A fiery ball dissappears in the night sky, as the atmosphere it was in was denser than what it was used to.
Little Johnny was watching, mesmerized, as the particles of the former asteroid fell onto the earth. Beautiful blistering debris.
Little did Little Johnny know, that was the start of a new era, the era of superhumans.
-200 years later-
Little Johnny is dead.
"Fucking hell, these damn superhumans" Maximilian complained. "I can't have shit in this goddamn world"
Maximilian watched as his favourite sitcom introduced yet another famous superhuman cameo, they made for awful actors. Apart from the ones who could control their brain chemistry, changing their mood, superhumans were hardly ever theater kids, and he despised seeing them take the place of actual talented people just because they could, supers were extremely arrogant.
The unfortunate that weren't born superhumans would, generally, have a hard time in life. There was a "Useless-POS government program" that was created a few decades ago which had the idea of helping the less fortunate, i.e. non superhumans, granting them protection, food, alcohol to deal with life and a monthly bonus to their salary.
The main selling point was usually the alcohol, and most of the less fortunate would need to make use of brain altering supers to deal with addiction somewhere down the line.
But, as useful as this program was, it was rather useless for Maximilian, he was superhuman after all.
Superhumans were, as one would say, the majority. Approximately 57% of humans had some sort of super in them, Maximilian was in those 57%, but, as if to throw sand in his eyes, "God", or whoever was in charge at the time, gave him the amazing power of... moving a single atom.
One. Single. Atom.
Granted, that was more than anyone could 200 years ago, and it would be extremely useful in research on several fields of science, but Maximilian wanted none of that "I want none of that" He would usually say. "I wanted something else entirely!" He would also usually like to add.
Seeing the biggest and most famous heroes on tv growing up, Maximilian had so little interest in anything but battles when it came to superhumans. Maybe a childish ideal, but battles between Marcus "The Guy Who Shoots Fire Out Of His Hands" Dennis and Stone "John" Golem were extremely intense, each super with so much power and versatility.
Maximilian could only dream of one day being as cool as Cold Flower or as useful as Barman, who would he battle moving a single atom? Maybe giving his opponents long term health issues by slowly messing with their body was an option, but that was too difficult, not efficient nor effective and, to be honest, quite the lame way to deal with it.
So he seethed, loathed and then after very little holding it in, complained, complained a whole lot. Complained to no one, obviously, he wasn't so senseless as to go on half an hour long complaining sessions about a cameo in a relatively nieche sitcom with people at the bar, he was an adult after all.
Maximilian never tried to learn how to control his power, at least not to the degree of precision he had when walking. He wasn't the best walker, but he'd been pretty proud of his walks recently, and they were quite the way to get rid of built up stress derived from cameos and sitcoms. And since he never trained his power, he not only had a borderline useless one, but he also had no clue how to use it, maybe there was a way to use it effectively, but he wouldn't know.
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"I need to go on a walk, walks have never failed me" He said, out loud, to the same people he'd been complaining to.
Grabbing his wallet and mobile phone, he walked to the door, grabbed the handle of the door, turned said handle approximately 60° counterclockwise, pushed the door whilst slowly letting go of the handle and... there it was. The outside world.
It hasn't been that long since he last saw it, he had just gotten back from work - in the outside world - a few half-an-hours back, but he could never have enough of it, the clouds looked funky and the trees so, so, so stupidly green. Perfect for a walk, or at least when the other option was watching Starlord deliver the most deadpan line in the history of television, good enough for a walk.
Just by his house there existed a relatively small store, it used to sell all kinds of magazines and cigarettes, but he hadn't heard anything of it ever since he last saw it. So, when getting to the place where the store used to be, he was delighted to find it hadn't suddently vanished since a little earlier today.
"Mornin' Jeff!" He greeted, temporarily forgetting where he was in the day-night cycle. "How's the family?"
"Dead, like always" Jeff answered grimly.
"Sorry to hear that" Responded Maximilian. He was oddly forgetting today. "Are there any of today's newspapers left?"
"No one buys those anymore" The orphan said "They're all still here"
Maximilian dropped a few coins on the counter, grabbed the outdated medium and left with an unanswered "See ya' later".
A few minutes down the street an elderly woman was getting mugged, the criminal was a super by the name of Robert "Robin'" McRobber, they are not important to the story, as Maximilian, at no moment in time noticed the event, saw either of them or at the very least even heard of it. But I, as the author of this novel, decided that it was remarkable enough of an ocurrence to grant calling attention to. The woman in question is called Lucy, and she never got that bag back.
Maximilian, after not realizing what had just occurred, went down from the store to the crime scene, seeing nothing unusual.
A few blocks down, however, he would find a dead mouse. Not that unusual, but in modern times, when things tend to die without leaving anything behind, a body that hadn't been eaten by ésthios in the middle of town was a very odd thing to see.
"Oh wow, a body!" Said Maximilian "Ésthios are getting lazier by the day in this damn city"
Ésthios are a group of insects that received a super that made them very good at eating things. Ésthios are still a huge danger to society and no noticeable increase in their lazyness was noted in any peer reviewed research paper. The comment from our protagonist is merely ironic, and should be disregarded as safety advice. Please avoid ésthios at all costs.
Suddenly, though, when looking at the night sky, Maximilian realized how late it was. Having work early tomorrow it was best to head home.
-In another city close by-
An alarm was going off.
"Run!" Screamed a man dressed in a white red-stained jacket with a name tag reading 'Dr. Smith' "He's coming!"
"Where were you?" Said a woman dressed in a white, this time not red-stained, jacket, her nametag reading 'Dr. Sanders'."We've been looking for you, professor!"
"Fuck, we're so dead" Said the professor.
"Why? Why is the alarm going off? Who escaped?" Responded Sanders, desperately trying to get a hold of their situation.
"Subject 1,673. He disappeared yesterday night, he killed the night guards and the surveillance team. We just now found it out. These fuckers witheld the information from us until we got here because they were trying to get him before we made a big deal out of it"
"What?" Exclaimed Sanders "What the fuck, he was loose the entire day?"
"Not really loose, since he's stuck here with us" Joked Smith, nervously.
"You know what I fucking meant!" Screamed the other scientist. "So what, they were planning on letting us die? How the fuck will we leave, the moment we open the gate to leave, that fucker is gonna kill us all, he wont let us go witho-"
A blast interrupted her, as a shadowy image came into view. It was 1.673's shadow. Nothing else of his was seen. As another blast echoed through the halls.
Maximilian read, in the black ink of the newspaper he had bought, the news of a mass breakout in a security facility close by that had happened yesterday. 146 men of the security team, along with the 37 scientists working on site were killed.
He then went on to very clumsly struggle to fold the paper down to the shape it came as.