Ah, an interesting question and one he's not asked very often. Billy smiles nostalgically, drawing on some of his earliest memories.
"I suppose it started when I was very young. From an early age I was motivated to read, learn everything I can, and ask questions. Now...I don't intend to put myself on a pretentious pedestal, but my parents found that I was qualified for genius programs, where my curiosity was rewarded further. For a time, it was all wonderful. I absorbed information for the pure joy of doing it. I saw mysterious objects and wanted to understand them. I took things apart to learn how they worked, and pieced them together again. From there, I learned how to build more and more complex devices, and it was thrilling to truly accomplish something. My obsessive interest eventually made me an outcast from the other children, so I retreated into my work. The world scared me, and I thought I would be able to master it if I could only take it apart to study it." He pauses reflectively. He'd never said that in so many words before, and it was an unsettling epiphany.
"My sour experiences with people led me to study hard facts---numbers, physics, mechanics. Items that had a clear answer, unlike the people I knew. It was an escape from loneliness to tinker with machines, and it gave me strength to know that I could solve a problem if I wanted to. But I never gave up on people entirely. Every now and then, I met someone who wasn't intimidated by my studies. And I eventually became friends with all sorts of people, once we learned that our judgments had been hasty and based on faulty information, but even then I still invented. It was my way of contributing to the world. I proved myself in that lab."
Billy's facial expression might be strange---haunted with remembered pain but hopeful. "So...overall, I'd say my interest was partially curiosity and partially a desire to be helpful. I've never thought about how or why it happened before."
no subject
"I suppose it started when I was very young. From an early age I was motivated to read, learn everything I can, and ask questions. Now...I don't intend to put myself on a pretentious pedestal, but my parents found that I was qualified for genius programs, where my curiosity was rewarded further. For a time, it was all wonderful. I absorbed information for the pure joy of doing it. I saw mysterious objects and wanted to understand them. I took things apart to learn how they worked, and pieced them together again. From there, I learned how to build more and more complex devices, and it was thrilling to truly accomplish something. My obsessive interest eventually made me an outcast from the other children, so I retreated into my work. The world scared me, and I thought I would be able to master it if I could only take it apart to study it." He pauses reflectively. He'd never said that in so many words before, and it was an unsettling epiphany.
"My sour experiences with people led me to study hard facts---numbers, physics, mechanics. Items that had a clear answer, unlike the people I knew. It was an escape from loneliness to tinker with machines, and it gave me strength to know that I could solve a problem if I wanted to. But I never gave up on people entirely. Every now and then, I met someone who wasn't intimidated by my studies. And I eventually became friends with all sorts of people, once we learned that our judgments had been hasty and based on faulty information, but even then I still invented. It was my way of contributing to the world. I proved myself in that lab."
Billy's facial expression might be strange---haunted with remembered pain but hopeful. "So...overall, I'd say my interest was partially curiosity and partially a desire to be helpful. I've never thought about how or why it happened before."