PART XXIII – THE KIDS ARE ALIGHT

Okay. Some of you may be like “Why did you ignore your dad’s plaintive attempts to tell you something important?”. To which I’ll respond with “Why did he ignore mine?”. Conversations are a two-way street. Ask any of your friend,. God knows I don’t have to check in with. Maybe real-world, adult besties have slumber parties where they eat steaks and do each other’s nails.

Here’s the honest answer. For me, people come and go all the time. We rarely stay in each other’s orbits for long before I’m whisked away or they wisely run. That’s why relationships like Jade, Alice, or even Flux, were so important to me. They were my stability. Even if they were all off their rockers in one form or another.

I mean, we’re all mad here so it would be possible to even forgive Ted-the-know-it-all. Alice tried to stab me, repeatedly, and I still trusted myself to be naked with her. What’s a little betrayal between buds?

The rest of you are probably wondering what happened next. Especially considering all that babbling before. The utterly useless back and forth and pointless drivel. I mean, did we learn anything useful? No. I could have trimmed it all out of this tale by stating the following.

Dad knew more than he’d explained. Hans and my dad and Lady Alexandria had conspired with Lord Purple to turn Vivian into a pint-sized version of herself. She’d been put in her place and seemed to enjoy it which half defeated the purpose. I’d teleported out of there again.

I had time to think about all of this because the gas hadn’t filled me with any sense of euphoria or delirium. It hadn’t taken me to Wonderland.

It’d taken me to a park bench in New York. Or New, New York. Or Newer York. Which served as a big fat circle of my life because that bench happened to the same one I’d sat on months ago. The same one where my prior story ended and I’d found myself reunited with an exhausted Alice and The Judge’s verdict.

She did not appear and join me on the bench. That left me, the birds, and joggers. I stared off into the distance and tried to figure out a solution.

“I mean, it’s just kind of shitty.”

Flux beeped.

“I’m unkillable. I’m an agent of chaos. Or whatever. And I can’t actually do shit.”

Flux beeped.

“They just ignored me!”

Flux fucking beeped.

“Do you still have that God Maker potion from two months ago?”

It’d tasted like seventeen energy drinks and turned me into a lightning wielding machine for around two hours. I’d used those powers to get the electricity working on cable television. Then I’d watched shows for the rest of my time because it was that or get involved in the powered fight around me.

Flux beeped twice, which normally meant no.

“Well you’re a fat lot of help.” Flux had made me a gauntlet that altered molecules. Before I figured it out, some asshole four-armed urchin kicked me in the nuts and ran off with it. I hoped it blew up his family. “Half the time you copy out underwear or useless user manual pages.”

Flux beeped a few more times than whirred. Which meant nothing to me.

“What do I even do next?”

A real Agent, such as my dad and mom apparently, would know what to do next. They’d have a plan of some sort that would take steps toward resolution. This is the problem with being apathetic toward most conflicts. I didn’t know how I wanted it to resolve.

I shook the teleportation wrist device at Flux. It couldn’t copy a broken device and make it suddenly work. “Can’t teleport a third time. This thing is busted. I could step into traffic. That worked once.”

These pants were an unmitigated mess. They smelled like every smoker in the downtown area had personally huffed a pack right through the threads. The shirt hadn’t fared any better. My stomach growled and the birds chirping happily gave me a headache.

My head swam. Food would have helped but I couldn’t bring myself to stand up and stagger across the park. They’d see how terrible a mess I’d become and probably call the cops. Then from there it’d get out of hand because the first cops to show up would be new and not have a clue about my existence.

“Do I call someone for help?”

Calling Jade would always be my default response when lost and without pants. She had a constant supply of clothes and could get me any messages I’d missed. I also knew that her call is exactly what had started this grand adventure. To top off that mess, Jade’s original reason for calling had never been explained. She’d simply bombed me with unfiltered filth, included Alice in the psychic overload, and everything went downhill.

Being on receiving end of Vivian’s nonsense for days also murdered my libido. Jade had an overflowing amount and I didn’t relish leaping back into that pit. But I needed to do something.

So, off to find a payphone. Which were getting harder and harder to track down. Constant renovations as a result of fights breaking out yearly made it hard. No one wanted to replace archaic technology.

A man jogged by. I waved him down and while pointing.

He kept on going.

“Hey, can I borrow your phone!”

He veered around me. I did the natural crazy man move of getting in front of him and asking louder.

“Give. Me. Your. Phone!”

He turned around.

Now it was a game to me and I needed a win. I dove for the man, realized my ribs still hurt like hell and a leg muscle pulled. My lunch turned into a flailing dive. The black guy I’d chased down fell away. His arms flippered at me like some slapping machine stuck on a loop.

“No! No! I hate this park. I’m never jogging here again. Get away from me. You’re crazy. You’re smelly. You’re homeless. You probably have rabies.” He kept on foaming at the mouth. Which clearly meant he had rabies not me.

“I got to call my lawyer!” I bellowed at him.

He stopped and stood up straight. I also got back to my feet.

“Seriously?” he asked.

I nodded.

He glanced left and right, as if expecting an ambush from nowhere. Eventually he held out a tiny phone toward me while squinting. “Cross your heart, hope to die?”

“You would be so lucky,” I whispered to myself then snatched the phone while nodding. Much louder, I added, “You’ll get it back when I’m done. Should only take a minute.”

My memory had grown fuzzy over the years, but Jade’s number is one of the few that stuck with me. Probably because when I found myself somewhere strange on Earth, checking in with her helped smooth out the legal hurdles. Not that I had a clue what those were anymore.

Before, I’m mentioned how states paid me to stay away. All that sort of went by the wayside once I’d been classified as a “no-go”. Which is the government and super hero world’s way of saying “Stay away from these things cus no one is going to help you”. Wilhelm, The Walker is a No-Go. The Judge is a No-Go. Me, known as The Fiasco, also a No-Go. Apparently having a “The” in front of your super name made it mean more.

The phone rang and Jade answered almost immediately. “Now who could be calling me on a Sunday?”

Between the words now, and who, alarm bells were set ringing in my head. It took a split second to register that Jade didn’t have any dampener’s active, I yanked the phone away and pointed it at the man I’d borrowed it from. His eyes went glassy.

I stood close enough to get a bit of the image. It involved Jade, breasts bursting out of a too tight jacket. The table under her rocked vigorously, and the stream of words coming out of her mouth hadn’t been remotely professional. For half a second, I’d been the one poised behind her, servicing, but that flipped around easily enough. Now the guy lending me his phone would find himself mentally balls-deep in a very enthusiastic and well stacked Asian woman.

Question for the audience, do you think that counts as repaying him for borrowing the phone? He didn’t have a wedding ring.

The problem with Jade’s powers is that anyone near her often found themselves participating. Jade didn’t always like it, but she’d also made her peace with the problem by wearing a dampener in public. The number she gave me did not have the psychic blocking devices that her legal firm phone did. I had to rely on her wearing that pendant or not.

My phone donator stood there for a good thirty seconds before it became too much for him.

“Oh my god,” he mumbled, then fell onto the bench panting and covering his crotch awkwardly. I knew that feeling and decided to ignore him.

I shouted at the phone, “Jade, you’ve got twenty seconds to put on your necklace.”

Part of me debated simply letting Jade blast me with those powers to see if Alice would show. The rest of me had vowed to be faithful. Stuff I had no control over, such as Vivian, I couldn’t stop. That didn’t mean I would walk into people’s debased fantasy lives.

Debased. That’s a Ted word. Look it up if you’re confused.

A half minute later I risked putting the phone back to my ear. Jade’s powers were muted and I found myself sort of disappointed. The guy on the bench looked absolutely smitten.

“You have her number now,” I mouthed at him.

He stared at me then his eyes rolled. Ten seconds and he’d been rocked. Either the guy was a virgin, or simply repressed.

My head shook slowly. “Way to go. You just gave some poor guy a mindful of your Sunday alone time.”

“Adam,” Jade said dryly. She didn’t sound pleased at all. “You know the risks of calling me at home. This is an emergency only line.”

“Well. I don’t ever call just to ask about the weather.”

Jade pouted. Which I could hear but not see. “You should,” she said. “It’s so hard to find someone to talk to about normal stuff.”

Normalcy is my middle name. I sighed, then asked, “How’s the weather?”

“Wetter than a hurricane,” she mumbled.

I didn’t have the energy to snort. My mind went blank and I pushed away my concerns to focus on a simple next task.

Jade beat me to the punch. “Are you calling me from someone else’s phone?”

“Nope. This is phone I stole off a dead guy. It’s mine forever. I’ll be browsing his pictures next. Bet he’s got a billion of those sort of funny pictures.” The phone buzzed. I pulled my head away and saw an address posted on screen. That meant little to me since I could barely keep my cities straight, much less their intersections.

The city was the same. That meant something.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Okay. I’m sending that phone a message.” Which I’d already received, but whatever. “It’s an address, which I tried to give you last time before your girl went crazy. The note on it said it was a matter of life and death, that you needed to get the message as soon as possible.”

I sighed. Who knew that a simply check in would have had such disastrous results?

“The note also said to stand at that address and you’d go where you needed to be. Whatever that means. I’d worry more about these things but with your no-go classification, and being unkillable, I figured it couldn’t hurt to pass along the note.”

That’d been a weeks ago. Either the note hadn’t been meant to be delivered then, or I would arrive late to a party.

“Sure. I’ll get right on it.” I sighed. The point of calling had been to get some direction. This qualified. I didn’t want to unload on her about the rest of my problems because I think Jade’s legal qualifications ended at the atmosphere.

“That’s a local phone number, right?” She must be talking about the caller ID on my borrowed phone. “You’re in town?”

“Sure. I’ll look up the address.” My phone donator still sat, glazed over. Jade had hit him like a freight train. I eventually figured out how to use the phone and figure out my address then relayed it to her.

“I’ll get a cab to the corner there. Would you believe you can do it all online now? No more phone calls. Has it’s perks.”

“You sound pleased about that.”

“You know me, easy to please.”

Ever hear a woman’s brain reset? I have. It sounds like Jade after she drops a double entandre and debates weather to clarify or simply roll with it.

“Hard to satisfy?” I offered.

She mumbled something that could probably be considered filthy. Too bad I didn’t actually hear it. My mind had started to wander off toward reaching Alice. Getting a note to stand in a specific location, for me, would have probably come from Wilhelm. No one else in my recent events had the ability to predict the future.

“Adam. You having one of your episodes?” Jade asked. She panted into the phone and I pretended not to notice.

“You know me,” I responded.

“Not as well as I’d like.”

Her mind had wandered in a different direction. My eyes drifted upward and I tried to figure out why the people around me were utterly base. That’s a Ted word. Base. Ted words worming their way into my thoughts served as a constant annoyance.

Jade entertained herself. I got in a last request. “Send pants.”

“In. A. Moment,” she grunted.

I hung up the phone and let her have her fun. Jade had never failed me yet, despite her distractible nature.

That brought me back around to who send the note. It had to be Wilhelm. No one else would have found it amusing to give Jade the note to call me, knowing it would set Alice off, and give me grief.

So, here’s my next question to you. Because today’s episode is all about other people. Do I trust that Wilhelm’s grand scheme is somehow for the greater good? Or do I assume he really is looking for new ways to kill me and somehow Alice is part of the latest plot?

Choices were few. Not if I really loved her.

I dropped the phone onto the still dazed jogger. He barely blinked and smiled goofily. The solid bet would be him picking up that phone and dialing Jade again. Which she’d either love, or hate, and either way I couldn’t concern myself.

Off I went. The nearest street corner would eventually have a taxi. I waited, and sure enough, a man rolled up twenty minutes later and leaned his head out. He scanned me once, read a sticky note in his head, then shrugged.

He unlocked the door, and I got in. There were hastily purchased pants sitting there waiting for me, along with a box of wet wipes. Jade must have paid triple market rate to have the taxi driver stop off and pick these up. Or maybe people were victims of super hero fights so often that an order of clothes and something to wipe up with were common.

He tossed the sticky note back, which I read. It said “haggard white male who’s been run over by god”. Which had to be a description from Jade for my appearance. The destination Jade had texted me sat below that.

I attempted to mop myself up with the wipes. Old clothes and used wipes went in the bag. New clothes were slipped on. The cab driver said absolutely nothing. If he had a note from Jade and pants, he knew what to expect.

My mind slipped away into unconsciousness.

I’d say I dreamt of nothing. That would be a lie. I’d tell you what I dreamed of, but you can probably guess so I’ll spare you the same old panicked details.

Part of me longed for the days before a relationship. Back in the era when nothing had phased me and my hope of spending my fucked up life with another person had been roused. It’d been easier to go through life with nothing and expect to life that way forever.

I remember this story about Pandora’s box. How it contained all the evils in the world. The cynical out there sometimes say that hope is more dangerous than all the other blatant evils put together.

Horn honking woke me from sleep. I jerked away. He pointed at the door and I got myself out. All in all, it qualified as one of the best cab rides I’d ever had. The chatty drivers made me pray for a meteor to come crashing down. My reward to the cabby had been taking my trash with me.

It seemed like a nice gesture. I threw it all in a corner trash can then glanced around. The street intersection matched the note from Jade. I stumbled down the street, following worn out building numbers until I found the one indicated.

It went to a cramped series of storage units that were behind a laughably broken chain-link fence. No one sane would store personal belongings back here that they actually wanted to keep safe. This kind of place housed local chemists meth labs or mad scientist’s questionable compounds.

I reread the note and found a number. Off I went, venturing deeper into the storage chambers. It reminded me of the endless rows of doors at the mole people larder. So, there was that idea to ponder.

Profoundly deep thoughts plagued me. Shallow ones were dwelled upon. Such as, which of these lockers had drugs? I’ll let you decide if that qualified as deep or shallow, but it’s relative. At this point I could drown in a kiddy pool.

I found myself in front of the locker mentioned in my note. It had no lock of any sort which only meant anything valuable inside had already been hauled off. For a minute, I stood there wondering what might be inside, instead of doing the obvious thing, opening it.

A hand rubbed at my dirty scalp. The change of clothes and baby wipes hadn’t made a dent. A bathtub with hot water and bubbles would be nice. Maybe a record player to put on something classy. A sandwich would have been great.

Speculation aside, I did carefully bend over and lifted the rolling door up.

Nothing but black walls greeted me. I checked the note again. The numbers matched. They weren’t cleverly inverted or hanging upside down. I couldn’t tilt the letters and see some sort of secret code in the cabby’s scrawl.

I’ll spare you the long searching monologue of all the clever ideas I had. I’ll even spare you describing how I went back outside, walked down the street, and found a place to get food, after calling Jade again to get a loan. Which was a whole thing. You’re lucky, really. You don’t have to be me trying to get any information out of the angry, frustrated, and still noise making lawyer lady.

I mean, if you weren’t me, then maybe that whole process would be really awesome.

Let’s also not talk about how someone tried to rob me, and a masked man dove out of nowhere to tackle my assailants, while I ate chips. He looked at me, blanched, then tied the men to a pole and ran off. They were the stupid kind of thieves who carried money with them, which meant I went back to the store to get more food.

A few hours later I ended up back inside the storage unit, inspecting the walls for secret messages from invisible people. There were none. I explored the other open units found for mold and disappointment. They didn’t combine to form a triangle of power or a portal into parallel worlds.

So, I guess I didn’t spare you entirely. Now that I’ve glossed over me being useless, hungry, needing to stop to take a dump in a public restroom, and having my sanity chopped into bits by an empty room and zero answers, we can move on.

After all that shit and being utterly useless, I decided to sleep on it, hoping for dreams from Alice. One of the other storage units had dilapidated sleeping bags. They were good enough. Another had a row of locks and shoes that fit poorly. I borrowed items accordingly then went back to my storage unit.

Then I slept.

This next part involves me sleeping a lot. That’s boring, but honestly we should all be able to tell my body and brain had been run over by a freight train. While I slept, delirious dreams plagued me. I woke shivering and covered in sweat. Flux’s camera lens stared at me, it’s body tiled to one side then the other. I ate the last of my purchased food, rolled over, and closed my eyes.

That went on for a while. So much that between bounts of sleeping and feeling utterly sick, I actually had time to think. The main difference between this and being in a jail cell, is that my dad wasn’t awkwardly sitting across the hall as we both listened to Vivian express herself.

It was just me, silence, and occasional footsteps as someone else wandered down the alley of metal doors.

I twitched and woke up screaming. My hands grasped at nothing. Moments later I’d be back asleep with fever dreams of rescuing Alice like I had before. Is it wrong of me to take joy in that idea? To believe that I could be one of those heroes like on the television?

Some dreams involved a lineup of heroes all telling me I didn’t deserve happiness. I couldn’t tell you who, exactly. Just that they floated around me wearing a strange mixture of spandex, capes, and disapproving glares.

Then I’d wake again, alone in my self made prison, save for Flux.

My powers had to be using this downtime to build up something terrible. In moments the building would crumble around me and some earthquake inducing villain would flee from a jello shooting hero. They’d shake my room until I felt like a mixed drink ready to be poured…

And that nonsense faded as I jerked awake again.

“Flux?”

I beeped.

“What time is it?”

Flux beeped again but otherwise proved useless.

I hoped the students were okay. They’d plagued my dreams. Poor Clinton would be on the run, trying to keep them safe. Kennedy would be growing increasingly bloodthirsty. To the point that he sometimes scared Leticia, who’d been violent herself. Then she would die again, and this time the other two wouldn’t notice until days later.

Flux heard my theories and beeped occasionally. It meant nothing. Just a craze homeless man in a storage unit wearing stolen belongings mourning life in general. I like to think I didn’t sound pathetic. I didn’t feel that way. I felt matter of fact and sick. Which put me with doomsday believers ranting on a street corner while high on coke with socks that didn’t match.

If we take the entire super hero world, thousands of people large. I was literally the homeless man that the police didn’t lock up for long.

Here’s the difference between a positive state of mind, and a negative one. All those thoughts before, negative. Not like full on in the pit better slash my wrists yesterday negative. But maybe a seven on the one to ten scale. Measure it whatever way you want.

After three days, which I measured with an occasional trip to the corner market to spent the thieves money, there were positive aspects. I had time to sort my thoughts out. My body felt better than it had in ages. I’d showered twice at a gym that let poor homeless beggars clean up for a dollar.

Routine. These events may seem boring because you don’t know about the lows between major events. My first story only covered one event after another, after another. I didn’t show you how I sat, bored, tired, chugging pain killers and waiting for my body to recover. Did you know that with enough time it’s possible to find bolt cutters? Then use those to get into other lockers and find a portable television?

I mean, morals aside, this place wasn’t high security. The television sat in a locker that someone else had already broken into. I kept the bolt cutters because I’d accidentally locked myself out of the storage unit I’d been camping out in.

Between bouts of sickness, feeling better, being dumb, and feeling sick again, a nervousness crept into my mind. Unease and knowledge that while I sat here day after day, trying to figure out what method might get me to Alice, she would be getting future away.

Delightful. So, fast forward another two days. For those playing the home game that meant five days since I’d broken my teleporter. And if I didn’t mention it, it wasn’t like I only got two teleports out of that stupid device. I’d had ten, and ended up in swamps, forests, a rave, and no amount of drugs or bark chewing worked to get me to Wonderland.

It’s like the place didn’t exist anymore. Which might have been true since I hadn’t actually been to Wonderland in months. Once Alice and I were a thing, once Id Alice and her stabbing existed outside of that weird pocket nightmare, my bi-monthly visits to some version of that place had stopped.

Anyway, five days after I first started holing up in the storage unit, hoping that this damn note meant something useful, the game changed.

I huddled in a corner, bundled in borrowed blankets and wishing for a heater. Flux had vanished, likely in search of better footage to pass the time with. The small room held mostly darkness, save for the static filled television screen which showed the news. For those interested, the world at large still existed, relatively chaos free, despite the war that had ranged near the moon weeks ago.

Then another light popped up. I shrugged it off as the static on my television clearing because suddenly the news grew even easier to see. The color came in and I could actually tell what they were babbling about.

The light brightened. A wall shuddered. I assumed it to be someone clearing out a neighboring storage unit. The noise grew and I fiddled with the sound on the side of my contraption. It didn’t make a difference.

Huffing filled the small room. Flux beeped and I woke up slowly. Words that didn’t belong to the television registered, along with some serious whimpering.

“Ken. No. No, hang in there, it’ll be okay!” a man said.

I slowly lowered the screen, peered over the edge and saw my new house guests.

In the small room with me, were two people. Clinton cradled an absolute butchered Kennedy in his arms.

Flux, showing up for the first time in days, beeped happily.

“You couldn’t knock first?” I said.

***

Character Dossier

Name: Kennedy

Gender: Male

Age: 20

Generalized Ratings as Follows

Strength: 6 (Telekinetic enhanced)

Intelligence: 5 (Capably lazy)

Agility: 4

Luck: 3

Attitude: Loyal, worried, questioning, dark side

Items of Note

First powered person in his family. Political father. Stay at home mother. Repressed childhood. Sent to boarding school. Ran away twice. Poor decision maker. Heavily codependent. Bird phobia.

Powers

Telekinesis branches into multiple specialties. Typically reduction of scope increase the users ability to cause movement. Kennedy’s range is humungous compared to average users, but the size of material he can work with functions better on the microscopic. This allows him to manipulate the half a percent of magnesium (a metalloid) in an average human’s body. For a more tangible image, picture a human pinky ripping holes in the human body. This impact is worse in species with larger percentages (up to approximately twenty percent), but tappers off in beings that are primarily composed of metalloids.

Fun Fact

Kennedy hates parrots, and birds in general, but especially parrots. His powers first awoke when a neighbor’s bird broke out, flew two houses over, and attempts to steal his sunflower seeds. One borderline hysterical fight later, Kennedy’s powers came online, slamming the bird to the ground. It cursed for two minutes before finally perishing.

The owner was not pleased. The sunflower seeds were ruined. The social media video of his fight got two hundred thousand hits. Kennedy got superpowers and a complex. He’s a first-generation powered person. This coupled with a lawsuit over the dead bird, a animal rights groups, and his sexual orientation, made being shipped off to Wilhelm Walker’s school for the gifted a no brainer for his parents.