I had a thought about Chris today that's a bit sad. I think Bob instilled in Chris, with limited success, that autism was something that Chris could beat, like it was an enemy that could be defeated. Think of how one says they have beat cancer when it has gone into remission. I looked online and there are books on how to "beat" Parkinson's disease, heart disease, and all sorts of other ailments, and plenty of other results about beating autism. Maybe Bob thought Chris could find a way to put autism into remission as if it were a cancerous tumor.
Bob was probably optimistic about this idea because Chris had began talking again and he learned how to play video games and do various other things that weren't too hard. I wonder if Bob was with Chris when he drew this picture of Bionic on his birthday in 1999. Note that Bionic is standing on the word AUTISM and the letters are also represented as jumbled letters in the sky, as if dissolved into temporary clouds.
Later, in 2008, Bob would draw his own version of Sonichu - note the pointy hair. He wrote "Knocking out the Big A" below the drawing. I think he still had optimism that Chris could make something positive of his life.