Chain

By Irfikos

Part II: Blood and Rhetoric

2.3: The Iceberg

Notes: All sections of Part 2 take place immediately before "Normal Again." All song lyrics in Part 2 are from "Psycho Killer," Talking Heads, 1977.


You start a conversation you can't even finish it.
You're talkin' a lot, but you're not sayin' anything.
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed.
Say something once, why say it again?

---

"Up until now your little chip has been performing a pretty simple function, you know? Behavior modification through negative reinforcement. Yadda yadda. You know the drill. It's all very basic. The chip is programmed to recognize a certain action as bad. Whenever you do that bad thing, the chip reads what you're up to and responds by causing you to have a kind of… incredibly painful seizure or something. Well, you've felt it. You know what I'm talking about."

He flashes a friendly smile at the vampire, who is seemingly hypnotized by the heartbeat tap tap tap of the stick on the bag. God, he's practically drooling. Warren can tell that he's listening though, saw the little flinch at the mention of the seizure.

“Even the dumbest subject – that’s you by the way, Chuckles – eventually figures out that if it wants to avoid the pain, it should stop performing the act that causes it."

There's a small snort from Spike, but nothing more.

"But that's just the tip of the iceberg, really. With just a little tweaking, someone could set up a whole new set of parameters to follow. Do you realize how much potential there is in that? If some genius happened to program his own set of rules for the chip to enforce… whole new levels of punishment?

Ah, there it is. He has Spike’s full attention now.

---

Okay, she’s gone too far. Tara leans back in her seat. Her hands flutter nervously, defensively in the air before she catches herself and folds them on the table. “I j-just meant… you know, I meant that… with him missing and… and Xander disappearing… and you know, with… other… people… before… I just meant that maybe if that was the reason, if you had… instead of –”

“Instead of me driving him away? You’re saying I wish I’d killed him instead of driving him away?” Buffy shakes her head and rushes headlong into the nervous chatter. “But that’s ridiculous. I mean, for one thing: drive Spike away? Ha! That’s totally impossible to do. Believe me, I’ve tried. He’s like, the annoying pit bull of love… which…which I don’t… ‘cause, y’know, evil… and stuff–

“But Buffy… if you wanted him to go… then why should it matter so much if he did? I mean, isn’t that kind of what you wanted?”

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