Core Drive: A Westworld Story

Reverie 2015-N: Logan

Anger wasn't something Logan learned to deal well with as a child.

After his mother was no longer in the picture, James grew even more distant and cold, leaving Josephine to pick up the pieces. She had helped, somewhat, keeping him on track; a routine of breakfast, school drop-offs, homework and Arthurian tales at bedtime. Then, during weekends and endless summers, she showed him a modicum of normalcy; walks in the park, planetarium visits, museum exhibits, countless libraries. The problem was that Josephine wasn't always around. She couldn't be. She was only human, after all. And no matter where she took him, he'd always wind up back in one of his father's houses. In a prison for a bedroom. Under the weight of the Delos name for a blanket.

Naturally, when left to his devices, unsupervised, Logan developed a few fucked-up coping mechanisms. As a child, that usually meant breaking things. Priceless things. Empty things. Things he'd later regret breaking. As a teenager, he took to stealing booze from his father's liquor cabinet. Then, after a bloodcurdling tongue lashing from his father, Logan had escalated to pills, his mother's prescription anti-anxiety pills hidden in the Blue Room's bathroom.

Drugs weren't his only outs. 

He'd taken to his father's convertible even before he got his license. A classic which sounded far too loud to be anything more than an ego booster. He didn't care much for the make or year or expensive paint job (a surprising viridian green), what he cared for was the rush! The rush of stealing it. The rush of driving it on an empty highway in pitch blackness. The rush that maybe he'd drive too close to the thorn bushes and scrape up the sides when he drove back home. The rush of chance.

Once James had caught on to Logan's theatrics, he'd stopped reacting to his son altogether. No more shouting matches, just a plane ticket and an enrolment form to a boarding school in Switzerland.

It was an all-boys school, preparatory. A school where lacrosse and polo were held to a higher degree than football and golf. Cravats were actual statement pieces. The blue blazers had a red and gold emblem stitched at the breast. A button-down dress code; shirt, fixed tie and black shoes (polished to a shine). 

No one ever spoke their mind there. 

Manipulation and book smarts were usually mistaken for intellect. The entire school was designed as an echo chamber. A place to mould rich kids into more successful versions of their rich parents. Twice more the challenge and twice as little accountability.

To his surprise, Logan had thrived there. Because while everyone else repeated the same cycles, he experimented. At first, it was with how far he could push the boundaries of the dress code. Then it was how controversial he could be with his social studies papers. Then it was who he could pit against who. And finally, it was his sexuality.

In the end, sex and stimulants proved to be the better distractions from life. And he desperately needed an escape from whatever nightmare he'd stumbled into in Joy's lab.

Friendships were a strange phenomenon for Logan. He'd spent so much time moving and burning bridges, his relationships had become transactions. Give and take.

Olivia Plemons was one such transaction, and probably the oldest he still had ties to. She had introduced Juliet to the art world. Pointing out which artists to endorse, identifying which charities were the better to associate the Delos name with (and which offered tax rebates). She was respected, feared and knew everybody's secrets.

She was also a high-functioning opioid addict.

He'd learnt a lot of his come-down tricks from her. They'd had a brief run at something of a relationship, too. It ended as quickly as it began. Its dissolution worse than a shit storm. It happened without either of them acknowledging it.