So, real concern here. What does a Defense Against Stupidity teacher do?
Defend themselves against stupidity? No. That’s impossible. Even the smartest person in the world is still occasionally dimwitted to the point of self-harm. If you don’t believe me, go ask that superhuman bundle of testosterone whatever his name was or even Walker and see if they haven’t put a fork in their own eye, metaphorically, even once. Walker has probably done so too many times for anything to count.
Truthfully, my job isn’t about protecting the students or even myself. Here’s where I realized it revolved about trying to prevent the world from dealing with these crazy kids. Take the trio of girls. They were getting alone, or at least seemed to be closer to childhood friends and siblings. Far more then they had been when I met them. That was good, except when they held hands, they altered reality.
Then there was Clinton and Kennedy. Clinton moved stupidly fast and seemed to be the only bit of sanity holding together his boyfriend. Kennedy could rip people’s blood out of their body and turned into metal pellets. Do you have any clue how fast a super villain could mist a town with those types of powers? I know exactly how fast it goes. It’s faster than you’d think. Almost as fast as Clinton losing his mind and shoving a fork in someone’s eye at super speeds.
These sorts of murky thoughts kept my mind going in circles for at least half a minute before I realized that none of it mattered. I mean really, what was I going to do that Wilhelm hadn’t already thought of? He’d probably said all sorts of little trigger words like “I look like a destitute buffoon” and “Pigs want to fornicate my mother”, which naturally impacted the entire chain of events that would follow.
Because screw time travelers who could predict the future and their dumb Machiavellian plots. Which is an oxymoron and I know it. Anyway, enough of hating time travelers and back to figuring out this absolute mess we were in.
The kids were discussing options based on our life goals, current powers, and recent discoveries.
“Is this the plan?” Kennedy asked. His head hung to one side and eyes were both drooping. Ice cream couldn’t solve everything. “We were going to put the core in here and crash their moon, right? Mister Millard’s right, if the dimensions are linked then we’ll be harming the earth.”
“This is Lady Alexandria’s plan,” Clinton answered. “She wouldn’t lead us astray. It’s got to be the best answer.”
It was my parent’s plan too. But Lady Alexandria implied more concern of her future intercourse than the planet’s wellbeing. I didn’t tell them that, because in most people’s eyes, Lady Alexandria was a paragon of righteous fury and a terror to her foes, which included everyone her husband wanted to stop.
“That’s the main plan, and it’s what everyone else was going to do once Mister Millard had caused enough of a disturbance to distract our enemies.”
“I’d say he was successful,” Midnight chimed in. “How many was that? At least half an army. The East Coasters barely see that many mole people in a year and we just-“
“I did that,” Kennedy snarled briefly then covered his face up like he’d been caught slobbering on doughnuts.
“We did that. Don’t think the three of us were just sitting there watching you.”
“I couldn’t have done much,” WhiteWash said with her gaze cast downward. “Without linking, all I can do is make people forget stuff. Like those monsters that attached us. I made them forgot about their enemies and where they were.”
To their credit, none of them mentioned running in terror through one of these doors to normal Earth. It also could be possible that these portals were pocket dimensions that only resembled places on real Earth so maybe they were right not to think about it. Superpowers are stupid and I didn’t have any good way to predict what the actual truth of a situation.
Clinton’s face brightened for a moment and he stared a hole into WhiteWash’s face. His head nodded rapidly then questioned, “Can you”-
“No.” Kennedy said immediately, cutting off whatever Clinton had been about to say. “It was my choice, and I’m going to live with that. I’ve been using the micro side of these powers since we landed here. It’s good practice for my self control.”
“But”- Clinton and Kennedy argued overusing WhiteWash’s mind wipe powers to remove the memory of Kennedy breaking his taboo. My head shook slowly. They’d been going in circles about the battles and our discoveries. They used different words but couldn’t disguised an ever-growing terseness. And I get why.
Imagine your enemies wanted to put a drive core on the planet somehow screw with gravity and crash your moon into the earth. Sounds bad, right? I mean, aside from gravity increases like that pretty much breaking bones of every random Joe and old grandma hips. So, your great idea is to just do the same thing to them instead.
Only you find out that mole people planet is somehow linked to Earth and now the whole nature of reality goes out the window.
Obviously, the whole thing could be a fake out. Maybe we were our own worst enemies and crashing the moon here would somehow crash the moon there and we’d just be doing their work for them.
I said none of that, because saying it out loud would send all the already over-tired and half-delirious college kids into a tizzy. It made my pulse quicken because that meant my parents were potentially destroying the Earth, and the Earth is where Alice and I resolved our stress through physical activity. If it went away, then I’d be disappointed.
Ironically, that made my point of view a lot closer to Lady Alexandria than I might like to admit. Which, since I’d been thinking about this entire thing being a fake out, made me even more uncomfortable because Alice had a third personality out there somewhere and it might be a giant muscle-bound rock star woman. She killed mole people with the same sort of fervor that Alice slaughtered everything.
I swallowed a lump and ignored all the psychological horror show ideas that kept cropping up. I had to pretend that what I saw was the only reality and nothing else mattered.
That brought me back to Clinton, who’d backed away from his mindwiping solution to one problem and moved onto more dire issues. Like the fact that the “larder” connected to earth. “Can we break the links? Dimensional anchors maybe? Remember that introduction class? Links come in all sorts of shapes.”
“I slept through that class,” Kennedy admitted.
Clinton’s eyebrows scrunched toward each other. “It was interesting.”
“You kept me up all night rambling about hedgehogs.”
Clinton’s jaw dropped and he gasped for air. “That was one time. And you wanted a pet hedgehog and I can’t believe you’d want one so I had to educate you on why they’re terrible pets. Caring for one is worse than a pug.”
“Wouldn’t let me have a pug either,” Kennedy mumbled sleepily. “And you’re doing it again. We need to get the rest of our sleep. We should set a watch, think it over tonight, and go at it again in the morning.”
“What if”- they were off again. Concerns like my family moving quicker, the amount of time we’d wasted, the building death toll from spaceships fighting in orbit. Whatever unknown plans that Lord Purple Poser and my ex-girlfriend had.
I found a rock chair thing outside one of the larder doors and listened to them all chattering away. Flux sat idly on a table nearby, with its camera recording a wide-angle view of our room. I knew, because in a few days this adventure would end up on the Hero Watch website complete with commentary and a professional breakdown on all choices made.
I planned on forcing my would-be students to review the website. The general public would provide better feedback than any real teacher could. Plus, they’d have more wit.
Still, Flux watching made me keep part of my mind devoted to their conversation. It was that or go back to thinking about a version of Alice that looked like Lady Alexandria out to get pregnant with twins. I felt pretty sure that being stabbed by ID Alice might be far more agreeable.
“I mean, this can’t be inside the real earth,” I whispered. “That’d be more insane than normal, right?”
Flux’s camera lens eyeball whirred and tightened. In a few seconds there’d be amply footage of the kid’s faces and closeups of Midnight’s budding look of horror. She glanced at me, back to WhiteWash, back and me and Flux, then back to WhiteWash. Her fingers twitched but the rag wearing beanpole managed to avoid grabbing the other woman’s hand.
“This whole trip was a bad idea,” I said to it. “Flux, are these places really linked?”
Flux beeped once, then twice, then its red eyeball went green as it printed out a piece of paper from the useless instruction manual. I glanced at it and found myself in a badly drawn cave complete with bats. They, of course, were better drawn than myself.
“Is this a no?”
Flux beeped twice.
I tried again. “Is two beeps a no?”
It beeped twice again.
“Mister Millard. I,” Kennedy looked left than right. “Can we not play twenty questions with the eyeball that teleports into people’s chests?”
Flux spun upside down then eyed me with a lens that looked exactly the same despite the inversion. It beeped in a jumping tune that might have been a question.
So, I pretended to understand the question and clarified myself. “I’m talking about Earth and this mole people breeding ground in some dark pit in a dark void through a dark portal! Are they connected? If we blew up this place, or use our landmass anal insertion plan, will the Earth kaboom?”
Flux beeped once to answer all those questions. It was super useful.
Kennedy groaned in fear. My hands swung upward, and I sputtered in exasperation as I turned toward my latest critic. “You control metal, why are you afraid?”
Kennedy pointed at Flux. “That thing is not metal.”
Flux beeped once in response to Kennedy, then proceeded toot around the area proudly. What that meant was utterly beyond me. Aside from possibly being part rooster, because Flux is the cockiest robot I’ve ever met. And that’s coming from a guy whose parents were apparently part toaster.
“Kenny,” Clinton said then sighed.
Kennedy nodded. “Are you okay with first watch?” he asked me. “Since you screamed us to awareness last time. This hall seems quiet enough. Though maybe we can find a more secure offshoot somewhere.”
I stared blankly at him. My powers didn’t include an ability to stay awake all night either, but it wouldn’t be the first-time insomnia kept me going beyond reason. We managed to find a second peaceful place to bed down and I sat in the hallway, waiting for certain doom and pretending the others were a world away.
Except I could hear them inside talking.
“Do you really think he meant all that stuff about the earth imploding?” WhiteWash whispered to the other two girls.
“He’s insane,” Leticia responded.
“He literally can’t be. Even if his brain is an absolute mess, he cant be insnane. The principle made us do a study on him. Because of his powers, Mister Millard’s been at the center of dozens of class A events in the last four years. Remember the Eternal Night? He went insane. Mister Millard was right there, with him, and”- WhiteWash drifted off.
“It’s just his power,” Leticia said.
“Is it? You heard his mind. All those thoughts. All those worries about what might happen. He’s seen it all. He’s seen too much. In four years, maybe five, he’s seen at least three what”- for the umpteenth time, WhiteWash drifted off.
Here’s where we both get to realize that those earlier thoughts I’ve been mulling over could be heard. First, I’d been thinking heavily on the Earth imploding and this whole plan being stupid. Second, I’d been worried about the nightmare Alice I haven’t met or found yet Alice person being somehow related to this journey we were on. Now imagine that they heard my mind.
Which, I didn’t like.
I tightened my eyes as it suddenly made sense. They had to be mind-readers of some sort. At the least, If WhiteWash could take memories, and Midnight could implant pain, then they could easily have other powers along the same lines. How else would they know what memories to pull out? I mean, it should have been damn obvious. Which is why they all give me weird looks.
Bet you can guess how well that will work out. You can? Well good for you, this isn’t a real quiz. The teacher fooled you.
Hours later I was exhausted. Even with my forced second nap my brain had been fried. We’d been in this hell hole for a few days, at most three. I’d been dealing with the students for barely even a week. They were just the latest props for my insane life.
See, already not thinking happy thoughts.
The students were still sleeping. Hopefully they were and not just staring at the ceiling dreading what life had done to them. Though Walker probably had a class called “Sleeping anywhere because you’ll need to be rested in case bad shit happens 101”.
I could simply get up and walk off. Now that they have food we could explore the doorways back to Earth. We should do that anyway to see if there were links between the two worlds. Then hopefully one of them would have a bright idea, like find some central power maker thing and smush it. That normally became the plan. Which was our overall plan for this entire planet so originality didn’t exist.
“Flux?” I whispered.
It beeped.
“You were from the future, right?”
Its eyes went green and the lens narrowed in my direction. I put up both hands to prevent it from vaporizing me into dust particles. Then I realized it probably couldn’t kill me so I had no reason to panic.
By the time my heartbeat returned to normal, Flux had already wandered off down the hall, red light present and a happy sort of bob to its floating body.
“So, note to self. Don’t ask about the future,” I mumbled.
Flux had been part of some weird time loop involving Ted, a mechanic who hadn’t built Flux yet, and being bound to my existence. None of it made sense but I figured it would become clear eventually. Clarity in my world meant “Someone would provide a vague explanation that only made sense while high as a satellite”.
I rubbed my head and tried to figure out how to cut down on the elements of this mess I’d found myself in. The five students seemed to be a package deal. Alice’s future problems could be set aside. This whole Earth, larder, mole planet issue existed but it felt more like a side note to the rest of the drama.
There’d been worse plots on television, which I sorely missed. Despite binging every show in the known universe while in the Hotel California to the point of innocent people dying because of me, I still liked watching the episodes of Biggest Loser. It just proved difficult to get reliable access to a television.
I pushed that side and wondered how much the girls had read my mind regarding their entire merger nonsense. They didn’t seem entirely aware of my thoughts in that regard, or if they were, they talked about it amongst themselves. Did their mind reading powers including communicating with each other silently?
Then why the fornication had they said any of that stuff about me aloud? Exhaustion? A fancy way to let me know that they could read my thoughts.
I probably had put entirely too much thought into it.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Back to basics. Once we woke up, I’d check out every door in this larder, explore to the end of the tunnel until we found something that empowered it all, get Flux to copy a second version of it until the whole thing imploded, and life should get simple after that.
WhiteWash sat down next to me. I leaned to the side in brief panic then settled back down. She still wore the same clean looking clothes as before but had lost the mask she wore early on. Honestly, she looked better without it. More human, less robot ethereal.
“Thanks,” she said quietly.
My eyes tightened. That confirmed she could read my mind. Which was a terrible gift I’d never wish on anyone. I dared ask a serious question. “Is it bad that even my inner monologue goes in circles? Like, how the hell am I going to teach you guys anything.”
“Everyone’s thoughts do. No one thinks of things in a straight line. Most try, but don’t last long. They restart. And restart. And restart. We”- she stopped, waiting for me to say my thought out loud.
I frowned. “Had a class on it?” They’d had a class for all sorts of shit that we were running into and that couldn’t be a coincidence. Not with Wilhelm.
WhiteWash nodded.
I rubbed my forehead and went back to trying to sort out everything in my brain. The problem is that I wanted to be responsible. Someone had stuck me with the teacher thing, and while I couldn’t take anything seriously, not even Hero Watch, I wanted to at least help. Not that I expected to ever make more than a small difference.
“I think,” she paused. “You’re going about it wrong. You’re,” she paused again and this time my eyes rolled. WhiteWash had some serious confidence issues. Which is probably how she got into the mess she’d been in with her sister and Midnight. “Please stop,” she begged me.
“Hard to. This is why I don’t like mind readers. If I think of even half the shit,” my mind rapidly hit a dozen or so of my worst days and WhiteWash visibly paled. “See?” I asked after trying to remember something more positive. Like Alice being thankful.
WhiteWash’s face couldn’t keep up with her mental state, or mine.
“I’m going to just talk. It’s better if I do that.” She gulped then nodded quickly. “You’re a pebble in the stream. That’s what we learned to call people that distort time flows. At least that’s what Walker calls them. Pebbles. That he stubs his toe on. Only he hates you a lot because no matter what choices he makes, you still exist somehow. His thoughts were more like, you’re a big rock. Rivers diverge around you. Plants grow in places they wouldn’t because of you.”
My chest swelled in brief pride. Knowing that Walker was doomed to be annoyed by me somehow validated my own feelings about the man.
WhiteWash kept going. “You being here, changed us. And I understand why you’re afraid. Clint is too. Ken is even more upset but he can muddle his thoughts a bit. Clinton, well his thoughts go even faster than any of us can pick up. But I don’t think any of you should worry. We’re not a bomb ready to go off and kill you. We were like, clogged gears of a big machine. We weren’t going the same way, and now we are.”
Which was great for their weird lovers or not lover’s relationship.
“We’re not anything like that. None of us have.” So, here’s where she implies they weren’t having sex or sexually interested in each other, awkwardly. Because college is apparently weird. WhiteWash ignored my thoughts and kept going. “At least, my sister isn’t. I’m not, not really. Midnight might be, but she’s just confused. We read each other’s thoughts. We value our friendly. She were close as kids and all those memories jumble around. It’s so confusing.“
Remember how I said superpowers screwed everyone up? Or maybe I didn’t. But you should know by now that they do. No one gets away without scars. Add being a teenager into the mix and getting insane abilities that include mind reading. No wonder they were fucked up. IF they’d been kids together, then there were probably all sorts of loving memories, mixed up with spats of annoyance, hate, and all those weird thoughts people had.
“Yeah,” WhiteWash said. “That.”
She hadn’t responded to my thoughts before, so I assumed their power joining made the mind reading even worse, or easier.
WhiteWash said nothing to blip of a thought. She got up and walked back into the corner cave we’d found, a few turns away from the larder wall of doors.
That left me alone. Once again, my thoughts wandered in circles. Nothing new popped up which means we get to skip the details. Instead, let’s move on to my next brilliant idea an hour or two later, where while the others were sound asleep.
I wandered down to the doors and stepped through another portal. Because I am a stupid and the world needs defense against me.
That brilliant idea comment a second ago? Pure sarcasm. It’d been stupid and I knew at the time it’d be best to at least warn the others. The original thought had been to get back to Earth proper, upload some shit from Flux or find breakfast. Maybe if I could get some forums posts on our current adventure while the youngsters were asleep it’d be easier to sound somewhat smart. Or my parents might use their robot powers to analysis the link between Earth and mole people land.
I’d forgotten there were only a few minutes before the door closed.
That let me in a room that had tons of vegetables but zero actual food. Anyone who thinks cucumbers are food is probably trying to explain why salads are tasty. Also, the front door had opened once the door back to mole people land closed. Not that I could tell you where the door was anymore. It’d vanished seconds after closing which answered one mystery at least.
I didn’t panic. That would be useless.
“Flux?”
It beeped.
“Did you upload everything to the site?”
It beeped three times, holding the third note until forever passed.
“Still working on it?”
Single beep. Probably a yes, but it could have been a dirty name in robot.
This room had a lot of dried noodles. Why it had dried noodles, I had zero idea. The labels weren’t in English and most of the products had blindingly abusive fonts all over their packaging. I crumpled one, poured the seasoning packet over it, and ate away. Possibly uncooked noodles might make me sick but the sodium overdose would get me first.
After my meal, I stood up, dusted myself off, and got ready to explore. Just to make sure this was the normal earth and not some alternate reality nonsense.
“Earth,” I pointed the only remaining door out of here.
Flux beeped.
“Let’s see if they speak English.”
If they didn’t maybe I could catch the Biggest Looser in Korean or something. They were way funnier than the English versions and made about as much sense.
I went over to the door, found some sort of inventory clipboard, and wrote a note on the back for the kids. It went back on the wall with my giant messy scrawl all over it.
The door opened easily, proving a connection of some sort between the mole people doorway being closed and this other one opening. I stepped into a blaringly loud restaurant with something on the speakers that violated my ear drums.
Waiters dashed by me with barely a look. They carried trays in both hands and steam billowed up from their meals.
The left looked to be storefront and the edges of a bustling street could be seen. Right of me lead into a kitchen with clanking and words being shouted that were certainly not English. My ears rung as someone’s scream sent me reeling.
A hand grabbed my mess of a shirt. Off I stumbled, being drug in the wake of a much shorter man who ranted up a stream of gibberish. Every few step’s he looked at me and shout high pitched words then flailed his other arm in exasperation.
I nodded every time he turned around, like his words made a lick of sense. They didn’t. The tone and constant glances at my messy clothes implied I’d sullied the area by existing. Somehow, I’d trespassed into an area I shouldn’t be. He wasn’t wrong.
We didn’t go toward the front. We traveled out an abrupt side door into an alley that smelled worse than two sewage plants competing in a foul-off. I gagged then plugged my nose.
The man pointed at a wooden box next to a larger box. Near that were dozens of freight containers broken down and stacked on their side to save room. He shouted indecipherable words then continued to jab his finger toward the mess.
I sat. He pantomimed a drink then exaggerated his words. They didn’t make sense, so I nodded.
He nodded in return then threw a cloth at my face. Followed by two more somethings. I couldn’t make out fast enough.
After a second, I realized he’d given me a grimy towel to clean myself up with. The next two objects were clothes. A fresh shirt that smelled musty and had signs of being over washed along with pants that were close enough to my size.
Here’s a tip for world weary travelers. Decency is an illusion that gets dispelled at the alley’s entrance. If someone hands you a change of clothes, take it immediately. Change before they get back. I say this because the only reason someone would take time to dress you better, is because they were paid to.
I stripped off the old clothes in a second and put on my new worn articles then sat down on the smaller crate. From there I watched the people passing at the alley’s entrance.
True to my expectations, none of them looked back here. Everyone acted like this dark smelly place between buildings didn’t exist. I would venture that even building workers wouldn’t come back here unless forced. It had a “mug me now” sort of vibe.
Those traveling by weren’t from any of my normal regions. It had to be Earth, since everyone looked human. Their clothes were normal enough for another country. Which meant that most people wore pants. If I were to guess, we were on the edge of some fancy business district since every third person had a suit and tie on. They were walking too quickly to guage more than that.
“Asia?” I asked.
Flux, who’d appeared a minute ago, chose to hover quietly.
“China? Korea? Maybe one of those smaller countries? Maybe I should get a map. Do you have a map?”
Flux swiveled to me and green beams copied out a pamphlet. I picked up the project and found myself with a map who’s only legible words were “Zork”. On the cover was a man with four arms, red skin, and enough muscles to shame an entire body builder competition. His biceps had biceps.
“Not helpful.”
The people walking by spoke, but absolutely none of it sounded English. We were certainly half a world away, at least, from where I’d been a few days ago. I stood up abruptly and looked around through the trash for any sort of newspaper clippings. After a few minutes I found the edge of a paper that had it’s bi-line in both English and some other language.
According to the date, it’d been almost two weeks since Alice chased me through all those portals and we ruined that dry wedding cake.
“Time flies when you’re underground.”
The door to the restaurant slammed open. Out came the man. He shouted at me and jammed his finger aggressively toward the wooden box. He repeated the same sound, a command of some sort.
“Okay,” I said. “Sitting back down. Sorry.”
I sat down. He went back inside. Probably to call the cops. That happened a lot when I ended up in other countries.
Most of the time their police would show up, nod a lot, say stuff I didn’t understand, and drag me toward an embassy. I’ll tell you now, the American embassy in Japan utterly hates me. I mean, embassy workers hate everyone, but when I walk in it’s like a small-scale doomsday of paperwork. They have a prewritten apology written out where I get to state that I’m sorry for existing and even looking in their direction.
Though, most embassies have the same form. I sign them with a smiley face or little hearts. Hopefully whoever gets them feels my boundless love for their country.
So, while I waited for something to drink, local law enforcement, or one of the students to track me down, I studied the people. They were delightfully normal and not mole people. I also couldn’t figure out why that portal had connected here of all places. It made zero sense and there hadn’t been any secondary signs of the doorway in that noodle storage room.
A half hour later I sat with a steaming cup of the greatest smell produced by man. Spices and heat radiated through my nose and fingers. My soup remained untouched. This had to be one of those rare moments of peace my powers gave me. The ones that served as a small break between rounds of bullshit so that I could “Stay sane”.
Ten minutes after that, and I’m guessing the timeframe here based on the fact that my eyes closed and the evening sun turned into cool night, I got a guest.
Clinton flopped down onto a second crate, sighed heavily then rubbed his face. I took his sudden appearance in stride and finally sipped the long cooled soup. It still tasted great.
After a few sips I asked, “You stuck over here?”
He nodded. “Until one of the other’s comes through. They’ll check on it in maybe twenty minutes. Just long enough for me to find you and go back.”
Great. They already had a rescue plan set up. Clearly I was the stupidity in this defense against the me class. I pretended not to notice and babbled on. “That door’s a tricky one. Just closing when you’re not looking.” Or too tired to take stock or what was happening.
He nodded. “At least we found you. Walker left us a messages and some supplies in three different storage rooms before the last one told us exactly which door to go to. I guess he already knew about these portals.”
“And he didn’t warn us. Shocking.” My eyebrows lifted in mock drama. Time travelers are assholes. Wilhelm could have solved this entire problem from the start but chose not to. He either didn’t care enough or had bigger problems to deal with Though if I understood his powers right, he wasn’t a time traveler exactly, more like a time rewinder.
Clinton kept on going, slurping a fresher cup of soup that had been delivered. It showed up while I was distracted hating Wilhelm. “After studying them a bit, we can see the links to Earth are gated. The door out to earth proper won’t open until the one back to the mole world closes. It’s probably the only reason they’re stable. A temporary fixture with an easily defeated lock. We could go through every single one and simply break the door on the other side.”
“Makes sense.” I nodded safely. “Of course, someone would have to stay on the otherwise for the last door. Who goes, who stays? Could they get back to this battle before shit hits the fan? I don’t think you’re fast enough to get back in time.” Hell, I knew he wasn’t fast enough but that didn’t matter too much. The plan made sense.
It also assumed that the only connection to Earth were these doors labeled larder. Since mole people cropped up everywhere across the globe, they probably had another hallway with doors named “Invasion point”.
I mean, how the fornication did anyone expect me to know? One of the students probably had a class on it. There were benefits to a former superhero education. Honestly, if I’d had any other power in the universe, going to Wilhelm’s school would have been really helpful. If I tried it now, chances were the school might explode as something in the mad Science lab went very, very wrong.
While my mind wandered, Clintons aid nothing. He looked utterly exhausted. The cup of soup in his hands continued to steam.
“Tell me something Mister Millard,” Clinton stopped then sighed. His shoulders bunched and head shook. “Is this really what it’s like for heroes? Days of this? Or does it get worse.”
I thought about it for a moment before shaking my head in response. “The running and fighting? No. That’s pretty uncommon I’m told. Ted,” I winced “The guys who run Hero Watch. They have a lot of tracking data on events. From what they said, most people get a scuffle once a month. A lot of training, a lot of practice and traveling around to keep the peace by existing. And that once a month is a day of hell.”
“So, they don’t all run from a space ship crashing into their school, to the moon through an series of dogfights, then zip into a portal to another world, where they run from monsters for a week?”
I snorted. “No. That’s just my life.” My lips curled in an almost heartfelt smile. “You heard WhhiteWash talking about it then? She and the other two were going on about all the stuff I’ve seen. It’s not, wrong. My life’s a mess. You and Ken? You two will get to be poster boys for some rights movement and won’t even have to go into battle. Or the ones you’ll do are all staged.”
“That doesn’t sound right either.”
Down went the last of my soup. “Didn’t say it was. It just is. Most guys get along well enough. I mean, it’s no worse than regular cops and robbers. Except a million powers that all interact weirdly and drama behind the scenes. Did I ever tell you about how I got Flux?”
Clinton shook his head. I proceeded to give him a short version of Ted’s adventure. Where he’d corralled a group of super villians that wanted to fight Golden Sun. He did that to get Golden Sun to break up with his wife, Ted’s ex. They had issues over their kid dying because of a powered event I had been involved in. That didn’t even begin to touch on The Judge, Alice and I meeting, or half the crazy from the Bizarre.
Near the end of my oh-so-brief recap with a million holes in the story, Clinton’s face turned green.
“That was over the span of a few weeks?”
“Yep. Then after that I got involved in this nonsense.” I gestured around dme but realized it made no sense because we’d left mole people land. “Well. That nonsense. Though Vivian wasn’t there.”
“Vivian?”
“The gas powered super suit person that attacked your school. We were a thing when my powers kicked in. We got abducted. She got super powers and polished her bitch skills to the next level. I got my house demolished, parents left to fight an interdimensional war, and a birthday cake.” The leftovers of that cake had been covered in sawdust the next day. “I miss that cake. Strawberry ice cream.
I think it’d been strawberry. It might have also been some shit I just made up on the spot to sound impressive. Too much had happened my powers came online and I’d been banged around a lot. Repeated blows to the head would scramble anyone’s memories.
“How do you still do this every day?”
I nodded sagely. “Drugs and a girlfriend who’s crazy in the sack. Number three and six on Adam’s top ten ways to put up with an insane world.”
He shook his head and leaved over the makeshift table at me. His arms went wide.
“But I heard you’ve only been with her for a few months. What about before? Before that website blog. Before this thing followed you around.”
Flux didn’t react to being called a thing.
“You want to know what kept me going?” I shifted uneasily. Being glib was one thing, but straight out lying still made me squirm. “Before the few good things?”
He nodded.
I thought about all the people that had tried to help me. Jade included. She meant well but soon realized being around me directly would be hazardous to her health. Everyone knew that. There’d been psychics who tried to take away my fears. They went mad. One equated my mind to a solider who’d been overseas in the thick of shit for years and years. She didn’t actually use those words so much as sob them while whimpering.
“Nothing,” I said far franker than expected. My gaze lifted to stare at the young man. “Nothing kept me going. I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I can’t stop. I can’t hide from this. I literally can’t. These powers don’t even give me a choice about feeling responsible. With this great power comes a great inability to avoid shit, shitting all over me. Shittily.”
Silence ensued. The kind of silence where Clinton would inevitably ask something profound, dangerous, or simply annoying as shit. Sure enough, he didn’t fail me. “So,” Clinton stared me and seemed to be picking his words careful. “What if it all went away?”
I thought back to that dream Alice. The words were still a bit muddled but part of me could feel the lingering sense of doom. Not that doom felt any different from my normal Monday morning adventures.
“It wouldn’t be good.”
“For you,” he said.
I smiled weakly and tried to find a response he could relate to. Something he could understand. “If you’re unlucky, one day being a super hero will get Kennedy killed. Or worse off, something will happen that requires you to be the one to do it. What would you do?”
He said nothing.
I said nothing.
But you and me, we can say all we want now. Because we’re on the other side of things, looking back as it all unfolders with our near perfect and utterly useless hindsight. We can see all the signs of what loomed. So, fucking obvious. This tale I'm telling you is simply a badly written plot on a daytime television drama. The kind where the villain is in sight the whole time.
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Oddity Study Highlights
Name: Time Travel, what is it really?
There are miles of speculation around time travel. One grander theory is those claiming to travel through time are perpetuating a giant hoax. This is worth exploring because the idea that reality has stayed intact – assuming even a tenth of all reported time travel cases are true – is beyond reason. Or at the least, points to a power so far outside our realm of understand that we could be blinked out of existence with only a thought.
Researchers, when possible, study cases of reported time traveling for alternate explanations.
Example, a person goes back in time, kills someone to prevent a loved one’s death. They succeed, and now the travelers timeline is altered. But is it really? Do they simply cause their own memories of an event to change? Localized and personal timeline altering often has minor repercussions unless the time traveling subject stays in the past and continues to make changes. Since the changes are so minor to the overall fabric of the universe, they’re impossible to accurately quantify. The same result could come creating a figment (construct) of their mother with in-tact memories. Traveling to a parallel world where she’s still alive. Or she’s been alive this entire time and the “time traveler” is breaking out of mind-altering prison.
A second example is the standard paradox. A person goes back in time, kills their own father before they (the traveler) is born. Since the person that brought them into the world no longer exists, then they, by extension, can’t exist. They return to their home world and somehow don’t get erased. Did they visit their past? A parallel timeline? Imagine the entire thing in a reality bubble? Trigger a ripple effect that some higher power solved?
This last possibility is why sciencists are so quick to discount time travelers. Otherwise we must accept the unquantifiable existence of a higher power is so far up the chain of abilities it can simply “make” a paradox work. Still, given our current range of observed phenomena, it’s possible.
Of course, any true scientist will explore alternate explanations. Otherwise we’re searching for monsters outside before checking under the proverbial bed.