Biography - Page 5
The debriefing was with Henry Peter Gyrich, however, so fifteen hours later Wanda finally got fed up and stormed into the session to rescue her husband. With Gyrich still not "satisfied" that Vision's mental issues had been resolved, Vision and Wanda turned in their Avengers credentials
to sever their ties with the government. As free citizens again, Vision and Wanda decided to move back to Leonia, New Jersey and bought a new house. However, their domestic efforts were interrupted by a horde of zombies led by the Black Talon and Nekra. The Grim Reaper, it seemed, had a new Lethal Legion and new plans for restoring his "lost" brother Simon. [Vision & the Scarlet Witch (2nd series) #1]
Vision and the Scarlet Witch compared notes with the West Coast Avengers and learned Wonder Man had been kidnapped by the Reaper's people. They joined forces to seek out clues of where Eric may have taken Simon, leading to an unexpected meeting for Vision when the group visited Martha Williams, Wonder Man's mother. Vision had never considered the thought that he might 
have more "family" beyond his "brother" Simon, but with his newfound humanity he was overwhelmed at the idea of meeting his "mother." As Martha told the Avengers the tragic history of Eric and Simon, Vision stepped forward and called her mother. Learning of his origins, Martha was overjoyed to have another son in her life, and so Vision's family grew even larger that day. [West Coast Avengers (2nd series) #2]
The final confrontation with Grim Reaper and the Lethal Legion brought Simon and Vision even closer, although when they tried to reach out to Eric he rejected their efforts and fell to his death at the bottom of a cavern. [Vision & the Scarlet Witch (2nd series) #2] Flush with the idea of having a family for the first time, Vision impetuously suggested to Wanda they look into having a child. Despite his synthetic nature, Vizh was upbeat enough to believe they would find a way and, in a few short hours, they miraculously did. In a confrontation with a coven of 666 witches led by Salem's Seven, vast amounts of mystical energy were released over the town of New Salem. To prevent the mystical equivalent of a nuclear meltdown, Wanda used her witchcraft to channel the magic safely away, with Vision holding and bracing her in the process. Her late mentor, Agatha 
Harkness, spoke to Wanda during this invocation, giving her the idea to use this magic while channeling it, and Wanda bent the law of probabilities to the breaking point. And with that, the mutant witch had become pregnant by the artificial man. [Vision & the Scarlet Witch (2nd series) #3]
As fantastic as the pregnancy was, it helped the couple fit in better in the Leonia community. The same men who set fire to their last house were deflated when they learned the "mutie" they were targeting was also a mother-to-be. In the nine months that followed, Vision and Wanda expanded their role in the community, meeting their neighbors and celebrating the holidays like normal expectant parents. They also battled the Enchantress, Samhein and the Terrible Toad-King, though, so normal was still relative. [Vision & the Scarlet Witch (2nd series) #4-11]
When the big day finally came, Vizh rushed to the hospital with Wanda, with both Doctor Strange and their regular OB-GYN attending the birth. To the surprise of everyone, Wanda delivered twins despite all scans and measurements before and after the birth saying she would only have one child. The second boy had a power making him completely invisible to detection by scientific or 
magical means. Even the scale in the delivery room couldn't read his weight! Wanda and Vision named their twin sons Thomas and William, after Phineas Thomas Horton (creator of Vision's original body) and Simon Williams (Vision's twin thanks to their shared brain wave patterns). [Vision & the Scarlet Witch (2nd series) #12]
Wanda and Vision enjoyed months of relative peace and happiness as domestic parents in Leonia, with occasional visits by Uncle Simon and Grandma Martha Williams. The only dark cloud on their happiness was Quicksilver's fall from grace. After his wife Crystal cheated on him, Wanda encouraged Pietro to consider forgiving her, but instead Pietro felt betrayed by his sister. Feeling as if everyone was against him, Pietro fell into bitter madness, renewing his long-forgotten hatred of the synthetic Vision and even betraying the Avengers to their enemies. [West Coast Avengers Annual #1] When Wanda and Vision responded to a letter for help from Bova in Transia, they were instead captured by Pietro's Communist allies in Hungary, along with many of the West 
Coast Avengers. By the end of the adventure, many of the Whackos quit the team for various reasons, leaving Hawkeye and Wonder Man severely understaffed. Unwilling to let the team fall apart, Vision and Wanda volunteered to rejoin the Avengers and move to Los Angeles to bolster the group's ranks. [West Coast Avengers (2nd series) #33-37]
Tragically, returning to the Avengers may have been one of the worst decisions the Vision ever made. An international government coalition dubbed Project: Vigilance was formed in the aftermath of Vision's takeover attempt of the world's computer network. World security was highly compromised in those few hours and, although the Avengers promised Vision was "cured" of the mental imbalance he suffered at the time, Vigilance was created to monitor Vision for future problems. Vigilance was content to merely observe while Vision remained a family man in Leonia. Once he returned to the Avengers and had access to their super-computer network again, however, Vigilance felt it necessary to take action.
In a multi-pronged assault, Vigilance infiltrated Avengers Compound in the dead of night and captured the Vision. They also introduced a computer virus into the Avengers' network, wiping all traces of the Vision from the Avengers' computers and the computers linked to them. This included any reports or files on Vision, as well as the electronic back-up of his own memories Vision routinely kept. The inert Vision was brought to Vigilance headquarters in Texas where he was completely dismantled and dissected, his programming wiped clean. Although the Avengers 
learned of Vigilance and located their base, they were too late to prevent Vision from effectively being killed by the coalition. Worse still, there was nothing the team could do about it -- Vigilance was officially-sponsored, their actions supported by the U.S. government. What remained of the Vision was turned back over to the Avengers and his horrified wife, as Vigilance was confident the Vision could no longer be a threat.
Hank Pym did his best to restore Vision, repairing his synthezoid body piece by piece after Vigilance tore him apart. He even reprogrammed Vision from memory, giving Vision a near-
complete recollection of his life up until that point. Unfortunately, a key element was missing -- the brain wave patterns of Simon Williams. Without that personality matrix as a basis for his mind, that slice of humanity, Vision was little more than a walking computer, programmed with all the pertinent facts about the man known as Vision, but possessing none of his emotional responses. Simon, for his part, was reluctant to allow his brain wave patterns to be copied again, mostly because his long-simmering feelings towards the Scarlet Witch had risen to the surface after Vision's apparent "death."
Further complicating matters was the revelation that Vision was not, in fact, the original Human Torch. Vigilance had searched for Phineas T. Horton, the Torch's inventor, for input on their Vision project. Despite the memory-quest Vision once went on showing that Horton died in his arms, 
Vigilance found Horton alive, albeit extremely old. When the Avengers raided Vigilance, Horton told them the same thing he told the government: the Vision was NOT his handiwork. Investigation into Horton's claims soon proved them accurate, as the original Human Torch was found buried in a graveyard by the Mad Thinker and even reactivated to stand beside the Vision and join the West Coast Avengers. [West Coast Avengers (2nd series) #42-46, Avengers West Coast #47-50]
[Note: These revelations were all part of Immortus' long-brewing schemes to manipulate the Scarlet Witch to suit his needs. He orchestrated Wanda's love for an artificial man, just so he could years later strip away her husband's mind and even the details of his identity in order to make Wanda emotionally vulnerable when it suited him. As before, with the synchro-staff, much of what Vision and the Avengers learned here was technically true, but without context it seemed contradictory. In addition to his subtle manipulation of events, Immortus also provided "Professor Horton" for this scheme, actually a Space Phantom locked into a cover identity to say what Immortus needed, when he needed it. The true Horton really did die in Vision's arms.]
Although he simulated concern for Wanda's rapidly deteriorating mental health to the best of his ability, Vision was unable to truly console his wife over her losses, even when their sons Thomas and William were revealed to be imaginary constructs, subconsciously forged by Wanda from fragmented pieces of Mephisto's soul. Wanda had apparently suffered from a hysterical pregnancy (a real condition where women want children so much, their bodies begin demonstrating the physiological changes of pregnancy) augmented by her hex power to make the children actually appear real. The infant boys were cast out of existence along with Mephisto and Master Pandemonium, causing even further conflict. [Avengers West Coast #51-52]
Vision was emotionally numb to all of this, even when Wanda retreated into a catatonic state after the loss of their children. Indeed, he refused the gift of Wonder Man's brain wave patterns when Simon finally relented to 
scanning his mind. Vision logically concluded that Simon's brain wave patterns would only restore his capacity for emotion, not his previous emotional connections, and in either case he felt he was more effective in his current state. Vision also decided that a logical division of resources meant he would be more productive as a member of the East Coast roster, leaving his wife and brother to deal with the consequences of his departure. [Avengers West Coast #53, Avengers (1st series) #311-313]
[Note: Revelations from Vision (3rd series) #7 cast these events in a different and even more haunting light. Flashback scenes indicated that Vision was aware of Wanda's diminishing sanity before his deconstruction and knew his children weren't real. He only pretended otherwise in public to placate his wife and her fragile mental state, while trying in vain to reach her logically when they were alone. After his mind was rebooted, he simply no longer saw a reason to pretend.]
Vision's departure from Los Angeles to New York firmly established his new status quo as permanent. It was the Whackos who were most familiar and acquainted with the emotional version of Vision, but now he had effectively cut ties with them. The East Coast branch members may have been daunted somewhat by Vision's overly logical demeanor, but they made no efforts to change him or restore his previous status. Vision was effectively reincarnated at this point, a new being proceeding forward with minimal ties to his past before the dismantling. When Wanda's life was torn apart even further in his absence, manipulated and abused by Magneto and Immortus, Wonder Man called Vision to see if he wanted to fly out during her recovery. Vision declined, responding that further interaction between him and Wanda at this juncture would not be beneficial to either of them. [Avengers West Coast #63]
Despite himself, however, Vision began to experience a sense of loss, an emptiness in his processors that no maintenance check or systems analysis could catalogue or explain. Seeking answers, he approached an artificial intelligence and consciousness theory scientist named Miles Lipton, who was fascinated by his new "patient" and his distress. Striking up a friendship, Vision and Lipton explored how the emptiness Vision felt was actually a lack of definable purpose in his life. Lipton also observed a recursive error in Vision's programming and determined it to be due to the missing human brain wave patterns in his personality matrix. Whereas Vision had previously determined upon his reconstruction that he could function without those patterns, the ever-evolving nature of his intelligence in fact required the "fuzzy logic" of a human personality template to carry the load of his programming.
Vision and Lipton were accosted by agents of RoXXon Oil's department of Extra-Legal Activities, who had recently killed Lipton's son Alec for threatening to act as a whistleblower for some of RoXXon's dirty dealings, and sought to eliminate Miles as well. During the conflict, Vision's programming glitch took him completely off-line and Miles used a copy of Alec Lipton's brain wave patterns used in their research to stabilize and restore Vision to full operating status. After the 
RoXXon agents were apprehended, Vision and Miles Lipton continued their friendship. At Lipton's suggestion, Vision had an image inducer installed in his chest, letting him assume the human identity of "Victor Shade" at will. By regularly interacting with and among humanity again like this, Vision began the slow and laborious process of reconnecting with his own humanity and restored potential for emotional growth. [Avengers Spotlight #40]