The air was cold. Sweat sapped the heat from her skin, and the sheets had long slipped off ever since she had started to hover above her bed. Her eyelids fluttered. But Lyssa could not wake. She didn’t even know who she was at the moment. It was all in a state of flux.
Somewhere deep underneath the M.A.G.E campus, Whitworth meditated. It had been a while since he used his powers so flamboyantly. Despite knowing he was unaffected by senescence, he felt old, drained.
How many years left? He had asked himself this many times. He was a truly young man when he saw these crazy Americans start a war over the principles behind taxes. Not that that particular movement was any more grassroots than this one. His powers were not yet developed then, and he had to rely on a normal man’s ken, which was sufficient to realize the world never moved via a single momentum. Good and evil was a dangerous reductionism. It would always be a matter of conflicting motivations. There existed no judge, no matter how blind, that could determine whose will deserved to exist more than another’s. He had fought many villains in his time. Many worked against the system because they recognized this truth, and because they loathed to see people reduced to a number. But maximizing happiness was the only way empires lasted.
He climbed out of his sensory deprivation tank, brushing a layer of water off his face.
‘They just don’t understand,’ he thought to himself. Very few people did. By the time most humans lived long enough to grow wise, they were on the verge of death. But a strange apathy lied beyond those golden years. Helena Hegemon, Lawrence Juniper, Magellan Orcus. Immortals who seemed content to let the ages roll past. Whitworth was quite young for his ilk. But he always wondered how many years it would take before he decided to become a hermit like Lawrence, or be sharpened into a spear of self-interest like Helena. Perhaps he’d turn into a tree like Magellan.
He dried and dressed, somewhat recovered from having to put thousands of people to sleep without them hurting themselves too much on the way down.
Bit by bit he eased back into his senses. His sphere of awareness expanded. He considered reaching over to the dorms to check on Lyssa. Conscripting others always made him feel some guilt, even after centuries. He flexed his telepathy, but stopped before he projected anywhere. The last time he had done this he intruded on a moment. He withdrew.
The last of the villains were being mopped up at this very moment. The fight was over. Lyssa deserved space, at the very least.
Whitworth also didn’t mind a few hours of quiet in the privacy of his quarters. He left the side of his deprivation tank, and walked across tiled floor. A nest of monitors on the other side of his quarters followed him as he sat down on a plain office chair. World affairs scrolled past on the screens.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
On one screen, the statuesque president of Helena Industries spoke to a crowd with the nascent dawn in the background. Helena promised a donation to help repair the damage to the city, and announced the start of a foundation for future events such as this.
Whitworth pursed his lips. When did Helena prepare this project? How much of this city’s situation was she aware of from the start?
The crowd applauded. Flash photography clicked. The woman smiled radiantly. It made her look human. The people didn’t realize who was feeding them altruism. Whitworth remembered how they had first met. It was at the opening of a history museum. Curators had unveiled a section of glyphic wall, painstakingly dug up from a part of the world where great canopies of leaves ruled and miles long vines draped over half-buried ziggurats. The glyphs were indecipherable, partly due to age, partly due to missing letters. Helena had looked upon it and stifled a laugh. Whitworth had asked her what was so funny.
“You wouldn’t get it.”
Helena wasn’t concerned with the West, or the East. The Russian Federation, the Red Parliament, the Noble Families, America. All of them were transitory, a time that would come to pass. He couldn’t trust her to protect this world, even as he bought her equipment for that very purpose.
All for another time. He leaned back in his chair and took Jackson’s advice. His people would take care of things from here on out. He thought of what to say before the courts when they inevitably trudged through the bureaucracy and called him in for questioning. They’d shout and pout and put on a show, then they would slap him on the wrist. They needed him too much. The theater was there to justify the salaries of government officials.
Satisfied with his prediction, Whitworth leaned back in his chair and took a nap.
Lyssa woke at the crack of dawn. She auto-piloted through her morning routine. The world swam around her. The noise in the living room washed past her. It was Penny and Amelia talking. Amelia was recounting what had happened between her and her mother. She had spent the night alone, above the clouds, pondering under the moonlight.
Lyssa could not understand them. As in she couldn’t ascribe meaning to their words. She wandered outside the dorm. The sky tasted orange-blue. She saw the roughness of the tree bark in the campus gardens. The colors of the flowers swirled. The winds blew sweet and sour. Everything was spinning, blending together. She was the only one staying still.
The shadow of a conversation mumbled in the back of her thoughts. It was the last remnant of coherent speech from her dreams. Someone was trying to convince her.
“Isn’t the world prettier like this?”
The grass sang. She knelt down and saw that it wasn’t the stalks doing so (that would be silly), but crickets. Crickets and frogs, dancing among the morning dew drops. A complex, choreographed tango around the stalks. She wanted to join them. The grass shot out of the earth, growing taller and taller. Its denizens became her size. The crickets and frogs made way for her. One of them offered a webbed hand. She took it, and joined the ball, pirouetting in the waving sea of green.