From the Upper Canada Journal of Medicine. Reprinted with permission.

Case Study: DOSGuy
by Dr. William Stryker

In the autumn of 2004, reports began to surface of a sasquatch or wildman living in the woods near populated settlements in Canada. The subject of the reports was captured naked by RCMP officers and discovered to be a human male. He had long hair that formed a sort of mane, and an unruly beard. Once bathed, he lost much of his sasquatch appearance, but was still obviously uncivilized, so the nickname "Wildman" stuck.

Testing revealed that Wildman possessed the mutant gene, but we have been unable to determine his mutant powers. Our facility was deemed the most appropriate for the rehabilitation of a wild mutant, and the courts ordered that he be transferred to our custody in late 2004.

His mutant cellular structure makes his age impossible to determine. He may be a man in his late 20s, or he may be older than I am. Having lived like an animal for so many years, he had no way of recalling the passage of time.

"Wildman" on the secure campus at our research facility

Wildman displayed a clear preference for living outdoors, and disliked modern technology. He frequently bared his teeth in a show of aggression when we began taking photographs, but was easily distracted by birds and squirrels.

Wildman baring his teeth

Distracted by a nearby bird

Early attempts to socialize him failed, and he was deemed too disturbed to interact with people outside of the facility. We attempted to teach him about our society by having him watch television, but he showed little interest in the programming. One of the doctors suggested teaching him to play video games in order to make the images on the television interactive. This successfully engaged his interest, and great strides were made in a very short time in our efforts to teach him to watch TV.

Wildman in the break room. Engineering samples of the Nintendo Wii allowed natural interaction with the television. Our research was shared with Nintendo to help them develop a more engaging experience with the Wii.

Wildman was still too dangerous to expose to the world outside, so it was decided that he should communicate with researchers and, eventually, civilians through the internet. Wildman disliked modern operating systems, claiming that graphical user interfaces placed too many limitations on the instructions that he could give the computer. A copy of DOS was located, and Wildman quickly learned to make the computer do what he wanted using a command line interface. He found communicating online to be boring, so we encouraged him to remain at the computer by letting him play games.

Wildman playing Clyde's Adventure at my desk. He seems to prefer the simple gameplay of older games.

Despite our best efforts, it became clear that Wildman would never develop the social skills to become a normal member of society, but we became hopeful that we might be able to develop him to the level of a video game nerd, which would at least allow him limited exposure to other males within a niche segment on the fringes of society. It was deemed unlikely that Wildman would ever date or marry.

Wildman was eventually enticed to express himself and communicate with the outside world when we asked him to create his own webpage. This led to a rapid increase in Wildman's vocabulary and forced him to express himself in a structured way. During this time he was asked to choose a name for himself, and he selected "DOSGuy".

In the year and half that we studied DOSGuy, he made great strides in his rehabilitation and eventually became capable of caring for himself. When he was finally shaved and given a haircut, he even began to look like a normal person. He showed little aptitude for math, science, art or music but, perhaps owing to his many hours working with computers, learned a number of programming languages and developed a passion for web design. He remains hostile towards modern operating systems, as evidenced by his insistence upon maintaining a website devoted exclusively to DOS games. It's as though he's trapped in the past.

In early 2006, funding for the project was cut, and it was decided that DOSGuy should re-enter society as soon as employment could be found for him. Finding an occupation that required no social skills or education was difficult at first, until someone suggested the possibility of employment with the federal government. He easily passed the entrance exam and began working in the tax department as a collections officer. I understand that he's quite good at negotiating arrangements.

Negotiating a payment schedule at the home of a taxpayer