Bruce left China behind empty-handed. The Project CONSERVE contacts at the KIZ and XTBG exhausted, he retreated from the cave, tail between his legs.
Bruce's decision to seek Kirk in the Kanbei'er cave had been intuitive. not borne on logical reasoning in the face of Xue and Isley's perspective: science, rational thinking's bedfellow. But at Kirk's hands, science had gone awry, or at least the guardrails had failed.
Bruce had unearthed his sympathies toward any ostensible misanthropy harbored by Langstrom. Little now separated him with Kirk, as far as the attachment to a totem of another species.
If Bruce had followed the rational path, he'd find what was logical, but could miss opportunities for magic insight. A procedural detective would follow logic from one point to another, a trail of evidence which ought to lead to the truth. But what if whom one was looking for was no longer guided by reason, but instead mental illness and delusion? In such an instance, what was the logic? Kirk's potential diagnosis of schizophrenia was a realistic state of his mind - it mattered not whether such reality matched another's.
Was Bruce much different in the delusion of his own alter ego, or what he believed he could wring from his body and mind in service to it?
Kirk's delusions were but a waking dream of a man ill of mind, yet Bruce wasn't too far behind him, short of eating insects.
Bruce lived in a mind of complex, hidden meanings. Though he was unable to pinpoint why and without detailed knowledge, he was right much of the time and knew it. His insight into people and situations was uncanny, of an almost psychic nature, his intuition allowing him to look around corners. Often, Bruce could characterize it with what Jung called synchronicity - the presence of meaning where there was no causality for it to exist. Yet, if Kirk were in a schizophrenic psychosis, would he not also have synchronicity at his disposal? How then did Bruce discern his own overabundance of meaning?
How different were Bruce's delusions of intuition, which in the case of the cave proved wrong. Could this, and the deductive reasoning he employed atop intuitive feeling, still lead to Kirk? Such a framework wasn't grounds for probable cause a detective might use or meet the threshold of reasonable suspicion. But Bruce's experience, training, and common sense led him toward this path.
Bruce couldn't help but experience the world via his emotions. It mattered not what the outside world appeared to see, thinking him cold and cut-off. His feelings weren't for the outside world - they were there to guide him - the prime element of his decision-making toolkit. What would someone who lived by their rational, thinking qualities make of such a decision-making basis? Bruce imagined they'd think such musings akin to parapsychology. Such psychic descriptions belonged in the realm of pseudoscience and the paranormal. Bruce couldn't defend himself from such claims. All he knew was he would continue to trust it.
What was he looking for, Bruce asked himself? On its face, it would appear as though he was working toward the whereabouts of Dr. Kirk Langstrom. But what was he working toward on the inside? Why, he queried, was he centering the drama of his life upon Dr. Langstrom, projecting upon Kirk's maladies? Did Bruce not feel as though he was able to concentrate upon his own life?
If Kirk was the object of Bruce's projection, what did Bruce understand Langstrom's preoccupation to be, which had been troubling Bruce? Kirk had started somewhere with benevolent intent, then descended into a mad scientist. Upon Kirk going missing, Bruce had investigated the man's home and workplace, leading Bruce to travel to China to investigate further. Bruce had been following in the footsteps of someone who'd gone mad. Yet Bruce felt he needed to follow the trail wherever it led him, to honor his intuition.
Bruce took it all in, asked himself whether he saw the flaw? He wanted to be a savior of Dr. Langstrom. What about himself? Bruce was healthy and productive. Did he want to make himself into what Kirk had become?
Bruce followed Dr. Langstrom's trail at the expense of the integrity of his own psyche. He understood the risk was less about his physical integrity, which was still significant. Bruce's greater apprehension was the psychological stress he'd be putting himself under past this point.
Could Kirk have lost his mind at the prospect of the extinction not only of his own species, but a tenth of all others? Such a consideration was an acceptable reason to wring one's hands over what the catalyst for a prospective change might be.
Bruce could only keep asking himself this question, searching for the answer. It was either messianic or deluded to think, dormant in his own brain, waiting to activate, lay the potential to alter the plan of existence.
His best intentions and noblest use of his intellect was in competition with another 8 billion of the most dangerous species. Assuming he'd spared himself the flaws of his fellow brethren was hubristic. As though he possessed a spontaneous mutation of altruism which had skipped everyone else.
Before any other attribute piled atop, he was a male human, associated with aggression, violence, and crime. When one considered humanity to be driving a mass extinction, was it not because of only one of the sexes?
He felt the need to be strong and courageous. Why? Courage was the will to face suffering, pain, risk, and feel intimidated. Why not instead end pain and suffering altogether? Why impose stress upon oneself to fulfill a foolhardy ideal, like psychological masochism? As though he needed to feel pain to be virtuous.
Bruce was a man, but to keep his sanity, he needed to recognize what it meant to be human: to have emotions and thoughts which could get the better of oneself. A human could be voluminous in intelligence, but lack the wisdom, judgment, and foresight to apply such knowledge. To be human was to be fallible and make mistakes.
