Mind Candy

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  But wait, you may say—what about Xander himself? He’s somehow managed to survive seven years facing the darkness; he clearly has something going for him.

  True enough, Xander has proved himself in the field of battle, but let’s face it, often he survived only because Buffy deliberately shut him out of whatever was going on. That sort of exclusion is one thing for a friend; it’s something else entirely for a lover.

  Besides, there’s all that history. There was a time when Xander and Buffy might have happened, but that time is long past. They’ve lived too close to each other for too long. They know far too much about each other’s exes—can you honestly think that Xander would not mention Spike in some unfortunate fashion during the inevitable lovers’ spats that crop up in any relationship? That wouldn’t exactly go over well with a touchy Buffy, would it?

  And it seems pretty clear that Buffy likes a little darkness, a little violence, in her men. Every relationship that’s gone anywhere at all has been with someone holding back a dark power or secret of some kind—Angel suppressing Angelus, Riley the drug-enhanced secret government agent, Spike with only the chip preventing him from being a monster. Some might argue that this string was merely bad luck, but her behavior makes this unlikely; Spike, probably the series character with the greatest insight into people’s motives, has certainly told her that she’s drawn to the dark, and her denials, never very convincing, eventually ran out entirely. Her relationship with Riley, let us note, seems to have begun to collapse almost as soon as he was free of Professor Walsh’s drugs and persuasion, while learning that Angel was a vampire only increased her lust for him. Her affair with Spike only took off when she discovered that he could fight her again.

  Perhaps it’s because of her own internal darkness, the fact that by her very nature as a Slayer she is as much a destroyer as a protector, or maybe it’s just an extreme form of the common female interest in bad boys, but whatever the reason, she is indeed attracted by men with dark secrets and hidden power. Much as she may hate to admit it, she’s drawn to that danger, that possibility of the loss of control, and Xander doesn’t have it. Oh, he has a temper, he can hold a grudge, but that’s not the same thing. Buffy wants someone who tests the boundaries, who risks unleashing his own darkness, and Xander doesn’t fit that profile—and given his abject terror of becoming his abusive father, he wouldn’t want to, even if Buffy was part of the package.

  So ordinary men, including Xander, are out. Extraordinary men we’ll get to in a moment, but first let’s consider some other categories.

  I think we can immediately eliminate virtually all vampires. Vampires are, as Buffy told Spike repeatedly during season six, not men, but dead, soulless things. These may work as sex toys, but not as partners and lovers.

  There are vampires with souls—two of them, anyway—who get around the “soulless thing” problem, and who can defend themselves, but neither of them is really going to work.

  Angel has the gypsy curse on him, of course, whereby a single moment of true happiness will turn him back into the soulless, sadistic monster called Angelus. We’ve already seen that a night with Buffy is enough to provide that moment—and even if it actually isn’t anymore, even if Willow’s version of the curse doesn’t have that problem, even if worrying about the possibility would mar Angel’s happiness enough to prevent the transformation, Angel and Buffy are not going to take that chance.

  And that’s just one reason they won’t reunite. As Angel told Buffy in “The Prom,” he thinks she deserves a more normal life than he can ever give her, someone who can sire her children. Whether he’s right or not, merely the fact that he believes it will doom any relationship they might have.

  In a way, they have each idealized their image of the other until they can’t possibly stay together successfully—Angel sees Buffy as a creature of light who he cannot be worthy of, who he can never give what she deserves, rather than as a flawed and human girl, while Buffy sees Angel as an ancient, dark, and powerful figure, recognizing nothing of the Irish ne’er-do-well Liam was, nor of what a doofus Angel can still sometimes be.

  That takes Angel out of contention, even though Buffy may still think of him as the great love of her life.

  That leaves one other ensouled vampire, one who loves her, one who got his soul restored entirely in hopes she could learn to love him—but Buffy has pretty definitely established that she doesn’t love Spike and doesn’t want to, soul or no soul. Respect him, yes; love him, no.

  A third vampire acquiring a soul is extremely unlikely; acquiring a soul and remaining sane and being someone suited to Buffy is just not going to happen.

  Not a vampire, then. Another variety of demon, perhaps?

  Who? Most of them are pretty thoroughly evil, many are of subhuman intelligence, and I can’t see Buffy settling for either evil or stupid. There are a few who are neither, such as the estimable Clem, but we haven’t seen any who really look like relationship fodder, nor have we seen any human-demon hybrids and other monsters who show much promise. Also, let’s face it, most of them are ugly, and Buffy does like a handsome face and well-built body.

  What does that leave?

  It leaves men who are not ordinary mortals, men who can take care of themselves when faced with supernatural menaces of all sorts. Men like Riley Finn.

  Let us look, then, at what made Riley special—and what went wrong with the Riley-Buffy pairing.

  Riley was extensively trained, and fed performance-enhancing drugs; he was big and strong and smart, knew how to fight and had an idea what he was up against. That made him almost as effective at monster-fighting as a Slayer. Physically, he could hold his own.

  Emotionally, though, he and Buffy never quite meshed. Much as he admired her strength and power, it also did intimidate him a little. He wanted to be worthy of her; he wanted her to admire him as he admired her.

  Buffy didn’t cooperate. She’s never been very impressed by mere physical prowess; she’s spent too much time beating on creatures twice her size.

  Also, she never really opened up to him emotionally. Angel and Spike, perhaps by virtue of their centuries of experience, have always been able to read Buffy in a way that poor innocent Riley could not. He needed her to tell him what she was feeling, what she wanted, and she never did.

  That’s inherent in their personalities. Riley is very much a team player, while Buffy, much as she appreciates and relies on her friends, is basically a loner, always aware that she is the Chosen One, emphasis on the “One.”

  Also, there’s that whole darkness issue. Riley saw that Buffy was drawn to the dark, that however much she might like him, she found him unexciting in his wholesomeness. The thrill of the forbidden was not there. He tried to find the darkness within himself, and only managed the sordid in his visits to the vampire hookers. Buffy found that repulsive, rather than exciting.

  Might it have worked out anyway? Need every relationship be thrilling to succeed? Buffy got over her revulsion, and was willing to carry on—but Riley wasn’t looking for simple companionship. He was passionately in love with Buffy, and wanted passion in return. Buffy wasn’t ready to provide it.

  I think we really need to consider that relationship a near-miss.

  Could another highly-trained human do better? Maybe. But we’d need to find a man who doesn’t mind being outclassed by his girlfriend, who fights for the good guys but has a little darkness in him…

  It’s not an easy combination. In particular, if we’re talking about physical training, a man like that is going to be unlikely. You don’t build serious muscle without a little pride and a lot of testosterone; combine that with a streak of wildness, and you’re probably not looking at someone who wants to live with a girlfriend who can punch him out.

  Is there some other sort of training that might serve?

  Well, of course there is: mental training, which in the Buffyverse is going to include magic.

  We’ve certainly seen that. Buffy has always had other
people around as her support structure, doing her research and providing the occasional spell—people like Willow and Giles.

  Imagine if Willow were a straight male. She has power enough to defend herself; she has dallied with the darkness. She and Buffy are friends, able to live in the same house without fraying too many nerves.

  She is, however, female, and Buffy, unlike Willow, is pretty definitely heterosexual. (I told you, I’m ignoring the comics.) Not gonna work. We know from “Him” that Willow could probably change either her own sex or Buffy’s orientation, but I can’t see that happening. Willow knows better (now) than to mess with such things.

  So Willow the witch is eliminated, but entirely on the basis of her sex. Is there anyone like her who doesn’t have that particular drawback? What magic-using males have we seen?

  Well, Giles is the obvious one, and he certainly has toyed with the darkness, both as Ripper in his youth and when pressed more recently—as Ethan Rayne or Ben/Glory could testify.

  But he’s too old for Buffy, and has played the surrogate father so long that quite aside from the age difference it would undoubtedly feel incestuous for them both. I don’t think that’s the sort of darkness Buffy’s after—it’s not so much dark as just icky.

  What about Ethan Rayne, then, since we’ve mentioned him?

  No. Far too untrustworthy. Buffy wants a man who can watch her back, as Angel did, or Riley, or Spike. Ethan would be much more likely to decide he’d rather run and protect his own hide.

  But if we’ve eliminated Giles, Buffy’s own Watcher, are there any other Watchers who might serve? Watchers younger than Giles, but with something of his style and experience? Not just any Watcher will do; we’ve seen too many who were stiff-necked fools with no real-world experience. Are there any more Watchers who are not hidebound morons?

  With the Watchers’ Council largely destroyed, the odds of finding a suitable survivor don’t look promising.

  Who does that leave, then? Must we resort to creating a new character—a male witch, or sympathetic Watcher?

  I think not. There is one more possibility. I have in mind a man a few years older than Buffy, but not old enough to make a relationship awkward; a man who has been fighting the forces of darkness for years, both alone and as part of a team; a man who knows and respects Buffy; a man experienced in the use of magic, greatly learned in the history of the arcane, and able to hold his own in a fight. This man was trained as a Watcher, but is no longer beholden to the Council. He has walked on the dark side, flirted with evil—and more than flirted, on occasion. While capable of passion, he does not demand the sort of commitment Riley hoped for; he knows how to give a woman her space.

  And there’s pretty good evidence that he’s not bad in bed.

  I refer, of course, to Wesley Wyndham-Price.

  Before you reject the idea, think it over carefully. Oh, it’s true that when they last worked together he was an utter twit, and Buffy despised him; it may take some time for Buffy to get over that, but as we have all seen, he has grown far beyond that now. Buffy, too, would quickly see as much, should they meet again. Wesley is not the inexperienced coward she knew; he has faced his fears and found courage, and survived everything from slime demons to a slit throat.

  Yes, his interests lie elsewhere at the moment, and he is not currently resident in Buffy’s vicinity, but these are trivial obstacles, easily dealt with. Find some excuse to throw them together against a suitable menace, and there you are.

  Imagine it—the rogue demon hunter fighting back to back with the Slayer…

  It would be perfect.

  Which, of course, is why it would never happen. Joss Whedon doesn’t believe in happy endings.

  But if he did…

  Star Trek: Lost Secrets of Pre-War Human Technology

  Seat Belts, Circuit Breakers, and Memory Allocation

  Originally published in Boarding the Enterprise

  From: Third Xenopsychologist Gleep

  Transmission Analysis Department

  Imperial Strategic Defense Directorate

  To: First Determiner Quarg

  Response Implementation Department

  Imperial Strategic Defense Directorate

  In reference to: Discrepancies in human video transmissions

  Quarg:

  As you know, I did not request this assignment. I had believed it, frankly, to be beneath my talents, and hoped for something in Retrieval & Interrogation. I now see that I was wrong, and that the analysis of these video transmissions may hold the key to understanding human psychology and devising an appropriate response to their expansion into the galaxy. I hereby offer a nuanced apology of the thirty-first category, indicating acknowledgment of an understandable error in interpretation of ambiguous data.

  I further proffer self-congratulation of the thirteenth category, indicating belief in a breakthrough in understanding that few could have achieved.

  Second Xenopsychologist Zitch has already told you our conclusions regarding why we have so many more transmissions from the humans’ 20th century than we do from any subsequent centuries; I have nothing substantive to add, but feel I should mention that while Zitch has clearly identified for you the major elements in the change, I would place more emphasis on cultural exhaustion and less on the transition to shielded transmission technology during and after the wars. I am prepared to defend this, should you feel it worthy of further discussion.

  As for my own assignment, determining how human civilization managed to lose several simple technologies while preserving many far more complex ones, I am pleased to say that I can now safely dismiss Nulb’s “random war damage” hypothesis as unfounded, and offer my own conclusions in its stead.

  To review, we had noticed that at some point between the many pre-war transmissions from 20th- and 21st-century Earth, and the handful of 23rd century transmissions from the human-led Federation, many basic devices had fallen into disuse, apparently forgotten. An early guess that the discrepancy might be sampling error due to our very limited access to 23rd-century material, all of it from a single series of narratives, was given full consideration, but eventually dismissed; while “Star Trek” does not provide a very varied view of life in the Federation, the idea that such technology as seat-belts and safety harnesses might have survived elsewhere in human civilization, yet not have been installed on the bridge of humanity’s finest starship, is simply ridiculous. No, if human beings still made seat-belts, the USS Enterprise would have had them. The existing records show crew members being flung from their seats by various impacts on several occasions, and the resources to install improvised seat-belts were clearly available; we must conclude that either seat-belts were unknown, or there were reasons not to install them that outweighed the obvious benefits.

  Likewise, the idea that seat-belts had been utterly forgotten was hard to credit. Yes, human civilization had been crippled by war, but human history had not been forgotten—even the half-Vulcan, Mr. Spock, knows enough of human history to recognize analogues of ancient Rome and Nazi Germany, and Captain Kirk can quote pre-war documents such as the preamble to the Constitution of the United States word-for-word without prompting. Judging by other transmissions, seat-belts were ubiquitous for half a century prior to the war; could the concept really have been lost?

  Let us leave that question open for a moment while we look at some of the other apparently-lost technology.

  Circuit breakers, as we know from many horror movies and situation comedies, were devices that would turn off electric current during power surges, to prevent overloads and subsequent damage. Older transmissions show a more primitive version called “fuses” that required replacement, rather than just resetting, when triggered, but which served the same purpose. The Enterprise clearly is not equipped with either sort of device, as instrument consoles regularly overload, explode, spit sparks, or burst into flame when the ship is under attack and power surges occur.

  Memory allocation is a technique in comp
uter design that prevents badly-composed instructions from causing complete systems failure by devoting a computer’s entire memory to an impossible task. A properly-designed computer system will protect its basic functions by refusing to allocate memory beyond a certain limit to any one task, and any reasonably sophisticated system will use multitasking to carry on other operations even while hopelessly struggling with an impossible job in one area. Federation computers, however—and oddly, the computers of certain other civilizations the Enterprise encounters—cannot do this, even when they are otherwise so advanced as to appear nearly sentient. They can be rendered completely impotent by such simple tasks as calculating the exact value of an irrational number, or resolving straightforward binary paradoxes. In some cases the computers clearly lack not just circuit breakers or fuses, but any sort of internal cooling or regulation whatsoever, and will overheat and destroy themselves when overtaxed.

  There is no evidence that most pre-war computers were so poorly designed—well, apart from those operated by megalomaniacs bent on world conquest, which do seem to have had a tendency to explode spectacularly when the megalomaniac’s plans were disrupted, but that appears to have been due to deliberate booby-traps rather than faulty design. Computers used by ordinary citizens of the final decade or two of the 20th century appear to have reasonably sensible operating systems that use memory allocation properly.