he's a historian, i think. he's a historian but in the same way that those people who make videos on internet history are historians, he scavenges through the remains of what's left and tries to put together the pieces as best he can. He's not a traditional historian, like Eret is - he doesn't have a big fancy museum, full of art pieces and maps. He has a radio, a recorder, and a board covered in thumbtacks. Granted, he's not the best historian. He does his best with the pieces he has but he doesn't have very many, and he tries to put the pieces together but he puts them together wrong. He knows he's wrong the instant he talks to anyone who was there, because they look at him strangely, like he's a fifteen year old who still believes in santa somehow. and so he tries again. He tears down his board and starts over, putting together the pieces in new ways. He does his best to search for new pieces. He begs people to come to him, to tell their stories.... nobody comes. He doesn't mind, not because it interferes with his research - it does, though, he can only find so many pieces in the wreckage of what's behind. But the reason he minds is because he's lonely. He's got an old, ratty doll in his backpack. Maybe it belonged to his sister, his daughter, his mother; but it was definitely someone important to him. He talks to the doll, and the doll talks back. He talks to the doll about anything and everything, he spills his guts to this doll, and he looks around at the empty cavern, filled with spaces laid out. There's enough spaces there, he thinks, for around fifty people. That's more people than the entire server - plenty of space if new people come in! Nobody comes. He's alone. He keeps talking to the doll, and the doll keeps talking back. He comes into town, to get some milk - a simple errand, one he does routinely. Not too often, he prefers to keep to himself, fitting the puzzle pieces together in more and more ways, ways that make increasingly less sense. He'd be able to put them together better if he just had the glue. He doesn't have the glue. Nobody hands him the bottle. Whatever. He picks up the milk, and he stops by the fast food shop for a burger before he heads back out to Serenity. A man runs in, wearing full armor. The man is frantic, panting, and his words don't make sense. Something about Dream - he's heard that name, time and time again, it appears in his puzzle pieces often enough. Dream is often referred to as bad, as evil. Dream is the thing that goes bump in the night. Michael isn't too sure what he did, but he knows enough to be relatively cautious. Once, he thought that Dream's reputation might have been bad. He ran to the prison, then, thought that maybe, just maybe, he could get Dream to hand him the glue. He couldn't get in. He wasn't really trying. But the man in the fast food restaurant is yelling about Dream, about how he's escaping. He's getting out. He's going to be free. Everyone else perks up, their eyes filled with various levels of fear and anger. Michael understands, Dream's what goes bump in the night after all. And so he runs out with the others, and there's a fight. And someone dies, and there's a ghost, and Michael's worldview is being shattered while people fight around him. He tries to listen to the words, to pick up more pieces in the wind, as best he can. He thinks he succeeds, but perhaps not as much as he could if someone would simply hand him the glue. Michael goes back to Serenity, and he hangs the pieces that he's gathered up on the board. There's not that many of them. Michael wishes he hadn't gone into town that day. The pieces weren't worth the chaos.