The X-Project

Okay.  Here's the thing.  I dunno what's been going around the rumor mill, but if you've been wondering where I've been, I've been in the medlab having tests run on me, because I passed out yesterday for no obvious reason--some crappy timing I have, huh?--and they did figure out what the reason was, and . . . well, I'm kinda getting ahead of myself.  I need some advice, but before I ask for the advice I need to explain a thing, and then I need to apologize for not explaining sooner, and then you'll know what's going on.

So.  The thing, the actual thing . . . starts with Skippy, which is something we haven't talked a lot about, and maybe we should have, I dunno. The thing I need to tell you about Skippy, Kitty knows about because she was there, and the Professor knows about it because he helped fix it the first time, and I told Doc MacTaggart because I needed to ask her something, and, well, if I'd've told anybody else it would have been you guys, but I didn't tell anybody--I guess I was sort of hoping if I ignored it it'd go away, which in hindsight is a pretty stupid thing to hope for.

Skippy beat me, before I beat him.  We were both down to one--I think, with . . . all the dupes he'd lost that day, he finally hit some kind of limit.  I know I was past mine just trying to keep up with him, pulling in a dupe every time he landed one with that damn claw, before the knockout drugs could take all of me down, keeping the numbers as even as I could . . . I think if he'd been able to manage even one more dupe than he did, I wouldn't be here, so Angie, Doug, there's something, if it helps you feel better about what you did.

Anyway, we were both down to one, and I thought it was my chance, so I leaped in and grabbed him, tried to reabsorb him like I'd been planning to--I thought, if I took the original out, the others would follow, either fall apart or be me again and stop.  But it didn't work, I couldn't reabsorb him.  Doc MacTaggart has this analogy she does with a melted Tupperware bowl that helped me understand why--his genetics were too messed up, my body, or my power, or whatever, didn't recognize him as a dupe.  I didn't know that then, though--all I could think was, what if he was right all along and he was the real one?

Especially when his next move was to absorb me. And that worked.  Or, almost.  That part is blurry, still--all I can remember is I felt like I was drowning, and I couldn't see, or hear, or anything, and I was losing my self, and I couldn't let that happen, because Kitty was right there, and I didn't know if the kids were safe yet, or if you guys were, or anything, and it came down to, I wasn't going to let him hurt anybody anymore, I wasn't going to let him go around being me, and . . . I don't know what happened next, I fought back somehow, and I sort of . . . built myself back, kind of absorbing him from the inside, I don't know, but the next thing I knew I was kneeling on the ground, and I had knees to kneel on, I was back in my own body, and I was . . .

Actually, you saw that part, Angie.  I put that together, afterward, but I wasn't sure how to tell you--still aren't, really, except to say that that dream you had, with me covered in meatloaf . . . well, you were wrong about it being meatloaf.

I got only a couple seconds to realize that yes, okay, I was back, and then the real kicker happened--all of Skippy's memories, trying to shuffle into place with mine, all at once, since that's always what happens when I reabsorb a dupe that's been running off its own brain. Seven months of . . . it felt like trying to plug a high-pressure sewer line with my bare hands.  It felt like I was going crazy, only worse--I was going to remember having gone crazy, months ago. But Kitty got me to the Professor, who gave me a zap with that big mutant brain of his, and I thought it was all fixed, all better, I could go back and try to pick up my life again.

Isn't that simple, though, of course.  And now we're getting to the part where I need to ask for advice.  But first I just want to say, I'm sorry I didn't tell you guys this before.  It wasn't that I didn't trust you.  I didn't want to say it at all, because saying it makes it . . . real, I guess . . . and I was a little afraid of what you'd think when you found out, I didn't know if you'd wonder if there was any of him left in me, and start treating me different--I wondered that, that's why I asked Doc MacTaggart to check my DNA.  Which is normal, if you were wondering.  It isn't a physical problem I'm having.

The problem is, apparently on top of letting me focus on a dozen things at once, and not trip over the feet of the me at the other end of the house, and not get confused about which of me did what when, my brain keeps backups of my memories.  Including, and this is why I'm in the medlab, the Skippy ones.  The Professor got the main memories, and the personality, all the connections and context, but he didn't know to look for the backups, because normal people's minds don't work like that.  And after everything that's happened, all the crap that's been coming our way this year--especially with Magneto coming after Miles last week, the Professor thinks that was the final trigger--the backups are starting to connect up again.  Which is why I passed out yesterday.

The Professor thinks, if we just leave it alone, let the connections happen by themselves . . . the best case is something vaguely like epilepsy, only with flashbacks.  The worse case is I pass out and don't wake up.  The worst case, which he says is a very remote possibility and he just mentioned it in the interest of me knowing all the possible outcomes before I make a decision about what to do, but still leaves me wanting never to come out of the shower again, is I pass out, and I don't wake up, but somebody else does.

The other option, he says, is he can go in and make all the remaining connections himself, in a controlled environment, and be watching to make sure nothing hinky goes on.  Doc MacTaggart has a theory that all the memories after the point where Skippy's DNA got too different for me to be able to absorb him, are gone, which would be most of the really bad parts, and the Professor and Doc Samson both think I'm together enough to handle the rest of it, and the Professor says if it turns out I'm not, then now that he knows what he's looking for he can probably get the rest of it out, if he has to, but part of the problem is there's some damage from when he did it last time--that much memory isn't supposed to be erased like that, I guess--and he isn't sure that wouldn't make it worse, so that's the last resort.  And I asked if I could have a day to think it over, which is today.

And the advice part is . . . what do I do?  I mean, I think I know what I should do, and it's pretty obvious what the Professor thinks the best choice is, but . . . I think I could live with the occasional blackout.  That doesn't sound so bad.  I'm just . . . scared.  More like terrified, of remembering all that.  It felt like it was killing me, last time.

I just . . .

This is gonna sound melodramatic, especially with 'Yana reading it--sorry, 'Yana--but . . . how do you walk back into hell with your eyes open?

I'll be down here in the medlab with Kitty, and my e-mail, if you want to talk on here.  Or else the Professor says I can have one dupe to do stuff outside the medlab, to help take my mind off things, unless I pass out again, so you can come find me, or I can come find you, or whatever.