This is Spork at home in his living room, where he is happy. He does not like being in the hospital. He does not want to go to a Home, House, or Residence -- he wants to keep his apartment. He pays the rent through his SSDI (he had worked in the computer industry for several years prior to becoming ill and has a modest savings account coupled with disability insurance), but he is barely making it financially. This is why he eats birdseed every night for dinner. He actually prefers beef with mixed nuts and hot sauce from the local Chinese place. Miss Meddling engages in a constant campaign to move him to residential treatment because he has psychotic episodes and needs more structure and help coping.

But Spork says he copes just fine-- despite his mental illness he is one of a very few people who have access to a special government computer for researching computer viruses and fighting new attacks. Spork is brilliant at computer security and he also does black & white photography and makes the occasional pot on a wheel he bought when They thought he was manic. Spork gets lots of praise and even some fame for his anti-virus work and he does occasionally sell photos and ceramics, but he does these things for himself, to prove that he is not a broken Spork as the doctor who granted him disability insisted ("Forever and completely disabled. No chance of any creative work.") not for money or prestige.

Miss Meddling seems to want to deliberately and cruelly put down everything he does as pointless, unhealthy, too stressful, and not suitable for someone as ill as Spork. She is especially outraged that someone with schizophrenia is doing computer security and keeps writing letters to the government saying he isn't trustworthy and could get voices telling him to make a virus and unleash it etc. but since she has no security clearance, her letters don't get past the the clerk whose job it is to throw away letters from insecure sources. Spork's illness prevented him from getting "Top Secret" at first, but the head of the FBI made a special waiver for him. Miss Meddling wants Spork to give up his currrent, active, life and go to a day program and make moccasins and trivets and glue buttons to mayonnaise jars. In a day program, Spork would also have the opportunity to discuss his feelings in groups led by none other than Miss Meddling, MSW, and would receive his medication at the program to make sure he is taking it right. Once she gets him into day program, she wants to seduce him into residential care "because it's so cheap and and you get Part III SSI instead of Part I, which is two hundred dollars more!" It will be too late when he realizes he'll only have $5.00 a day spending money...

If Spork is placed in a Residence, he will not be allowed to sit at his computer and work because he must work on his social skills and be with the other patients, even though this means watching the Jerry Springer Show day after day in the day room over Rice Krispies with people who have not uttered a word since 1953 and that word was "uh." He will also live with others who bounce around the room babbling and are taken aside to be shot up with Haldol at regular intervals. He will be allowed his pottery and photography, so long as he shares all his materials with the whole house, which means they will get broken right away and he will instantly run out of clay.

Still Spork resists because he knows he would have to sign himself into such a facility and that it is a voluntary situation. He worries about getting sent to an Adult Home involuntarily (can you get sent involuntarily? Spork will have to ask Peter, who knows these things...). Yet Spork has done nothing wrong or bizarre in the neighborhood. He called the police unnecessarily about the chemical weapons plant in 3D, but the police did not investigate fully. There was obviously something sinister going on in that apartment, and he was sure of it and just because his initial notions were a bit far out -- he couldn't help that, it's how people with schizophrenia think but it isn't a legitimate reason to be locked up -- he ended up in Bellevue! He expects to get a medal some day when they find out what is really up with those people in 3D.

The FBI business really was a bit awkward as Spork truly is capable of screaming at the top of his lungs "The FBI is after me!" when he is having a bad episode, and initially there was a problem because he knew who the local FBI agents were, and in his insane rambling, he broke their covers and the Lower East Side does not like FBI agents that pose as street people and liberals, and there could have been loss of life. But now he is taken to Alaska to work during virus emergencies and only knows the names of the Alaskan officers, which is not likely to cause any harm in NYC.