The Secret Origins of Stephen Reyes

[tylik]

I'm bored. (Strange. That sounded like a number of people leaving the building in an awful hurry...) And I was just reading through more back episodes from last season, and thinking about how much I would really like to see the secret origins story for Stephen Reyes. So much material, waiting to be revealed...

...and then it occurred to me that hey, we could entertain ourselves in the meantime by indulging in wild speculation. We could even tell Sol stories... but about Reyes. (Or about the both of them.) Hey, we don't have to be right, we just have to be entertaining.

We know that Reyes has been working on this anomaly thing for longer than anyone else. And everyone seems to know that he knows more than he's telling, right? Now, I'm guessing "knows" is kind of a definitional question, because I don't think he'd withhold useful data that he was anything like sure of. But he has ideas. And he seems to anthropomorphize the anomaly to a great extent.

Now, given, he's way up there on the tormented scale. But let's just imagine that he's not just fundamentally the tormented type, but that most of the torment comes from his experiences dealing with the anomaly. Early on. By himself. Before there was anyone else who would possibly believe him. (And after that too.)

What the heck happened? How did he start seeing a pattern and putting the pieces together? And how the hell did he convince anyone (okay, anyone other than Todd) of what he was seeing? Where was he and what was he doing when it all started? How much of him tending to be closed mouthed is because there was a long time between when he thought he knew what was going on and when he had anything like proof? Why is it so terribly personal for him? Because he's not just hunting monsters, he's trying to save people. And it would be awfully easy to classify hosts simply as monsters, just to allow one to do one's job (which is hard enough) and get on with things. Is his fear about Chaz grounded in knowing someone who succumbed?

(I find myself thinking of the anomaly a bit in the terms that the curse is described in Bujold's The Curse of Chalion. something that can take someone's strengths and talents and turn them against them. Okay, obviously it's perfectly happy to play on fear and anger as well...)

I find myself wondering, for instance, if the first time he started to get a sense of the shape of the anomaly was in that woman in Pennsylvania. You know, the one with the horses. Because he got to know her pretty well before he had any idea what her part was in things, and he'd been so impressed by her. She'd been through a lot, but came through it standing straight and looking life right in the eye...

[MadGastronomer]

I don't recall a woman in Pennsylvania with horses.  Or is that part of the story?

I dunno, I kind of feel like he had his first brush with the anomaly young, when he was still young enough to believe in monsters, young enough that it was a natural conclusion for him to reach that when his uncle started acting weird, that something else was looking out from behind his eyes, like maybe he was possessed.  And then perhaps it became part of his break with the Church.  He may have been driven by this a lot longer than any of us suspect.

[Felicia1066]

My pet theory on Reyes isn't really a fully developed theory, more a matter of putting a bunch of things together and saying "Hmmm."

The anomaly maximizes pain. It makes people do things that have everybody around saying "X would never do that!" It makes them do things human beings shouldn't be capable of. It would be easy to describe it as evil. One of the ways to describe how it may work is possession. Reyes used to be a Catholic.

.... Exorcism? Gone wrong, of course, because the anomaly can't be cast out that way. In fact, it would be more likely to result in the painful and bloody death of those involved, while the "possessed" walked away laughing. If Reyes witnessed it, or if someone he knew and cared for was involved.... I can see him dedicating the rest of his life to finding out just what had happened, and how to (some day) prevent it from happening again.

[Elizabeth Bear]

All I'm saying is, thank God we have so much advance planning done already, so I can claim not to have been influenced.

[Alena]

Huh.  I didn't know Argentinian racehorses went through Pennsylvania.

[Bunny M]

Fascinating. </spock>

[greywalker]

The exorcism thing had occurred to me, too, in connection to Reyes.

I also wonder when he started believing deep down that, if he just works hard enough and sacrifices enough, he can save the world.

[tylik]

I don't recall a woman in Pennsylvania with horses.  Or is that part of the story?

Or at least the wild speculation.

I dunno, I kind of feel like he had his first brush with the anomaly young, when he was still young enough to believe in monsters, young enough that it was a natural conclusion for him to reach that when his uncle started acting weird, that something else was looking out from behind his eyes, like maybe he was possessed.  And then perhaps it became part of his break with the Church.  He may have been driven by this a lot longer than any of us suspect.

Yes. Something else, but something else that was using his uncle's worldview as a tool to spread badness, rather the way a virus will use a cell's machinery to replicate itself.

[tylik]

All I'm saying is, thank God we have so much advance planning done already, so I can claim not to have been influenced.

Okay, so that should have read:

"Hey, we don't have to be right, we just have to be entertaining. Or annoying."

Even though y'all haven't said much, a lot has been hinted at, really.

[tylik]

Huh.  I didn't know Argentinian racehorses went through Pennsylvania.

*blink*

*google*

*Falls over laughing*

[Mattador]

I still can't help but picture Reyes and Mulder in training together...

[jimsmyth]

I still can't help but picture Reyes and Mulder in training together...

Mulder: Trust no-one.

Reyes: That many?

[Mattador]

...that cracked me up to the point where anyone watching me might have thought I was having a seizure.

[tylik]

It's got to be partly the way Reyes out urbanes Mulder... (completely without trying, of course.)

[Jezabella49]

At the moment, I can't think of anyone who can out-urbane Reyes.

Can you?