and offered to be my lieutenant. He indirectly guided a great deal of my early villainy, which I didn't stop to ask why until he subverted half of my robots, stole my latest prototypes, and left me for dead in my exploding hideout. Lesson learned, I suppose, but he taught me a lot about how to properly plan and execute a villainous plot in the process, so in retrospect it could have gone worse. quote:Who first showed you that you could do good? What caused you to switch sides?  Dr. Selina Garrity. She's a brilliant biologist - I considered her very nearly the equivalent of me in my own field of robotics. She published the first proper study on Malign Hypercognition Disorder, and at first I dismissed it as mere propaganda, but as time went on, I began to doubt myself. I considered myself to be superior to all other life because of my genius, but her description of the symptoms wore at me. The doubts began to affect my work, and after a particularly humiliating defeat at the hands of the Justice Alliance, I realized it was not a battle I could win. I decided the path of true superiority lay not in planetary domination at the head of my robotic army, but in conquering the lack of empathy that proved my undoing time and time again! I surrendered myself into her custody, and offered to become the first subject in the grandest science experiment yet known to man - conquering and harnessing the very FOUNDATIONS of MAD SCIENCE ITSELF! AhAHa! quote:What was your goal as a villain? Ostensibly, I wanted to conquer the world, preferably in a very public way that demonstrated my superior scientific genius to the entire planet, forwards and backwards in time for all eternity. Really, though, I think I just wanted validation. Everyone around me was just so...slow, I wanted them to acknowledge my genius, my accomplishments! quote:Why do you care about the team? I'm trying to be a good person, and that's what good people do, right? Care about other people? Yes, perhaps I lose my patience with them too easily, but I'm trying to relearn this whole 'empathy' thing. And the most important thing about the treatment is establishing a support network, to have examples I can learn from. It's selfish maybe, but I need the team. quote:What made you decide to join the academy? Some...sceptics do not trust the effectiveness of my cure, or the sincerity of my change of heart. Joining the academy is the ultimate test, and should I succeed here, among the best and brightest of the future generation of heroes, my work will have de-facto proved itself. I shall forge my empathy and kindness into the ULTIMATE EXPRESSION of my GENIUS, and drive it into the very HEART OF HEROISM! Actually, I may need to work on a better metaphor. quote:Which hero sponsored your entrance into the academy? What did you do to impress them?  Dr. Garrity is well respected among the hero community, but sometimes her unorthodox methods draw disapproval. To make sure I got in, we went to Id, the Justice Alliance's resident psychic first. She agreed to sponsor me on the condition that I submit to an invasive psychic probe first. From her reaction when I agreed, she'd been hoping that would've been enough to drive me off, but in the end I spent four hours at JAHQ that I can't really remember getting the 'ol brain looked at. She said it looked like I was on the right track, so she signed off on my application. Telepaths normally have a difficult time with Malign Hypercognition Disorder - apparently our minds are quite expansive and quite disorganised, so perhaps the fact that it was effective at all is proof of my treatment's effectiveness! Also, I now cluck like a chicken whenever I hear the word 'rhombus', so anyone who tells you Id doesn't have a sense of humour is sadly mistaken. quote:Tell me about that one interesting person in your class!  Nico Rossi, aka Hocus. A most irritating person to share a class with. He comes from a long line of powerful wizards, which would be enough in and of itself - magic is a strange physical facet of the universe I do not yet understand, and 'magicians' like himself do nothing but cloak it in unnecessary superstition and occult nonsense that just makes it impossible to do any sort of rational study! But he believes himself born to be a hero, with all the arrogant generosity that implies! I can't stand him and his faux humble airs and his incomprehensible powers and his dreamy eyes and his entitlement! What? quote:What's your favorite class? What about least favorite? My favourite class? Heroics 101. Having been on the opposite side for so long, it's absolutely fascinating to get an outside perspective on things. Some of it, like the unit on common villain tactics, is laughably out of date, but most of it's great. To me, heroes kept making really foolish decisions, but somehow kept defeating me, but now I understand that it was in fact a carefully calculated combination of teamwork and bystander protection. If I was ever to go back into supervillainy-which I won't-I would certainly be much more dangerous for learning these things. My least favourite class? Science! I should be teaching it, not sitting at a desk for seventy minutes sketching earth-shattering inventions that harness the HIGHEST ENERGIES of the UNIVERSE while some underpaid, overqualified babysitter drones on about gravity's effects in a vacuum! I've applied for a transfer to the advanced class, but apparently the administration is concerned it'd be a 'temptation'. Bah, the real temptation to destruction is entering into hour three of our unit on photosynthesis - I dare any scientist alive to not fantasize about death ray construction. quote:What do you like to do in your free time? Tinkering! My access to materials is somewhat limited, but you'd be amazed what you can build with even with just the tools permitted to me. It's an ongoing process, and anything particularly fancy I have to submit to the administration for approval before I build it. But a mind with a photographic memory and a world-class knowledge of robots and high-energy physics need never be bored! quote:New Arcadia’s a pretty sweet place, isn’t it? Tell me about that one cool place you like! Ever heard of The Vault? Even among the supervillain community, it's just a rumour. It's where the superheroes gather all the technology and artifacts it captures from supervillains that are too dangerous to even hand over to the government. It's guarded around the clock while an army of scientists try to reverse engineer peaceful purposes for all of them. When I gave up my supervillain lairs and equipment, I...may have forgotten to disable some of the tracking devices, so I know it exists right here in New Arcadia. Even while at the heights of my supervillainy, I would never stoop so low as to steal some other villain's technology (it was about proving my superiority, not someone else's), I know any other villain who could somehow gain access to the place would immediately become a true threat to the world. How could they not? I bet I have an entire wing in the facility! quote:(Optional) Hey, guess what! They’re making a variant cover focusing on you! Please describe the cover to me! Mechatronic stands in the blasted ruins of what apparently used to be a high school science lab, flanked by two custom-built combat droids. His head is thrown back in maniacal laughter, while the other heroes look on in confusion. The under-title caption reads: A NEW ALLY APPEARS??? quote:Something you made during your villain days has come back to bite you. What was it? How did you handle the situation? Well, there was that whole incident with SULLA. SULLA is an AI I built - one of my first real inventions, he actually predates my becoming Mechatronic by a few months. I've spent a lot of time over the years upgrading him, tweaking his personality, building rad combat robots or buildings for him to inhabit. I thought I'd lost him when my last moon base self-destructed, which is why he wasn't on the inventory I provided the authorities when I surrendered myself. Turns out he'd managed to escape by ejecting his core into space, where he managed to piece together a constructor arm over the next few months. Anyway, the first I heard from him was when he took out a communications satellite and issued a global broadcast where he threatened to start dropping satellites on government buildings until I was released from prison. Yeah, apparently he found out I was at Hero Academy and made the natural assumption that I'd been captured by the heroes and somehow imprisoned here. Fortunately, the heroes let me actually talk to SULLA, and I convinced him that I was there willingly. I built a special uplink so he could transmit himself down from orbit safely, and the crisis was averted with only limited damage. quote:Has there ever been a moment were you almost relapsed into your old ways? Or have you been successful at fighting those urges? Well, remember how I said the damage was limited? Apparently communications satellites are incredibly expensive, and as soon as I brought SULLA down to earth he was arrested. There's a special court for AI-related crimes, and they were going to try him. Yes, destroying that satellite did tens of millions of dollars in damage, and yes, SULLA breaks essentially every single legal requirement for an independent AI, but it's not like he hurt anyone, right? He was my friend and they wanted to delete him! I had to SHOW THEM that they can't TAKE MY FRIEND FROM ME! SHOW THEM ALL! ...sorry about that. I'm still a little new to this empathy thing, and it takes me weird places sometimes. I'm going to be honest, the day of the trial, I was ready to go rogue. As soon as they passed a guilty verdict, I had a concealed neuro-disruptor field to knock out the human judges, a directed ion weapon for the mechs. From there, I could grab SULLA, grav-pack out of there, and then call in some old favours to get a safe house long enough to figure out what to do next. But the strangest thing happened. Dr. Garrity and Id spoke on SULLA's behalf, and they considered my testimony as well. In the end, they gave SULLA probation, essentially. Now he resides in a residential server for rehabilitating AIs, and I get to visit him twice a week. He seems happier than he's ever been before. I don't understand, I've never seen the system work before. Is this how it is for heroes all the time? quote:Somebody declared themselves to be your rival in SCIENCE! whether you like it or not, and they've been constantly trying to one-up you. Who are they? What are you going to do about them?  Scarlett Summers, aka 'Lovelace'. She's a hacker by trade, but she recently branched out into building crime-fighting tech, which got her into Hero Academy. She sees me as a rival, and I suppose it's true in a sense; few superhero teams have multiple tech specialists. She's brilliant, but I am, of course, the one of greatest geniuses on the planet and how could her dilettante ways EVER hope to measure up to MY GENIUS! Umm, sorry, I'm trying to learn modesty, and that was uncalled for. The last few times our inventions went head to head, I came out the winner, which she wasn't happy with. Privately, I'm a little worried about her. She took our confrontations very personally, and while I must admit I enjoyed winning a little more than I should have, I'm seeing some familiar signs in her reactions. I'm worried she's showing early signs of Malign Hypercognition Disorder, and while I've tried to deescalate our rivalry a little, she thought I was just patronising her. As a hacker, people already expect a little antisocial behaviour, but my hope is that I can convince one of my teammates to befriend her. One of the biggest risk factors of MHD is social isolation, and I think that if I'd had even one real friend growing up, I'd have been able to avoid going quite so far, so maybe the same will prove true of her? Green Bean fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Feb 1, 2017 |
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Jan 19, 2017 22:09
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