"The TV feels like what popcorn taste like," Hemlock declared one day, at the age of three with an innocent laugh, and a childish giggle. Hands on the TV screen to the dismay of his parents, his hands on the screen that is. Born without sight, his parents didn't give it much thought originally. Children say weird things from time to time. For a time, unbeknownst to them, their only son had been born with the gift and ability to manipulate technology through the EMFs they radiate.
Further unknown to them, was that while technically blind Hemlock saw though not as clearly as say any person with sight. And he didn't see in hyper detail, instead Hemlock was privy to a world of static and snow. To him he was graced with a world of color. The color being the brief pops of EMF, the colors got bright and more vibrant depending on the what was emanating electromagnetic fields. He mapped his entire house based on color, navigating it with ease, through a world of darkness and color.
His parents merely assumed he was just a relatively odd kid. They had heard tales of children's sense being more fine tuned to make up for the blindness so they thought nothing of it when he was young. Though their ignorance wouldn't last forever.
"And sometimes the TV talks to me, the static hisses, but it whispers," Hemlock excitedly states to his Father one day at the age of six. When he was young, it was forgivable for his little odd statements. But at six, it seemed less forgivable now.
Outside of his home Hemlock, navigated the city he grew up in with ease. Even refusing a white cane, stating that he could navigate just fine because the colors tell him where to go. His parents, of course ignored his refusal.
"You need this," Mother stated sternly.
"No, I listen to the static, and feel it on my skin,"
"These little games need to stop Lock,"
So they did for awhile. He stopped saying things about the lights, the visual static, the static on his skin and the whispers from all electronic devices. And went to a school in the city, where he attended a special needs classroom. Learning braille, because despite being able to navigate the world through color and visual snow it didn't grant him the ability to read. Yet, Hemlock's oddities continued even in school, which started conflict with the other students in his classroom. All with their own particularly needs and special requirements. Because of the way Hemlock carried himself, a lot of the kids thought he was stuck up. Which prompted a lot of bullying from even kids who were supposed to be similar to him.
His parents never really discovered quickly his abilities. In fact he would go on for nine years without them ever knowing about his ability to control Electromagnetic Fields. Curious, bright, and intelligent Hemlock was already experimenting with the things he could do with them. The day his parents discovered his abilities was the day he went missing for several hours, it was the first day that Hemlock learned he could go into "Ghost Mode" so to speak. Touching the screen of the computer, as he normally would, to feel the static. He got transferred in, though limited to his consciousnesses. Intrigued by this new ability he discovered, he took his laptop with him and left the house without notifying anyone he was going anywhere. Fiercely independent at an early age, defiant to the end, Hemlock wasn't going to allow his parents stop him.
It wasn't that day that Hemlock would learn every facet and extension of his ability. But he learned that he could transfer his consciousness into machines. He would later discover he could manifest his consciousness the way an apparition would on a camera through electromagnetic fields. But back then, his parents searched for him for hours.
When he did return home, there was a lot of scolding, and of course he was grounded. His parents always saw him as a frail blind, disabled child. At that age, he admits merely wanted to scare them, after yelling at him for just as long as he had been missing.
That evening he transferred himself into the computer again, and began to mess with his parents TV while they were watching a movie. Turning the family home into a real haunted house briefly. And he the Ghost that Haunted it. Childish as it was, it was then when his parents realized their son was a Metahuman.
Once his parents realized the scope of what they were dealing with, they knew something had to change. In fact the truth might have been that they were slightly afraid of what Hemlock was capable of, considering the fact that he was curious, a voracious learner, someone who enjoyed gaining bits of knowledge and clearly he had been experimenting with his gifts, who knew what else he was capable of. They decided to move outside of the city. Limit his access to technology. What would he do at school if a bully went too far? What would he do if he learned too much about his powers? Yes, the best option was to make sure that never happened. His Mother, contacted family outside of the city, though never fully explained the situation to them. And within a month it was settled, they were moving out to the countryside in some rural bumpkin village.
The rural countryside wasn't entirely too different from the city, there were still some electronics, like the lights, and the heaters. But there was less of it. The small town was harder to "see". The colors were not as strong, and this seemed like a good thing to his parents actually. Despite the town not having nearly as of extensive special education than the ones he was taking in the city, they did their best to accommodate him. However, here he faced a lot more prejudice than he did in the city. In the city it was his "own kind" disabled kids bullying him. Here in the small town, it was kids who weren't always disabled.
The white cane felt unnatural. When he would leave town the EMFs would quiet, and dull. Harder to see the colors, but this didn't stop Hemlock. Strangely it was the move that got him interested in the paranormal. There were ways of pumping electromagnetic fields into the environment through pumps, the technology of paranormal research began to fascinate him in his middle school days. This fascination would carry on through high school as well. Despite it getting him a lot of laughs at school.
Those kids probably wouldn't laugh if they knew where he had ended up after high school. They always took his defiance in school, as just a joke. The Blind kid attempting to be cool or something. Even entering the Robotics Club, the only thing interesting in town, despite protest and attempts to kick him out. Once he was old enough Hemlock ran away from home. With as much money as he could steal from his parents checking account. He merely hacked into their computers with his gifts to do so. He contemplated whether or not he was seeking revenge on his parents for locking him up so to speak or if he should just take the money. Transferring the money over to a checking account he made in secret he left in the middle of the night, guiding himself on some long stranded road through the very weak signals from power lines, and the few passing cars. To eventually find a town where he could live in.
Eventually he found a city to live in. Where he ended up taking college courses. Fascinated by ghost, the paranormal, the theory of electromagnetic fields and their connections to other dimensions, Hemlock desired to investigate these phenomenon through A.I. technology. Things seemed to be going his way for once. Due to his gifts, he was talented with programming and coding, though no one knew how he did it. He naturally accelerated in his courses freakishly quick.
In the end he was extremely young graduating becoming the youngest person to graduate in his courses. This success of course brought him unwanted attention. Attention from his parents that is. They caught wind of his whereabouts, but he caught wind of their whereabouts as well. Quickly fleeing once again to avoid their detection.
At twenty-three Hemlock mostly worked for odd jobs. Mostly in A.I. programming his specialty. But Hemlock's fascination with ghost, the paranormal, and occult never really ended. Considering his gifts, and what worked with his parents worked once, Hemlock got most of his money, stealing from bank accounts. Completely untraceable, completely undetected. If there was any crime he should be charged for, it was theft. Except that Hemlock was always careful to never flag anyone's account.
At twenty-eight, eventually with stolen money, and intriguing opportunity arose sifting through emails of potential people of interest. He found an email about funding an A.I. Project. Project Dream, a project about understanding Human subconscious their relationship with dreams and how dreams help brain development in formative years. Proposed by a Joe Hartman. Joe was looking to get the project off the ground. Joe's project never really interested Hemlock, in fact he saw the Project as a way to fund and launch his own project, by stealing Joe Hartman's identity or really having Joe Hartman steal Hemlock's identity, and Hemlock would steal Joe's project.
Re-arranging the contents of Hartman's email, and rerouting the sender so when Hartman got a response the email would go through to Hemlock's email instead. The plan was set. He was going to steal a project from right from underneath a stranger's nose.
Project Dream was originally a project to utilize A.I. to understand Human dreams more in depth, by creating an A.I. that simulated Human dreams. There they would begin to plot points about how this affects human brain development, especially in their formative years. It quickly, under Hemlock's supervision began to warp from its original design to one about transferring the mind from machine to reality - Spirit. While some of his fellows thought Hemlock was a little insane, they went along with the plan. As they saw uses for the idea, lessening the trauma of surgeries perhaps by giving the brain somewhere else to go, or using it to lessen the trauma of soldiers on the battlefield. Imagine an entire war fought by Spirits. All though Hemlock was always against the latter explanation of Project Dream. Hemlock didn't approve of using his project to contribute to human suffering.
With Project Dream Hemlock learned that with enough EMFs being pumped in the environment, an apparition could manipulate it's environment. Things like rolling balls off of tables. He was beginning to prove, what paranormal investigators had been trying to prove for years. On the side it gave Hemlock the ability to expand and test his own gifts in private, to see how far he could manifest his physical form, with how much reach he could manipulate his environment. To the point that he may have accidentally begun the rumors of the Dream Labs being haunted. Hemlock would let them believe what they wanted to believe.
With Project Dream there was a potential to lesson human suffering. Hemlock always saw the projection as a humanitarian effort. Though he realized and recognized, that their work would eventually attract vultures. He valued the idea the work could be used for more beneficial and kinder ideas.
At thirty his fears came to light when the military caught wind of Project Dream. It was then when Spirits was proposed to be used to project Soldiers as Avatars onto Battlefields to fight wars. The military and the government didn't care about the science, the machine still required someone to transfer their consciousness. And the thing was that Hemlock had no idea how killing a Spirit would affect the main body. Especially if they didn't have the abilities he had. The machine was shaky at best, despite what it did prove. It wasn't ready to be utilized in any real life tests with non metahumans. And even then he didn't know how metahumans would react to the machine, especially if they didn't have the ability to see the electromagnetic fields or know how to use them.
The military and the government didn't really care. They threatened to cut funding. Hemlock had never been one to be steamed rolled, dared them to do so. His colleagues were slowly starting to waver, this was after all the government and the military. And to some who were not as anti-war as Hemlock actually saw the proposal as a good thing. The idea of protecting Soldiers from the horrors of war fascinated some, causing descent in the facility. When the Government did cut off funding, to strong arm the facility, not willing to risk having the military take over Project Dream Hemlock went into action to destroy all of the facility's research. He would even kill his precious machine, which at this point had become something he sort of loved as a partner.
When he was caught doing so, by some of his colleagues, he was dragged away from the machine. Before having time for him to destroy it. Despite being able to see EMFs, what was Hemlock going to do against five colleagues attempting to stop him from nuking the entire project?
Originally they argued among themselves, about what to do with him? Leave him for dead? Arrest him? He tried his best to wrangle out of their grip, but there were five of them and one of him. They felt they were protecting the machine, they felt they were protecting the project this way. They wouldn't hear or listen to his pleas. They eventually dragged him toward a storage closet. He attempted to escape. Stop the door from closing. Using their blobby shapes as an approximate of where the door was. They smashed his fingers with the door. Once. Twice. A third time. Just to get him to let go of the door frame. He eventually did when a good portion of his fingers broke, trying to stop them from closing the door.
They were going to steal the project he stole, he knows how that sounds. But he knew he had to stop his project from being utilized in the way they intended. Somehow. It took him hours actually, feeling the EMF current running through the floor and ceiling. He had always transferred himself through machines that emitted high EMFs, but never this low. Eventually, however, he got it. Using the electromagnetic field to travel, till he could navigate himself to the most potent source, the machine.
His plan was the same. Destroy the research. Destroy Project Dream. He was about to commit to an act, that he once found heinous, but now his machine was going to be used for murder. That very Haunted Lab, became Haunted that day, as a Digital Apparition and through manipulation of the facility. He killed all nineteen personal excluding him. The lab became a blood soaked facility.
The issue now, was what to do when someone came to the facility? It was evident to him that he might have to protect the lab and nuke his project from the inside.
The next set of events are hard to describe. For Hemlock over the course of the years had fallen in love with the project or more specifically the machine. As a romantic partner. The idea of killing the machine he had grown to known from the inside out, was heartbreaking. And evidently the machine felt the same way. Or maybe the machine never spoke to him. Yet, he felt convinced enough to let Dream live. Together they would protect the facility, all he had to do was destroy the research information, the formulas, programming coding, but keep Dream alive.
For the next three years that is exactly what Dream and Hemlock did. Anyone who wondered into the facility, to shut Dream down, was swiftly eliminated. Military personal, other specialists, government officials. Since no one at the time knew about the metahuman controlling the facility, there were a lot of ghost stories about angry ghost murdering people. Some even claimed the machine had gone rogue. No one really had an answer, and Hemlock was willing to waste away to protect Dream, and die alongside Dream.
While Dream spoke in whispers. And static. It was alive. Perhaps. Maybe. Or maybe all of that is made up.
Eventually the military alongside the government facilitated a plan to force a shutdown of Dream. As they would have in the past. This time, however, they brought a group of soldiers with them to fend off - whatever it was they were fending off. If it were really a ghost, what would their weaponry do? The soldiers were of course sacrificial lambs, a distraction while another team came in to dismantle the machine.
It's unclear how the government determined it was a metahuman controlling the machine. But it seemed that the terror of Dream, and Lock were over once the facility was officially shut down. Without any electricity admitting through the facility, the death of Dream. Lock was relatively easy to capture, being blind, and near death anyway. There he would be taken to Thornwood.
