It has been six weeks since the portal opened in the United Nations building, and today was the day the world really changed. The information packet provided by the multiversal authorities had leaked about when Tessa had said it would, but it didn’t reveal the speculation that the world would gain superpowered individuals. Terrance was at his computer desk in his home office which was off the side of his living room. Making the news circuit was the man who survived a building fire due to his ability to manipulate fire emerging. The fire guy even was demonstrating his powers now. It was hard to deny the reality of someone actively making shapes out of fire on a live broadcast in the middle of a field. Now, smaller stories began making the rounds about people doing things that had previously just been passed off as hoaxes.
“Tessa, what are your hypotheses or theories on what powers someone gains? Is this guy a coincidence, a bit of survivorship bias, or did his environment influence his power?” Terrance asked Tessa who was sitting on the couch.
“No one on my earth reached a consensus, but my opinion is a mix of environment affecting power formation and personality. It is not a definitive thing but there was at least a trend on Earth-255 of more creative people getting powers a little bit different than just extra strength or speed, while most professional athletes seemed to get something that made them better at their sport. I think we also had a few cases like that guy emerging where their power helped them out of a bad situation. That level of power wasn’t something we saw until near the end of people getting powers though.” Tessa said then trailed off into contemplative silence.
“Does that mean this earth is going to trend towards a significantly stronger genre effect?” Terrance asked. Tessa was using Terrance’s smart tablet and was frowning.
“That seems likely. I’m looking through some of these other stories that are popping up, and assuming they are true, this is going to be much more of a change than I predicted. I’m going to have to go talk to the Council of Terrance about this before more things happen.” Tessa said.
“I know I can’t leave this universe yet to go with you, so please be careful.”
“Like I’m going to do anything stupid on purpose” she shot back testily.
“You know what I mean, this is more than you said would happen this fast and the implications of that are worrying me.”
Tessa softened and nodded. “You are right, this has me worried too. I will head out today and should be back tomorrow. The sooner I do it, the fewer people have powers. I don’t know how much info is making it back right now, so I’ll need to let them all know and see what kind of resources might be needed to protect you.”
Terrance got up from his desk and started walking to the kitchen. He said, “I really appreciate that. I will go pack up some leftovers you can take for dinner in case you get busy”
Tessa smiled at Terrance worrying about her. The Council was supposed to be protecting him, but he had been worried about her even more since she started staying in his guest room. He would make sure he cooked plenty for both of them even if she was out doing something. He let her use whatever he had around, including his smart tablet. He had even offered to get her a laptop and printer if she needed one to take information back and forth. She had refused that offer for now, explaining that soon she would be able to bring over one of the multiversal laptops the Council of Terrance had made and would update it to include new universe standards. She had one before, but it was being fitted to accommodate the Earth-256 standards. She was pretty sure that enough time had gone by that she could sneak it through with the Council’s backing even if the moratorium on tech exchanges had not been lifted yet. She didn’t tell Terrance yet because in case she was wrong, but she was pretty sure she could get him one too. Earth-248 had cracked super dense information storage, so she wanted to see the look on Terrance’s face when she gave him a laptop with a petabyte of storage, an operating system that could natively run nearly any software, and a terabyte of RAM.
She would definitely be peeking into his mind at the time.
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She came into the kitchen and saw Terrance rummaging through the fridge and wanted to give him a startle. She snuck over but at the last second went for a hug from behind instead.
“I’ll be fine, and so will you,” she said. She was getting flashbacks to her own world’s change. They had called it an upheaval, and it certainly was for Tessa. She didn’t want to dwell on that right now though.
“Thanks, Tessa. I don’t think I’ve ever had as good a friend as you or even clicked this well with someone before. You are a me from another universe though, so I wonder what that says about me.” Terrance muttered as he turned around to face her.
“Hey, none of that. You are awesome, almost as awesome as me. The rest of the people in your universe just suck much more than me. I mean, look at me.” Tessa said as she stepped back and did a little spin and then propped her hands on her hips in a pose. She continued, “I was superpowered before anyone in this universe after all. And as far as I can tell, we had similar lives before the respective multiverse integration. I didn’t get along with many people either.”
Tessa went to swat Terrance’s chest, but her hand lingered and turned it into a more tender touch than she had planned. She attempted to brush past it and ignore the psychic connection she had just accidentally formed with Terrance.
“Did you just broadcast your emotions to me, Tessa?” Terrance asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it right now. I need to get going anyway,” she said a little embarrassedly.
“Alright, you know you can talk to me about that later if you want. I will have a lunchbox packed in a few minutes, so you can go get together whatever you need to take. You got that reciprocal driver's license, so you can borrow my car if you need to, you are at least provisionally on the insurance now to make things easier.”
---
Terrance was alone now, just like he had been for years.
'Why does it feel so empty now?' he thought. Terrance liked being alone, but apparently, he liked having Tessa around more.
Terrance couldn't decide how he felt about Tessa. He obviously liked her, but the question of how much he should like her bothered him. He was attracted to her, but wasn't that strange since she was kind of him from another universe? She was also kind of here on a job to look out for him. He was pretty sure all her interactions were genuine, but there was some doubt when he thought about it as her job right now. She was also very touchy, probably more than she realized. He would hear her tiptoeing behind him like she was going to try and scare him just to be met by her poking him or patting his shoulder or something. And then she gave him that hug and apparently accidentally shared her emotions with him before she left. He had felt a lot of loss and sadness there, as well as what seemed to be some attraction towards him. Based on what Terrance understood about autism, he just didn't have the same mirror neurons as neurotypical people, and his brain was literally a bit different. He felt he had his own advantages, but he definitely lacked the innate ability to read people. It was all analysis and pattern matching facial tics, body language, microexpressions, etc. to his mental database of what that likely indicated the person was thinking or feeling. That was one of the reasons it was so much less exhausting just to deal with people digitally for his freelance work. Tessa didn't exhaust him the same way.
Aside from the fact that she was pretty honest about how she felt, she often accidentally blasted her emotions when she was in the same room as him. He hadn't wanted to embarrass her by pointing it out, so she just accepted that as part of her. Terrance had coworkers and work acquaintances, and his brother in another state, but he didn't really like talking to most people. That reminded him he should check on his brother. They weren't very close, but Terrance still checked in on him. Apparently, some Terrances had brothers or sisters and some didn't. As far as he could tell, there didn't seem to be any consistency with that. He had passed on what info he could to help his brother stay safe, but he didn't really take Terrance seriously and told him he was worrying about nothing. Terrance would still try, but his brother and he were not very similar. Terrance's parents had died in a car crash a few years ago. Terrance felt a migraine coming on, so he went to take medication for it. He sent his brother a text while he sat with the lights off and the medicine kicked in. He had his eyes closed when he felt a boom. He immediately looked outside but he didn't see anything. He next checked social media for his area to see what was happening.
The posts did not fill him with hope.
> It was aliens, I swear!
> > No way, loser, troll somewhere else 🖕
> I saw a plane go down
> > me too
> > it landed in my neighborhood, theres trail of houses that are just gone
> > There are fires here
> > > how does that line up wit a plane goin down???
Terrance saw more things like this constantly popping up. It would be impossible to know what was actually happening until the news started covering it, but seemed like multiple people mentioned a plane going down. Was it possible more than one plane went down, or did a lot of people happen to catch sight of it?