Hugo’s Adventures in Wonderland (Part 2)

Hugo had first been frightened by Cobblepot, then frozen by Victor, but he still did not want to give up. He felt this might also be an incredibly unlikely coincidence: two geniuses with unique consciousness spaces had gathered together and even become mentor and student. The odds were slim, but not impossible.

Aside from those two, the most recent person with treatment records was Evans Falcone.

When Hugo saw that surname, he hesitated for a moment, but ultimately decided to invite him over. Hugo felt that as long as he did not use any drastic measures and merely took a look, he probably would not offend the notorious Godfather.

Evans’s situation was similar to Cobblepot’s. He did not know Schiller had resigned, and he readily cooperated with the request for a follow-up visit. When he arrived in Hugo’s consulting room, Hugo had him lie back in the chair as before, started the machine, and attached the pads to his own head.

After entering Evans’s consciousness space, Hugo froze again, because there was a grand theater inside it.

That alone was nothing unusual; it was no different from Cobblepot’s situation. The problem was that beside the theater stood an old manor that was only half-built.

Two buildings would have been one thing, but the building beside it was still under construction. When Hugo entered, a figure walked out of the unfinished structure, looked him up and down, and said, "Who are you? How did you get in here?"

Suddenly, his expression changed. "Are you an Assassin?"

Hugo saw the other man’s hand twitch, but then he calmed down again. "No. If he wanted to kill me, he would definitely come himself…"

At that point, Hugo also realized that the person existing in Evans’s consciousness space seemed different from Evans himself. He asked, "…Multiple personality disorder?"

"That’s right. Don’t tell me you’re a psychiatrist?"

Hugo sensed some dangerous qualities in him, so he said as calmly as possible, "That’s right. I’m giving you hypnotic therapy. What is your name?"

The man examined Hugo and said, "My name is Alberto. Hypnotic therapy? I’ve never heard of that being part of Evans’s treatment plan…"

"I’m the new psychiatrist. This is how I conduct treatment. You don’t need to be nervous. I’m just confirming that your current mental state is normal…"

"Fine, then don’t hold up my work. My house is only half built. Go visit the building across from here."

Hugo carefully examined the half-built house and discovered that it was still astonishingly detailed. Even the bricks that had not yet been stacked and the cement mixed into lumps were clearly visible.

"What are you building?"

"A house. What else?"

"Why are you building a house?"

Alberto looked at Hugo as though he were an idiot. "If I don’t build a house, where am I supposed to live?"

That question genuinely stumped Hugo. The logic made perfect sense in reality, but he had no idea how to explain that normal people did not need to build houses in their Consciousness Worlds.

Alberto impatiently waved him away. "The person you’re here to examine and treat is in the house next door. Go find him. Stop bothering me."

Hugo felt the dangerous aura around him growing stronger and stronger. He did not dare linger, afraid of causing more trouble, so he left the unfinished building and headed into the theater across from it.

The moment he entered the theater, he froze again. More than a dozen Evanses were rehearsing a play onstage, and absurdly enough, there were quite a few audience members in the seats.

Even more absurdly, Schiller was among the audience.

Hugo hesitated, unsure whether he should enter, because he sensed immense danger in the backs of those audience members.

He swallowed and stopped himself from moving forward, silently backing out instead.

He did not even dare press the button before ending this journey through Evans’s consciousness space. Evans rose from the chair, yawned, and stretched. He felt as though he had had a strange dream, but could not remember what it was about. "Thank you, Doctor. Is the treatment over?"

"It’s over…" Hugo answered distractedly.

After Evans left, Hugo remained stiffly where he stood, because what had happened recently had truly exceeded all his expectations.

The first step of his career in Gotham had met with an enormous challenge, because his worldview had been overturned. No matter how one looked at it, the odds of three extraordinary geniuses appearing in succession should have been zero.

Hugo could not figure out where the problem lay. All his previous theories had been built on the premise that ordinary people’s consciousness spaces were chaotic, disordered, and barren. Therefore, he had believed that his own ability to manifest a complete form within a consciousness space placed him above ordinary humans and allowed him to control them.

But lately, it felt as though he had happily moved into a new house, only to get slapped hard three times in three steps.

Hugo truly deserved his reputation as a professional psychological expert. His ability to regulate himself was strong, and he quickly emerged from that shadow and considered a crucial point: the person who had appeared in all three consciousness spaces—Schiller Rodriguez.

Hugo now suspected that Schiller might have used some therapy Hugo did not know about to transform the consciousness spaces of those three people. That was not impossible.

Over the past few days, Hugo had stayed up through the night reading all of Schiller’s papers and research reports. He had to admit that Schiller’s Mind Palace theory was unlikely to have been fabricated out of thin air, because a fabrication could not possibly be so detailed and realistic.

Previously, out of arrogance, Hugo had not read those papers carefully and had only skimmed them. But after studying them closely, he discovered that Schiller might truly have mastered some unknown psychological technique, perhaps one he had used to transform his patients.

Hugo suddenly felt indignant. They had both conducted illegal human experiments, yet he had been discovered, hunted down, and fired, forced to flee to Gotham for refuge. Meanwhile, Schiller remained a world-renowned master psychologist. It was completely unfair.

Schiller had clearly done the same thing Hugo had: used his professional expertise to alter patients. He had simply done it more covertly, in a way less likely to be discovered. Therefore, not only had he paid no price, he had instead achieved fame and success. This left Hugo, who had just been fired and driven out, deeply unbalanced.

Because of this, Hugo formed a thought: he wanted to find a way to expose Schiller.

Then an even more dangerous thought appeared in Hugo’s mind. If he could control Schiller, then all of Schiller’s techniques, knowledge, reputation, and status would become his to use.

But Hugo also knew very well that they were both professionals in the field. Hugo knew something about Schiller’s research direction, and Schiller likely knew the same about Hugo. It would be difficult to trick Schiller into coming over the way Hugo had tricked these patients. Even if he succeeded, Hugo was not confident he could hypnotize a colleague like Schiller.

Therefore, Hugo felt that he needed a meticulous plan, as well as a partner.

In the end, his gaze settled on the last medical record, bearing a name without a surname—"Jack."

None of Gotham’s weather forecasts had predicted that snow would truly fall in Gotham during an early autumn like this. It was a very fine snow, and it was not especially cold, but it was still a strange occurrence.

Tiny, crystalline snowflakes drifted slowly down from the sky and settled atop Arkham Asylum. Once the mottled tiles of the old hospital roof were covered, it looked unexpectedly renewed.

Because the hospital had been built so long ago, its structure was unlike that of a modern psychiatric hospital. Instead, it retained certain distinctive features of psychiatric institutions from an earlier era, such as basements for handling particularly troublesome conditions.

A harsh light flashed. A white halo spread before his eyes, and Schiller opened them to find two figures before him.

"You’re awake…"

Hugo fiddled with a machine on the table across from Schiller, while Jack leaned against the railing beside him, picking at his fingers in boredom.

Hugo looked at Schiller, who was tied to a chair across from him. The professor was strapped into a somewhat antiquated interrogation chair. Iron cuffs bound his hands, his feet were secured as well, and he appeared completely unable to move.

Schiller lowered his gaze to the two sharp circular saws fixed beside his neck. "So you asked me to come to your office to hand over my work just so you could kidnap me?"

Hugo smiled and pressed a button on the wall. The small saws on either side of Schiller’s neck began spinning rapidly, then slowly moved inward until they reached his neck. Yet Schiller showed no reaction at all. He merely looked at Hugo and asked, "What exactly are you trying to do?"

"Nothing much. I simply hope you’ll cooperate with me in a hypnosis experiment."

"Oh? This is interesting…"

"I know that under ordinary circumstances, you would not be willing to talk with me, much less cooperate. But with this chair…"

Hugo pressed another button, and the circular saws began spinning again. "…I’m afraid you’ll have to cooperate, whether you want to or not."

Hugo picked up a book from the table beside him and held it up for Schiller. "In one of the papers you published in this book, you explained the theory of the Mind Palace in detail. You described it as a layered building within the space of Human Consciousness, used to store different memories…"

"I don’t know whether you have truly achieved this, but we can verify it soon enough…"

"How do you plan to verify it?"

"You must have asked many people that question, right? Because you were certain no one could verify it, that no one could enter your mind…"

Hugo revealed a somewhat cruel smile. "…But I can."

"Now, let us wait and see whether you are the greatest fraud of this century, or…"

As he spoke, he attached pad after pad to his own head. Jack remained very quiet beside him, but if Hugo had looked up before closing his eyes, he would have seen the mocking smile at the corner of Jack’s mouth.

The moment their brainwaves merged, a long descent into darkness began. Hugo had never imagined that the process of entering someone’s consciousness could take so long. He did not know how long he had been falling, but he never reached the bottom.

He felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Endless bizarre and fantastical images flashed past his eyes, followed by darkness, and darker darkness still.

In that endless fall, Hugo was nearly driven mad by the loneliness and weightlessness. Just seconds before he considered giving up, he finally landed on the ground.

When Hugo regained consciousness, he looked down and saw black flooring beneath his feet—

And endless floors above his head.

Aha! Didn’t expect an update at this hour, did you?