From the moment he was born, Angus Cooper was destined to know. The son of a policeman and a high school teacher, he was shown the virtues of understanding how one fit into the world as soon as he could make sense of what he was being told. When he was 8, his mother once scolded him for returning from school a few hours late; not because she was overly worried about him, but because of what the neighbours might say about her being an incompetent parent. His father backed her up, pointing the consequences of his behaviour out to him. "Do you know what happens when people get the wrong impression, Angus? Do you know what happens when they turn against you?" he asked with a tone of seriousness that frightened the young Cooper.
Angus had simply shaken his head in reply.
When he was 15, he once climbed to the top of the school hall's roof and stood looking down at the parking lot filled with learners below. Several screams, a terrified principal and a guidance counsellor who tried desperately to seem calm later, he was rescued. His pleas of innocence were met with almost believable "of course we believe you" answers, which he smirked at without showing it. He suspected that his paper-plane-finding excuse would be fairly transparent, but didn't expect that no one would realise what his true intentions were. Jumping was about as far from his thoughts as finding any paper planes; he simply wanted to see how people would react. Realising what power he had over their behaviour made him feel like he knew something they didn't. It also made him realise that people could be used to accomplish a variety of things, as long as they felt in danger. He didn't entertain for a second the thought that the school staff might actually have been concerned about his welfare. It made no difference to how they reacted.
When he reached university, Angus was intent on becoming a psychologist. He spent three years studying things about the human mind that he didn't believe to be true, until one day, he happened upon someone doing something that fascinated him. As he strolled past the chemistry building on campus, a young man with long hair came running out of the main entrance with a test tube in his hand. The sunlight hit him squarely in his face as he raised both arms up into the air and loudly shouted "Oh yeah! Take that! What's your reply to that, huh?!" A few students turned to see what the commotion was, but the young scientist barely noticed them. The grin on his face was contagious. At that moment, Angus Cooper knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to know. Not because he was particularly curious, or because he wanted to understand, but because he wanted to have knowledge to himself, and to himself only.
A blue kaleidoscope moved between bright white spots, blending into a blurred mass on the edges. The blending slowly spread out toward the edges, bringing the blue into focus in the middle of the wheel of colour. The colours became less vibrant, more real, until they couldn't belong to a kaleidoscope anymore. The collar of a shirt started to appear, just as the muffled sound of something that had to be a man's voice became vaguely discernable.
The voice increased in intensity away from a muffle. "Mr Cooper? Angus, can you hear me?"
Angus tried to look to the left, but his gaze was focused on the collar. He grabbed a fistful of grass in his hand, but strangely it felt like bedding instead. An attempt at a groan was more successful: the collar moved rapidly closer into his gaze, again blurring his vision in the process.
"Please try to relax Mr Cooper. You're in hospital. You were in an accident, and you're recovering. Please try not to move."
The collar moved away, back into focus. Just as did, the kaleidoscope begun turning again, fading everything into a blue blur.