Superpowers. We all want them, but only a select few have them. Or, I guess, one guy. Until proven otherwise, at least.

So, yeah, as you might have figured out, that one guy is me. Just Your Average High School (University*) Student. I would probably be a whole lot more hyped about the whole deal if it wasn’t just a bit underwhelming. You know how you’d watch Star Wars or Chronicle or whatever and then you’d try to make things move with your mind just in case? Like, to get the remove without having to stand up?

It worked. Not, uh, the remote thing, I haven’t got a TV, but I did succeed in making a single piece of candy float. And boy was it strenuous.

I’m going to blame Chronicle for this one, but I had seriously assumed that the first thing you’d be able to lift would at least be the size of a baseball. Sensible, you know. But, nope. Just lifting a sewing needle makes my whole body shake. It’s not like I’m out of shape or anything either, so it’s more so that my psychic powers (I think?) are pathetically weak. For now.

If it hadn’t been for the fact that lifting teeny tiny things got easier as time went on I would probably have given up.

Compared to lifting actual weights with my actual body, the improvement of my powers was staggering. One day I could barely lift a paper cup and the next I could make a whole box of matches fly without sweating too much. Within a couple of days I’m sure to be benching towtrucks like they’re nothing.

-Obviously not, but a man can hope.

My first thought is that I should maybe tell someone, or at least go to the authorities. Then again, in movies and stuff where the superpowered people go to the cops or whatever, they either get laughed out or made into guinea pigs for whatever reason. It’s usually because there are others with powers, making them expendable, but I sort of think that isn’t the case because if other people had powers, it would have been known. That is, unless these powers were awakened by excessive radiation or whatever and the government was able to cover it up, but most governments are incompetent as shit so I heavily doubt it.

So, yeah, not doing that. For now, at least. Maybe once I get so powerful they can’t contain me I’ll try to knock on their doors or otherwise make myself known. But, for now, I actually don’t have time.

Yeah, powers aside, I actually have a lot to do this week and being able to psychically lift a bottle of shampoo is sadly not going to help.

For now, training my powers will have to be secondary to passing this course and fulfilling my social roles.

Predictably, I train as often as I can. After a few days, the heaviest thing I can lift goes from being a relatively large book to my trombone and then to my entire desk. It didn’t take long for me to start challenging my powers against my actual physical strength, mostly by arm wrestling and then by leg-pressing. See, the power is just one muscle. It’s less of an arm and more of a tentacle, with the whole thing being homogenous.

The same muscle lifts all things. In comparison, my legs are stronger than my arms, and it didn’t take long for that muscle to beat my arms and go on to my legs. It still hasn’t beaten both of them, but it’s getting close, which is a bit frightening.

The weekend has arrived, and due to the carnival I will be completely in the power of social obligation. Pray for me, friends.

Monday has come and with it: freedom. The amount of relief this has granted me cannot be understated. I almost feel too tired to train, but I still do it just because it’s fun. I feel like I should mention that no, acquiring psychic powers beyond my own understanding has not made me stop going to the gym. Keeping my body fit is important and has little to do with my powers. The only thing I can mention is that I can now use my powers to make the weights even heavier at the gym, allowing me to break through my limits on the leg press. I have no idea how much I’m lifting but that’s not as important as the pump.

Going to the gym gave me a good idea. The only issue is that in order to do it, I’ll need to talk to the gym receptionist.

Being the autistic alien I am, working up the courage to ask her how in the heck I can go into the gym at night took all my might and a little more, but in the end I had my answer.

Knowing what hours the gym has most/least active members, I decide to try psychically working out out at 3 AM next friday.

Until then, I must keep challenging myself, but it’s getting a bit difficult. After almost a full week of rigorous, daily training (the muscle has a hard time getting truly fatigued and overexerting it only gives me a headache and a nosebleed, kind of like abs training) I could finally lift my bed, and rather easily too. There is nothing heavier inside my room except, on occasion, your mum.

That leaves me somewhat empty-handed.

I want to try flying, but I don’t trust my own, erm, gentleness. I can lift things, yes, but if I get too excited I can easily break them or squish them. This is worrying. Strength is important, but so is flexibility and subtlety. The latter can be obtained by lifting very, very small things. Like the head of a needle, or a single hair. I’ve been trying to split a hair but it is very difficult.

To keep myself training, I exercise mostly by just lifting my bed over and over again. It’s going pretty good. By Friday evening, lifting my bed barely feels like anything. I can also split a hair now, which opens up a lot of possibilities for witty comebacks.

That leaves me with the plan.

For friday, I go to a gig I had almost forgotten about late at night. I hadn't intended on going to it, but it keeps me awake. Once it’s done, I pack my jingling jacket into the backpack I brought and say goodbye to my bandmates. I bike away, through the city, down into tunnels and over roads. Through a path leading homeward, I emerge out of the city and into the countryside. Not a whole lot of cars out at this hour, which is perfect.

I slow the bike to a stop and get off. The air is cool and fresh and almost summery. It smells like rapeseed flowers. At this hour, the characteristic yellow of the rapeseed fields looks more blue than anything. Briefly struck by the midnight beauty of it, I pass my invisible hand over them, feeling through the muscle how the flowers bow lightly under my incorporeal touch.

I pluck a single flower from its place and let it float over to where I stand. I give it a sniff. Nice. Then, hoping it’ll work, I return it to its place, carefully burying the roots once more.

But enough about that.

I hold out my hands to my little bike. It’s nothing fancy, but it drives good and it’s taken me pretty far. Carefully, it rises into the air. The realisation that I can barely tell I’m lifting it at all makes my chest surge with confidence. Carefully, suddenly assured of myself, I make the handlebars squeak from right to left. I turn the pedals around and around.

Learning to do two things at once had taken a bit of focus, but now it felt simple, like using both hands to play the piano, something that I have never done in my life but imagine would be easy once you get the hang of it. Turning the pedals and the handlebars at the same time was a bit much, but it would be good practise.

I put the bike back down but held it steady as I mounted atop it. But I didn’t put down my feet or grab the handles. Gulping, sweating a little, I crossed my arms and folded my legs across the top tube. The bike below me swayed a little but I knew it would hold fast.

Willing the bike to stay upright, I put some weight onto the pedals. Down, up, forward…

As soon as the bike started moving I felt a surge of pride, followed instantly by vertigo as the bike buckled from under me and I fell over, only barely catching my head before it bumped against the pavement. Sighing, I pull myself to a sitting position, carefully rubbing my temple. Right. That didn’t go so well.

As I sit there in self-pity, a bike slowly rolls by. The old man riding it gives me a strange look, but Sweden being Sweden, doesn’t stop to chit-chat. I grumble and get back on my feet. Nobody said this would be easy. I should be happy I even have the opportunity to do this at all.

Struck by a sudden thought, I take a peek at my phone. The time is only 00:42. I’ve got plenty of time.

I try getting back on the bike. This time, turning the pedals works alright, but once I try turning the handlebars, I fall again. Almost hit my head again.

I try several more times. The trouble is to be able to both keep the bike upright alongside moving the pedals and the handlebars. If I was less lenient on myself I could just turn the handlebars by hand, but that would be weak. I keep going, until, finally, I get the hang of it. By that point, I’ve got an invisible shield around my head at all times, ready to catch myself if I fall.

Not that I do.

Swooshing forward, going up and down slopes and hills with striking ease, I fly forward. The cold air whistles in my ears and I feel a triumphant grin rise to my face, but I won’t let myself lose concentration. Right, left, up, down. It works!

After a few minutes I start to feel a sort of exhaustion grip my invisible muscles and a tension blossoms across the back of my head. Grumbling, I will myself up one final slope before letting down my feet and taking over the biking for a second. I bike manually for a few minutes before, mid-slope, pulling up my legs and letting my powers take over.

Then, a few minutes later, I continue manually before repeating the process. This way, I keep myself in motion, swapping out my muscles as needed. A pretty good work-out, all things included. As time goes on, I need to use my legs less and less, and by the time I approach the pink house, I’ve been biking using nothing but my powers for over twenty minutes.

I turn into the street I was born and raised on. Along the road, in one of the fancy newly-built sections, I find what seems to be a student party of some sort. Most people are inside, but a few linger outside. I lock eyes with them. They stare at me. I wave. They don’t wave back. Feeling awkward, I speed up and hope they were too drunk to remember this tomorrow.

Feeling a surge of competitiveness, I increase my speed, raising the gear to 7 and pushing up and down as hard as I could. The bike began wheeling back and forth but I could keep it straight.

Down the road, just outside the house of that old man who has a lusthouse, I notice the speedometer in the distance. I accept the challenge. Either it won’t notice me or it will say “Kram!” but either way I will prove my power.

I speed up. Faster and faster. The bike below me begins to groan. The handlebars tremble and I have to both anchor myself to the seat and duck down to avoid being blown off. If my bike bell was working, it would be incessantly ringing at the constant movement.

Closer, faster, until I can hear nothing but the roar of the wind and the beating of my own heart. Pain thrashes across the inside of my skull and I ignore the taste of metal flowing down from my nose.

Far ahead, the speedometer begins blinking in red, flashing “Sakta ner” in half-glitched letters and a number spelling out 57.

Smiling from ear to ear, I straighten out in victory and hold up my arms brightly. Of course, as it is with shows of arrogance, this makes my concentration slip and the bike, previously only barely controlled, instantly began to rumble and fight beneath me like an enraged bull. I only have time to look down in brief panic before the bike flies away and I crash to the ground, tumbling over once, twice and rolling into the trench. At least I had the speed of mind to keep up my protective helmet before taking a healthy bite out of the lawn.

I stand up again, feeling a healthy dose of vicious introspection wash over me. My bike is lying across the road in a mangled heap. Too tired to walk over and grab it, I lift my hand and will it over. Yeah, the tyre is busted, looking more like a bent churro than a pretty circle. Oh well, nothing a good bout of Inhuman Power can’t fix.

I bend it back into shape. Very useful.

I get back on my bike, vowing to not do stupid stuff again. Knowing myself, it was superfluous at best. Ordinarily, this would be the point at which I’d go across the road to where my mum lives in order to have a nice little sleepover in my old room, but I had better ideas. The time wasn’t even 2, so I had plenty of time.

Biking past my old house, I passed by the jour, beneath the highway and towards the ocean.

I don’t actually have all that many memories of the ocean. Sure, my grandparents used to take me and my sister and my cousin there, but I don’t remember those times all that well. Oh, but there was that time my cousin brought me and my sister there when it was storming and I almost drowned. Lovely times.

Crossing a final bend, rising over an unnecessarily steep hill, I lay eyes on the ocean in all its black glory.

Across the ‘sund, the glittering lights of copenhagen gleamed tauntingly, all arranged in symmetrical patterns that suggested buildings that may or may not actually be there. I want to say that I’ve always liked looking at it, but for some reason, the lights struck me as intimidating. There was so much life, just out there. So many histories I didn’t know and never would. It felt daunting, in a way.

So I turned away from it. Along the beach were pastures that would at times host lovely angus cows. There were also bunkers from either WWI or WWII, I could never remember. One time, my family and I went down in one of those. It was small and cramped and smelled like dirt and sand.

Letting my eyes move nostalgically over the nearby landmarks, I spot the decommissioned nuclear powerplant over in the distance. Despite everything with my parents, I let a smile rise to my lips thinking that that was where they met.

I shake my head.

Approaching the stop sign, I quirk my head from right to left, checking for cars. Nothing. Regardless, I still stop for just a second before continuing, crossing the road and biking down to the right. I bike down the road, intermittently glancing down at the ocean and the glittering lights beyond it.

Eventually, I reach my goal. It’s technically not a crossroad, but it is a place where you can go down four different roads. One way goes to a small park-place-ish where I’ve been so many times I know it by heart, and another leads down to a small viewing pier by the ocean. I go towards the ocean.

Parking my bike in the three parking spaces where the cars would usually stand, I make sure to lock it before heading down.

The last time I was here, my aunt and my dad had ventured inside the cow pastures to remove a half-eaten can of redbull. She had been really cool, but then again, she always was. I climb over the same small wooden ladder she had climbed and wonder briefly if other countries have such open access to farmland.

I pass over the pasture, climb over one more fence and find myself face-to-face with the ocean. It’s pretty, that much is for sure.

I glance down at the sand and the water with no little amount of trepidation. Lifting a big bowl or a bike is one thing, any muscle can do that, but what about water? If I can lift water and train with it, I’ll be able to essentially use infinite weights. It would be the perfect training material.

Assuming I can lift it at all, that is.

I pull my backpack off my shoulders and place it on the dry sandbank. Then, I squat down next to the water and hold out my hands. Concentrating all that I have, I try to coax the water into rising. For a second, nothing happens. Then, reluctantly, like a sleepy cobra roused by its charmer, a small stream of water rises, its edges trembling.

Remembering my biking trip, I don’t let this initial success distract me, but instead tempt it into rising higher and higher, trying to stabilise it as it goes. It feels almost like how I imagine forming spinning clay might feel, going up and up but becoming weaker the more it stretches. In the end, trembling like a piece of grass in a storm, it simply collapsed, splashing back to the sea. If it had been any bigger it might have gotten me wet. Frightening.

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I fogus again. This time, instead of making a spire, I try to just kind of cup it, as if I had invisible hands.

A bulb of water slowly forms, the surface of it beating and uncertain, and once it has risen enough, I nip it off like a dumpling, leaving a small sphere of water to float uncertainty in the air. I snicker to myself, moving the orb of water back and forth, trying to get a feel of it. And then, while still holding it in the air, I tried to form yet another one. This was my fatal mistake, as this show of hubris caused not just my newly-created sphere to collapse, but also my initial one.

Regardless, I did not give up. For minutes, even hours, I remained there, urging water into the air, manipulating it as I did, all the while mumbling Yoda quotes to myself to keep up the motivation.

In the end, by trying to connect the feeling to how it was lifting my bed, I was able to lift a pretty substantial amount of water. It was difficult to say exactly how much it was, but maybe the size of a small car? Either way, I felt quite proud.

Even better, my control over small amounts of water had increased to the point where I resembled a water-bender more than anything. My sister had always said she wanted to be a water-bender back when we watched the same shows. The thought made me a bit sad, but it did remind me that I had rather wanted to be an air-bender if only because I wanted to fly.

I blink and look across the ocean. The sky has started to turn a lighter shade of blue, the horizon gaining a tone of purple and pink that can only mean one thing.

But my thoughts are elsewhere. Namely, can’t I fly now?

My handling of water is alright, and I can lift much more weight than I am. Logically, I should be able to fly. Sure, I’d need to be careful, but other than that… It’s possible, right?

Gulping, I try to wrap myself in my power. It feels weird, but also protective, like being held by a big friendly octopus. Is this how Typhin felt? Shaking off weird thoughts, I focused on just lifting. Slowly, slowly, bit by bit, kilo by kilo. Not fast. Not yanking. Just an easy rise.

My feet left the ground. I stared down with widening eyes. Sand was starting to float as well in a really cool manner but I was completely overcome by the feeling of lightheadedness, of bodily freedom usually only obtainable in dreams.

I rose higher. One metre, two, three, five, ten.

With my power wrapped tightly around me, I knew that even a fall from this height would not damage me. I was safe. It was as though I was in a lucid dream, but so much more substantial. Maybe it was some degree of delusion, but the air tasted different higher up. Fresher. And the higher I went, the more I saw of the sky. Higher, higher, until everything below felt as small as a model set for a Godzilla movie.

I stopped briefly. It was one thing to just fly up, but if I was going to do this, shouldn’t I fly for real?

That’s right. That’s it exactly. Grinning to myself, I move forward, and then backward. To the sides, as well. Then faster. Once I feel confident in my movement, I still in midair and turn towards the sea.

A second’s pause, a brief deliberation, and then…

I blast off.

Faster, faster, so fast I feel like a flying bullet-train. A laugh escapes my lips and I swoop down to the surface of the ocean, skimming the surface and making water rise behind me. The exhilaration is incomparable to anything I’ve ever felt before, dream or not. It’s so much, and when I abruptly rocket up into the air, what meets me is the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen. Sweat is beading across my body and I feel the needle-like pinpricks of a headache begin to poke across my brain but I don’t care. This was worth it all.

I blink at the dawn. Oh, yeah, I was supposed to try out the gym tonight.

…But is that really necessary? Obviously, I can lift any weight they’ve got there. It would just be a waste of time if anything.

In that case, what else do I do? Flying around at this hour would probably not be a very good idea, so I’d do best to head home.

I slowly float down to the ground, stepping down with care. But I don’t unwrap myself. Who knows when I could get hurt by some random something? Really, I’d be a fool not to keep up the invisible barrier.

Reaching into my bag, I extract my phone. As expected, the time is almost 6. If I went home, I’d probably be there in an hour and a half or so.

…Or, I could spend the weekend at my mother’s place. That would also be nice.

Smiling to myself, I send her a message that I’ll be there in a few hours. And then, before any morning-goers can notice my activities, I mess around in the water a bit more before leaving.

The weekend passes and by the end of it I can confidently lift about a semi-truck’s worth of water. The price? Insomnia. But that’s worth it, I guess. I really would have liked to stay home-home for a few days more, but the gym calls. Mum offers to drive me home but I take my bike early in the morning. Just kidding, obviously I test my limits to check how fast I can fly.

The trip took half of what it would take for a car, meaning that my speed was probably close to 200 km/h. I was originally a bit afraid that I might get picked up by some military radar or whatnot, but a random forum thread said that they probably wouldn’t notice anything. I still feel a bit worried, so my main tactic is to skim close to the ground in less populated areas, flying at a human’s height over the rapeseed fields.

Once I get close enough to the city, I quickly hop down to a biking road and bike the rest of the way.

This week won’t be nearly as hectic as the last one, but I still have two exams to turn in, so working on them easily overshadows training. Not going to the gym though, no, that’s a different matter. On that note, by skillfully using my powers once I’ve already lifted a weight and am letting it down, I’ve been able to tell that I can at least lift 250 kg, but I already knew that.

Hm. I think I’m beginning to feel a bit too confident for my own good. Flying is dangerous and so is using my powers in the middle of the day where people can see. Really, I don’t even know if I could realistically block a bullet, much less an AOE explosion. As it is, I’m way too weak to risk getting exposed. Best case scenario would be that I could eventually effectively block a nuclear strike of the Tsar variety, but I have no actual means of testing that one.

I need to be able to subconsciously block bullets.

To do that, I need to be really strong.

It feels weird and I kind of don’t like it, but the best way for me to not get in trouble is to be able to cause so much trouble that state or independent entities won’t want to mess with me to begin with. The obvious problem is that I’m a mentally weak youngster. I mustn’t let anyone rope me into doing anything for the “greater good”, and…

Well, now I’m starting to sound a bit narcissistic, even for just assuming that this entire situation will have this kind of importance.

Maybe my best bet would be to pretend to be super weak? That way, no side will be interested in recruiting me for anything. Ah, but then they’ll think they can assassinate me and the truth will eventually is come out, so it’ll just be a useless lie in the end. Hrm.

And it’s not like I want this to define my life, either. I still want to get my degree and spend my free time playing trombone and drawing and writing. If I’m lucky, the most that’ll come from this situation is that humanity will do some experiments on me and in the end it will help in the development of this-or-that and then I’ll be free to go and continue my life except that I can now cook food without having to burn my fingers on any cookware.

But that’s probably a bit too naive of me. I’ve always been too much of an optimist.

Not that I even know how to get into contact to begin with. I’d like to talk to a researcher as a first step, just to get their opinion on things. A researcher. Researcher of fucking what? Since I am attending a big university it would obviously be easy for me to come into contact with a “researcher”, but who, and of what? Physics? What kind of physics? I have no idea.

Trying to find someone who genuinely believes in the paranormal in this year in Secular Sweden AB would be a nightmare. My best bet genuinely seems to be to just grab some trustworthy looking professor who appears to care about the fact that I’m breaking the laws of physics like a convict run amok.

Most importantly though, I need to make sure that once I approach them, I’ll be able to protect them should anything happen.

Am I being too paranoid? I don’t know. Maybe I’ve seen too many movies and my brain has gotten so rotted that I assume governments want to kill me for no reason.

Okay, okay, let’s devolve into stupidity for a moment here. If it comes down to it, if my life and the lives of those I love are being threatened, am I willing to kill to protect us?

Uh, um… No? Obviously I won’t want to do that? Killing is bad.

But only truly strong people have the privilege of mercy.

-Right, that decides it. Before I tell anyone, even my friends (there is no way I’m telling my parents about this), I need to be strong to an overwhelming degree. I need to be able to shrug off shells hitting me from the back even when I’m not expecting them. Surprise attacks are what killed that bad guy in Chronicle, but I’m gonna be different. Erm, not worse, just more prepared, I guess.

But how strong?

There has to be some point where my water manipulation becomes too much and someone notices. But training with water is all I can do.

…What if I wore a disguise?

Delightfully devilish! And I know just what to wear, too.

Nighttime. These kinds of excursions aren’t exactly good for me, but it’s the only time I can train. Like a speeding bullet, I fly across the fields at a low altitude, exerting power mostly just in an effort to avoid damaging any of the crops.

My head is still whirling with thoughts. I mean, what isn’t there to think about? I turned in my essay just a few hours ago, and although I should realistically succeed, I still have every right to feel nervous. Gosh. I should have gone a more concrete course where I could actually answer with facts instead of having to write essays about things I don’t even-,

“Hey!”

A flashlight shines in my face and I stumble mid-air, crashing into the dirt and the rapeseeds and tumbling over several times before skidding to a stop a few metres away, completely unharmed but well and fully dazed. I blink.

“I finally caught you, you rascal!” someone shouts and a flash of panic courses through me. The flowers stand too high for me to see them properly where I sit in shock but the light shining from their flashlight is enough for me to know that they’re approaching. “You thought you could drive through here at this hour just because it was night? Hah!”

For a second I just sit there in shock before finally pulling myself together enough to scramble for my backpack lying a few paces off.

“Hey, no movements! I’ve already called the cops and they’re heading over here right now!” he shouts and I feel a brief moment of relief at knowing that most people in Sweden didn’t carry guns. That moment is quickly overtaken by fresh panic as the man approaches closer, probably to try and see the face of his menace.

Fumbling for my backpack I finally gain enough calm to just grab it psychically, making it fly over from where it laid and pressing it into my hands. I force up the zipper and make the previously prepared piece of cloth inside fly up.

“No funny movemen-,”

Bursting into the cloth, I emerge from where I’d been sitting, flying up to hover just a few decimetres above the rapeseeds. Through the two holes in the cloth I can see his eyes widen in shock and confusion. He looks pretty old, wearing a wife-beater and boxers, holding a flashlight in one hand and smartphone in the other. The flashlight is pointed straight at me but he doesn’t seem to know what he’s looking at.

“...The hell are you wearing?”

I throw up my hands, letting the white sheet I’m wearing stretch up menacingly. “Boooo!”

He stares at me mutely.

My hands falter a little and I consider apologising just on instinct. We look at each other for a few seconds. A voice on his phone asks him if everything’s going okay. It breaks us out of it and I float up a bit higher, making my backpage follow along. His flashlight moves along me, looking for wires or whatever and finding none. My eyes, comparatively, are focused on the rapeseed flowers I crushed in my descent. Damn it.

A wave of the hand makes the flowers stand back up, righting their roots and letting the earth clutch them tighter. The farmer stumbles back. I want to say sorry, but instead I keep quiet and turn away.

“Hey, stop! What the hell are-,”

I blast off, apparently forgetting to dampen the air pressure since the farmer had to take a step back and the rapeseeds began swaying.

That… could have gone better. I don’t know what I had expected, but I almost feel relieved that he didn’t immediately think I was an actual ghost of some sort. Either way, this does show that it would probably be a good idea to always wear the sheet if I’m flying around. Hm. Maybe I should get a black one to blend in better with the darkness? But if someone sees me, wearing a white sheet will make them sound far less sane should they try to report it to anyone.

Besides, I don’t really feel like assaulting any other sheets (I don’t have too many and these things are expensive) so this will work just as well.

Nodding to myself, I fly off towards the sea, keeping my speed at an even 300 km/h while simultaneously manipulating the air around me to fly completely silently.

Days pass in relative silence. Prompted by nothing in particular, I decide to start experimenting a little on my own. Namely, I try out doing unorthodox things with my powers. For a while now, really, ever since I got them, I’ve been thinking of these powers as a sort of muscle, kind of like the arms of the Elfen Lied bitches. Lifting things with my powers has the same feeling as lifting things with my arms, so it’s only fair that this is what I would assume.

But they aren’t muscles or arms. The powers are powers. They can lift water and manipulate it oddly, or fly the whole of me.

The powers are, in the purest sense, force. And not like the force, but just force. Force to make things move, force to make things stop moving. Is there any reason why this force can’t do other things as well? Subtle things.

So far, I haven’t really tested out my range. That might sound like a silly thing, but right now, I can lift so much water that it’s sure to make someone notice. If my range could reach up towards thousands of metres, then I could eventually control the weather.

I can lift quite a lot of things at once, but if I could lift a million tiny pieces without blinking, building houses within single days would be like building with legos.

If I can be subtle enough, if my powers could reach into the very tiniest of places to touch the smallest things known to man, I could split the atom.

But, for now, I’m content with trying to cool my room down a bit. Summer is starting to hit, and since most Swedish homes don’t have air conditioning, my room is getting hotter by the day. I don’t know as much about physics and similar things as I'd like, but I do know that heat is movement and lack of movement is cold. Friction is heat. Hypothetically, if I could make molecules and electrons and all that stuff stop moving completely, then I could create absolute zero. I’m, uh, not going to do that though because I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be good for the planet. Maybe. I don’t know, I should ask my dad.

But, yeah. Making things a few degrees colder would be nice.

It just takes some focus. And practise. Both of them, actually, but in the end, after a few days, I was able to freeze water. I wanted to cool the air of my room immedietly, but if I messed up and made it too cold I might accidentally kill myself, so, yeah. But once I had a knack for freezing (or boiling) water on command, doing the same to air was quite a bit easier.

If I try, I can instantly defrost a chicken thigh.

I… No human should have this power. This is too much for any one man to bear alone.

Like this, it is only a matter of time before I become God.

…Just kidding. I highly doubt that these powers have unlimited growth, as much as I can wish. But, yeah. Being able to control cold and heat is nice and it does grant me yet another way of horribly destroying living beings, but I’m not doing that. My control is still very limited. The most I can do is to cool my room a few degrees. And the air around me as I walk, obviously. This way I can always wear clothes of moderate temperature. I never need to go warm/cold again! Hah!

So far, nobody seems to notice that the room I’m in always drops by like five degrees.

Personally, I would love to use this sudden power to cook food so effectively I barely even have to care, but I can hardly do that when there are people in the room with me. Even when I’m alone, I usually cook by hand simply out of habit. Maybe it’ll keep me grounded.

Oh, also, so far I haven’t been able to even touch it, but I think that if my powers got subtle enough, I could probably redirect light in such a way that I become invisible. The trouble is that this will probably also make me unable to see for the duration of it, so once I get good enough to actually do it, I’ll have to make my eyeballs visible. That will probably be a pretty disturbing sight.

So, yeah, there is very little - next to nothing, really - that I can’t somehow affect. And, yeah, that’s good and all, but that also leaves me with the realisation that within due time, I may very well be able to affect time itself. But that notion is so ridiculous that I don’t even want to touch it.

For now, I’ll stick to trying to become an expert ventriloquist by affecting waves in the air to make sound. So far it’s not going too well but I think the day when I can phantom-play the trombone is not too far off.

Not that I’ll actually do it. Or anything else for that matter. Not in front of people.

But I want to. Couldn’t these powers make the lives of other people so much easier? I’m not even humouring the idea of becoming some sort of crime-fighter (I’m too soft), but shouldn’t there be something? If I wore my sheet or even if I went invisible, there would be so much I could do. People I could save, even.

I can’t pretend to know how I would do that. For now, all I can do is keep improving. At some point, I’ll be brave enough to reveal myself to someone, somewhere.

I keep thinking about those scenes from Chronicle where the characters are flying. They can fly so fast and so far that they can go to different countries within only days. One day I might be able to do that too. I could go visit my online friends. It sounds a bit pathetic, sure, but they’re the only friends I’ve had for over ten years. If I could meet them, then…

Well, I’d need to learn to refract light and scramble radars first, but after that…

-That’s too far off. For now, I’m content with just training and trying to be the best that I can. The time will come eventually when I can shed this cowardice and reveal myself. Maybe. I can always hope.

For now, I’ll put up a nigh-impossible goal to shoot for and once I succeed at it, I’ll reveal myself. Specifically, I’ll pick a professor basically at random and try to get his opinion on all of this. Hmm. I think I’ll set my goal to something as ridiculous as lifting an entire lake. My parents have a small cabin in the woods next to a pretty substantial lake, so if I can lift that, then… Yeah.

Right.

In that case, I guess I might as well use next week to train. I haven’t got anything happening - no gigs or anything - so I might as well borrow the car and drive up. Okay, perfect.

I send a message to my parents, telling them that I need some peace and quiet for a week to recover from this-or-that. Being the nice and lovely people they are, they let me borrow the car. Technically I could just fly up, but I do like driving for a while. Since this is a training week I’m obviously doing things, too. See, uh, technically speaking, I’m not driving at all. The wheels are spinning and the car is moving but that’s not because the gas is actually down. My goal is to not need to take any breaks for the entire trip up. Oh, apart from when I stop for groceries.

And, lo and behold, it works! I did need to slow down a few times to catch my breath, but I did it, and without getting a nosebleed, too. Heh.

And so began my week of training.

Since I’m out in the forest, there’s plenty of space to fly across, and, even more importantly, there’s a lot of space to touch.

See, I’ve been thinking about something. It’s a bit weird, but I can feel though my powers. It feels less like actual touch and more like how you can subconsciously tell where all your limbs are, but this does tell me something. If I spread out my powers like a massive blanket, I might be able to sense movement and similar.

No, not might. I can. I tried it out, and it works.

My boar-detecting mechanism is fully functioning.

The trouble is that having it activated constantly is exhausting. It’s like contantly keeping your arm flexed for minutes, hours at a time. It’s easier if I keep the distance small, and after a day or two of always keeping two metres of this boar-sense around me, I can now sense even the smallest flies or shifts in temperature around me. Even better, I can react to it instantly. It might be a little morbid, but all the flies up there made for excellent training, as every time one of them entered my range, I instantly obliterated them.

I even tried different ways of doing it. Instantly boiling them to the point of burning, freezing them, crushing them, dismembering them, twisting them, carefully removing their internal pieces… All kinds of things.

…Now that I’m writing it out, it sounds a bit morbid, but it was a pretty good exercise.

As you might except, I’m also hanging around the lake a lot. Especially at night. I go out in the boat we keep and try lifting the entire thing. I hadn’t expected to get even close, but even on the first day, I can lift at least half of it. Since I’m now weight lifting almost the entire day (alongside training my boar-sense by checking out the fishies) my progress is fast.

There is hardly any doubt in my mind that I will be able to lift the lake by the end of this week.

…But I don’t want to. Maybe I am a coward, but I don’t want to be able to lift the lake and have to try to talk to some researcher about all of this. Can’t I just train for a bit longer?

As the week moves on, I grow melancholy despite the obvious steps I make.

Manipulating the weather is now just something I can kind of do. -Ish. By spacing out water (without heating it up) I can create a mist, and if I lift it high enough in the air while still keeping it in shape I can make a cloud. It doesn’t last long and it usually dissolves within a minute or so but it’s something. So far I haven’t tried to make any big clouds or to do anything like that, but considering my manipulations of the lake, conjuring a thunderstorm shouldn’t be too far off.

A quick google search tells me that I’m lifting around 7 million kilos.

…I’m sorry?

Thursday, nighttime, I’m sitting in front of my computer trying to make sense of what the hell I’m reading. Seven million. That’s way more than a house, or even maybe a skyscraper, I think. I don’t know. I’m just completely flabbergasted. That is just… Way too much.

As I’m frowning at my computer in deep thought, I instinctually make a nearby fly explode into tiny squishy bits.

…Right! The week isn’t over. I still have things to do, stuff to train. Since I can apparently already lift and entire fucking lake (only by 1 cm or someone would catch on) I guess I’d do best to work on my range and subtelty. Considering that I’m anyways in the woods, I might as well go full monkey mode and capture a boar or whatever. I’ve always wanted to pet one and it seems like this will be a good time to do it.

…

…Okay, I’m back, and the boar-petting mission, uh… Well, it didn’t go so well, it was kinda struggling a bit too much, so I accidentally, erm… That aside, the good news are that I now have plenty of boar meat to last me however long I want it to! Skinning and butchering an animal is very easy when you don’t even need knives or buckets to keep the blood in. I considered making, like, blood pudding or whatever, but I have no idea where this thing’s been so I just threw it in the lake.

Not sure what to do with all this meat, but whatever.

The lesson of the day is that I should probably not psychically grab a living thing if I’m not intending on that being the last thing to happen to them. Hm. Spooky.

Anyway, as the week ends, my final test, if you could call it that, is to summon enough clouds to blot out the sky. Since my range wasn’t quite enough to grab the clouds flying far away I had I fly way up high to get closer, but in the end I was able to do it, which was nice. Then I cleared the skies again and was able to feel proud and content for maybe around five minutes before the reality of the situation set in again.

I would need to go talk to someone about all this. They would probably be upset with me and I’d be flustered and have to explain why I didn’t go to them straight away, or, even worse, why I didn’t go to them straight away. The worst case scenario would be if it turned out that I’ve been hallucinating all this time. The chances of that is unlikely based on my age and genetics, but, well, anything’s possible.

And so, with my heart deep in the pit of my stomach, I drive back home, unable to muster the excitement to do anything apart driving it normally.