trans_9 | A-Mazed [Log with determinal; backdated to before Brainy was rele

The room they were dumped into was completely empty. Just metallic walls, metallic floors, metal ceiling. There were no more mazes here, no more portals, no more temptations of Earth confectioneries. Brainiac 5 had done all this before. This was the part where they were kept waiting and then eventually given their belongings and released. The skinny, green-skinned alien sat on the floor, hands clasped in front of him, and waited (the AI usually was terrible about making one wait, perhaps analyzing their reactions).

His only change in expression when the other man was dumped unceremoniously into the room through a portal was a slight raise of his blonde eyebrows.

"Ah. I see I wasn't the only one GLaDoS so indecorously ripped away from normal life on the ship--for all that it can be called normal."

A shame that this individual had been trapped here, running mazes. Brainy was good at remembering faces--as he was good at remembering everything--and he pegged him for someone that'd been relatively new. He wondered if he'd even had a chance to get a proper explanation of what was happening on the ship before being forced to run mazes and treated like a lab rat.

The tasks that they were forced to complete were too mundane, too pointless to really call ones of any importance. Spencer couldn't imagine that they had any greater goal aside from observation or busywork. Through the time he had managed to keep himself busy through analyzing the environment they were forced into. It reminded him of case studies that he had read about prisoners that were forced to do mundane tasks in an effort to test their psychological endurance. It could have something to do with what he was told earlier about being tested..

Today seemed quite a bit different, though. First he was forced into a new room with another person that he had never seen before. However, "person" seemed to be a negotiable term. This being didn't appear had a green tinge of skin and overall appeared like something unnatural.

However, the questions posed without flinch or question of his own presence did call for a little inquiry of its own. "Glados.." Spender started, raising an eyebrow as he uttered the name, "I think calling it 'normal life' on a ship is a little inaccurate." Nothing about the normal out there was even remotely normal to him.

"You were taken before having time to adjust, weren't you. Had anyone even explained our situation to you in full?" Brainiac asks.

It was a question he wanted to approach carefully considering the mixed reactions that he had gotten from the people he had spoken to. One..creature almost attacked him, while another person acted mildly--but nonetheless bewildering. So Spencer chose neutrality in his answer, "It couldn't hurt to get clarification."

"What do you know thus far?" Brainiac asks, hands still steepled as he looks at Spencer over them. It's easier to know what to clarify when you know the full extent of the muddled mess of misinformation. "Were you informed about what happened to your world?"

"I know that.." Considering all the mixed responses he'd gotten, Spencer decided to be a bit vague, "there's certainly a lot to learn about this place." What he knew was a muddled mess of confusion and mixed messages. Every bit of information he'd gleaned from the surroundings were conflicting, confusing, and irrational. The doctor clasped his wrist with his other hand, making sure that his hands were visible and he would appear less inconspicuous. "I wasn't told anything about anyones world, except that we were all chosen for something."

"The full explanation is this: our worlds are gone. They were supposedly destroyed by race of insectoid creatures known as the Ohm. We were rescued by a race called the Daligig, who claim that this ship is an ark, a former prison ship refurbished to house refugees from a myriad of worlds. Supposedly, damage to the ship has rendered her incapable of veering off her present path through the dimensions and we cannot stop her from forcing us to go on missions to fight the Ohm. The Daligig claim they desire to give aid and will make attempts as soon as we're closer to their sector of the Multiverse," explains Brainiac. "Currently, you and I are at the mercies of one of the ship's artificial intelligences, GLaDoS, who makes crew members run these mazes because, she claims, it provides her insight on our intellectual capacities, and our ability to operate under pressure."

He goes on, "The Daligig also claim that a way to restore our worlds may be in the possession of the Ohm."

It seemed like he'd figured out the reason for the maze and trivial tasks correctly. And signature to Reid, he couldn't help but spout a couple of facts in spite of his success. "Since the early, Scientists have conducted studies on rats who ran the same maze time and time again to evaluate their mental capacity as well as their ability to learn and memorize simple patterns. They also had them do these tests to test their spacial capabilities. It's a--" Maybe he was straying from the task at hand.

Instead Reid tilted his head, trying to prod the right chain of words into a sentence and through his mouth about the rest of the mess he had just been informed about. It sounded improbable, delusion, fictional, and.. crazy. However, since he was the one experiencing these things to so realistically maybe those same words could describe him. Reid decided to try and opt for the more sensical route than injecting his thoughts right off the bat. Perhaps if he asked a few more things he could gain some clear insight for once. "It seems like our world being destroyed would be something that people remember, but no one here has mentioned that their entire world is gone."

"Some refuse to believe the Daligig are telling the truth," says
Brainiac. "Largely because it's entirely possible that their actions
are meant to fulfill some agenda of their own. They could easily be
lying about our current predicament."

Brainy tilts his head, a gesture that is human and alien all at once,
the way he does it. "Or perhaps those individuals you spoke with are
merely in denial, because of their grief. Yet others have accepted our
fate because it's more promising than the existence they came from--a
new society that welcomes diversity, a home, a purpose."

Considering the variety of people he had met in the ship prior to this, this particular person seemed more capable of objective rationale--a welcome thing in a situation that was entirely irrational. After the conversations of having to speak to others who were speaking a language different from his own, one filled with native terms and places, it was nice to have someone step into his own way of thinking a little.

However, slightly discouraging since there were sparse details about the subject of planetary destruction.

"Denial is a completely normal way to deal with outstanding situations that people can't otherwise deal with." They didn't seem to harbor classical symptoms of denial, though. "But in our present situation, we don't seem to have many other options outside of cooperation in order to get back to our homes, if they even exist any more. Since we don't have any proof that what they say is fact we're going on the assumption that they're going to be good to their word."

"Or perhaps we're simply cooperating long enough to discover if the truth is indeed the truth," Brainy says simply. Not all of them buy it. Some are merely playing along and perhaps might still do so even when they're fed more of what the Daligig say is the truth.

Some people are skeptics for other reasons besides simple denial.

"But for right now, it doesn't seem like the captive audience has much of a choice since they're forced to cooperate no matter what." He wasn't sure of what he bought either at that point, but conjecture would only get so far in a situation like this one. Reid brought his hands forward, habitually clasping his slender hand with the other, "Speaking of captives, It doesn't seem like they're to quick to let us out of here either." Admittedly he wasn't sure where to go even when he did finally get out of the marathon of repetitiveness..

"GLaDoS seems to work independently from Stacy, just as Stacy seems to nearly work independently from the Daligig," Brainy offers. Of course the key word is 'seems'. "We'll both be released eventually."

There is a pause, as Brainiac, for once in his life, actually considers the mental well-being of the person he's talking to. He's gotten much better at considering such things during his time on the ship.

"Tell me, what is your impression of the situation?"

What do you think of it all, Spencer? A war? A ruse? A psychological experiment?

All in your head? Talking to little green men, running mazes--have you finally gone nuts?

It was a little jarring to try and comprehend those new names and try to figure out how they all related to one another. For now, he could assume these people of Dalgig, Glados, and Stacy were separate factions with independent motives. One thing was for certain, and that was that he had a lot more gathering of information to do before discovering the exact situation on the ship.

"My impression?" Well it was a little too early to say that. As for personal opinions, he might've been able to relate more to a logical point of view with his conversation parter, but he didn't know them well enough to confide too much. "I like to base my impressions on fact, and right now there really isn't much fact to go on. I.." Reid couldn't rationalize anything so far, and the situation was so far from logical or probable that he couldn't think of any rationale for it but insanity. If he had to profile someone who had described the situation he was in, he would have come to the conclusion that they were delusional and the situation had been provoked by massive amounts of stress.

The investigator swallowed, a little.. apprehensively, "I think I need more of a grasp about this place if I'm going to come to any solid conclusion."

There's actually the slightest of grins that flashes across Brainiac's face.

"Ah, someone with sense then."

A fact-based approach, in Brainy's eyes, was, well, the perfect approach.

"A fellow scientist, I presume?"

At least that response seemed preferably compared to reactions in the past. This time his words hadn't evoked a negative or hostile reaction as it had with others he'd spoken to. For the first time since he arrived, Reid felt the ever elusive feeling of having made some progress. "Actually, I'm a doctor; I work in something called 'behavioral analysis'." He began before clarifying, "But, I do a lot of work with statistics, physics and philosophy." It was a study of a subject that was considered a science, yes, but Reid felt the need to clarify since the fields that could be referred to when saying 'science' could be widely vary. "I do research in the classical sciences from time to time too--they are really fascinating."

"What field of work do you practice in?" Brainy asks curiously. Statistical behavioral analysis only has practical applications in a few specific careers. He's wondering if it's in the one he thinks it's in.

"I'm something called a 'psychological profiler'." He realized that most people wouldn't be familiar with the field, and especially in a setting such as he was in Reid felt compelled to explain a little further. "A psychological profiler solves crimes through analysis of a criminals actions. Most criminals attach personal motives to why they commit their crime, so we try and understand why the person committed their act in order to identify who they are. We try to create psychological pictures of our unknown subject, understand where they live, what they think, and why they do what they do." He lilted his head a little, "Some people don't believe in it's effectiveness, but it's surprisingly accurate." He didn't want for the entire thing to be about himself though. Conversations were more effective if he provided some counter-interaction to be responded to. "What about yourself?"

"I'm well aware of what a psychological profiler does--I've worked with them on a few rare occasions," explains Brainiac. "I'm a member of a group called the Legion of Superheroes, which draws its members from a myriad of planets for the purposes of law enforcement and to act as a figurehead of interspecies unity and cooperation. We're funded privately but operate in tandem with the Science Police and are answerable to the government of the United Planets. We handle any number of interstellar threats, when the UP government and Science Police are overwhelmed, as well as track down and arrest particularly dangerous and problematic superpowered criminals."

Legion of Superheroes. Reid showed a thin frown, but nodded acceptingly at the answer he was given. "Super-powered Criminals. That sounds.. dangerous." It seemed like as soon as things started to sound more and more logical that there had to be something more or less ridiculous-sounding tossed in his direction."Seems kind of like an intersteller version of the BAU." However it was a bad idea to keep a closed mind of the situation; at least with that answer there was some semblance of things he had heard before.

"In a sense, though we're certainly not standard law enforcement. But then again, when your inspiration is Superman and the heroes of old, you're hardly likely to be standard anything," he said, with a light grin on his lips. One thing he does brag about almost as much as his intelligence is the Legion.

"The BAU was never really standard either." Like the law enforcement mentioned, they were a means that were called--or invited rather--once all other leads had been exhausted. If there were an alike force aboard the place he was at it would be a welcome inlet to investigate more about the place. "Do you know of anything like that aboard this ship?"

"The Security Force. I haven't had much to do with them, but they go beyond standard peacekeeping and do engage in investigations. Unfortunately, there is need, despite our situation, for law enforcement and inquiry."

It's right then that GLaDoS chimes in. "Brainiac 5, your testing is finished. Enjoy your cake that I baked."

Tentacles pull him through a trap door before he can react, and then Spencer is left alone again.