By Kim
Max sits at a desk in The Dreaming, looking through some papers. Joshua asks if she's working on finding an antidote for her Logan-specific virus. She is, using the papers she was given by the extremely nervous former Manticore scientist who was helping her before he left town. Max is frustrated by the doctor's lousy handwriting. Joshua turns on a lamp so that she can have better light, and then there's a whole bit of business where he can't get the lamp to reach her because the cord isn't long enough, so he ends up picking up Max and the desk and carrying them over to the lamp. Max is touched that he wants to help, but wants to get him out of her hair, so she asks him to find her another pencil. Joshua slaps the table and yells out, "Pencil!" Joshua is kind of annoying.
Speaking of pencils, Logan is tapping one on his desk while he speaks to a doctor on the phone. He is also searching for a cure for his virus. The doctor on the phone seems to think Logan is a nut, and hangs up. Logan breaks his pencil in frustration and then tosses it across the desk. He is so manly!
Joshua searches in the basement for a pencil. While searching, Joshua finds a painting on an easel, and nearby, some tubes of paint. One of the paints is called "Chocolate Mousse," so Joshua thinks it's candy and sticks some in his mouth. He immediately starts choking, so he uses a piece of paper to try to wipe it from his tongue. He eventually spits some paint onto the painting, and then uses the paper to wipe it off. The paper sticks to the painting. They couldn't have picked another color besides brown? Because it looks like a big mess of poop. Anyway, Joshua is still choking and drooling, so he picks up an old ashtray to spit into, but then he sneezes and blows the ash all over the painting, and the ashes get stuck in the paint. , Joshua grabs a cloth and some turpentine to try to remove the extraneous paint, but apparently he likes what he sees, so he keeps doing it. The brown paint dripping from the painting just looks like diarrhea. I'm sorry, but it does. Max comes downstairs to try to find Joshua. At first, he doesn't want to share his work, but eventually relents. Max thinks the painting is good. It also looks nothing like the painting he started -- all the poop paint is gone somehow. Joshua informs her that it's a painting of their father. Max thinks it's good that Joshua has a hobby, because it will keep him out of trouble. Joshua repeats her warnings about people being afraid of things that are different.