Typically, if a person has more than a thousand personalities inside them, it can hardly be considered a mild illness. Most people who become aware of this fact would be extremely surprised, exclaiming that it's too outrageous.
Indeed, it's a fact, how could you possibly fit over a thousand souls into one shell?
But now someone tells him that you're not as ill as I am, and David wants to see how seriously ill Shiller is.
"How many personalities do you have?" David asked.
"I only have one."
"That's impossible."
"Indeed, there's only one, it's just shattered into more than 2000 pieces."
David was speechlessly choking.
It seemed that indeed, compared to stuffing a thousand souls into the shell of one person, one soul shattered into more than 2000 pieces was more serious.
"How do you live?" David asked with some curiosity.
"I get by, and by getting by, I survive."
If someone had answered David's question like this in the past, he would have thought that the person was brushing him off, but looking at it now, Shiller was serious. Besides, given the circumstances, how else could he manage?
"Why did your soul shatter?"
"An accident," Shiller answered concisely and to the point.
"Do you think I've come to talk to you about mutants?" David said, "Why do you think so? Do you see me as their representative?"
"No, I think you don't care much about them; you care more about yourself. But the problem is that you are a mutant, and to solve your problem, we still need to talk about mutants."
David furrowed his brows deeply.
Shiller clenched the pen in his hand and said, "You might think that your current condition is rooted in Dissociative Identity Disorder, so you come to me, thinking that as a competent psychiatrist, I can cure your mental illness."
"But in fact, your problem is not a personality split, but rather that each personality you split off has its own thoughts and abilities, with abilities being the key point. If they didn't have those superpowers, they would be harmless."
"To society, maybe, but they cause me much suffering."
"If your other personalities didn't have superpowers and posed no danger to society, your suffering could be addressed with medical means. But if each of their stress reactions could cause massive destruction in reality, then without solving this problem, no one would dare to treat your Dissociative Identity Disorder."
David pondered with a frown. He had to admit the truth of it; if those personalities only existed in his brain and couldn't affect reality, maybe a psychiatrist could gradually make them disappear or integrate.
But once they have independent thoughts and abilities, trying to erase them would undoubtedly provoke resistance, and once their strange abilities erupted, it would certainly cause serious harm. No psychiatrist would dare do that.
"I can erase them," David sighed and said. "But as soon as one disappears, another appears. My abilities are effective against almost anything, except for them."
"So you agreed to come to me on Charles' request. Both of you hope I can solve your problem," Shiller said carefully. "You know I will try to find a solution because you're like a ticking time bomb. Even if we sent you to the Andromeda Galaxy, you could potentially destroy the entire cosmos."
"Indeed, no one dares to take me in," David snorted coldly and then said, "But they're right. Those who come into contact with me always end up unlucky."
"I need to ask first, who do you think you are? I mean the personality that's currently talking to me."
"I am the real David Haller. I am his ego. I think you should understand that I am the true David, and the strongest of him," David said, averting his eyes. "The abilities I possess are what David was originally supposed to have."
"What can you do?"
"Everything except make myself better," David said. "I can make things happen just by thinking about them, make the world change according to my will."
"When did the accident happen?"
"During a terrorist attack in Paris," David said, pursing his lips. "I witnessed my foster father being killed, I lost control, killed my superego, and from then on, everything spun out of control."
"What about your id?"
"It..." David paused for a moment, speaking in a somewhat puzzled tone. "I don't know. I can't find it anymore."
Shiller was silent for a long time, obviously thinking rapidly.
He could understand what David was saying. To some extent, the situation was somewhat similar to his own, with some external stimulus causing something in the Psychic Space, and then everything spiraling out of control.
Except in his case, the breakdown of the High Tower caused his personality to shatter into thousands of pieces, while David suffered the death of his superego, the custodian of moral constraints, and the disappearance of his id, representative of desire and instinct, leading to missing personality fragments and causing all sorts of strange personalities to continuously emerge.
"Let's start with analysis, why after losing control, you killed your superego," Shiller said, twirling his pen, speaking to himself. "The superego usually represents latent conscience and internal moral standards."
"If I'm not mistaken, you used to be a very kind person with high moral standards."
"Indeed," David said helplessly. "David Haller was a shy, kind person, never did anything bad. He was somewhat frail and sentimental, but very gentle."
"Like your father."
"Partially."
"Without a doubt, witnessing someone completely break the law, committing murder, must have been a huge shock to your morals. You must have felt why the law can't punish these criminals, why the law can't allow you and your loved ones to continue living peacefully," Shiller deduced.
"These thoughts will be the key culprits in killing your conscience and morals, the Superego might just perish then."
"Do you have a Superego?"
"Of course," Shiller said. "But unlike you, I didn't grow up in a place that embraced the universal values of law and morality, which has led my inner sense of conscience and morality to be quite different from what is commonly accepted in today's society. So, when I witness something that contravenes conscience and morality, I do not question mine."
David nodded, knowing this was what was referred to as twisted morality. If the standards of judgment were different, it might be possible never to violate the baseline.
"If I'm not mistaken, you actually had the opportunity to stop the terrorists, but you hesitated. Your overly high moral standards made you hesitate when it came to killing."
David's eyes widened slightly for the first time, as he had never spoken about this to anyone, including his mother.
David finally sat up a bit. He began to listen seriously to Shiller's analysis because he realized the medical staff's recognition of Shiller's professional competence might still be somewhat restrained.
The key wasn't whether the guess was right or wrong, but whether one dared to make the guess. After gaining a certain status and position, they usually would not be willing to make such decisive judgments for fear of making mistakes. Since Shiller spoke out, it suggested he was fully confident in his judgment.
"Your hesitation gave the terrorists the opportunity to strike, and when you witnessed the gruesome deaths, unprecedented guilt engulfed you. At the same time, you began to loathe the societal moral demands that had been placed on you because it was precisely these demands that caused you to lose extremely important family members and a happy family."
"Then you instantly killed these demands, and the key culprit that hurt your family, all traceable with a coherent logic. I feel sorry for what happened to you, but it was probably inevitable."
David was silent for a moment but then nodded before he said, "That terrorist was the first soul I absorbed. He told me he wanted to change me, and this was his way of doing it."
"Just like power does not exist in a vacuum, neither does a person's psychic battlefield. If rationality is lacking, more chaos ensues, and the madness fills in. When the structure is broken, a new structure will take its place."
"But what puzzles me is, if you only killed your Superego, the Ego and Id combined should not give so much room to those personalities. The biggest mystery is the disappearance of your Id."
Shiller took out a chart from the side, looked at it, and asked, "When was the last time you really wanted something?"
"Three months before the terrorist attack," David recalled. "I saw a pair of great sneakers in a store window, and I worked for two months to buy them."
"And you haven't since then?"
"No."
"How long has it been since you remembered your life goals?"
"It's been a long time as well, ever since these personalities bothered me. I've never thought about them; I nearly forgot."
"What about other desires? Appetite, sexual desire..."
David shook his head.
"Good, it seems your instincts have completely ceased functioning," Shiller said, his expression turning grave. David started to feel uneasy.
But this unease quickly turned into a semblance of panic when Shiller began looking through books.
Just looking through books was not enough; Shiller then turned on the computer to start looking up research papers. Looking at one research paper wasn't enough; he began a wide search.
"Is there… any hope for me?"
"Don't worry, let me see," Shiller said, and the more he read, the deeper his frown became.
Then he started to explain, "Our situations do seem somewhat similar, at least concerning that Id part."
"I've had issues with my Id too; it stopped talking. But my symptoms were mild, the reason simple: just some external stimuli causing an instinct deficit, usually not affecting daily life."
"But your Id has completely disappeared. I speculate there are two possibilities. One is that the immense guilt at the time not only made you lose control and kill your Superego but also significantly harmed your Id, leading to its demise."
"But the likelihood of this scenario is low because if your instincts were entirely killed, then you would have completely lost your mind. With two of the three pillars collapsed, the entire psychological structure would fall apart, and you would be lying in a hospital as a vegetable right now."
"Since you are still able to function smoothly, that means the pillar hasn't collapsed; we just don't know why it disappeared. That leaves only the last possibility: it's hiding."
"Why?"
"Because of guilt," Shiller's fingers lightly tapped the mouse as he said. "Or perhaps due to disappointment because wanting to protect your relatives is your instinct, but at the crucial moment, you didn't choose to trust your instincts but instead believed in moral demands. Your Id felt deeply disappointed by your distrust and so it's hiding."
"Do these entities really have personalities?"
"Don't you have a personality?"
David fell silent, saying, "Before I experienced the madness, I never realized that I wasn't just me, but many 'me's."
"That's normal. People need time to accept their own madness," Shiller remarked nonchalantly while clicking his mouse. "But no worries, you'll get used to being crazy after a while."
David still had no comeback because from what he read in minds, it seemed the Doctor in front of him really must have adjusted—otherwise, he couldn't imagine how someone could live normally with over two thousand selves.
"What do you think I should do?" David asked.
"The key still lies in your psychic battlefield," Shiller heaved a deep sigh. "I was looking up information for this as well. We need to first address your mutant ability, then resolve those personalities, and finally find your Id. The problem is, the first two steps are too difficult."
"Why?"
"Because those personalities of yours are too strong. They are powerful in the real world, and only stronger in the psychic space."
Shiller thought for a moment and said, "Just me alone won't be enough. We need to form The Mind Assault Squad and enter your psychic space, to rescue your Id from your chaotic personalities."