Chapter Text
I am a man who goes on wild, dangerous, and even life-threatening adventures where the fate of the world rests in my hands.
In the past I've rewired bombs, been shot at, and essentially hunted in various cases.
And tonight, I sat at home scrolling aimlessly through my phone.
Though, I suppose my efforts aren't truly aimless, My name is Stephen Leeds, and I am a genius who can memorize numerous textbooks with a mere glance.
Kind of.
You see, for all my life I have been accompanied by 'imaginary' people, called aspects, all of whom have deep knowledge in their fields and incredible abilities.
These people, with their own lives, thoughts and feelings, are all simply repositories for the information stored inside my brain.
There's Ngozi, an forensic scientist who is terribly germophobic, only leaving her room for special occasions, like missions we simply cant go without her for; Arnoldo(?), a balding french man who specializes in metaphysical engineering; Kalyani, a sweet woman who is a linguist and Hebrew interpreter; and so so many more.
Tonight I was accompanied by what I called my ground team; Ivy, a gifted psychologist, and tryphobe; Tobias, a wise old man full of history and fun facts; as well as JC, an “ex navy seal” who acts basically as my bodyguard.
Currently the four of us sat in my lavish bedroom pouring through textbooks and online articles.
Is it pathetic that the only people willing to hang around me on a friday night are literal hallucinations my mind made up? I think so.
Tobias, dark skinned and elderly, is wearing a casual suit with no tie and simple reading glasses. He’s sat in a soft reading chair, thumbing through a hefty book with a fine leather cover. A small pile on the small table next to him, yellow lamp illuminating the pages.
Ivy is on the floor, her heels next to a chair, with various papers laid out in front of her.
Her blonde hair in a tight bun as always, and wearing knitted leggings to ward off the cold of the room.
JC is a man of action, and is pacing impatiently back and forth.
He was usually only this jittery when we were out in public or if someone or something triggered his intense paranoia.
As he paced, he fiddled with his sidearm, which as far as I knew he never put down, occasionally whipping it out and aiming at random targets around the room to entertain himself, though he was careful to keep the safety on.
As he marched stiffly through the center of the room, I couldn't help but compare him to a toy soldier.
His tireless march disrupted the airflow as he got closer and closer to Ivy’s set up. Forcing me to imagine her papers fluttering and shifting out of place.
Ivy glared up at him through her black rimmed glasses, annoyed but staying silent.
As for me, I am currently sat on my bed, caught in an almost bird-like nest of books, papers and articles on an open laptop.
As my aspects could only really know what I know, I had the heaviest workload, doing the actual digging and sorting of information amongst them.
“Alright!” JC said
“I aint hanging around this snooze fest any longer, you nerds do what you gotta do.”
Ivy raised an eyebrow at him and finally deigned to speak up.
“Aren't you the one who insisted you could, quote ‘do this all day’? It’s only been an hour and you're giving up so soon?”
“An hour!?” JC cried “I coulda sworn it’s been 10 years! I've been on all night stake outs more entertaining than this dump!”
The restless man strode to the door, throwing his arms up in disbelief.
“I’m gonna go raid the kitchen, you all are welcome to join me when you’re done being sticks in the mud.”
He slammed the door behind him, aufly loud in the quiet room.
And Ivy sighed in exhaustion, setting down a paper she held and rubbing at her temples.
Whelp, that was as good a sign as any to take a break.
I got up from the bed and stretched painfully, a low groan emanating from my throat.
“Alright, what do we have so far?”
Ivy looked up at me and picked up her paper again, Tobias placing a thin bookmark to hold his place.
“Ok, so the client, Ace Router incorporated, tasked their head of cyber security with encoding some high-class files. Standard protocol, that is most of what his job consists of.” Ivy said
“The only problem, is that instead of handling and documenting the process himself, he handed the project off to his son, a six year old boy.”
I winced, remembering how embarrassed the high-ranking manager had looked when explaining this.
I nodded and Ivy continued.
“He originally intended to have him smash a few random keys, coming up with an unguessable password.
But, when left alone for too long, the boy managed to set up a series of puzzles and mazes, apparently inspired by a video game he played called Hide-And-Seek.”
She recited.
“By the time the manager came back the files were locked so tightly with random words and phrases, that no one could access them, not even him or the company.”
Tobias chuckled,
“Truly wonderful is the mind of a child.” he said, in a deep warm voice.
“You know, many famous scientists and mathematicians were somewhat special even before reaching adulthood, such as Albert Einstein. He was a child prodigy, conversant in college physics before the age of 11 years old.”
I nodded, not wanting to get too far off topic.
“Right, and when they tried to get the kid to undo it he’d ‘forgotten’ what he did to lock them in the first place.”
The psychologist nodded, “which lead us to… this.” she said, distastefully gesturing to the mess of papers and books around the room.
“When Audrey's cryptography skills failed, as they are based on pattern recognition, and the boy had no discernable pattern, we decided on a new approach…”
“Glancing into the mind of a child,” Tobias finished.
“To see the world the way they do, to be as free and creative as we want, where the arbitrary becomes exceptional, and the only rules are the ones you make.”
I stretched again, popping something in my back. Hopefully nothing important.
“Right, so so far we’ve researched children learning games, child psychologist reports, random probability generators, and age-regression.”
I leaned over to look at the categories Ivy had sorted her papers into.
“Ivy, you’ve been working on psychology reports and age-regression, how’s that going so far?”
She stood, gathering some of the papers, and walking over to lay them on a desk, so Tobias could see what we were looking at.
“Well, initially, I looked into reports of how children solve and make mental problems. Unfortunately most of what I found was about how putting physical puzzles together encouraged motor skills in toddlers and the like. I couldn’t get very far there.
However, age regression is a whole other problem,
Age regression occurs when someone literally reverts to a child-like mindset, which would be very hard to control, much less keep on task.
The retreat may be a few years younger than the current age, or, it could also be much younger, into early childhood or even infancy. We’d have no way to control where you’d end up, nor take care of you, as age regressors often need a physical caretaker for that.”
She explained.
Somehow I doubted even Wilson, my real butler, and loyal servant, would still be willing to work for me if I started randomly acting like a child, on top of everything else he put up with.
“Regardless, not only would the regression therapy take time, I doubt it would take to you at all, as you tend to be remarkably resistant to traditional therapy practices.”
She deadpanned, obviously referring to the numerous times i’d stubbornly refused to cooperate with various therapists in the past.
I avoided her gaze nervously, how is that my fault?
Those ‘doctors’ were the problem, everything they tried was either based on incorrect assumptions such as insisting I had schizophrenia and nothing else, or condescendingly implied I was lying about the whole thing, not to mention personal questions were rude, invasive, and ended up in tabloids the second I left the room.
Yes some might have genuinely been trying to help but what do they know? Its my brain. I should be trusted to take care of myself.
I coughed awkwardly, turning to Tobias.
“Ok, well, how about you? Probability and learning games right?”
He nodded,
I probably could have asked Chen about a probability generator, but Tobias was already in the room, and often enjoyed learning various fun facts.
“Well, Stephen, I don’t know much about mathematical probabilities, but from what I’ve found I doubt it would work very well anyway,” he rumbled soothingly.
“Essentially we would be spinning an arrow on a game show spinner, with random words and phrases written on it. Any answer it landed on would have to be the passcode or pattern used, which is what we are looking for, not what we have.”
He explained.
It made sense, or at least it did to my tired brain, fried from the sheer amount of information I’d dumped into it.
“Okay, so generator’s out of the question, what about the learning games, any luck there?” I asked
To my surprise and relief he nodded.
“Yes actually, I believe it may be just what we need.
You see, in order to understand how children learn and how they solve puzzles, teachers often find themselves putting themselves in the childrens shoes, trying to see things from their perspective.
In fact, some teachers are so well-versed in such an exercise, that they can understand how children make puzzles and what inspires their perceived randomness.
It is of my opinion that we can research this topic more ourselves or reach out to such a creator and bring them in on the case.” He concluded, happy to have reached such a simple solution.
I stared at him in awe, knowing the internet wasn't his forte, and that he’d figured it out anyway.
“Good work,” I praised, “So, we can look into the learning games more, and if we can't figure it out, we’ll contact someone who can. Nice and easy.”
Relief filled by body at the chance that this wouldn’t be a muti-week case that involved me being shot at, or even one in which I’d need to create an entirely new aspect.
God knows the last thing we need is a child running around the place.