Fringe - What Can't We Do [2/?]
1986
Wooster, Ohio was not her ideal home but she adjusted. A college campus was not her ideal lab but she adjusted. Children were not her ideal test subjects and she never quite adjusted.
The children were happy, she knew that. To them these were games and fun times. They never quite seemed to remember the injections and the head scientists were gentle in their tests.
Walter Bishop visited a few times to check on the children (The subjects, she thought bitterly) and speak to the other assistants. Sean had been promoted to the head of research in this “lab”, a role he took with relish. She’d never quite understood his words so long ago, that it was all for science, but she saw it now. His eyes shined when he spoke about his work, his theories and ideas, and they sparked even more when Dr. Bishop gave his own suggestions.
And to her shame, she felt the draw as well. When she read results and had ideas, she felt the thrill of adventure. She felt the utter bliss of realizing that she was carving the path to the future. Yes, she was making a future for children of the next generation - the very generation blinking innocently as she manipulated it into obeying her tests.
It was all for science.
For the future.
Carl was awful with children, to their amusement. He’d been inducted later than she and he had no idea how to deal with shouting toddlers. He settled for buying their love with candy, sometimes even stealing Dr. Bishop’s special stash of red licorice. Han, on the other hand, was an unexpected natural. His calm, quiet atmosphere drew the subjects - the children - to him with ease.
“What is it?” Carl asked a crying girl helplessly. Her name was Becca, she was six, and she always carried a large stuffed frog. “What’s the matter?”
Becca wailed and he awkwardly picked her up, holding her as far from himself as possible.
“Sexual harassment,” Han intoned and Carl nearly dropped her. Han walked over and took the screaming girl from his coworker.
“Hello, Becca,” he said and Becca’s whimpers dwindled. “Where’s your frog?”
“I - don’t - know!” Becca wailed. Han adjusted her into one arm and gently wiped her face with his sleeve.
“Well then, we’ll have to find him, won’t we?” The little girl smiled at him, all tears gone as they began their quest for the missing frog. (He was at the snack table.)
“How do you do it?” Carl demanded later. They were driving back to the house the government had kindly allotted them. Sean was pretending to ignore them as he drove, Wendy sitting beside him in the passenger seat. She glanced back for Han’s answer.
Han looked at them all impassively.
“I try to remember they’re children.”
Sean’s knuckles whitened against the steering wheel.
She knew he wasn’t likely to welcome her but she couldn’t help feel that maybe he needed company. She knocked on his door and was surprised to hear a response.
“Come in,” Sean’s voice drifted out. Wendy entered hesitantly.
The room was neat and overwhelmingly organized; no surprise there. The bed was perfectly made and there was a stack of files on the table beside it. Again, not a surprise when it came to Sean.
What did surprise her was the fact that Sean was slumped in a chair surrounded by various bottles of alcohol. He was pouring himself a glass of scotch.
“Drink?” he offered and she shook her head no. He shrugged and took a long, long gulp. She watched his throat convulse.
“What,” he said, and he looked at her with raw eyes she’d never seen before, “are we doing?”
She had no answer.
“They’re just children,” Sean said in a mocking imitation of Han’s voice. He drank and swallowed bitterly. “They’re just children,” he echoed quietly.
“It’s not hurting them,” Wendy pointed out. She felt like she had to. “It’s just…accessing their potential.”
“It’s pervading the laws of nature,” Sean snapped. His glass trembled between his hands. “It’s wrong.”
“It’s for science,” she quoted and he laughed.
“Right,” he said with suspicious cheer. “For science.”
He hummed and downed his glass. Wendy watched him warily, unsure what to do. She’d never seen him unraveled like this, never dreamed she would witness the breakdown of renowned scientist Sean King. It frightened her.
“Well,” Carl’s voice said and she was relieved to find him and Han standing by the door. “It looks to me like you need some sleep.”
“No thank you,” Sean muttered and protectively held his whiskey bottle. Han gestured for her to walk over as Carl crossed the room with soothing words.
“Will he be all right?” she asked him. Han shrugged.
“He’ll pretend to be.” He closed the door carefully as violent curses streamed out from the room. “And that’ll have to be good enough.”
There was no sign of the last night’s events when they made their way to the lab, Sean quiet and sullen in the back beside Carl. Han had wordlessly taken the driver’s seat and smoothly took them all the campus. Students ignored them, used to the strangers with their machines and boxes.
It was time for separate trials, which simply meant they took each child aside and gave them impossible tasks to solve. There was little incident though young David Crow threw a fit when they tried to separate him from Angela Keye and they resumed their fruitless experiments.
“The game is to make a picture on the screen,” Wendy explained to Ivy Kang. The little girl blinked, sucking her finger shyly as she glanced at the machine. It was a flat gray screen filled with black magnetic powder. Dr. Bishop had theorized that one of the children’s first abilities would be telekinesis, drawn from the human need to take what was beyond reach.
“Just think of something you like,” Wendy said encouragingly. She glanced at the instructions on her clipboard. “Or something you want to see.” Ivy frowned at her and switched to her thumb, gnawing slightly as she glanced at the screen.
“Maybe a flower,” Wendy continued. She had no idea what else to do. “Or a bunny, or a dog, or a -”
“Wesson,” Carl said sharply. She turned around and nearly dropped her clipboard.
Darkness was crawling up the screen, swirling rhythmically as it scratched against its container. A large, squiggly round shape appeared with two shaky ovals accompanying it, lines scribbling out against it.
“Doggy,” Ivy mumbled proudly against her hand. Wendy stared as the blackness trembled.
“Very good,” she said faintly and the little girl beamed.