"Dude. You're power is super cool. But it's giving me some serious Heebie Jeebies."
There were no cars in the driveway when they turned in, a fact that they took full advantage of as they stormed up the stairs and into Kaykes' bedroom.
It was a quaint room with little in it but her bed, which was space ship themed, those glow in the dark stars and planet stickers which had been a fixture of her ceiling since she'd been seven, and two bookshelves practically groaning with books. There was a desk like Jimmy's near the window with several text books strewn over it and her book bag lay on the floor next to the desk chair.
"Alright Jimmy, feast your eyes. Anything the light tou — NOT THAT!" Kaykes darted in front of him as his eyes snapped directly to her computer sitting on the desk.
It was one of the new Gen X Horizon's with enough GPUs, CPUs, and all the other three letter acronyms required to run a small local AI without pushing to an external server. It was a gift from their parents last year, as a reward for Kaykes' straight 'A's for the eighth year in a row all the way through middle school.
Half of it. The other half Kaykes had paid for... somehow.
"Not my computer, Jimmy."
Jimmy grit his teeth and made sure his hands were firmly by his side. "That... would probably work beautifully, Kaykes." Jimmy said.
"Ah uh. Nope! I need it. Stay away!"
"For what?"
"Computing! I need a computer, dude! Pick something else! Besides mom and dad will notice instantly if that technological marvel disappears."
"YOU wanted to power test! I was good for like... A good week at least."
"We didn't think. GAH! We know so little. Why do you need —"
"Your wallet." Jimmy gritted out. "How much you got?"
"I don't know. I'm in ninth grade. Like five bu— HEY!"
This time, she wasn't fast enough. Jimmy's hand reached out and... a card flickered into existence. He breathed.
"More like five hundred bucks. Where does a ninth grader get five hundred bucks?!"
Kaykes' eyes blazed. "Give. It back." She said dangerously.
"It's coming up as Five Hundred Dollars of Grit and Toil."
"That's how, you clepto-bastard. You can't just take my lunch money!"
"You seriously misunderstand me when I say, 'Thats not how this works'," Jimmy said. He pocketed the card and watched Kaykes' face as it flickered through anger, sadness, consternation, mirth of all things, and finally regret.
Finally she said grudgingly, "So, how much did my 'grit and toil' buy us?"
Jimmy shrugged. "A day, maybe? Two? —"
"My 'grit and toil' bought you one maybe two?!" Kaykes yelled. "Didn't you survive for weeks on a hundred measly bucks from that kid and his debit card?!"
" — Three, but then I'll be famished."
Kaykes wailed and pulled at her hair.
It was a really good thing both their mother had stepped out, Jimmy mused.
"Seriously though. How does a ninth grader make five hundred bucks? The Itch doesn't seem to think it's even that valuable."
"Inflation hasn't soared that high in three months" Kaykes growled. "That should be good for weeks!"
"I don't make these rules. I just have to abide by them. Three days. Max. I need a contract."
Jimmy glanced between his sister and the card pointedly until she shuffled her feet, and glanced away grimacing.
"Like you said, bro." Kaykes muttered. "I'm a ninth grader who know's laplace. How do you think I make money? When I hold court, Seniors come running." She glared at him. "Still doesn't mean I'm happy about losing five hundred bucks."
Jimmy shrugged. "I'll buy you lunch."
"Hey! that's a nice chea —"
"Not. How. This. Works." This was starting to sound like his catch phrase. "The Itch understands extravagant spending. Not extravagant giving."
Kaykes slumped, and threw herself in her chair.
"Ok. Fine. I get it. Eldritch Itch is finicky." She folded her legs underneath herself and huffed. "I'll put some feelers out. It's High School, I'm sure I can find someone who's had their stuff reappropriated recently."
Jimmy eyed her. "O-ok, Godmother."
"I've got friends, Jimmy! Not just some lame tree-nerd clique!" And while Jimmy choked on his own saliva, Kaykes asked. "Now tell me about these contracts."
----------------------------------------
3 MONTHS AGO
It is an unfortunate constant in the universe that with great power, does NOT come great understanding. So when Jimmy woke up one morning with powers of eldritch mystery at his fingertips and a burning itch he couldn't scratch, Jimmy did what any other boy his age would do.
He got up, stretched, yawned a whole lot and stumbled off to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Aaaand walked out a short while later with his sisters bathroom supplies.
"Jimmy?" His sister's morning face was more bemused than usual. "Is there a reason why you've dragging my... ah. Stuff around?"
"MINE". Jimmy said. And wrapped his arms protectively around HIS Salmon toothbrush, pink toothpaste, pink mouthwash, bag of feminine supplies, box of some more feminine supplies, two hair towels, vanilla-lilac shampoo, and mocha scented conditioner.
What followed was possibly the strangest game of tug of war in the known universe. And, let it be known that his sister eventually managed to rest control of all of her supplies except for her toothbrush.
"You keep that, Jimmy," Kaykes hissed. And stalked off, leaving a now very bemused Jimmy holding a toothbrush he wasn't ever going to use and clutching his chest and wondering why it felt like something was tearing.
It didn't end there.
Jimmy walked through school that day, he sat in lectures and attended study-tree session with Nate, Sashaya, Mico and Tom, and it didn't stop! He borrowed a pen from Sashaya and it disappeared into his pocket. Nate looked away from his cellphone for one second, and suddenly it was in Jimmy's backpack.
It was like people's affects were suddenly magnetically attracted to his fingertips. He bumped into someone in the hall, and their wallet was now in his back-pocket. He brushed their arm and their watch appeared on his wrist. The less said for anything left on desks, chairs, corners, and open lockers the better.
And every time Jimmy made to return the items he appropriated, it HURT.
But with all of that, it took him a three weeks to card his first item.
----------------------------------------
"What was it?" His sister was reclining back in her chair now, and her bare feet were thrown up on the foot of her bed.
Jimmy was lying on it.
In answer, Jimmy flourished a card and tossed it to his sister.
Kaykes let out a muffled shriek and dove out of her desk chair.
"Relax, it's just..." Jimmy un-carded it, and The Guy's Phone for Illicit Dealings shimmered into view on the floor.
"I just saw you shatter stones to bits with those things!" Kaykes hissed picking herself up off the floor of her room and glaring. She snatched it up. "So this was your first cellphone?"
"Yup. It wasn't called The Guy's Phone for Illicit Dealings then though. That was Random Cellphone 1.
"Huh."
"Yea. And the moment that I carded it, I was fine. Things didn't stick to my fingers. I was good for about three weeks."
His sister pursed her lips. "One cellphone. Three weeks. Got it."
"It's inconsistent. Mico's phone gave me about a month and a random guy's tablet gave me about four day's." Jimmy shrugged. "Kind of feels like a dice roll to me."
"Right, so fast forward to the contracts. What's the deal?
"Ok. So the thing you have to understand is that just because I'm not starving doesn't mean I'm not... snacky.....
----------------------------------------
2.5 MONTHS AGO
"So apparently, this new Super on the News? Legion?" Tom looked around, his eyes popping incredulously behind his glasses. "He actually visited a psychiatrists office, before he went all ape shit!"
Sashaya sucked on her pencil eraser and didn't look up. Patricia heaved a put upon sigh and Nate said, "So?"
Tom looked back and forth between all of them, his mouth flickering back and forth between incredulity and something very close to hilarity. "Well... he... he brought his girls with him."
That got everyone's attention. Especially the resident girls, who were not amused.
Sashaya punched him in the leg, while Mico and Patricia scowled.
"Don't call them that. It's straight up slavery what he's doing. And those collars he makes them wear?" Mico said all of this in the iciest tone Jimmy had ever heard from her. "They're victims! Who know what he does to —"
"I mean, from this shrink's accounts, it sounds like he mostly sits in the corner and shivers. Get this. 'Recounted to me... bla bla bla... more bla...' Here we go. 'The girls are demons from another world. They have little sense of morality, and come from a place where slavery is common practice and the consumption and mutilation of sentient creatures is the norm. When ordered to, they answered my questions truthfully and with explicit detail —"
"What's up with you, dude?" Nate asked from where he was lying on the grass, one of his notebooks propped up on one of the Study-Tree's roots.
Jimmy breathed shakily and slowly moved his hand away from Mico's Tablet where it had crept while Mico's eyes were diverted.
'I've got to get this under control' he thought. 'I can't keep doing this.'
"Ha! Ah. Nothing... nothing is up" 'And that lying problem. What's the deal with that?'
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
"I just, ah... Mico, you mind if I borrow your tablet for a second? To check something?"
"Go for it, Jimmy. It's still slavery." She continued, back to Tom. "That's as evil now as it was twenty decades ago."
Jimmy checked the weather quickly, and then passed it back, still chuckling nervously. That was until Patricia who had been listening to Mico's fiery discussion with Tom silently, began looking in his direction curiously.
Then, Jimmy swallowed his nervous laughs and did it all on the inside instead. 'I am ME!' He thought desperately at himself. I will not steal. I'm. NOT. Doing it!
The Itch... just itched.
"—AND Why are they ALL female?" Sashay pounced now. "That's, like, way too grossly misogynist."
"It says here that Legion doesn't get a —"
"Ah ah!" Sashaya wasn't having it, neither was Mico, nor Patricia for that matter, who was grimacing and shaking her head.
Sashaya jabbed her thoroughly chewed pencil at Tom beleaguered face. "A guy gets a power where he can summons creatures from the dark abyss and you think it's a coincidence that they are all supernaturally hot women with a compulsion to obey his every word? I'm not buying it, dude. Why the hell would a power even be so arbitrarily specific?"
Jimmy opened his mouth.... and — he eyed Mico's tablet which his fingers were even now trying to reach for again — and closed his mouth tightly.
'Legion can fight his own battles,' Jimmy thought. 'I've got my own, and He's got supernaturally hot women with compulsions to obey to do it for him.
The Itch hummed.... and burbled something indecipherable in the back of Jimmy's mind.
It was always doing that now. Itching and mumbling and humming and slithering through his hands, to his fingers and...
It wasn't even a scratch-able itch. It was too deep. Too in him for him to reach.
'But I can fight you.' Jimmy promised that night while he brushed his teeth in front of the bathroom mirror. 'I'm gonna return everything you try to take. Even if it's a tissue.'
But when Jimmy went to speak those words out loud after he spat out the toothpaste, they wouldn't come, and by now... Jimmy thought he knew why.
He didn't sleep that night.
He didn't sleep the next one either.
But he did return the items he stole, even though the looks he received started getting stranger. Even though the pain in his chest started getting worse and spreading throughout his body, like it was tracing his bones.
He did! But he also kept stealing, and that he couldn't stop.
----------------------------------------
"The Problem, Kaykes is that its far too easy to steal. When I stole The Guy's Phone for Illicit Dealings I freaked out! I went back to the store asking if someone had lost a phone — no one had reported anything — so I went to the lost and found and... turned away because it made me feel icky for some reason."
"Icky?"
"Icky" Jimmy nodded. "But that didn't stop me. I actually tracked the guy down after searching through the phone for his information, and then biked across town to his house. I was this close to knocking on his door and handing back the phone, when the Itch finally realized I was serious."
"It had a tantrum?"
"Right there on his front porch."
----------------------------------------
Jimmy inched his finger closer... closer.... 'C'mon!' He thought. 'How hard can this be?!' His finger was shaking. It was curling in on itself, practically writhing, like it was a tentacle rather than something limited by joints. His arms was shaking too. So were his feet.
Actually, Jimmy noticed suddenly. His entire body was practically vibrating where he stood.
He breathed and closed his eyes. 'Ok. Ok.... In three seconds I'm going to jump forward. My power can't stop me then.' Jimmy thought. 'Not when I'm in midair.'
"Three. Tw —" Jimmy gasped. Three. Two. Ooooonn —" Jimmy hunched over shuddering. It was like something was pulling somewhere deeper than he could comprehend. Too deep. Too There in him.
Jimmy was sweating he realized, and suddenly he wondered how long he'd been standing there cradling his chest.
----------------------------------------
"I wasn't in a good way." Jimmy told his sister. He folded his hands behind his head, remembering. "By this time I had been un-stealing things for a good week. Made sure to put everything back whenever something stuck to my fingers. Policing myself constantly. I'd even been sleep steeling! And right there on that porch? It was like the Itch just decided that enough was more than enough".
"I bet you were starving."
"I was famished, though it didn't feel like that then. It just felt wrong. And it HURT." Jimmy shook his head. "So, anyway, I was standing there practically dry heaving from the pain and the door..."
----------------------------------------
... Opened, and a short, bearded man with silver hair and a lined face peered out at him. His eyes were crinkly and hazel, and his knurled hands were shaking where they gripped a walker.
"Son?" He said in wheezing voice. "I have never seen someone try so hard to push a doorbell before." He pointed a crooked finger at a camera behind Jimmy that he hadn't even noticed. "Is there something I can help you with?"
Jimmy just looked at the man for a moment, still shaking uncontrollably. Then he gasped, "I have your phone." And he showed it to the man.
The man's eyes brightened. "Ah. I'd wondered where it had gotten off to."
He reached for it but Jimmy's hands jerked back involuntarily. "I think." Deep, rasping breaths. "I think you have to... pay me for it."
"Oh." The man scrutinized him, frowning. Then he said. "Would five dollars do?" And he reached one shaking hand into his pocket and, extracting a wallet, pulled out a crisp, green, five dollar bill."
"Ye —" Jimmy choked on the word, and slowly shook his head.
"Ten?"
Still no.
----------------------------------------
"I think, today I could have done it, but —"
"But you aren't starving today."
"No. Not like then."
----------------------------------------
"Would a hundred do?" The man had stopped pulling bills out, but he was still scrutinizing Jimmy curiously.
Jimmy shook his head. He was starting to get a sense for this. "One-fifffff — two hundred — and three?" He managed. "Two hundred and three exactly." And clenched his eyes shut at how that sounded.
"Ah." The man said.
He peered at Jimmy for a long moment. He did not pull out two hundred and three dollars, but he did open the door a little wider. "Why don't you come in, boy," He wheezed. "I have a nice pot of tea brewing. Leaves, not that tea bag stuff. Why don't you sit with me a while. My son just went back to Florida, and I'm... I'm feeling a little lonely today."
He opened the door wider still, backing up with his walker so that Jimmy could squeeze in, and smiled warmly as Jimmy hesitantly did.
"You're not right boy," He said as he led Jimmy inside.
The house was small, but homey, there was a reclining chair and a couch and a wall of bookshelves, with what Jimmy could only describe as tombs, but which were probably encyclopedias and histories and some even looked like religious texts.
In the free wall space there were many pictures. Most with groups of people, several with just two, and those two seemed to age together. And some of them showed a little boy. And then a teenager. And at some point that teenager wore a military uniform and was no longer a teenager anymore.
"Somethings not right in here, is it?" He tapped his head. "The noggin."
Jimmy didn't say anything, but the man continued as Jimmy sat down at the quaint, little glass kitchen table with a small orchid arrangement in the center, and the man passed him a steaming cup of hot tea and eased himself into his chair.
The man held his hand. It vibrated as he held it out. "I've got some experience with problems in the mind, you know? Parkinson's. You see? Can't stop. Diagnosed five years ago today. I used to be a boxer. Was told I was pretty good too." He shrugged. "Now look at me. Some days are better. Some days I can even throw a jab — not a strong one, you understand?" He chuckled. "But a jab. Those days, I go out into the town. Do some shopping. Walk the park and see the sights."
"And some days...." And he shook his head. "They tell me I'll lose my mind eventually. Start to forget things. Forget my wife. My son. Need someone to help me eat. And shit.... The mind. Can't do anything about the mind. Name's Elias, by the way. Elias Biggles. What's your name?"
"J-J-Jimmy," Jimmy stammered.
He suddenly didn't know what to say. How to respond to... but the man was looking at him expectantly, holding his tea with his shaking fingers and sipping at it. And Jimmy did know what to say.
He told the man, about that first day when he woke up and stole his sister toiletries. He told him how his hands moved and snatching things. Stealing from his friends, and pickpocketing strangers. How he HURT when he gave them back. His terror that it was getting worse. And how today....
His eyes were leaking into his tea at this point. His hands shaking only a little bit less violently then the man sitting in front of him. "I can't stop. And today... today I...." Jimmy couldn't say it, but he could do one better. He picked the phone up and flipped it into a card. Cellphone of a Kind Man, it read now. It had changed.
He waited breathlessly for the man to jump. To flinch. To throw his tea cup at him... but he didn't. His eyes squinted. "Ah. He said at last. You're one of those folk. You know? I had feeling."
The man held his hand out for the card and Jimmy tried to place it in his hand, but of course, it slipped through his fingers. So Jimmy placed it on the table and the man peered at it. "It's beautiful." The man said at last. "Those colors. Like the oce —"
"It's evil!" Jimmy burst out. "I'm evil!"
"I just watched a boy doing his damnedest for ten minutes to give a phone back to an old man." The man said simply. "Evil?" He shook his head. "Can't do anything about the mind. In fairness the mind can't do anything about the body either." And he chuckled. "Got to work together, you see?"
"But I'm a Super. They're... they —"
"Going to destroy the world?" The man chuckled again and winked. "I read the news papers. Hear the radio. Supers. The next evil." He smirked ruefully. "Causing mayhem. Going to destroy the world and all that." He shook his head.
"People destroy the world, Jimmy. People. And people were doing a damn fine job of it long before Supers started showing up. But you do have a problem boy. Let's talk about it."
----------------------------------------
"And he gave you the idea for the contracts?"
"Not the full idea." Jimmy said. "He didn't know about Arbitrage and all that. And I don't think I ever told him about my ability to find things that were MINE. But he said 'Can't do anything about the mind, boy. Can't live with it...'"
----------------------------------------
"... And you can't shoot it. But you can work with it. Sometimes I wake up, and it's a bad day. And I know, it's a day to stay in. Let my mind rest. Maybe heal a little or do whatever it needs to do. Other days I demand. I say 'You know, mind, I gave you my Monday and Tuesday. So you best give me my Wednesday, you hear?' And I go to town."
The man shrugged and smiled sadly. "Doctors think I'm crazy. They say it'll stop working like that. But so far, it works. And when it doesn't, it just means I need to figure something else out with it. Got to work together with the mind. You need to find a way, Jimmy. Something that works for both of you."
"You mean... compromise with it?" Jimmy's voice was shrill.
Elias smiled sadly and winked at him with his crinkly eyes. "Keep the phone boy." He said simply.
And they sipped their tea in silence.
----------------------------------------
"Did you see him again?"
"Once. When I got the idea for the contracts I went back to visit him. See what he thought of it. I explained about Arbitrage, the tiered AI system of arbitration, and what I figured I could do with it and my powers. Turned out he knew some things about contracts and he helped me write the first basic outline. He moved to Florida soon after though to spend the rest of his time with his son."
"Ah." Kaykes was looking a bit wide eyed at this point. "You, know, if this were a story, he'd have left you the deed and keys to his house."
Jimmy flourished a pair of keys.
Kaykes toppled out of her seat with a yelp.
Jimmy laughed. "Nah. These are Tom's. Were at least. Sometimes I've got bad days, you know? I need to stay in."
"Asshole." She stuck her tongue out at him and picked herself up off the ground, righted her chair and plopped herself back into it. She studied him.
"You still think you're evil, bro?"
Jimmy shrugged. "Yes. No. I don't know. There's something dark about my power, Kaykes. Most of the time its really cool."
Jimmy waved his hand above himself and cards soared into the air.
Meager Bike Chain
Stun Stick of Power!
Violent Chair
Brick... for Brick Things
There were many more, and they flowed together above him in a slow figure eight of oceanic color.
Once and Future Blow Drier That had been his mothers... once.
Mattress — Moderately Used
Jimmy smiled up at them and his sister was watching them too with her mouth slightly open as the cards flowed and folded over themselves in flight like a school of fish.
"And the bad parts... they seem kind of innocent on the surface. A bit whimsical even." He looked at his sister. "Not like Legion's, at least."
His sister raised an eyebrow. "You think he doesn't have a choice?"
"I think Sashaya doesn't have power's." Was all Jimmy said.
"My power is not like Legion's, Kaykes, but it's got its own skeletons. And I'm pretty sure if I look too deep, I'll see them. I feed off of people, and I can't stop. We can talk about working with the Itch all we want, but in the end of the day, Elias worked with his mind to figure out whether to go shopping or not. Me? It's whether I take something from someone else."
They were silent for a long, long time after that.
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"It's really hard to come after a wise old man with Parkinson's, Jimmy. But I have my own take, if you want to hear it." His sister sounded hesitant.
"Of course I do, Kaykes."
She took a breath.
"Have you ever read the books after Ender's game, Jimmy?"
Jimmy blinked. That was... not where he thought she was going. "I mean... I read the first. Can't miss out on the classics. But I never really got through the second one."
"Right. So the first one was definitely the best. But the ones after that changed. Took a more philosophical bend." Kaykes paused for a second. Then she continued slowly.
"They didn't so much in the first book, but in the later ones they talked a lot about inter-species philosophy. They kept classifying different species as Ramen — like the soup — or Varelze. Is this ringing any bells?"
Jimmy shook his head.
"Any species that was compatible with the majority of human norms were Ramen, but then you got some who's way of life, species specific need, what have you, was so dichotomous to ours as to essentially be zero sum."
"If you're Ramen, we're good and can work something out, if your not...." Kaykes made a face and moved a finger across her neck. "Eternal war and damnation."
"Here's the deal Jimmy," She said. "I'm not a wise old man. I've not even been around the block that long. Barely through High School." Kaykes chuckled without mirth.
"But the way I see it, Jimmy. A lot of our good and evil philosophy boils down to what's good for humans as a group. We can kind of extrapolate that to adjacent species like monkeys or dogs and say that chopping off a limb is probably evil, but if you start championing the rights of cockroaches to not be gassed, you've got another thing coming.
Kaykes looked at him long and steadily, and Jimmy thought, a little angrily.
"I think — I think If scientists came out today and said vegetables actually had bright and thriving cultures, all of humanity would be appalled. But that wouldn't stop anyone from chopping up carrots and serving them for dinner. All these contracts? Helping people who've lost things? Making it work? I dig it. I really do. But if something goes wrong. If you can't make it work for both humanity and you, then fuck your skeletons, Jimmy. In a zero sum game, your not evil if you choose you."