FILTERS 13
CONTROL
Red hat, US flag. Mirrored sunglasses over the narrow slit in a black ski mask that covers the rest of the head of this other. Wisps of hair just visible, light brown, maybe blond. Black t-shirt, toned arms fill the sleeves. Blue jeans and brown boots.
Someone in the class says "What the fuck?"
The reporter stutters, "C-can we put you on with our studio?"
The other says "Sure, just a moment."
The camera follows him walk toward a group of police, who even some distance from the camera, and Andrew some distance from the screen, are obviously unnerved. Quiet, vaguely orchestral music plays as the stream cuts to a title flash: BREAKING NEWS
Andrew looks into the field. Same everywhere in the building. He looks farther, same everywhere on campus. He looks into the city, some cars are moving, otherwise the same everywhere. Everyone is looking at a screen.
"Look at that guy!"
"The one in Tampa had that jacket and jumpsuit on, you couldn't see any of his body"
"Yeah, this one you can see is a white guy–"
"He kind of looks like a farmer"
Laughter, "Yeah, he does."
The screen changes to Wolf Blitzer.
"Good morning. For those just joining us, a psychic sphere that struck Denver has been stopped by the remarkable individual who now speaks with us live. Thank you for your help, and thank you for speaking with us. What may we call you?"
The other says "I don't care what you call me, but you'll need something, so I guess it should be Second."
"'Second' – you're saying you aren't the individual who intervened in Tampa?"
The other shakes his head. "Wasn't me."
"Do you know that individual?"
"No, but I bet a lot of people think I'm lying. I'm not, if that matters."
"That's fair. How do you possess these abilities? Are you human?"
The other laughs. "That's blunt. Yeah, human as far my human parents know. I won't go into specifics, but the literal description of what I can do is psychic telekinesis, right? But don't worry, I can't read your mind, it's just a coincidence that I know you're thinking 'He wouldn't admit it if he could.'" He laughs again. "I've never called it telekinesis. I call it Control. I control objects, I control myself, it's how I fly."
"Why did you decide to speak with us?"
"Why not? What's the harm?"
"You wear a mask, that would seem to indicate some concern over your identity."
"Yeah, but not in the way you think, this mask is just convenience. If I showed my face I would never be left alone for the rest of my life. Obviously I don't care that you know I'm a white guy, and I'll happily tell you that I'm not rich, I'm not famous, I'm a normal guy and I love my country, but for celebrities, it can be a bit much."
"That's true, it can be a lot. Do you understand why these spheres have been happening?"
"Yes. There are certain people, like myself and like the First, who have, frankly, a bastard relationship with Control. There was something fundamentally lacking in that unfortunate man and the woman in Tampa. They never had, and they would never have, what I and the First have. They cause these disasters, but it's not deliberate."
"You make it sound as though, for lack of a better phrase, they are waiting to go off."
"No, it isn't like that. I know there's been no official identification made of the woman in Tampa, but everyone assumes she was from the destroyed apartment with the dead man in it. He was a known domestic abuser and he probably attacked her and he might have been trying to kill her when she stopped him, and that's what caused the sphere. Like that woman, I think something terrible must have also happened to this man, and that's happened with every sphere, where every time it's a person being driven to the very brink of their life. If this is a lesson in anything it's not to be afraid, it's to be more compassionate."
"Well said. What happened at the end, when that man disappeared?"
Andrew watches the man in the red hat sigh.
Redhat he thinks.
"He disintegrated himself."
"You're saying that it was self-inflicted?"
"Yes. When he was driven to that point he underwent, ah, I'll call it psychic break, and his unstable connection with Control began to consume everything around him. When a sphere can go no farther, at that point I think the person at the center is the last thing consumed. I think I interrupted that process, and it cut to the end."
"Fascinating. Do you believe there will be more spheres?"
"Do you not? How many are we at? At least six, with two in four days. I doubt the rate continues like this, but on the other hand, how do we know these haven't happened in places where the news never got out? Like a remote village that's wiped out and nobody's checked on them for months. I'm sure someone has an idea of exactly how many spheres have happened, but even if it is just six, no matter how optimistic I am, I have to think more will happen. But I'll intervene every time I can."
"Wow. Well, thank you."
"It's truly the least I can do. I'm good on questions, so here's the reason I'm talking to you: to all other Controllers, if you had any doubt after Saturday, this should clear that up–you're not alone."
He turns back to the police, but seems to change his mind, as he rises and disappears into the sky.
The projector shuts off and the lights come up and the class fills with chatter. Andrew's gaze is locked until his professor speaks over the noise. "Holy shit that was cool! Also maybe a little terrifying! Where are we at?" He makes a show of looking at his watch and says "Don't care, everything will be online, enjoy your lunches or whatever."
Andrew reaches for his phone without looking, fingertips grazing rubber. In his hand he stands and pockets it and in rote motion stows notebook and recorder and walks down the row and out of one hall for another. He knows his phone has messages from Emilia and Michael and Devaris and he has everything in the world to say but no idea where to start as he walks down a flight of stairs, into the entrance hall, through double-double glass doors with vestibule in-between and into the brightness of midday. He could sprint to lunch.
Andrew sits on a bench outside one of the food courts, face to the sun that's pleasant on his closed eyes. He distincts a large and obvious Marques-shaped figure in the field.
"Sup Drew, you see that shit in Denver?"
"Yes I did." says Andrew, eyes still closed.
The identity of a less-obvious figure is unknown until he speaks, Devaris, "World's crazy, what's up!"
They go through the lines and find a table, Devaris ignores his plate. He recounts his interrupted workout, how he was in the squat rack when his music went silent for the pop-pop-lull-pop attenuations of notifications. "Y'all, my phone vibrated off the bench. He says he's not psychic," accusatory finger in front of his grin, "then he says of course he'd say that he couldn't read your mind. He's fucking with us! The government was trying to make psychics forty years ago, now they got them!"
Andrew thinks "Yeah, he is fucking with you. He knows exactly how many spheres there have been, same as me." He reads the messages from Michael, a single long BROOOOOOOO at the top.
Devaris, finger still out, pivots to point at Andrew. "What'd you think of that guy?"
Andrew, distracted, says "Who, Redhat?"
"'Red Hat?'" Devaris' confusion is brief, then his fingers snap. "Redhat!" he's on his phone, tapping away.
"He was incredible. He just saved so many lives, not to mention all those buildings, not to mention Coors Field."
Devaris laughs, "Yeah, and Mile High. You would be thinking about baseball, but you're right. Jesus. Jesus. He says those people have 'psychic break,' what do you think? Made up sob story from some super black CIA-DOD Manhattan Project shit? He called it 'Control,' you know that's exactly the kind of name some spooks would cook up. So they start making these guys, some are like, sleeper agents, or secret test subjects who have their memories wiped and have no idea what they are until. . . boom."
Andrew says "I hope not," as he reads the lone message from his father: We'll talk when you're home.
"They're all fucking scary," says Faars, "they're living weapons. What are normal people supposed to do about that?"
Devaris tisks and sets his phone down. "Bro, what'd I just say? The government made these guys, so the government must be able to turn them off. Look at them! Tampa wearing an Adidas jacket and this Redhat motherfucker has a USA hat and Ray-Bans. You think it's a coincidence the first sphere was in Germany and 'The First Controller' was wearing Adidas? You know what this is about? The tech is getting out, all these other countries are about to have it, so we need to show 'Confidence in Capitalism and the American Way!' It's subliminal! Look at what he said, there are other Controllers, and it's going to keep happening. Of course it is, they're all in on it!"
The table laughs, even Andrew.
Faars says "Yeah, okay."
Andrew walks to his next class. The energy from Sunday is back in the air, he sees groups gathered everywhere, talking about and watching the sphere and the interview. Again he can't help his own feeling of excitement, glad greetings to the people who call out his name. He reaches a street that divides the campus and the city and pauses to look across at new construction.
Fences surround the building that covers a full block, its exterior the same red as the university buildings. He admires the grand facade with tall blue mirrored windows set between deep red marble columns with white plinths and corniced molding below gables decorated with alligators in low relief. The fences have two repeated logos that read UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA and CANTON CENTERS FOR REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH.
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He looks within, the building could be in use already, with figures in almost every room and hallway. They move and place equipment, they stand on ladders in ceilings, working on ventilation and running cable. He withdraws and notices a man taking a picture of the building, and close to that man he notices a young woman shaking her head. He turns back, his pace picking up, and texts Emilia. His afternoon is in physics, his professor deviating from his plan to spend the hours talking about Control. A spookish name, Devaris is right about that, but a far better name than gift.
He works out, he jogs to Emilia's empty apartment and showers.
A washcloth hangs on his shoulder. He stares through the illusion, a horizontal plane manifested in the stream of the shower, water droplets bouncing off so energetically they turn to a second spray. He dismisses the plane and starts again, from a point he expands as a sphere until it blocks the water. He changes it to a cylinder, to a cone, pyramid, cube, and sphere again. He dismisses half of the sphere and watches droplets again bounce vigorously off the inverted dome, then he hollows the dome, beads sliding around the invisible surface they cannot wet.
He greets Emilia with a kiss, they walk to dinner. Her heel is light on his foot, she taps his shin as she smiles at him across the small table and says "You were right!"
"Yeah, it's still so weird to think about. But I'm glad."
She says "Me too. It's crazy that it happened again so quickly. The sphere and another. . . Controller. That's a funny word, I like psychic more."
"I don't know, it's growing on me. Whatever the word is, it's great. Two stopped so far, maybe the next time it happens another one will show up. And the time after that, and after that."
She says "Or, hopefully they stop completely. Maybe those poor people who cause the spheres subconsciously understand what they can do and they're afraid of it, but knowing that people are out there who can help will make them feel better and give them, well, control over it."
He feels the urge to lean across the table and kiss her, and he does. "You're brilliant. I never considered that. God, I hope so."
They eat, he gets the check. When they're outside he asks "Hey, have you seen that Canton building going up just off campus?"
Emilia shakes her head, "Canton, like that boxer?"
"Yeah, same guy, John Canton."
She says "I've driven by it, but I've never really looked at it."
"It's beautiful. We're not that far from it, do you want to go look at it?"
She takes his arm, "Yeah, let's go."
Their path takes them to the back and along the side, where storeys of red brick are punctuated by narrow bands of concrete that continue the alligator motif. The entrance is partially obscured by the fence, but he can see the upper halves of columns of the same stone as the side that faces campus, supporting a covered drive that has metal lettering on each side with soft orange backlighting: CANTON CLINIC — UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA. He sees fewer figures than he did in the afternoon, but it's not by much. Andrew says "They're putting in a lot of work on this."
Emilia says "It shows. This is beautiful."
"The front is the best part."
On the next street Andrew sees a woman ahead, near the center of the facade, carrying a sign. When they get closer to her she turns, and Andrew realizes it's the young woman he saw before. He reads the sign. UQ = EUGENICS
He considers stopping at the edge, but decides to continue on to the center, close to the protester. Emilia says "Wow. I really like the alligators."
"It's a good touch."
"Do you want to go back to my apartment now?" she asks.
"Yeah. . . actually, one moment." He walks to the woman. "What are you protesting?"
She looks a little surprised at this, "Oh, um. I'm not that good at this, I don't have any pamphlets yet and that would tell it better. You could Google UQ Eugenics and our page would show up."
Emilia joins him and adds, "Well, I don't know anything about this, I'm sure you'll do fine."
The young woman looks away and then back at them, "Okay. So some people have this thing called the UQ-Marker, it's genes that make them like, really healthy, and good athletes. So these Canton Clinics offer sperm, and eggs I think, that are UQ-Marker, and they're getting really popular, but what about all these people who don't have that? It's like saying they aren't good enough, like that they don't deserve to have kids like them, and no one here is doing anything about it. And the University partnered with them, which is like a public endorsement that only people like that should get to live and procreate."
"Huh." says Emilia.
"Thanks for the explanation." says Andrew.
When they're far enough away from the woman Emilia asks "What do you think?"
"I've actually read a bit about this, I was just curious what she was going to say. Have you heard anything about the family of David Owen and the Harvard and Johns Hopkins study on him?"
She says "I've heard the name but I can't think of anything specific."
"There's this guy named David Owen, he's still alive, he's spent time living between West Virginia and Maryland, his family lives in both. He was born in 1955 and he has sixteen children, and all of them are still alive, and now he has hundreds of grandchildren and great-children. Every time one of the Owens becomes pregnant or impregnates someone the pregnancy is carried through to term without issue. In the mid-90s someone finally noticed that all these Owens have clockwork perfect three trimester pregnancies, perfect births, and perfectly healthy kids. Every time. No congenital conditions, no stillbirths, no dangerous complications, perfect every time. Harvard and Johns Hopkins studied them and a few other families they identified, and twenty years later they announced their results as the existence of the UQ-Marker, UQ as in Upper-Quartile. It's more than just 'really healthy' like that girl said, there was a natural cause mortality rate of zero during the study. That's part of the thought of why it took so long to notice, these people never need to go to the doctor and for a long time the population was small enough, or seems like it was small enough, that the odd highly healthy person didn't stand out, but their numbers keep increasing, and that's probably the second biggest discovery of that study. The UQ-Marker is inherited perfectly every time. Someone with it has children with it one hundred percent of the time, and the same for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Emilia says nothing, a focused look on her face. Andrew adds "I've known you for almost a year, I don't think I've ever seen you under the weather."
She says "I've never been sick. That's how my mom is, and my grandmother. They've always said we're blessed, I guess that's what I thought it was."
"A blessing seems like the right word for it. It's the same for me, my dad has it. He actually told me about it when I was a kid, before the study had been published. The military has known about this for a long time, and they sort-of told him he had it in when he was in the Air Force."
She says "So. . . since this passes on perfectly, and all of our children–" the double meaning hits both and Emilia blushes while Andrew grins at her "–will have it and so will their children, there's nothing stopping it, right? Eventually everyone will have it."
Andrew nods, "And that's my thought. It's a snowball, or more like an avalanche. There's no stopping it. I'm not unsympathetic to the argument of that girl. I can't imagine what it must be like for people who don't have it and know that. But that's why what Canton is doing is necessary, so that a person who doesn't have it can ensure their child does. It's still shitty that they have to make that choice, but it's better than not having that choice, especially since in however many generations everyone is going to have it no matter what anyone does."
"Do you want kids?" asks Emilia.
"Yeah, I do."
"I do too. I want a bunch of them," she says.
"That would be nice."
Her cheek is warm against his chest.
The blind spirit wanders through construction. Through atrium and long corridors. To elevator shafts, basement tunnels, to a large room with rows of metal chassis, slowly filling with servers. Clinic rooms to offices to a hidden courtyard. He could stay all night; he does.
Gym, breakfast, class. He goes for a run before sunset, a different route than usual, one that takes him past the future clinic. He looks across the city as he runs. He sees Emilia standing at her stove, he sees the figures around her, through wall and floor and ceiling. He returns to himself but stays in the field, lingering now on a figure close to him on a side street making sweeping motions in front of a wall. Curious, he jogs toward them. They're finished when he arrives, still standing in front of the spraypainted wall they take pictures of. Red hat, US flag. Sunglasses. Black ski mask. "Sup," says the masked artist.
"I like this."
"Thanks," they say, and they grab their bag and run off.
Andrew reaches for his phone and takes a picture of the mural, sending it to Michael. He gets a response when he's walking into Emilia's building. Haven't seen any graffiti of Tampa ;)
Gym, breakfast, class. An afternoon run, the same route as the day before. He knows the crowd well ahead of his arrival, unsure of what to expect and unsure of what to think when he sees and hears them. Signs and many marching, chanting magnified by bullhorn. Maybe this is healthy, maybe this is right. A futile cry against fate, but against inequity as well. This may be our future, but do not forget who we were. For lots cast before birth, before your parents' birth, before your grandparents' birth. If asked, who would decline? He didn't choose, his father didn't choose, his grandfather didn't choose. They were, they are, he is. His children will be. He can see them, the dark hair and eyes and high cheeks of their mother. Would they have his gift? Should they? Would it be better that none had it and the world be free of spheres as well? He suddenly wants to laugh. This gift, Control, and he only reacts. He could shape the world, and he only reacts, and only once at that.