I have some advice, Mr. Doom.
Now, I know what you are thinking – Who is this fool to offer a genius such as myself? What can I learn from someone who cavorts with danger instead of lovingly embracing safety, who runs into the home of a serial killer, who couldn’t tell you the difference between a particle accelerator and a full mass spectrometer? I am someone who has lived things you haven’t. Science is built on people experimenting, collecting data, extrapolating truths and then others using those truths as the basis for more experiments, more data, more truths.
I don’t know what the first scientific discovery technically was, but I always think of fire. Slamming two stones together to make a spark, and the spark igniting a fuel source. Suddenly we had a way of making food out of some previously non-edible materials, we had light and heat to keep us safe when we previously didn’t. Nowadays, we have discovered more fire than we know what do deal with. We have discovered fire that can atomize civilisations, that can end all life as we know it. We have gone from flint to fission.
A good person is better than a good scientist. I say this not to insult, but as an observation. I look at all of the contraptions you’ve displayed publicly, and yeah, I think ‘man, I wish I could come up with stuff like that.. I could help people so much’. The world is riddled with problems and suffering, and I would love to change that. Maybe I have a saviour complex, I dunno. Then I see drones attacking people in hospital, you blowing people up in a ring, you leaving destruction, monsters and misery and corpses in your wake.
Don’t get me wrong, that is possible without science or intellect. Evil people still perpetrate evil, the only difference is scale. A malicious idiot can kill a couple of people before society shuts them down. A genius can kill millions and be held up as a hero. Now, you don’t need an IQ of above 140 to see which of these two individuals are more injurious to society. Now, take a good idiot. They are clumsy, they make mistakes, they may frustrate, but ultimately they enrich the lives of those around them through kindness, co-operation and acts of sacrifice and servitude.
This is why I respect your intellect but not you, Doom. Whether it be the poverty of The Slums, the villainy of people like Nox, the political strife Arcadia has to endure… It is in your power to fix these things. Instead, you seek power for self-aggrandisation, for ambition. You use it to win some fights in a combat sport while tormenting or murdering others. Knowledge is power, but one’s character is the most important thing of all, for it is the difference between a nuclear reactor and a nuclear bomb.
No amount of drones or grenades can kill the truth, Doom. The truth that you are evil. That you don’t deserve Felix. That even a fool like me is better than you.