From deception comes invention

[Dr.Steel]

Dr. Steel squares his shoulders, raises his chin, and begins to wax eloquent;

"I am," he drawls, "crazy."
"It's official." he says, spreading his hands.
"There's paperwork on it. Graphs and everything, so, it - it must be true."
A smile bristles his beard.
"And let me tell you, it's a real load off my mind. I mean, it relieves a lot of responsibility for me.
I always have a ready excuse if I begin talking to myself in public - or if I decide to crawl around the floor of the cafeteria barking and whistling - so be it. I'm bonkers.
It's very convenient, and fun!
So, for me, you see, there are no longer any rules - no strangling societal 'boundaries', mores, values and such, to keep me from objective truth.
There is literally nothing I cannot, or will not, use my 'instability' as an excuse for in pursuit of the deepest truths."

He stops, breathes deeply, then continues.

"You see, while I am not clinically 'sane' per se, neither am I stupid. I am quite aware of my foibles and frailties, and the scientific benefit that they offer me.
Because I lack the filters of a 'restrained' mind, I can see truths where your subconscious self-protection makes the rest of you blind.
In short, I can see things that your hind-brain refuses to let you see."

This, of course, is the basis for my grandest work, my Trans-Static-Inversion Multiverse Principle."

Pause

"I can see from your faces that you are unaware of my work - as you should be. I have only shared it with my Nursing staff, and of course my imaginary friends, Tom and Ralph.
And they'd never talk.
They can't! They don't exist outside of my own perceptions.
Of course, the Nurses are real..."

The Doctor waggles a gloved hand in the air, shaking his head to clear it.

"Sorry to ramble like this, but you see, as I mentioned earlier, I have an excuse."

"I shall offer you an appetizer, an amuse-bouche, of my work shall I?
Well, I must tell you, my work is creeping inexorably closer to a stupefying truth about our Universe, it's place in the Pluriverse, and how they expose the causal relationship between the Multiverse itself, and - this is the exciting bit - and our own bodily atomic structures.
Consider a solar system - Consider an atom. Now compare. Expand this model through micro and macro to full plurality, flip it then invert it.
Wheels within wheels..."
He raises an eyebrow.
"See?
No?
Not surprising.
It would take far too long, at this juncture, to fully explain it to you - and telling you just the salient bits would only confuse you, I'm certain."

He holds up a hand to forestall comment.

"I mean no insult to your intelligence, but I can clearly see that you are 'sane', and as such, your own ego-filters would obviously preclude you from divining emergent truth from partial datum. Yes?
Yes, I am quite sure of it.
Perhaps soon, when Dr. Foetsch and my Nurses are not drunkenly reeling from their own fear-toxins, we can sit down over a Cardi n' Cola and further discuss my important work - fully - in a manner that you can understand."

"Now.
You have brought us here for a purpose, I assume.
And I, for one, should very much like to get on with it."

Dr. Steel smirks.

"Unless, of course, your purpose is interrogation...
In which case I can tell you about the puppy I had as a boy, how my parents never understood me, and how I cannot stop pining over being spurned by Maggie-Mae Marsh in the twelfth grade....
...but something tells me you have brought us here to help you seek out data that eludes you, not to simply provide it."

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Building a Utopian Playground - One Smile at a Time