“Hey man, sorry to hear you're going.”

Putting my advent calendar into the cardboard box, I looked over my cleaned-off desk as Nick came up and gave his condolences.

“It's fine,” I muttered, under my breath. Sighing, I said, louder, “I'll be okay, Nick. I suppose I wasn't really a good fit for the great Prometheus Inc.” Inwardly, the sense of sarcasm that leaked out into my voice made me wince.

“What are your plans now, Matthias?” Nick asked. I knew that most of my other coworkers were pausing at the question, perking their ears for the latest office gossip as one of my best friends here acted as the office's liaison.

“I'll be going back to the job search, finding something I haven't done yet. Maybe go back to school,” I chuckled to myself.

“No way, you? Matthias Dewey, going to school to become a Super? That would be amazing!” Nick exclaimed with his own broad grin at the jest.

I just thought to myself that they probably would be amazed and shocked if I demonstrated my ability, even though that very gift caused me to despair.

It was only possible to understand my position, I ruminated, in the context of history. Today, the strata of society were very clearly divided into the Supers and the Mundane. However, 50 years ago, everyone was Mundane, when a secret experiment out in the Pacific exploded, giving birth to a strange and insidious dust. This dust caused the event that was later known as the Mutation, as men and women around the world found themselves inexplicably and irrevocably changed with incredible power, though not necessarily for the better. A relatively small number of people were changed that day, as their bodies and minds and very existences were changed into things that casually broke the previously known laws of physics, whether they gained the ability to move things with their minds or suffered from being turned into stone. From this group came the first Supers, individuals who had the power to effect great change and used it to separate themselves from the Mundane, whether for good or for ill. However, as transformative as those first Supers were, it was the animals, plants, and minerals that were affected by the Mutation that truly changed the world.

Strange flowers that overtook cities, deposits of minerals that started to grow with unearthly light, and animals that grew to enormous size began to propagate, spreading these changes faster and farther along thousands of paths. The Mutation created monsters and dangers in the wild that humans had begun to think mastered, bringing in a new need for the Supers to combat this new threat as mundane military could not. In addition to new threats, though, these materials and creatures also opened up new opportunities, as some were able to research these animals and use them to create processes that turned normal humans, mundanes, into Supers.

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As such, Supers began to infiltrate into all levels of society, as the rich and powerful found their ways to get those powers that were most beneficial, whether that be enhanced intelligence, a powerful physique, or any other number of abilities. This trickled down, as companies started hiring upon the basis of abilities, or based on the possibility. Eventually, schools that were created to transform and then instruct in the proper use of abilities popped up in the developed countries (while the less developed countries created their own methods to transform and educate their Supers). As such, those who didn't have opportunity to become Super, or who the procedures, for whatever reason, did not work on, became the Mundane, removed from positions of power and relegated to the dregs of society as there were people who were measurably better in almost every way.

Fortunately, in the United States, the government passed laws through Congress that protected “people unaffected by the event known as the Mutation”, giving basic living subsidies to the slowly shrinking percentage of the population that didn't register themselves as Super in some way.

I reflected on this change in position as I walked out of the office, my belongings in my own tiny cardboard box. There weren't any hard numbers, but there were some people who were listed as Mundane, even if they were changed by the Mutation. Some of them had abilities that simply did not allow them to live normal lives, relegating them to be permanent outcasts, whether for their own safety or for the safety of others. Some of them did not have abilities that registered as life changing, whether that be a changing eye color or more efficient stomach. And some of them, like myself, knew that our abilities simply would not fit into the world and let our abilities lie unexposed in order to stay in the comfortable anonymity of the Mundane.

All along the way home, from the wait at the rickety bus stop to the three narrow flights of stairs up to my subsidized apartment, I allowed myself to fantasize how my life would be if I just allowed myself to enter the world of Supers. I could make a name for myself, using my abilities to fight crime, improve the world, or simply make a ton of money. Or, I thought to myself as I turned the key and entered my modest abode, I could fall to the other percentage of the population, the ones that found themselves living on the outskirts and using their abilities to force their own wishes onto the world like in parts of Africa or the state of Cuba. There, people with powers could easily become commodities, their fall from humanity as hard as a meteor as they were traded around and sold for their ability to give youth, to create gold, or any other of a myriad powers that were of great value, but did not allow them to protect themselves.

At home, I pet my cat, Preston, and as was my ritual, used my power on him. A rush of ethereal water rushed out from my hand and rushed into him, making him purr as he rubbed his cheeks against my hand. And then he walked away, rising into the air as he began to fly.

For that was the reason that I couldn't risk letting my power out. The ability to choose to give anything a power, with the variety of possibilities that I've found over the years, wasn't a gift. It was a great big bucket of gold that I would hold in my own, frail hands, that I could not let anyone else know about.

No matter what.