Everything's Gonna Be Fine, Just Play Pretend

Everything is Alright...Probably

Smart Beavis slammed the front door closed as he entered his house. He sped to the bedroom and set his bag down on the bed. He unzipped it and threw the files he grabbed from the lab onto the bed, spreading the papers all over the bed.

He then threw the bag off the bed. He took the papers out of the files and laid them all next to each other.

He still couldn't manage to read the fine print on them. Everything seemed to blur together.

He had to take a moment to collect himself. His emotions are overwhelming right now, and that was not really something he was used to. He closed his eyes and took deep breaths. He gripped the bed sheets, and after a moment he felt a little more in control of himself.

He had just grabbed every file he saw. He didn't get to read all of them.

He looked for a pile with a title on it he hadn't seen before, and he soon found one. It was titled, "Dependency Experiment".

Smart Beavis grabbed the small pile of papers and brought them closer to him. It had a big picture at the top of a younger Smart Butthead and himself. One of them was in a glass box the size of a bathroom stall, and the other was in a separate glass box the same size. They were up against one of the walls looking at each other with desperate looks on their faces.

The picture already made Smart Beavis feel uneasy.

As he read through what the experiment was about, he grew very upset at what they had to do and see. He first read that they were both 6 years of age.

It started with them just being separated for an hour. They were clearly distressed by not being in the same box as the other, and that caused a negative paragraph to be written on the file.

After the hour was over, one of the workers came in. Their name was listed as "Kali". She entered Smart Butthead's box, and it was recorded that he backed up into a corner. Kali approached him and punched him in the stomach. He dropped to the floor and kept groaning in pain.

Smart Beavis had screamed and pounded on the glass, showing a need to reach Smart Butthead and save him.

The next paragraph explained that this was a flaw. The fact that Smart Beavis had shown emotion in the first place was not right, and it was even worse that he had wanted to go as far as to go into the other glass box to save him. He should've shown no care. He wasn't supposed to have the need to rescue Smart Butthead, since he shouldn't have had that attachment to him in the first place.

There was also a flaw in Smart Butthead because he had shown fear of Kali's presence. Their species was supposed to serve a life of intergalactic travel and fighting if necessary. It should've been biologically impossible for them to feel these things.

The following paragraphs explained the next few steps of the experiment.

They had brought in a projector to show pictures to the two of them to study their reactions. The pictures were fake; they were created to look exactly like Smart Beavis and Smart Butthead in different types of distressing scenarios.

Such as one of them being strangled, or one of them burning to death. They expressed feelings of fear and anxiety. The pictures started to become focused on bad things happening to Smart Beavis, and Smart Beavis was expressing how horrified he was. Then at one point, Smart Butthead banged on the glass to get Smart Beavis' attention. When Smart Beavis looked over, he made motions with his head and hands to not look at the pictures anymore, and to focus on him. Smart Butthead was calm and appeared to want to comfort Smart Beavis. It worked, in just a matter of minutes Smart Beavis had calmed down. Neither of them were looking at any of the pictures anymore.