Xenoverse origins / R-082
Lola LushOrigin story
Lola Lush and the Patient Who Felt Excellent
An impatient technician mistakes a patient's doubt for the whole problem and must persuade him to accept a difficult feeling he has paid to lose.
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The patient entered carrying his hat at arm's length. Something inside it was whispering that he had made a dreadful mistake. Lola Lush asked whether the voice had started before or after he bought the hat. He said it had started when he accepted a Council appointment, which narrowed matters considerably.
Lola Lush discovers that removing an unwanted creature can leave an official missing a judgment he never learned to exercise.
Feeling excellent is not the same as being finished.
From the dossier
Prologue — A Vacancy in the Waiting Room
Lola served as Parasite Removal Technician at the Jungle outpost. The clinic contained glass specimen jars, a desk that leaned away from paperwork, and a waiting bench whose occupants competed to look least worried.
She disliked that competition. Worry made people hesitate, and hesitation filled her appointment book. Lola preferred a problem she could name, remove, and place behind glass. She was good at doing exactly that, which had gradually convinced her it was good for everyone.
A letter from the Goblin Council praised her efficiency in removing an infestation without canceling a banquet. Councillor Murr had delivered it personally, along with three complaints about dessert. In later meetings he always greeted her warmly before asking whether she could settle something quickly.
Today's patient was the newly appointed Deputy for Confident Decisions. He introduced himself as Flenn and set his hat on her desk. Beneath the lining sat a small blue creature with antlers like crooked question marks. It whispered, "Are you quite sure?"
Lola recognized a second-thought beetle. It lived in ceremonial headwear and fed on the little pause between an instruction and agreement. Usually it stayed unobtrusive.
Flenn wanted it gone.
"Do you want the creature removed," Lola asked, "or do you want to stop hearing it?"
"Whichever is quicker."
She should have asked another question. Instead, she reached for a specimen jar and congratulated herself on an appointment likely to finish early.
Act 1
A Remarkable Improvement
Act I — A Remarkable Improvement
Lola persuaded the beetle into the jar with an unfinished riddle. It stepped out of the hat, supplied three possible answers, and immediately forgot which one it preferred. No instruments were needed. The creature looked disappointed by the simplicity of its own departure.
Flenn put his hat on and stood straighter.
"I feel excellent," he said.
He signed the clinic's visitor book so forcefully that the desk straightened in alarm. Then he issued an order renaming the waiting bench the Seat of Immediate Compliance. Nobody had requested this.
Lola sent him away with his hat and his appointment slip. She had five more patients, including a courier whose satchel was growing teeth around delayed messages. Flenn's satisfaction seemed like sufficient evidence of success.
Within an hour, he returned to announce that the Council had granted him temporary authority over clinic access. He had removed the outside steps because they slowed arrivals. He had also dismissed the interpreter needed by a patient who spoke only through flowerpots.
Lola asked how people were supposed to enter.
"Promptly."
She looked past him. A porter had constructed a ramp from furniture, and the flowerpot patient was waiting in visible distress beside an untranslated fern.
Flenn approved the ramp, declared himself responsible for the improvement, and ordered the furniture polished while it remained in use.
Lola felt the first unpleasant movement of doubt.
Inside the jar, the beetle had become very quiet. Its antlers rested against the glass.
"What did you eat?" she asked.
"Pauses," it replied.
"What else?"
The creature shifted its little feet.
"What grew inside the pauses."
Act 2
The Shape of a Missing Question
Act II — The Shape of a Missing Question
Second-thought beetles did not create doubt. They gathered it, fed on it, and occasionally put some back. Flenn had carried his creature for so long that he had allowed it to do all the wondering for him. Removing it had left a skill unused and a deputy extremely pleased with the silence.
Lola could return the beetle. Flenn refused even to look at the jar.
"I paid for confidence."
"You paid for a removal."
"And received a promotion. Surely that proves the treatment worked."
He was due to chair a Council hearing that evening. His first proposal would abolish appeal meetings on the grounds that a correct decision did not require one. Murr had already reserved a favorable seat.
Lola tried to embarrass Flenn into reconsidering. She asked him to explain the missing steps to the people waiting outside. He announced an accessibility success and accepted a confused round of applause. Shame required an uncertainty he no longer practiced.
She tried frightening him. He authorized a committee to investigate the fright.
Finally, the flowerpot patient knocked a ceramic rim against the floor. The sound was small, stubborn, and impossible to mistake for agreement. Lola brought the fern close enough to read the marks on its leaves.
The patient was not asking her to repair Flenn. They were asking her to find the interpreter.
Lola stopped arguing and did that first.
When she returned, the beetle watched her from its jar. "You like finishing things," it said.
"That is usually considered useful."
"Especially people."
She sat down. She had treated Flenn's stated problem as a faulty component, then treated his refusal as another obstacle to remove. At no point had she asked what his new confidence was protecting him from.
She carried the jar into the empty consultation room and invited Flenn to sit without promising an improvement.
Act 3
An Appointment Kept Open
Act III — An Appointment Kept Open
Flenn talked because nobody was challenging him. He described the Council's appointment ceremony, the deputy's large chair, and the way his predecessor had been laughed out of a meeting for asking what a proposal meant.
"I don't want to be the one who stops everything," he said.
For the first time all afternoon, he did not sound like a notice nailed to a wall.
Lola told him about the missing interpreter. She did not use it as evidence in a case against him. She described the patient waiting, the untranslated fern, and the time they had lost while she tried to make him admit she was right.
Flenn listened. His fingers turned the hat by its brim.
"Would the beetle have stopped me?"
"Perhaps. I should have discussed that before taking it away."
"I feel excellent."
"Feeling excellent is not the same as being finished."
He looked at the jar. The creature offered no reassurance. It was busy considering whether a transparent prison was better or worse than a familiar hat.
Flenn opened the lid himself. He did not put the beetle back. Instead, he asked it to attend the hearing on the table beside him. The creature agreed, provided someone supplied a riddle with more than one acceptable answer.
At the hearing, Flenn withdrew his proposal to abolish appeals. Murr demanded an explanation. Flenn said he wanted to hear the objections first. The room treated this as a major procedural malfunction.
Lola did not stay to see whether he survived the embarrassment. She returned to the clinic, found the porter, and helped arrange actual seating while the steps were restored. Her appointment board still had a space reserved for Flenn. She left it open.
The next morning brought a parcel from the Council. Inside was a hat, a note requesting absolute decisiveness, and a second-thought beetle twice the size of the first.
The note was unsigned.
Lola set the parcel beside the desk and wrote a reply requesting the owner attend in person. Before she sealed it, something in the hat asked whether she was quite sure.
She read the reply again. Then she sent it.
The clinic and the cost of a quick answer
At the Jungle outpost, Lola works with imaginary parasites whose effects extend beyond itching. Her clinic brings practical competence into contact with Council officials who mistake an uncomfortable question for a defect.