2019-11-21 - Reality Is Merely An Illusion, Albeit A Very Persistent One.

People are dying, disappearing, or being kidnapped SLIGHTLY less often, which leaves Alexander the free time to try to catch up on certain suggestions, including one of inviting Dr. Stevenson to tea. Hopefully the Espresso Yourself has some of that. His text was terse, and now he's here, at the appointed time, sitting towards the back where he can watch the whole shop and the front door. He's in a sweater that is this awful rainbow of green and brown, and he already has a chocolate chip cookie before him, his fingers tap tap tapping a rhythm on the table.

Getting Hailey to agree to meet anywhere is a big chore. She's super-big on last minute rescheduling. So some of this long delay probably lands on her, too. But she's made it, yay! Whatever she was doing before she came here doesn't show in attire or demeanor; she's dressed for the weather in jeans and a sweater and a rain slicker, the last of which she shakes off outside the door before coming in. On the first look around the interior, she doesn't see Alexander at all, just slides her eyes right over him, frowns, and checks again. "Oh. Hi!" There he is! Then it's 'wait a sec' while she gets some tea.

Now then. "Hi!" This time, when she's sitting down with said tea. "How are you, Mister Clayton? I like your sweater."

"Hi," Alexander responds, pleasantly enough, like he expects to be overlooked. As she's getting tea, his phone chimes, and he looks down at it, firing off a text or two before she sits down. Once she does, he puts the phone aside and says, again, "Hi." A blink, then a rather bewildered smile as she says she likes his sweater. He looks down at it, then over at her. "Thanks. I like it, too. I'm mostly okay. And yourself? No further pumpkin incidents for you or the editor?"

"Pumpkin incidents." Hailey repeats the term cluelessly, looking over Alexander's shoulder toward the board at the front that's like PUMPKIN SPICE IS HERE EVERYONE, brows knitting. So it takes her a solid three or four extra seconds before, "Oh! You mean the thing at the park. With the headless horseman." Nobody gawks at them, but she should probably drop her voice some. "Ahhhhm. No, no more pumpkin incidents for me. And I don't think for Harvey, either." Anyway, her tea needs sugar so she does that. "No more awkwardly rapid healing incidents for you?"

"Good. Pumpkins belong in pies, not trying to explode your face," Alexander says, cheerfully. He breaks off a piece of his cookie and nibbles on it; if people are looking in their direction, he either doesn't seem to notice, or is used to the 'oh, there's a crazy person' nose-wrinkles. He shakes his head at her question. "Trying to avoid needing them. Trying to talk other people out of them, as well, but," he shrugs, "it's not exactly easy. Everything in this town wants to kill us. But. Other than that, how are you?"

"If it was," easy, "probably I wouldn't have a profession at all. If it helps any, I really like my job?" Hailey's smile is edged with apology, like she knows it's not completely kosher to be a-okay with people getting themselves into situations that land them in the hospital. "I'm fine. Busy. Alive, though. Which is a pretty big deal around here." She points at Alexander, everything in this town wants to kill them! "Ahm, you? Are you, ahm - " Yeah, she's floundering. " - work... ing... a lot?"

Look, pretty doctors don't have to be great conversationalists.

"It does help. I'd hate to think of what you'd do if you hated it." Alexander takes another piece of cookie, puts it in his mouth. There's an agreeable nod at the idea of 'alive' being a pretty big deal around here. Then he watches her flounder for a while, and does not help. Asshole. Eventually, he clears his throat. "Yes. I have a few paying jobs, and I'm keeping busy. Thanks. For asking." There's a quick little grin, just there and gone. It leaves a more serious expression in its wake. "I'm glad you were willing to sit down and talk with me, Doctor. I, uh, understand you were at the Paranormal Society meeting...thing? And witnessed the disruption there?"

"Quit, I guess." Hailey frowns thoughtfully, looking off into the middle distance like it's never before occurred to her what she'd do if she hated her job. When she comes back to the here and now, it's with a quick shake of her head and the knowledge, "But you mean, like, torture people or something." Nose-crinkle, not on her agenda. So she sips some tea while Alexander answers her wonderfully awesome small-talk questions with his wonderfully awesome small-talk answers.

Oh good, something with more teeth. "I was!" Ahem. "Steve." She's inordinately proud of remembering that. "I assume he, you know, left when he left."

"I mostly meant be snarly and give out large morphine doses in order to keep irritating patients quiet, but sure, we can go with torture. If that's where your head goes. I don't judge." Alexander says, with a shrug. He nods, slowly. "Yes. I wasn't there, but that's the name I heard. Do you mean you think he went back over there?" A pause. "Why would anyone want to go back there? All of the previous inmates I've talked to have been rather...unanimous in their characterization of the place as awful."

Cheerfully, "Are you sure the large morphine dose was the only thing I did to you while you were there?" Hailey beams across the table at Alexander, twitches her brows, and then adds, "But really you're probably fine. If anything was going to happen..." She's kidding.

So let's leave that conversation behind, 'cause this other one is waaaay more serious. "I think he left. I don't know where he went. Some people can do that, you know. Just go Over There when they want to. Not me, though." Hold on, there's more to this.

"Not you, either." She shrugs, like that's just the way the Cookie Crook Crumbles, friend. As to why, she gives it some serious thought before committing to a slowly enunciated response. "Some people just... can't... make it. It's hard, you know? To try to... be okay. When you're not okay." She's not communicating this well, and she apologizes with the troubled expression.

Alexander twitches, visibly, at the implication. His hands fidget nervously with each other and he just stares at her with a fixed expression, like he's pondering the strength required to rip the knowledge out of her mind. Eventually, he shivers, and says, quietly, "I wish you wouldn't joke. About that. It makes me nervous." And tries to refocus on the conversation. "I, I've met one. Who can apparently just walk through any door and be Over There. And a few more who can find thin spaces. I know I can't." Although his eyes narrow when he feels the brush of her power. "I'm not a psychokinetic at all." He looks down at her slow response. "I know that. I know it's hard." It's a mutter. "But...never mind. Some friends of mine want to, need to go over there. I believe you've met one - Easton Marshall. But it sounds like someone I need to find - two someones - might be releasing patients. I...can't make any doors to go over there, as you pointed out. But I was hoping you might have some information about the place, what it does, who is there. That sort of thing. To make it easier to get over there and back without getting hurt."

Hailey never jokes about it again, the serious nod promises that. She also makes appropriate apology-noises. "I know," that he's not psychokinetic at all. "Me, neither." So she shrugs, such is life, and pretends not to hear him muttering about the hardness of playing sane; she's too busy sipping tea, see. "Easton Marshall." Just trying out the name, and all set to shake her head like it doesn't ring any bells, but - "Oh! I gave him a key." Again, she's really proud of herself for putting that together all on her own. (See above re: pretty doctors get free passes on lots of things.) But then she's listening again, and her frown deepens steadily until he gets to the end. Simply, "I wouldn't count on that. I mean. With all due respect, Mister Clayton, if you're going to try and go to the Facility, you had probably better plan for a long stay." Him in particular, says the pronoun-stress.

"You gave him a key," Alexander agrees. "Apparently it goes to Dr. Marshall's office? Possibly from more places than the usual." He's reaching for another piece of cookie when she responds to that last, with the emphasis that is hard to miss. His fingers still, and he stares at her. "How do they keep people in. Assuming that someone does not arrive restrained and sedated, or voluntarily committed?" A long pause. "And why me? I'm not...I'm not that..." His teeth click, because he can't really finish that sentence in the way he wants and remain serious.

"Sure." It should not be even a little bit hard to divine that Hailey has no fucking clue what that key is for. So she nods like she agreed wholeheartedly with Alexander's decision that it opens the dead doc's door, yep, sounds good to her! Those nods trail off gradually while he stares at her, until she's left staring back at him with her head tilted. Finally, after like five seconds solid of just staring at him, "I don't know. I mean, I'm sure they keep them there somehow, or probably a lot of the patients would just leave. But I don't... remember... the details, Mister Clayton. I'm sorry."

Like, very sorry. The big eyes are full of trouble and apology for falling short here. Made even worse! "I don't want to hurt your feelings, but. Just." Fidget fidget. "You're not really... passing. You know? I'm so sorry, because you're fine here, in this town, but - " She stops trying and concludes, "I'm digging a hole here."

Alexander stares back. For those long five seconds, it's INCREDIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE for everyone concerned. And then...well, it gets worse. At least for Alexander. First he scowls. "You don't remember. But you stand out. And you worked there, you weren't a patient. Right? Is that something they do to you, or..."

And then she goes on, and he sucks in a breath, goes rigid in his seat. He gives a little shudder and looks away. "I know that. I know that." A sad little shake of his head at his last words. "No. It's fine." It's not fine. "I know what I am."

Deep breath. Nod. "So. Yeah. I would just, ahm, make sure I had all my affairs in order. If I were you. And planning to break into that particular Facility. Whiiiiiich I wouldn't do. If I were you." Hailey tries on a smile, but it doesn't fit, so she doesn't purchase the thing, just sticks it back on the rack and starts dismantling her teacup, one little rip of paper at a time. "I worked there, and I wasn't a patient, correct. And I don't think anyone did anything to me. I think..." She thinks about what she thinks for a second or two. "I don't know what I think anymore. Maybe it's living over there? Or maybe it's the Facility itself? I don't know. It just seems like trying to remember makes things worse, and it's much easier to just let the forgetting happen."

"But Alice and the actress seem to have been able to. And Alice was an actual prisoner there. How did she escape? How could someone escape?" Alexander frowns, his fingers rapidly tapping the tabletop. "Why would you even work there? What made you want to go there?" The questions are fired like bullets, like new data might distract him from contemplating the truth of her suggestions about his mental stability...or lack there of.

Hailey's not saying Alexander's crazy. Just that he SEEMS crazy. In case this ever comes up, like, in court or something. <.<

And then he's asking her questions, a whole bunch in a row, and she sighs, counting them out on her fingers so she remembers them. (It's not nice to rapid-fire questions at someone who just confessed to having holes in her memory, sir!) One and two, so she folds those fingers when she answers, "I don't know how anyone escaped. I wasn't there. Steve said something about they made him open the door? So probably that's how they escaped." Beat. "Or else it's not. He is a mental patient, after all."

Three and four... she sighs and looks at her fingers as if for inspiration. "I felt a sense of obligation to Doctor Marshall. There was - " She shakes her head and leaves it at, "Medical school is very expensive, Mister Clayton, and I'm super-poor."

Alexander listens. His jaw sets. "Still, that it worked, whatever they did, suggests there's a way." Then he sighs, and slumps back in his chair, running his hands through his hair and leaving it wild. "All right. I don't mean to badger." He totally means to badger. His eyes flick up to hers. "Did you know what the place was when you went there? What was it like? That you remember."

Hailey nods along with that first part, mostly agreeing. "Or else they didn't escape at all. Maybe someone let them out? I mean, you are kind of putting a lot of faith in someone who might not be the most, ahm, reliable narrator?" She means Steve. Not herself. But the shoe fits... She stops looking at the growing pile of teacup-paper-snow and looks back at Alexander, head tilting again. "I think I knew? At least, I don't remember not knowing, so that suggests I knew." Let's call a spade a spade here: She doesn't know if she knew. "It was mostly like a mental hospital. Clean. Cold. I had a nice little room." Pause.

Sadly, "I don't know the things you want to know, Mister Clayton. If I ever knew them," she shakes her head, "they're gone. Replaced by Headless Horsemen and Pancake People and who knows what else."

Alexander sighs. His shoulders slump. "That's fine, Dr. Stevenson. Can't expect answers to be handed on a silver platter, and no one seems to remember what the place is like, or what happens there. The fact that it extends to ex-employees is still /data/, even if it's not the data I was hoping for." He shrugs, then perks up. "Wait. Pancake people? ...are we talking makeup, or breakfast food?"

Feeling just all kinds of guilty, Hailey blabbers out as fast as she can, "I know that Doctor Marshall came and went a lot? But I never left until I left. And I remember there was a cemetery there. And I never got hurt there. Not by doctors or patients or the nightmares or anything. And I was there for two years, which is a pretty long time to go without the nightmares if you think about it, because I do things to people all the time and yeah." She plugs the hole on that info-dump with a sheepish cough.

"Oh, breakfast food. They were at war with the waffles. Over butter. It happens."

Alexander blinks at the flood of information. A smile flickers. "They...probably had other things to feed on, there. Judging by what some of the others have said." An eyebrow arches. "Are you still, uh, doing things to people all the time, Dr. Stevenson?" And then there's a bright laugh. "...only in Gray Harbor. But here, it does seem to happen rather a lot. Who one? Waffles, I hope. Clearly the superior food."

"Not. Like. Healing mortal wounds, no. But I like to categorize things." With a chin-lift, because Hailey's not about to suffer judgment for being nosy by Alexander Clayton, of all people, so there! "And you can't just ask people, you know? 'Could you just fill out this little Venn Diagram for me? Red is for if you can levitate things, blue is for if you can communicate psychically and electrocute things, and green is for healing and plant-stuff.'" She shakes her head very seriously. "Most people aren't all one color, did you know? I just don't know why yet..." Or else she used to know and has now forgotten!

Anyway. "I think the pancakes had the upper-hand. They were kidnapping the waffles - which explains a lot about that restaurant at the edge of town and why they never have any waffles even though it's called the Waffle Shoppe."

Alexander notes the chin lift, and it makes the other eyebrow rise to match its twin. He snorts. "Just be careful. People have been taking a lot of...unpleasant consequences for overuse of their abilities, of late." A pause. "And you might be surprised how many people would fill out such a diagram. Of course, the ones that won't might try to set you on fire for asking. It's like gambling. But with more fire." He eats the last of his cookie, meticulously folding it. "I noticed. I haven't done a study, exactly, but almost everyone I know can do more than one thing. A couple of people are almost even across all three...broad categories. A lot more are like me. Focused in one area, with another, or two others, much weaker. I theorize personality factors play into what parts manifest, even if maybe we all have the potential for all of them."

He frowns. "See. Pancakes are tricky and dishonorable. Waffles are the only true breakfast food." It's just as serious as what he said before.

"Do you think so?" About personality, she means. "I've wondered about it. Are we who we are because of what we can do, or can we do what we can do because of who we are? And then there's the whole thing of some people can learn to do other things if they try very hard..." But Hailey sighs at the million loose threads. "Have you ever tried to use the red or the green?" She looks hopefully across the table at Alexander, like they haven't been sitting here, talking about the insane asylum where people who fuck around with this stuff wind up getting dumped.

Oh and, "I don't eat breakfast anymore. Eventually, when the nightmares ruin club sandwiches for me, I figure I'll have to get over it. Till then." She'd sip her tea like Kermit, except she ruined the cup, and winds up blinking at the pile of paper scraps in front of her confusedly.

"I would prefer to think that it's because of who we are, that shapes what we can do. But I don't have a lot of evidence either way - I've been picking up people's emotions, things like that, as long as I can remember, although I've gotten better at it, and better controlled, as I've gotten older," Alexander muses. "But I didn't break through to the, uh, green, until college, and that's never been my strong point." He reaches out for her paper scraps, and starts carefully putting them together, the little tears sealing when he places them against one another. "This is about as much as I can do. Only something this simple, and only if everything is there, and just needs to be...restored." He shrugs. "I can't even wrap my mind around psychokinesis. I've tried. But I don't feel it. It doesn't resonate with me." He looks back up at her. "What about you? Tried poking around in people's heads?"

He snorts at the breakfast boycott. "Everything's food, eventually, Dr. Stevenson. Circle of life and all of that."

Watching the edges of the paper knit themselves back together, Hailey comments quietly, "I know we just had a whole conversation about the giant holes in my memory but. Ahm. Didn't you just tell me that people have had unpleasant consequences lately?" Her eyes go from the paper to Alexander's and back again, wide below raised eyebrows. She leaves her rebuke with a nose-crinkle and a quick nod. "I think... I'm more blue than you are green, but less green than you are blue. Not red, though. I can't touch things that aren't alive, I think? I can't even really do that, what you did with the paper. So probably I need to add a bunch more colors to all this, but it's exhausting to think about it." She's drawing the Venn Diagrams with her index finger on the table, see, and coloring them in her imagination. Then swipes her palm across the invisible pictures, all gone~!

"And we can talk about the circle of life the next time a waffle tells you that it's got a baby on the way."

"Yeah, but I think we also established that I'm a crazy person," Alexander points out, voice dry. But he does stop trying to put her paper cup back together again. Now it just looks like she lacks commitment to her destruction tendencies. "I'm sorry. About your memories. That has to be terrible. I would go cra--crazier if I couldn't at least have a memory. Even if I don't always know if it's a true memory. Are you. Um. Talking to anyone?" He looks down at the paper. "I'm better, in some ways, fixing unalive things. I'm not much of a healer. I can make bruises go away faster, or a cut scab over more quickly, but," a soft laugh, "nothing like what other people can do. And it's hard to know if I've - if any of us - have discovered all the things we MIGHT do. Like, six months ago? I would have sworn up and down that there was no way for anyone to bring shit out of Over There. Now people do it. Completely contradicts the knowledge I had. So maybe things are evolving, too."

Then he jabs a finger at her. "Stop. You're not going to ruin waffles for me. There are few uncomplicated pleasures in this life, and I refuse to have sad, baby-waffle eyes staring into my imagination every time I have a decent breakfast."

No, but seriously. "I don't think you're crazy, Mister Clayton, and I'm sorry if it sounded like that's what I meant. I just think you're not normal." Hailey stops there. Before she jumps back in the hole she dug nice and deep on the first round of this subject. Is she talking to anyone? "No." There's probably more to that, but then Alexander's talking about things evolving, and she's quick to contribute, "Do you think so? I think maybe it's just that everyone who finds things out - real things, I mean - they die or they disappear and all that knowledge goes with them. Or maybe they just forget." She perks up cheerfully to conclude, "Which means the upshot to all this is that someday, I'll forget about the waffle wars, and so will you."

She hums a few bars, hum-de-dum the bright side of your life, hum dum.

Alexander stares at her for a moment. Then leans forward and says, in a stage whisper, "You're not very good at reassuring people, Dr. Stevenson. I don't know if anyone's mentioned it. But I thought you should know." Then he leans back, and moves on. "Um. It's possible. And I think for some things, yes. But for others?" He shakes his head. "I know that we can change things. About how our abilities work. When we put Gohl to rest, it made it...harder? To reach out. So evidence suggests that the environment can be shifted to make things at least more hostile or more accepting to abilities. Maybe environmental shifts can have qualitative effects, not just alter intensity. But I have less evidence for that."

A soft laugh at the humming and looking forward to forgetting. "You're not entirely normal, yourself," he points out. So maybe he didn't move on THAT MUCH.

"I know. I should really consider pathology or something where I don't have to talk to actual people, just other doctors." Hailey shrugs expansively, like oh well, what're you gonna do.

News to her! "Is that what happened? Good gravy, I've been thinking for weeks that I just forgot - anyway. You can't really rule out the possibility that, well, have you ever heard of the Mandela Effect? The whole thing with the Berenstein Bears?" (Which her player continues to spell that way no matter what the fucking universe is trying to tell me is the way it's supposed to be spelled.) "Maybe you're just remembering a different reality, where you can't bring things back, but now you're in this one, where you can." Shut up. She's perfectly normal. Even while she's tapping her nose, 'cause she totally just unmasked the grand conspiracy, look at how proud her beam is.

Alexander shrugs. "It's fine. Most of the people in town aren't very good at communicating with others. Have you seen our violent crime rates? At least you don't talk with your fists. Or by stripping the skin off the still living. Puts you in the top...third of Gray Harbor residents. At the very least." He seems to be serious. That, or he's got that deadpan humor thing down on a lock.

A nod at what happened. "That seems to be what happened. Although I'm not sure how. The spirit indicated he was...shutting something behind him when he went? And then the world got smaller." An exasperated sigh. "No one bothers to write a fucking book on how any of this works." He twitches at the mention of alternate realities. "I don't...I don't like that idea. How would you know that where you are now is the real reality, if that were true." And that bothers him. That clearly bothers him A LOT.

That's okay. Hailey seems to like the weird enough for both of them! "Or maybe someone has written that book, and it's just poof, gone." OMG woman, learn to read the room already! "That's the whole thing, you'll never know which reality is the real reality. Did Nelson Mandela die in prison in the eighties? Have grapes always been toxic to dogs, or is it just in this reality? Because I don't remember ever hearing about that until, like, a month ago, and yet everyone seems to know it."

Abruptly, "I should go home. Are you okay? I know you didn't get exactly what you were after but...?"

Alexander visibly twitches. Not just once, but several times. "Things that are real are real, Dr. Stevenson." But his voice seems a little strained, his eyes a little wide. And wild. He stands up in haste at her abrupt readiness to depart. "I'm fine." He's not fine. "This was fine. Thank you for the, the discussion. Maybe I didn't get the answers I might have wanted, but the ones I got were interesting. I. Um. Nice to talk to you." And then he's leaving, head down, shoulders hunched, plunging into the rain. No doubt to go obsessing about whether anything is REAL.

THANKS, DOC.

"Are they?" Hailey's little bit of blue will involve a crude, non-moving illusion of a waffle-person plastered to the wall just outside the coffee shop, pinned there by those toothpicks with crinkly plastic capping the ends. Blue plastic, specifically. Its big, cartoon-eyes can't move, so it's just luck that they happen to be at eye-level with Alexander upon his departure. But she was just making a point, so - while she's inside, pulling on her slicker and calling, "Have a nice rest of your day, Mister Clayton!" - it fades out of existence.

PROVING HER POINT, YOU'RE WELCOME.