Emerging from a weary haze of half-remembered dreams and darkness, Ben's mind was being intruded upon by the annoying, repetitive buzz of his dollar-store alarm clock. He rolled over the width of his king-sized bed and slapped the snooze aggressively. Annoyed the warmth and comfort he'd built up overnight was now leaving him, he rolled back into his blankets to retain as much heat as he could.
A floating orb of transparent light entered the master bedroom, intruding further on the comfortable darkness, then spoke in a synthesized female voice, "Good morning, Benjamin!"
"Good morning, Idet," grumbled the bed enthusiast. "What's on the schedule for today?"
"Just a three o'clock vote on the new sewer system," said the disembodied luminescent essence. "Mayor Wilkinson was afraid the weather would turn foul, so he set it up as a video conference."
"Anything else?" he asked, hugging a pillow.
"Your assistant, Hannah Sinclair? Her birthday's in two weeks. I'm fairly certain that preparing a gift is customary here, isn't it?"
"It is," Ben said as he hugged the comforter tightly to his body in a losing war against the cold. "She's nineteen, isn't she?"
"That is correct."
"Yet she still walks to work," Ben reminisced. "Idet, I've got new homework for you. Get Hannah a car, a work horse that isn't cheap, but not so expensive that she'll feel indebted to me for gifting it for her birthday. You have permission to review her social media and find what her preferences are, but that's tertiary to the car's function. Make sure it's something she'll actually use and try to argue the price down to something amicable between both parties. Use this to practice as much custom and courtesy as you can."
"Yes, sir," Idet cheerfully responded, then her light faded.
Fully awake now that his cheeks were pink from the cold, Benjamin Hersh threw the covers off and embraced the cold as his cruel mistress. Sliding his feet over the side of the bed, he thanked whoever cared to listen that he'd installed carpeting in his bedroom, insulating his feet from the frozen floorboards.
"IDET," Ben shouted, and the glowing ball returned, "why the hell is it so cold?"
"You instructed me to maintain the house with only your councilman's salary. Due to the water main break thirteen days ago, we do not have enough money to last for the month without dipping into savings. After some research, I concluded the most economical approach would be to lower electricity consumption within money-saving parameters."
Ben grumbled something about having to living in poverty, "What were the alternatives?"
"Dipping into savings," Idet listed, "limiting water consumption, selling a few house decorations, or starting a fight with the utilities company that the meter is trash. You know, it's been charging us for the ambient electricity merely existing through the wires. If we replace the ten gauge copper wires with the much more efficient twelve gauge gold variety, we could be saving almost-"
"Idet," Ben announced passive-aggressively, rubbing his temples in the cold as he pulled a pair of chilled jeans onto his legs, "if this is another one of those 'zero point zero one percent efficiency increase' schemes, I'm going to strangle you with my freezing cold hands."
"You cannot strangle me," Idet remarked, "I do not technically exist within the parameters of your reality."
Ben buttoned up his shirt and donned the warmest winter jacket he had to hand while saying, "You know what I mean. I know you know what I mean, I've already given you homework on hyperbole. And you also know that I have ways of altering both of our realities to make good on my threat. I'll be reviewing my finances at work, and if there's a flaw in your math, this house better be nice and warm by the time I get back."
With the aches of an old man, Ben opened his bedroom door and stepped through the sonic-shower installed in the frame, lifting a slight dust off of his jacket. He followed a small hallway down to a kitchen where the coffee maker had already been running and was now dispensing a viscous brown fluid into a pre-placed mug. He let it finish before grabbing the mug and taking a sip.
"Five grand for some Columbian roast and a machine that'll do it justice, and it still tastes like ass," he remarked before dumping the coffee into the sink.
He tapped the fridge and initiated a heads-up display. It listed out the various ingredients in the fridge and all the recipes that could go with them, but he tapped a settings option to organize in order of what was about to expire. Both his bread and his eggs were a few days from their 'best by' date, suggesting french toast for breakfast.
"Oh yeah," Ben remarked, "I got those eggs to practice omelettes. Why didn't I use them?"
He tapped on his history for his meals and saw that there were two days where he didn't make breakfast and remembered, "That's right! The tiki masala came in bulk and I had the leftovers for breakfast!"
He selected the french toast and a screen popped up with suggested finishings. When he pressed on cheese, a little notice popped up saying his last five meals had high cholesterol content.
"You don't tell me what to do!" Ben griped at his fridge. "Just for that, I'm using butter to grease the pan!"
Ben got a frying pan and mixing bowl, scrambled the eggs while the pan was heating up, then dipped his bread slices in the egg and slapped them onto a freshly buttered pan. He cooked them up nicely, garnishing some with cheese and the rest with a light sugar confection.
Ben didn't even take the finished product to a table to sit down, he just ate them as they came off the skillet. One of the very, very few perks of living alone.
With breakfast sorted, the diligent councilman walked across his living room to a door adjacent a set of stairs leading down to a basement. He opened the door to reveal a two-car garage reeking of oil fumes and brake fluid. In front of him was a rust-bucket 1997 Ram Pickup 1500 with a sparkly set of snow tires. In the second parking spot was the demon car itself, a cherry-red 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat, with a front hood open and a suspiciously empty engine block.
Ben climbed into the drivers seat of the pickup and started the ignition to hear the gates of hell open as the engine roared to life. Opening the garage door, Ben thundered across the foot-high snow bank faster than he could press the remote to close the garage door. He circled the little subdivision he called home, barely staying below the speed limit and barely drifting at all, then hit his garage door remote on the second time around. With the roar of a diesel, he rocketed out of the housing enclosure and soared onto the main road passing through Medina township.
None of the roads had been salted or plowed, something Ben took mental note of to bring it up to the town transportation department, but he already knew how relaxed the mayor was about work.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
And he knew that had to change. Being easy-going was one thing, but Mayor Wilkinson was almost negligent in his duties as a public official. Certainly giving local government and schools a day off when snow was piled up to the knees made sense, but not everyone had it so easy. At least salt the roads before a major snowfall, at least!
Ben had to take a few breaths, and step back. Maybe the guys who drove the plows had some extenuating circumstances. There were always freak accidents to consider.
As Ben tested the front bumper of his truck over a particularly high snow build-up, he noticed someone walking in the snow, bundled up to their teeth. The councilman slowed his monster down as he wondered what mad bastard would be walking through snow this deep, until he recognized the red knit cap.
"HANNAH!" he shouted, half angry and half worried. "What the hell's gotten into you?"
"Just going to work, sir!" the studious assistant shouted through her scarf. "I might be a bit late, but I'll work overtime!"
"You have the day off! Didn't you get the mayor's text yesterday?"
"Didn't you?" Hannah responded.
"You're as stubborn as I like," Ben shouted. "Get in, I'll get you the rest of the way!"
Hanna plowed through the snow around Ben's car and climbed into the passenger seat. She shook the snow off onto the floor, then undid her mittens and placed her chilled hands in front of the air vents blasting a furnace-like heat.
"Seriously," Ben said, "what's the occasion that you'd brave the snow like this just to go to work?"
Hannah seemed hesitant to say, but she underhandedly mentioned, "My dad got a new girlfriend, and... she likes me out of the house as much as possible."
"Ah," Ben ended his line of questioning.
Of what little the councilman had been able to pry about his assistant's home life, her dirt-bag father had won a small-time lottery and was drinking through the winnings. A string of girlfriends came and went, hoping to get their own grubby hands on the money but unable to handle the drunken spaz even for a cash prize. On her first day as his assistant, Ben had to call Hannah into his office for a frank discussion about the bruises, but Hannah went to almost suicidal lengths to ensure that Ben would keep it a secret. He made sure she had his number on her at all times and that she could call for help if anything too serious happened.
"What about you?" Hannah asked. "Don't tell me you got out of bed just to spend some quality time in an empty office?"
Ben pursed his lips, "I didn't know when I bought these snow tires that Mayor Wilkinson was allergic to snow. Also, my water main broke and it's costing more than I thought, so my heat's off right now."
The rusted out Dodge pulled up to a mostly empty city center. It was a large building for such a small township because it was partially comprised of the police and fire departments. Ben recognized the police chief's car, as well as a few firemen who were stationed there. He parked his truck and went into the municipal side of the complex, turning on the lights and enjoying the lukewarm air as it washed over him. He hobbled over to his office to strip his thick outer layers and sit at his desk for an honest day's work. He lit a candle that cackled like firewood and started his computer up.
He sorted files, managed some spreadsheets about committee assignments, checked his budget balance and found that Idet was right, he'd pulled too much for the water main break. He called to apologize when a young man with shoulders like paving stone slabs approached his office and stood outside the door.
"Can I help you?" Ben asked cautiously.
"I'm James," the young man greeted, "the new guy at the fire department. The chief sent me over here and told me to stand outside your door until you say otherwise."
"Ah," Ben exclaimed, "and did he tell you why?"
"No," said the confused ward.
"It's because I am the only person in the whole county registered as a meta-human," Ben stated, and he saw the young man's face go through a range of emotions. "That's right, and I make sure to tell everyone that I work around what my power is because it's an area-related one. Did you ever play 'catch'?"
"Catch?" asked the confused boy. "Sure."
Ben opened a drawer and grabbed a packet of playing cards, then tossed them to James and said, "Catch!"
James fumbled the packet for a second before analyzing them to make sure he wasn't being tricked.
"Here's a demonstration of my power," Ben announced, "I want you to take the cards out of that pack and shuffle them to your heart's content. When you're ready, pull a card and make sure I don't see it. When you've got the card, put your arm past the line on the floor and I'll tell you what it is."
James looked down and noticed for the first time that a blue masking tape line had been stuck to the ground. He shuffled the cards as requested and pulled out a seven of diamonds. He stretched his arm out past the line on the carpet and James smiled.
"Seven of Diamonds," he named, and James smiled. "Make it a little harder, shuffle again and pull out seven cards."
James did as he was told and Ben said, "From left to right: king, three, four, ace, nine, seven, jack; diamond, heart, spade, diamond, diamond, spade, club."
"That's right!" James exclaimed, stepping forward. "How did you-"
"Tut-tut-tut-tut," Ben stuttered, backing away from James before the boy could get too close. "It's because my power is three-dimensional sight. I can see all sides of things within a limited range, which is that tape. That includes the backs of those cards, and the wax that covers them, as well as the pulp of the paper underneath. My power can even see inside people, including all your guts and anything that might be personal to you. If you have a medical condition that you don't want people to know about, or even something that might be illegal, understand that I see everything."
"Everything?" the young boy asked, crossing his legs a bit as something came to mind.
"Everything," Ben assured, "even the clear nail polish you have on."
James curled his fingers into a fist as he considered what he was just told.
"Now, I need to assure you, I am absolutely confined to secrecy on all matters that don't threaten everyone else," Ben continued. "I can't tell anyone, not even you, about anything that's going on in your body. If you have cancer, or irritable bowel syndrome, that is a secret that will remain with me and only me. But if you come in one day with an arsenal behind your trench coat, confidentiality be damned, I'm screaming that to the high heavens."
James nervously paced in the doorway, then scratched his head and apologized, "Sorry, you're just the first super I've ever met."
"There are usually two things people do when I tell them about my power. They ask me not to get near them, or they ask if I can see anything wrong with them. I'm fine with either. It doesn't hurt my feelings if you have an embarrassing birth mark or delicate medical condition you don't want anyone to know about."
"Yeah," James awkwardly backed up, "I think I'd prefer if I kept some space."
The boy turned around and headed back to the firefighter annex, and Ben watched him go.
Literally.
Even though Benjamin told everyone his sight was limited to a five foot radius, he kept it set at twenty feet. He had already seen James inside and out, for everything he was worth.
And sure enough, there was a tattoo on his back right shoulder of three overlapping triangles. The symbol of a growing movement of anti-meta-human activism. Some were just quiet political believers that there was something unnatural about super powers, while the more extreme believed that it was kill or be killed, and they weren't going to take it lying down. Humanity First it was called, and they seemed to be growing at an alarming rate. The Hero Department already had a special division of non-violent heroes to quell their protests.
Not that it bothered Benjamin. After all, he knew of seven Humanity First members in the village, but they weren't particularly active or hateful.
However, Ben decided to do some snooping to check on whether he should be expecting some harsh activism against his mayoral run in a few years.
As he searched the internet, Ben noticed a news article on the third anniversary of Ymir's death. He opened it and watched the candlelight vigil over Ymir's grave. The new strongest hero, named Big Man, was criticized for not paying his respects, but the hero seemed wholly unconcerned with the blue bastard.
"What are you so happy about?" Hannah asked, startling Ben as he realized he'd been relishing his old foe's death in public.
"I'm just looking forward to the weekend," he excused, "the newest episode of 'Snapping Sad' is coming out!"
"I never got the appeal of that show."
"What time are you going home?"
"Why?"
"Because I can pull up Setflix on my computer and we can binge the whole first season," Ben declared. "You'd better not be thinking about walking, either! I'll kidnap you on the way!"
"Ugh," Hannah turned and left, but she smiled when she thought she was safe.
Ben leaned back as he pondered his future mayoral run. He had allies around the office of municipalities, but most regular folks who vote for mayors didn't know his name. If he was going to clinch a run at the mayor's office, he would need something snappy and memorable, something that gave him free publicity and the ever-crucial 'word-of-mouth' angle to get his name signed on the ballot.
A notification popped up on his computer about a new email. He opened it casually, then a grin formed as he recognized what an absolute prize had just fallen into his lap.