4. Smart Alec wants to know everything

4. Smart Alec wants to know everything Smart Alec's contribution is intelligence: rapid calculation, recall and an ability to process information far beyond most people. His later Omega equipment includes a large encephalo-helmet that gives him still more information to work with. Alec Thorne is also arrogant enough to mistake having a powerful mind for having an answer to everything. The others have little patience for him, and his exchanges with Lil make their old Gamma association sound exhausting. That combination reaches its disastrous conclusion when he takes Shaman's medicine pouch in Alpha Flight #12. Shaman warns him not to look inside. Alec looks anyway, confident that he can understand what is there. His mind cannot cope with it. The aftermath in #13 makes clear that Shaman is preserving his body while trying to find a way to restore him. It isn't a straightforward death in battle, and describing it as one loses the strange, disturbing situation the story leaves behind. For the original Gamma, Alec is an example of why an impressive ability alone cannot settle readiness for the field. He has the intellect. What fails him in that encounter is his refusal to take another person's warning seriously.