Mark Patterson, neurologist, looked over the latest test results. The subject had shown a marked decrease in schizophrenic symptoms with the latest drug cocktail. Once they got the drugs balanced, the woman would be able to join society as a normal person. Of course, the voices weren’t actually hallucinations. The woman was a telepath, and was picking up the inner voices of everyone nearby. The jumble of voices confused and annoyed her whenever her powers would activate, so she would turn violent, striking out at anyone that was nearby. Mark had been teaching her to control her powers, but with all of the voices flooding in any time she opened her mind up she hadn’t made much progress. Hopefully now they would be quiet enough that she could concentrate on the lessons.
There was a knock on the door and Mark looked up. “Officers Mendoza and Talmidge are here to talk to you, sir.” the redheaded woman, Janet, said. She had been Mark’s secretary for years, since they met in medical school. She had even helped him develop the Awakener device, an electronic means of mapping and activating mental pathways, which is how Mark got his powers and how he treated many of his patients. She had to drop out of medical school for personal medical reasons, but when he graduated and started this clinic for the treatment of super-human psychological issues he had asked her to join him. She agreed and had been working with him since. To Mark’s disappointment, however, he had never worked up the courage to ask her out.
“I’ll be right there.” he said, closing his laptop and grabbing his coat.
They went down the hallway and entered a small conference room where two officers waited in uniform. “Doctor Patterson.” one of the officers said, standing up. “I am Lieutenant Mendoza. This is Sergeant Talmadge. We came to consult about a superhuman criminal.”
Doctor Patterson nodded and sat down at the head of the table, Janet sitting beside him and pulling out a notebook to take notes. The room actually had recording devices built into it, as well as security cameras, but it never hurt to take notes. “So, officers. What can I do for you?”
“I was told that you were the city’s leading expert in the psychoses that super-humans have.” said Mendoza.
“I like to think of myself as such.” Mark said. “Though, of course, not all superhuman abilities lead to psychosis. Some, like those linked directly with the brain, are just likely to do so, as they directly rewire the brain.”
“Are you a super, sir?” asked the young Talmadge.
“Yes, I have minor telepathic and telekinetic abilities. I’m basically a lie detector and can move up to two pounds with the manual dexterity of someone wearing mittens. And yes, I am registered.”
Mendoza nodded. “So, if we were to tell you about a person’s powers, you might be able to tell us about their psychological condition?”
“That isn’t likely. The powers themselves work in a variety of ways. Even two abilities that might seem the same might rely on two entirely different pathways in the brain, the exception being if the two people in question are relatives. This increases the similarity between their brains and therefore the likely-hood of their brains using the same pathways to produce powers. I have identified over a dozen pathways and over three dozen pathway segments that can lead to telepathic abilities. Then there’s the fact that many psychoses are the result of trauma experienced because of the powers, and not as a result of the altered neurons themselves.”
“So you can’t help us?” asked Mendoza, looking a bit disappointed.
“Not without more information.” Mark said. “to actually know, though, I would have to examine the subject.”
Mendoza nodded. “Then I’ll tell you what I know. There have been reports by several people in the Kellogg district seeing wallets and jewelry floating out of people’s pockets, purses, or off of them as they walk down the sidewalk. That tells me that they are using telekinesis to pickpocket. I was hoping to get some sort of information on their psyche to help us catch them. You understand, right?”
“Of course.” Mark said. “Kellogg is a rather affluent neighborhood. People being pickpocketed there in broad daylight makes it look like the force can’t protect them.” If he remembered correctly, Janet actually lived in that district, so he felt like he should do something to help.
“We’d of course do the same for any of the less affluent areas of the city, you understand.” said Talmadge, “but we have received several calls about this particular case, so we were ordered to look into it.”
Mark nodded. “Of course you would. Do I have any more information about this person? Any people in the area with known telekinetic powers? Have you checked the registry?”
“All accounted for. Which means that either someone is traveling to commit their crimes or they are unregistered.”
Mark nodded. “In that case, am I safe to assume you don’t have a suspect?” The officer shook his head. “Then I can only speak in general terms. Many telekinetics get a bit of an overinflated sense of self. Namely, they think they are better than others because they can invisibly grab things at a distance, something which is difficult to defend against. Many also have a detailed sense of feeling in their psionic hands, on par with the one in their hands or even more sensitive. These kinds often use their powers to fulfill their more base desires.” Mendoza looked confused. “They often use them to sexually assault others they find attractive. The person can’t block it, after all, or even know that it’s coming until they are touched, so the telekinetic will often get away with it where more common forms of sexual assault will fail due to them seeing your hand.”
“So, we should check for instances of sexual assault in the area where the perp wasn’t seen?” asked Talmadge.
“It’s only a guess. For one to pickpocket with telekinesis would require fine motor control and senses, after all.”
Mendoza nodded. “Then we’ll look into that.” The two officers stood up. “Well, I think that’s everything.” said Mendoza.
“Feel free to call if you have any more questions.” he said. The officers nodded and left.
“Interesting case.” said Janet after they left. “But they just sound like a minor super villain to me. No known neuroses. Not really worth going after.”
Mark nodded. “Yeah, not really our concern.” He sighed and forced his brain back on his job, lest the criminal case take over his thought. He could work on it tonight, or have his friends look into it tomorrow night after their meeting. For now, he had patients to help. “So, about Mr. Kruger’s case...” Mr. Kruger had developed the ability to control plants after participating in the human trials of some super drug. Unfortunately he got so in tune with plants that he now thought he was one. One of the nurses had to bathe him every day, what he calls ‘watering’ him, and he has to be fed intravenously, as plants don’t eat. At least he’ll drink water, or sports drinks if they called it ‘fertilizer water’. That kept him alive, even if he did insist on keeping his feet in dirt 24/7 and only spoke in whispers.
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Dr. Patterson spent the rest of the day going over the patient files for Mr. Kruger and similar cases, including people who could talk to animals and adopted animal cultures or identities. Many had been sent to his city from around the world, as he was widely considered the best in the field of super-power caused psychological conditions, so he had large amounts of data on such cases. He even used his Awakener device on every one of his patients to map out the exact mental pathways that gave them their powers or, in the case of powers with a physical component like super strength, allowed the control of their powers. He was certain that with enough data he could learn to understand the exact pathways which interfered with the proper functioning of the brain, but knew that it would be at least a few years before he had enough data to even begin mapping out the brain in such a manner.
The problem was that he only really had access to those that had psychological issues. To find the solution using only scans of them would be like trying to make a proper dollar bill from dozens or hundreds of known forgeries. Worse than that, it was like he had forgeries from the currency of every nation on earth and needed to make a US one dollar bill. He simply didn’t have enough data to know what a dollar bill was, no matter how much he knew about the common ways a forgery could go wrong.
When he had first developed the Awakener device he hadn’t just relied on it, but on his actual power, something he called Puzzling. Given sufficient data on a problem, his brain could convert it into a three or more dimensional puzzle which he could then solve to find the correct values for the different variables. He had used the data from his own brain scans, as well as everything he learned from papers on the structure of super-human brains, to discover inactive pathways within his own brain which corresponded to telepathic or telekinetic abilities, and activated them for a few seconds at a time. Eventually he had practiced enough that he could turn the powers on permanently without developing the side effects that his patients experienced.
He considered deactivating the powers of his patients, at least temporarily, so that they could learn to function without them, but to do so would be breaking the law. As much as he disregarded the law when taking on the role of a vigilante with his friends, he couldn’t do so in his public identity. The device hadn’t passed clinical trails and therefore couldn’t be used for actual treatment. And he had no intention of sharing the schematics of the device so that it could be allowed. Despite all of the copyright laws, the device would be reproduced, first by the military, who didn’t care about such things, then shortly by the pharmaceutical companies and medical device companies, who would get around the patent by making minor alterations which did little more than make it easier or cheaper to build, and caused such laws to no longer apply. While, in general, he believed all technology should be freely shared, if this device were openly shared many terrible things would result from it, from poor use of the device creating more psychologically impaired super-humans to the to the government equipping every soldier and police officer not just with enhanced stats, like they did with soldiers, but with mental abilities as well. If they could do that, they would be able to finally close their grip around the throat of lady liberty. And that was something he had to prevent at all cost.
Most humans, in fact, had some of the pathways that were necessary for super-human powers to be expressed. For example, almost all had some sort of extraneous power source other than basic metabolism. Around thirty percent had some of the pathways needed for telepathy, like enhanced empathy or high perception. And around twenty percent had those necessary to develop telekinetic abilities, like places where extra senses can connect to the sensory cortex, or places where extra limbs can connect to the motor cortex. Even Mark lacked all of those necessary pathways when he first started. The chance of someone having all the necessary parts of both was around a one in ten million chance, after all. The Awakener device, however, was able to emulate those pathways well enough that his brain slowly developed the pathways he didn’t have until he no longer needed the device to use the power. At that point it was possible to simply activate those pathways and give himself full, if weak, telepathic and telekinetic abilities. And that process could likely be repeated with anyone given enough time. While he had no problem with humanity as a whole becoming superhuman, with politics the way they were, he wasn’t sure humanity would survive such a transformation. Human society needed to change before such an awakening could be executed peacefully, and not result in a super-human war that would devastate the population of Earth.
Mark realized he had let his mind wonder and forced himself to focus on the patients. If only he could learn enough about the specific issues a patient was facing he could create a Puzzle for the case and find the solution to their issues. He had managed it three times before, cases in which his ‘miracle cures’ had made his clinic far more popular and brought massive amounts of funding to the non-profit, but none of his current cases were at that point yet. Half a dozen could be solved if he only he had a tiny bit more data with which to form the Puzzle. But none of the current methods of collecting data could give him exactly what he needed. He briefly considered experimenting on some of the patients, activating or deactivating specific neural paths that could alter their minds or powers, thus giving him the data he needed, but stopped himself. More than being illegal, such experiments could cause other issues. They might even, in rare cases, interrupt autonomic functions and kill his patients. He was a doctor, and the one rule he had to follow, at least when dealing with patients, was to first do no harm.
The more he thought about it the more he knew that he needed data from healthy minds. He briefly looked over the finances of his organization. They could afford it, if barely. He could, of course, use his personal funds, as his other identity had millions hidden away to be used for the cause, but he couldn’t risk creating a link between his two identities. He could also offer superhuman abilities in exchange for letting him scan a subject’s brain. He wasn’t sure he wanted that. Few people could properly handle abilities, even if he was able to give them the abilities safely and not force them onto the test subjects along with psychological issues. As the saying goes, Power Corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Without knowing if the test subjects had the personality and strength of character to properly use their abilities and not harm others, he couldn’t risk that. He would have to stick to offering money, even if he didn’t have that much.
He got up to look for Janet, as she would need to arrange to bring in maybe a dozen people for neural mapping, and noticed that most of the lights were turned off. Looking at the clock he realized that it was seven thirty already. Janet probably left at five like she always did, thus leaving only the few nurses which looked after the patients. He would have to talk to her tomorrow morning.
He left the office and made his way to his house in the suburbs. Once there he ate supper like a normal person, then made his way to his basement. He had a complete laboratory in his basement, having moved everything here from the apartment where he first built the Awakener device while in college. Here he could work with a wide variety of electronic devices, many of which were designed to mimic the abilities of super-humans. That was the way society was taking technological development at the moment, and he was riding the wave. He had even joined a few online communities that were working on open source versions of some of the more popular power-based devices. His favorite was based on the powers of a man that could absorb radiation and use it to power physical enhancements to his body. A major electronics company had patented a nuclear battery based on his abilities seven years ago, and you could purchase as many of the batteries as you wanted from their website or a resale company. There were also knockoffs of those batteries, cheap versions which were inferior to the original but cheap enough to make up for that fact.
Many people used these batteries to power devices, some even their homes, as they would put out a slowly decreasing amount of electricity for decades or centuries depending on the design of the battery. The more compact designs, of course, could put out the power for less time. Mark had done something different with the technology. He combined it with another open source project, this one based on a compact nuclear reactor that a company three years ago patented. They currently sell their devices to the government and other companies, and their biggest client is a space exploration company that was currently building a colony on the moon as well as mining a few near-earth asteroids for resources. Mark replaced the 50% efficient power generator on that reactor with the 95% efficient conversion of the first project, allowing it to convert the radiation directly into power rather than converting it to heat first.
It was that which currently powered his underground base, with enough potential energy production to run a much larger base for centuries.
Once he gathered a few things and put on his suit, hidden in a secret compartment in the floor of his basement, he went to a back wall and waved his hand. This telekinetically flipped a switch which caused the door which was hidden there to open inwardly. He then started his mile-long hike down the long corridor.
He eventually made it through the various hidden doors and secret hatches to the base, where he activated a special device. This one was based on telepathy, but for a reason no one had figured out yet it used tens of kilowatts of power for even short range communication and exponentially increasing its power requirement the further away the signal needed to reach, making it a largely abandoned project that wasn’t even being developed for commercial purposes. After all, why would one use a device with such high power requirements when a simple cell phone could do the same? Even the amateur radio crowd saw such devices as only a curiosity, as they could talk with people half way around the world for only a few kilowatts of power use with their equipment.
The technology had a few advantages, however. The source of a signal couldn’t be tracked, the signal could be connected with a distant source to drastically decrease the power requirements, and the signal didn’t weaken no matter how much rock you sent it thorough. All of this made it ideal for secret communication between vigilantes. He used the device to connect to another one in the city, a device he had also built, and send a simple message to his friend Rebel. He informed the other man about the telekinetic pickpocket in the Kellogg district, and asked him to look into it. After all, they might have found a new ally.