Volume 3: Meristem
Issue 6: Snake Eyes
Florian Reyes Honeywell
By Roach
A tiny bell chimed over my head when I entered Aesop’s. The café was strangely empty for a Saturday morning. Then again, the main customer base were students, who were all occupied with the Science Fair. Aesop tended to the counter by himself, offering a wave as I passed by.
I found Camilo sitting at a booth in the corner of the café, partially sheltered by shelves of comic books. The illusion of “Chad” had disappeared. Now, he rested his chin in his hand, and stared out the window—perhaps toward the Starbucks, I wondered.
“Hey.” I sat down across from him.
“Hi,” he mumbled. He fidgeted with a set of dice, presumably from the assortment of board games which cluttered the table.
We were both quiet. “So… That was something,” I said, after a pause.
“God, she gets on my nerves,” he groaned, referring to Amber.
“Can’t say I blame you.” I lowered my voice. “So, what happened? Did your illusion… I don’t know, crack or something?”
Camilo shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“But how did she see us?”
Camilo moved the dice between his left and right hand. After going back and forth a couple of times, he looked up at me. “Robot eyes.”
“What?”
“She has robot eyes!” he blurted out.
“Shh!” I hissed. I looked around. Aesop was still at the counter, wiping a coffee mug. He didn’t seem troubled by the proclamation. In a calmer voice, I said, “Care to explain?”
With a sigh, he slumped deeper into his seat. “Well. My… skill can’t affect non-living things, remember?” He closed his palms over the dice, shaking them lightly. “So, with the right technology, like cameras… or, dare I say, robot eyes, she could see through it.” He rolled the dice. “Yahtzee.”
I looked at dice: all showed aces. He picked out a scorecard among the games, then noted the numbers down. He shoved the dice towards me.
When I rolled, the numbers amounted to 1, 2, 2, 5, and 6. “Come on, it’s Amber we’re talking about.” I re-rolled, ending up with a total of four aces. I noted my score on the card and turned the dice over to Camilo. “She’s too evil to be a robot.”
“You’re saying robots can’t be evil? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” He rolled again as he spoke. “A robot feels no compassion, and thus, no remorse. It has the ultimate potential for evil. Yahtzee.” The dice showed all 2s.
“Well, if a robot feels no compassion or remorse, you’re implying it doesn’t feel anything. If that’s the case, can it really distinguish between good and evil?” I rolled. 1, 3, 4, 4, and 5. I re-rerolled. No 2s.
“Let’s say, hypothetically, it could. Then what?” He rolled all 3s. “Yahtzee.”
“Then I would question its programming.” I rolled. There were no 3s. “Look, I’m not here to argue robot ethics with you. But I agree that there could be some kind of… ability at play.”
“But how many people can have powers at a single high school? How could it possibly be more than two?” He rolled. All 4s. “Yahtzee.”
I glanced over my shoulder, checking on Aesop. He had his back turned to us as he rearranged the cupboards, humming along to an indistinct pop song on the radio. I looked back to Camilo.
I mulled it over. During my late nights scouring online forums and articles, I had read a fair amount about superpowers and how they work. A lot of it went over my head—and, to be fair, scientists still didn’t fully understand most of it—but some of the statistics had stuck with me. “I think something like two in every thousand people have powers.” The numbers ran through my head. “We’re around 1,500 students, right? Which would amount to… I’d say three… Three people. Maybe even four, just from standard deviation.” I rolled the dice. 2, 2, 3, 3, 3. No 4s.
“Really?” Camilo stared blankly at the scorecard. “That’s like… A lot, isn’t it? Are you sure?”
“Well, if you think about it, powers come from the third helix… which is already in most people’s DNA.”
“The what?”
“You know, from biology?”
“You actually pay attention in bio?”
Ignoring his comment, I continued, “So, with the increase in powertech and stuff, a lot more people get abilities. Even if their third helix is technically dormant, some drugs can activate it. At least, that’s what I read. Or something like that.” I didn’t fully understand the technicalities, and my own powers were neither innate nor technologically enhanced. If anything, I considered them parasitical. But regardless of how they worked, I knew that the third helix had something to do with why my body had adapted to the swarm instead of dying from it.
As for powers that were artificial in nature, I usually only heard about them when something bad happened. The news would report on how someone powered up by drugs lost control and hurt someone else, or died themselves in response to their newfound abilities. I could only guess how many slipped under the radar. Presumably enough to sway the statistics. Enough to create Ambers, even.
“Huh.” I expected him to say more, but instead, he rolled the dice. A 2, 3, 5, followed by a pair of snake eyes, glaring at him. “That’s… really interesting.” I wasn’t sure if he referred to the roll or the power statistics.
“Finally decided not to cheat anymore?” I reached for the dice.
“I’m not cheating.”
“No one rolls only Yahtzees.”
“Maybe I’m just lucky.”
“Or maybe you’re just cheating.” I rolled. 1, 1, 2, 3, 4. I re-rolled. No 5s.
“You’re no fun.” He rolled. All 6s. “Yahtzee.” A grin replaced his formerly contemplative expression.
His score totaled 80, while mine amounted to 4. If I still had my phone, I could have used my camera to see through his illusions and work out the actual scores. But maybe it was for the best that we avoided revisiting the robot hypothesis. “Either way, what do we do about Amber?”
“Right now?” Camilo fidgeted with the pencil. “Nothing. She may know about us, but we also know about her.”
“So… Mutually assured destruction.”
“Exactly. If she tries to out us, she can’t do it without risking that we expose her.”
I nodded. “But I still think we should keep an eye on her. I don’t know what she’s up to, but whatever it is, I don’t like it. I’d also like to figure out what she can actually do… Before we jump to any wild conclusions.” I gave him a look, daring him to bring up the robots again.
“Can’t say I disagree.” Camilo noted a few more numbers onto the scorecard. “Should we go back to school, then?”
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I dreaded the idea of returning to the fair. Although I had just proposed that we keep an eye on her, I wasn’t in the mood to run into her again. Or Dr. Morris. Or my mom. Or anyone. But then again, going home wasn’t exactly ideal either. How would I explain to my parents that I ran off?
Camilo seemed to have picked up on my reaction when he said, “I know somewhere else we could go.”
“Yeah?”
“Come on.” He got up and headed over to the counter. For a moment, I lingered by the table. I glanced at the dice. They still showed 6s. Was he holding onto the illusion, or had he really rolled that high? I blinked. Although Camilo was busy making his order, the dice remained the same. I followed after him.
“Do you need anything? I’m just waiting for my coffee,” he said when I approached.
I shook my head. “I’m good.”
“So you weren’t up all night working on the stupid poster?”
“Nope.”
Aesop turned to Camilo with freshly brewed coffee. “Is today the Science Fair?” he asked.
“Sure is,” Camilo said.
“Any crazy experiments this year?”
“The usual antics.” Camilo handed him cash in exchange for the steaming cup. “Just beware of the flesh-eating ladybugs, and you’ll be fine.” He shot me a playful glance, and I rolled my eyes in turn.
“Will keep that in mind, then,” Aesop replied.
We headed outside, and took the bus to the Ranger Memorial Mall. The mall had been built over the remnants of an older neighborhood. The neighborhood itself had been destroyed in a villain attack over a decade ago—mid-2000s, I believed. The mall was named after one of the heroes, Ranger, who died in the attack.
It all happened just before I was born, but maybe that was exactly why I got so acquainted with Ranger during my childhood. In the years following his death, his toyline increased in popularity and he got his own movie trilogy. I wasn’t old enough to watch the movies at the time, but young enough for his action figures, cartoons, and comics.
Outside the mall, there was a fountain featuring a statue of Ranger in its center. The statue was pale like marble, erasing the typically darker red and yellow colors of his costume. But his most iconic feature remained: the five falcons which either perched on his shoulders, arms, or hovered above him. His shoulders were padded, while he wore thick leather gloves to protect himself from their talons.
There had been a lot of speculation on the nature of his falcons. Obviously, I had never seen them in the flesh—but that was the thing, they didn’t necessarily have flesh to begin with. Most witnesses described the falcons like they were made out of light. They could fade in and out of existence, and their touch left burn scars on their victims. Some theorized that they were manifestations of photons or some type of energy, others said they were ghosts. But most people leaned toward the energy theory, since Ranger’s arrows appeared to be made of the same material as the falcons. The ghost theory, on the other hand, had sprung out from a rumor that his falcons had made an appearance during his memorial service.
Camilo and I sat down at the edge of the fountain. Its water chuckled softly, while coins glimmered beneath the surface. Occasionally, people passed us by on the way into the mall, but it wasn’t too busy for a Saturday.
Only a minute had gone by when a flock of pigeons descended upon us. They pranced at Camilo’s feet, or perched next to the stone falcons. My classmate pulled a bag of peanuts from his pocket, then scattered them around the pigeons. They eagerly scooped up the nuts in their beaks.
“Do you want to feed them?” Camilo offered the peanut bag to me.
“Is it… Is it allowed?” I said, nodding to the nearby sign which explicitly said DO NOT FEED THE PIGEONS.
He shrugged. “It is if no one can see it.”
“Right,” I said. Cautiously, I reached into the bag and scattered a handful of peanuts.
“That’s Gladiator.” He pointed to a brown and white pigeon, picking at a nut.
“From your survey?” I said, remembering his Science Fair project.
“Yep. And there’s Bullseye.” This time, he pointed to a one-eyed pigeon.
“Like the hero?” I asked. Ironically, Bullseye had been Ranger’s sidekick. Her power? She was amazing with a slingshot. And she could calculate the trajectory of her ammo, sending them flying like ping pong balls.
“Yeah, she used to be one of my favorites growing up.” Camilo chuckled, as if the admission embarrassed him slightly. “But these days I like Mr. Mystery more. What about you? Do you have a favorite?”
“Do you promise not to laugh?”
“Maybe.”
“It’s… It’s, uh, Champion,” I said.
Camilo burst out laughing.
“I know it’s the most basic thing ever. You don’t have to rub it in.”
“Sorry, it’s just so comically basic,” he said in between laughter.
I tossed another handful of peanuts at the pigeons. “Are you done yet?”
“No, I don’t think I’ll ever be done.” His laughter faded to a grin. “But why Champion?”
“Well… What’s so wrong with basic?” When I thought about it, it was very simple. “He was strong, and to the point.”
“To the point? What do you mean?”
“Like… At the end of the day, he tried to help people.”
“Isn’t that just the job description?”
“Yeah… But I guess what I mean is that Champion was never about the action or the movie deals, or anything like that. Maybe that stuff came after his time, but still. He did what he could to help people when they needed it.”
“That makes sense…” Camilo nodded slowly. “Sometimes it feels like heroes just want an excuse to use their powers. Just look at Seraph. Like, once you’ve stopped the bad guy, that should be enough, you know? Torturing them is overkill.” One of the pigeons landed next to him, eyeing the peanut bag. “I don’t ever want to be like that.”
“Me neither,” I agreed. Seraph had a reputation for her violent methods—it was hard to overlook how she had hung the Gentleman from a streetlamp, stringing him up by his own guts. Maybe she had stopped a bank robbery, but only after sinking to the villain’s level, if not lower… Then, of course, there were the ensuing controversies. Not really wanting to delve into all of that, I asked him instead, “When did you first think about being a hero?”
“Hmm… It’s been about two years since I got my powers,” Camilo replied. “I guess there was never really a moment where I made a decision. But since then, I always thought that I could make things better one day.” He looked at me, smiling faintly. “What about you?”
I felt the same way, in the sense that I’d never had a specific moment where I thought I’d become a hero. I still didn’t really know what it meant to be a hero. When we took down the monster, it seemed within reach… But then, when it came to dealing with people like Amber, my powers were completely useless. “I don’t know,” I finally said. “The swarm…” I stopped myself, anticipating that the Queen would say or do something to stop me from talking about her. She usually did if I ever tried to talk about the swarm, her “empire,” but it wasn’t like Camilo didn’t already know about my powers. So, when she didn’t react, I continued—thinking more carefully about what words to use. “I only changed last summer. And I can’t say I felt very optimistic about it. I still don’t, a lot of the time.” I paused, waiting for the Queen’s reaction. When it seemed like I hadn’t said the wrong thing yet, I resumed my train of thought, “If I ever thought about being a hero, it was only a daydream. A way to cope with…” I exhaled. “Anyway, so I guess it’s not until recently that I thought I could actually do something with the swarm. After we, you know…” I trailed off.
Camilo listened intently to me. Then, he said, “Yeah, me too.” For a while, the only sounds were the trickling water and coos of the pigeons. I dipped my fingertips into the fountain, letting its sprout wash over my hand. He continued, “So… Do you want to talk about it? What happened to you, I mean?”
The swarm churned within me, their bristling hitting me like vertigo. “Uh, I…” My words got stuck in my throat, like the bees I always had to repress. Before I could figure out something to say, my thoughts were interrupted by a ringing sound.
Camilo fished his phone from his pocket. He furrowed his brows. “So… It says you’re calling me.”
My eyes widened with realization. “Shit. It’s my mom.” Since I had left her with my phone, she must have decided to try to contact someone once she realized that I had disappeared… And Camilo was the last person I texted.
Camilo looked at the phone with an uncomfortable intensity, as if I had just dumped a grenade into his hand.
“Just… let me take it,” I said, reluctantly. I would have preferred not to speak with her, but I knew it would only get worse the longer I held it off. And I would rather she didn’t raise any alarms about my sudden disappearance.
He handed me the phone. I picked up. My mom’s voice came through, “Hello? Is Florian there?”
“Hey, it’s me,” I muttered.
“Where on Earth are you?” Her tone was hard, as if she resisted the urge to raise her voice.
“I needed some fresh air. It’s… It’s the migraines again,” I said. It was an excuse I had leaned on before, especially when the swarm first hijacked my body. But it was an excuse that worked.
Although it didn’t erase her frustration, her tone softened a little. “You can’t just leave like that. Who is with you? Who’s… Who’s this Camilo?”
“A classmate,” I said.
“You’ve never talked about him.”
“You never asked,” I retorted.
“Look, you can’t leave without telling me first. You worried me.”
“Sorry, I just didn’t feel well. I’m heading home now, okay?”
I heard her exhale into the speaker. “Fine. We’ll talk later.”
“Okay. Bye.”
“See you.” She hung up. I returned the phone to Camilo.
“Sorry, I’m gonna have to go now…” The pigeons flapped their wings, shifting as I rose to my feet. “Thanks for introducing me to Gladiator and Bullseye.”
“Of course,” Camilo said. “Are you gonna be in trouble?”
I shrugged. “I guess I’ll find out.” I knew she would be annoyed with me, but somehow, I wasn’t too worried about any repercussions. My parents would leave for their next survey soon enough, so at that point, what would she do about me anyway? “See you at school?” I said.
“Yeah, see ya.”
Before I left, I looked back to the fountain one more time. Camilo remained sitting on its rim—Ranger’s statue loomed over him, while pigeons strutted around his feet.
He waved to me. I waved back, and left for home.