Chapter 16
Chapter 16
It turned out that there were a significant number of hoops one had to jump through to even apply for crisis training. Before anything, Dan would be subjected to an in-depth background check. Marcus seriously doubted that Dan’s cover story would hold up to the scrutiny. His upgrade paperwork, at the very least, would be revealed as a forgery.
There were also exacting physical requirements. Dan supposed that upgrades made meeting them less difficult, but it still startled him to realize that he barely met the threshold. He couldn’t even see the sense in it. It wasn’t as if every volunteer would be shifting rubble.
Furthermore, the training course was a week long and demanded a hefty admittance fee. Nothing about it was guaranteed, even after acceptance. It was entirely possible to fail and have to reapply.
“It’s like they don’t want volunteers,” Dan muttered furiously. He sat in Mercury’s lab in front of a spare laptop, scanning the application for a Disaster Response license. There were multiple organizations who coordinated crisis relief around the country, but all required a government issued license to participate. It was almost considered an occupation rather than an altruistic pursuit. Indeed, some people managed to make it their source of income.
“How many people get frightened off by all these requirements?” Dan pondered aloud.
“Better a single competent professional than a horde of well-meaning imbeciles,” Mercury declared loudly. The doctor was seated beside Dan, calmly watching his plans die.
“Quantity has a quality of its own,” Dan shot back, parroting a phrase that he’d heard somewhere before.
“Yes, a low one. That’s precisely what I said,” Mercury replied, leaning smugly backwards in his chair.
Dan searched his mind for a rejoinder and came up short.
“Shut up.”
“Good intentions alone will not suffice,” the doctor continued mercilessly. “Good intentions do not make you competent. They do not make you capable. They do not make you safe. We learned that decades ago.”
Dan’s lips were so pursed that he resembled a prune.
Mercury glared at him. “These safeguards are in place to protect people from altruistic fools like you, stumbling around in the dark without a clue.”
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to help people,” Dan protested indignantly.
“By all means, help away!” Marcus declared with a dismissive wave. “But don’t complain about a few perfectly reasonable restrictions that have been put into place to weed out the useless chattel. I’d trust a man being paid for his service over an idealistic volunteer any day. Motivated self-interest easily trumps well-intentioned do-goodery.”
“You have an incredibly low opinion of people,” Dan observed dryly.
“My opinion of people is the byproduct of a life spent among them. You’ll feel the same way if you live long enough I’m sure,” Marcus remarked, his voice losing some of its edge.
After a moment, the old man sighed. “Personally, I think you should give up on this idea. At the very least, wait a few days until you’ve calmed down. It’s obvious that what happened in Atlanta is currently impacting your mindset.”
“That’s—” Dan faltered. He wanted to immediately dismiss the claim. To loudly and confidently declare his ability to withstand some truly horrible shit without blinking. The doctor had no idea the kinds of things that he’d seen! Dan had grown up in the age of the internet, after all! He opened his mouth to speak, ran the words through his head, then stopped.
It felt like the argument of a small child. Just hearing it in his mind made him cringe. If he vocalized the thought, what was left of his ego might collapse on itself like a neutron star. He was just Dan, he had always been just Dan. He wasn’t special or powerful or unique, and the fact that he had to continually remind himself of that was physically painful.
Time to grow up, Dan.
“That’s probably true,” he admitted.
Marcus managed to school his features into something resembling understanding. “It’s perfectly normal for you to feel restless. You’ve been displaced from your home, and are still coming to terms with the world around you. There is nothing wrong with that, so long as you temper your reckless stupidity.”
Dan winced at the blunt assessment. The doctor meant well, he just sucked at conveying it. That had to count for something.
“Never flinch at the truth,” the doctor commanded sternly. “You can’t hide from what is. You’ve been here for a month. You still need time to adjust. I suggest that you continue to better yourself. Make some more friends. Look for a hobby. Find some familiar ground to stand on and get back into a routine. It will help.”
Dan shook his head wildly. “That’s, like, the exact opposite of what I want! Seriously Marcus, I understand what you’re saying, but I need to do… something. Something more. Something that matters. I can’t just fall back into a— a passive routine again. That’s not who I want to be. I want to be better than that.”
“There is nothing wrong with routine,” Marcus snapped. “There is nothing wrong with familiarity. There is nothing wrong with accepting your limits. Only a fool strives to be more than he can become!”
“I don’t know what I can become,” Dan elaborated, “and that’s precisely the point.”
Mercury shook his head helplessly. “You have an opportunity here, Daniel. There’s a perfectly happy life available at your fingertips. Why not take it?”
“Why does it matter?” Dan demanded somewhat churlishly. “You’ve already admitted that you’ll barely be inconvenienced even if my origins are discovered.”
“You remind me of a less intelligent version of myself at your age,” Marcus said frankly. “I too was painfully naive, blindly altruistic, and determined to make my mark on the world. I too thought public service would bring me some vague form of perennial satisfaction.”
“Oh, how ominous,” Dan replied with a huff. “I don’t suppose you’ll actually tell me what you did?”
Marcus glared at his dismissive tone. “I’ll tell you that it ended poorly.”
“Don’t draw parallels where there aren’t any,” Dan replied quickly. “Whatever mad science you cooked up in your past, I doubt that it was as simple as disaster relief. Thousands of people volunteer for this all around the world.”
“People who were born in this dimension. People who are already accustomed to the way that the world works. Idealism died in the 60’s, Daniel. And the job still takes its toll on them.”
“I refuse to entertain your sick notion that there are no good people left in the world,” Dan told him.
He thought of Margaret, the kind old lady, concerned for a stranger.
Dan straightened his back and looked Mercury in the eye. “I know for a fact that it isn’t true.”
“Of course there are good people,” Mercury scoffed incredulously. “There wouldn’t be any volunteers if there weren’t.”
Dan deflated. “Then what—”
“Are you prepared to see the darker parts of our world, Daniel?” the doctor interrupted. “Are you prepared to pull corpses out of burning buildings? Are you ready to witness mothers crying over the bodies of their children, of husbands weeping for their spouses? People die every day. You can’t stop it. Nobody can stop it. Have you ever had to face that? Have you truly internalized it?”
“That’s not—”
“Do you honestly believe you can face the devastation and come out unscathed? You, who still believes in superheroes. Who thinks that good intentions are a substitute for proper training. Who wants, desperately, to be special? How long could you tolerate cruel reality? How long before it breaks you? There are no idealists left in the world Daniel!”
Mercury finished his rant with an angry bellow. He was red in the face and heaving, and Dan watched cautiously as the old man fought to catch his breath. Dan mulled over the entire conversation while he waited, examing Mercury’s words as dispassionately as he could.
The doctor had made some unflattering accusations. That Dan was naive, idiotic, reckless, self-sacrificing, the list went on and on. They weren’t all baseless. It hurt him to admit it, but there it was. Dan was naive, he was overly optimistic, he occasionally believed things that had little basis in fact. These things were true.
This final rant, though, felt off. Dan was many things. Many unfortunate things. But fragile was not one of them. Dan did not break easily. It was one of the few things that he could actually say with certainty. He hadn’t even realized it before now.
Here he was, infinitely far from home. Here he was, stranded in a strange land with no hope of leaving. Dan had not broken. He moved forward. Slowly, haltingly, tripping over every step, but forward. He’d had his moments of despair, sure, but crying in a corner only mattered if you didn’t get back up again.
Dan couldn’t speak on his capability. Determination wasn’t enough to guarantee success, he could admit that. Failure was always a possibility. But, Dan would move on. He’d keep going. He’d try something different. He wouldn’t break.
Dan, after twenty-five years, had found his spine. He wouldn’t be letting go of it any time soon.
Dan spoke quietly. “I’m not sure we’re talking about me anymore.”
The doctor’s panting slowed. His face fell back into a stony facade. “No, perhaps not.”
“Right then.” Daniel stood up. “You’ve given me a lot to think about. I’ll say this, though. I know that I can’t fix the world. I know that there’s no silver bullet for suffering. I know that any contribution I make will be small and unimportant.”
Dan paused, searching for a way to explain himself. Marcus watched him, his face completely blank.
“I know that,” Dan said, slowly, “but I’m going to try anyways. I don’t expect to actually succeed. The old me would have come up with some excuse not to try. I don’t want to be that person anymore. I want to try. If I fail, then I fail. I’ll just try something else.
“That’s the kind of person that I want to be.”
The silence of the room was deafening. Marcus looked as old and withered as Daniel had ever seen him. When no comment was forthcoming, Daniel turned to leave.
“I’m going to do some research,” Dan said, walking away. “There is a way out there for me to contribute to the world, and I’m gonna find it.”
He made it about halfway to the door.
“You can bypass most of the process with a recommendation,” Marcus spoke suddenly.
Dan stumbled slightly, then spun to face the scientist. The old man was watching him, brow furrowed. “Excuse me?”
“To bypass the standard requirements for your crisis training license. You need a recommendation, specifically from someone who has already been trained to deal with the relevant situations,” Marcus explained. “Meaning a person who is already certified, or certain public service employees. Policemen, firemen, that sort of thing.”
“That… helps. Thanks. Though I don’t actually know anyone who has been certified.” Dan frowned suspiciously. “Are you certified?”
“I am.”
Dan clamped down hard on his irritation. “Is there a reason why you didn’t mention this at the beginning of our conversation?”
Marcus looked at Dan like he was a particularly slow infant. “Because I thought it was a terrible idea. Was I… unclear on that, somehow?” The man sounded genuinely concerned.
“No,” Dan muttered. “You were quite clear. You’ve changed your mind then?”
“I have not.”
Dan took a deep breath and counted to ten. “So you won’t give me your recommendation?”
Mercury sighed, adjusting his glasses. He looked like a man about to attempt a hopeless task. “I’ll give you a chance to earn it. You will participate in a training program of my design.”
Dan took a cautious step backwards. “Do you promise not to use this as an excuse to torture me?”
“No.”
Dan retreated another step, before remembering that he could teleport. “That’s not reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant to be,” Marcus acknowledged. “I will not go easy on you. I will, in fact, be exceptionally hard on you. But I can promise you that, should you perservere through it, you’ll be prepared for anything you’ll encounter.”
“I’m not looking to be prepared for anything,” Dan pointed out.
The doctor raised an eyebrow. “But wouldn’t you rather be?”
Dan chewed his lip. “You’re not giving me much of a choice here.”
Marcus shrugged. “You could do something else.”
If the doctor was attempting sort of reverse-pyschology then it was working wonderfully. Dan attempted to look determined. “I’ll try something else if I fail, but I won’t fail to try.”
“How poignant. In that case, no, I’m not giving you much of a choice. Though…” A touch of humor entered the doctor’s voice. “If I remember correctly, you’ve caught the eye of a police officer in the past. You could always ask him.”
Dan blinked, trying to recall the incident. He remembered a man, large in stature and voice, bellowing about potential. What was his name?
Dan absently reached into his back pocket and withdrew his wallet. There at the front, the only business card he’d been given thus far: Officer Gregoir Pierre-Louise. A bundle of overenthusiastic muscle with a penchant for gross optimism even by Dan’s lofty standards.
Dan stared at it, discomfort churning in his gut. Two paths spiralled out in front of him, one painful, one agonizing.
“Fuck,” he announced succinctly.
“Quite so,” Marcus replied.
“I choose you,” Dan said quickly, before the vindictive old man could retract the offer.
“I thought you might,” the crafty bastard said. “Return to the station in two days. I’ll have things set up by then.”
“Return? Marcus, I live here,” Dan pointed out with confusion.
Marcus blinked. “Ah. So you do.”
“You forgot that I live here?”
“I’d gotten rather carried away playing the role of a sinister mentor,” Mercury confessed awkwardly. “My apologies. Keep yourself occupied for two days and don’t bother me.”
“Sinister mentor?” Dan mouthed with exasperation as he left the room.
It seemed that he wasn’t the only one who still harbored some childish tendencies. The doctor’s appellation was oddly appropriate. He could certainly fit sinister to a tee.
That wasn’t a comforting thought.