Monday, June 13, 2011

Who was William?

Some of you may remember back when I posted about one of those guys who's been completely broken coming up to me and telling me that his name was William.  And then a different one claiming the exact same thing.

Well, I've been keeping an eye on the Broken ones for a while now.  I'm curious about them.  I want to know what exactly makes them tick.  How they act, and why they act the way they do.  Agents are relatively easy to understand.  Even if I don't really consider myself an Agent, I've got motivation.  Hyde had motivation.  Caper has a motivation, even if he won't tell me.  Alex (I interviewed him the other day; you'll be hearing his story soon) has a motivation.  I assume that Poe has a motivation, and I'll need to get around to her.  All the Agents have motivation of some sort.  The Broken?  They've got the opposite of that.  They're dead inside.  They've been forced into this against their will.  They're not going to act like normal people.

But yeah, I've been keeping an eye on the Broken.  I think I'm starting to figure a few things out.  It's strange how exactly they tick.  Were they all former runners?  Random people who just went insane?  Former Agents who...mentally regressed for some reason?

Lately, I've seen a lot of the Broken in this area start dressing the same.  Picking up the same mannerisms.  And they've started to become slightly more coherent.  I tried talking to one the other day.  A lot of the time he'd blank out, and I'd have to ask him about three times before he realized he was being asked a question, and not everything he said made sense, but he could at least carry on something resembling a conversation.  The conversation is highly fragmented, so I'll just give you the bullet points.

I started by asking him what his name was, and he looked up at me, huge bags under his eyes.  "William," he said, slightly confused.  "My name is William Jameson.  I'm 33 years old [there was no way he could be older than 25].  I live at [address undisclosed]."  And from there, he kept listing all this private information.  Some of it pretty clearly either contradicted what I could tell about him from a glance or earlier information he had given me.  The whole time, he had this look on his face like something was off, but he couldn't quite understand what.  Like he knew that this person he was telling me about wasn't him, but he couldn't quite grasp that fact.

He kept rambling nonstop until he couldn't think of anything else, and then just trailed off and fell silent.  It was a few minutes before I could coax another word out of him.  He just sat there, staring down at the floor, as if his mind had completely shut down.  He threw out a sentence here and there, but nothing of any real value.  He finally started talking again about the third time I got around to asking him what he did.  He looks up again, like there was this light going on in his head.  "Well, I...we...he...."  He trailed off, completely confused.  It's like it was dawning on him that he wasn't really William, and that the whole life that he had constructed was a lie.  I changed the subject quickly before he shut down completely.

"So how did you first hear about...you know.  The Boss.  The guy we work for."

His face lit up again, the confusion clearing away.  "Well, my father and I were stunt motorcyclists.  We had a pretty good life, until I found out that my dad had cancer.  The Big Guy offered to heal my dad if I came and worked for him."  I froze.  I had never heard anyone but Caper call him "The Big Guy."  William continued.  "My dad actually did recover.  He got better.  The doctors said it was a miracle.  And then, his first big show, he had a terrible crash."  He snapped his fingers.  "Dead, just like that.  So now I'm stuck here."

I shook my head, thanked him for his time, and headed out.  I'm going to have to talk to Caper about this.

I think I may have figured something out, though.  The Broken have nothing anymore.  They don't know who they are.  So they find things they can latch on to.  Constants.  A name.  A particular style of mask.  A story.  Anything they can to construct some sort of identity for themselves.  I have no idea who William really was.  Was that one guy who came up to me really William?  Is anything this William said about himself true of the last William?  And how many people think that they're this guy?  Who was William?

And more importantly, is he still alive?

-Don't Shoot The Messenger-

7 comments:

  1. do you mind if i ask... why this even matters to you? why you're bothering to investigate this stuff? it seems like kind of an important question.

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  2. Why NOT investigate it? It seems that Messenger has little else to do, and he seems the kind of person who's driven to help others and get walked all over.

    And Caper is apparently a fan of Ghost Rider.

    -STEWARD

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  3. Why does this matter to me? Because I'm really pretty new to all of this. I'm learning as I go. Believe it or not, I had only seen Marble Hornets before getting involved in all of this, and that was only about a month and a half before I started this blog.

    Also, all the blogs I read seem to be saying that I'm on the "wrong side." I need to know why exactly this is the wrong side. Because really, a lot of the time, it seems like we're not so different. Sure, there are a lot of crazy Agents, but there are a lot of crazy runners as well. And besides, I'm curious. If we're the "bad guys," what makes us tick? You guys get to get inside the mind of Agents and Broken here too, you know. I don't know why you're asking questions.

    And yes, Steward, it seems that that DOES parallel the plot of Ghost Rider fairly closely. I think that in his other stories I've also caught some references to Batman and Lost. I can see why Poe found a story where he's a reanimated corpse one of his more reasonable stories.

    And I do NOT let people walk all over me, thank you very much. There's a difference between helping people, being a doormat, and attempting to learn more out of personal curiosity. I fall under the latter, but if I help a few people out in the process, that's fine by me.

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  4. Messenger, William is all of us. We are all william when we Go, when we are gone.

    His name is William.

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  5. There is justification for all paths. Ultimately, it is a matter of being satisfied with your choice.

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  6. His name was Robert Paulson~
    Sorry, couldn't resist.
    It is quite an interesting phenomena, is it not~? Almost like rumors; circulated enough that they become truth.

    Remember; History is only written by the victors.

    Messenger, wish you the best from out here in the forest; really, what you're doing is a service to /us/ all. Alas, can't chat for long, much to do before this weekend is up.

    Hello and goodbye, Hakurei, Steward, Maurice, Typer, and, of course, our good Messenger~

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  7. So, you used to call them the Broken before you called them the Husks. Good thing to remember.

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