Microstory 134: Phaedra Wirth

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Although there were fewer than a hundred people who were considered anomalies, and presented special abilities, they were not technically the only ones of their kind. Years ago, when the test subjects from the original anomaly experiments were released from their captors, they moved on with their lives. Some had children with each other. Others had children with normal people. Their altered genes spread throughout the human population in a random pattern, and the traits that made them special continued across the centuries. During the time just before and during Bellevue, a number of their descendants were activated by The Keystone, but many thousands more were left normal. There was a particular organization interested in tapping into anomaly abilities, and finding ways to replicate them. They kidnapped and experimented on the handful of people with abilities that they could find. Phaedra Wirth was not born with abilities, though she did share genetic similarities with the kidnapped, suggesting to the team’s scientists that there might be some way to turn someone into an anomaly through further science. Phaedra volunteered for the super soldier program, hoping to gain abilities of her own. The scientists were unable to find a way to activate Phaedra, but they did find a way to transfer—not copy—someone else’s ability to her. One victim perished as a result, but the procedure was perfected, and the others survived. Most of them grew angry and violent for what had been done to them, and ultimately joined the primary opposing force to Bellevue. But after what she had been through, and what she had unwittingly done to the first victim, Phaedra became determined to focus her energy on preventing these scientists, or any others, from trying such procedures again. Armed with a plethora of new special abilities, she turned on her superiors and broke out of the facility. She discovered files containing intelligence on Bellevue, as well as an island of anomalies with physical mutations, which the organization had scheduled to be kidnapped for a second round of experiments. She managed to travel to the island with the help of a partner in order to protect the mutants from her former employers, and later spearheaded the effort for them to all join Bellevue.

Microstory 133: Alter Orenstein

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In order to understand how Alter Orenstein’s ability works, one would first have to understand the true nature of time. There is an infinite number of realities which exist simultaneously, each one based on a decision that any given free-thinking individual could possibly make. Let’s say that you are trying to decide whether you should place your foot on the next step in a staircase, or skip to the step above it. Before you make that decision, both of those possible realities exist at the same time, but as soon as you actually make the decision to skip the step, the reality where you didn’t skip the step is completely destroyed. And that’s only one simple example. You could skip two steps; you could fall down the stairs; you could even skip the step, but do so a half second later. Each one of those possibilities creates a new reality, but it will only last for a fraction of a second, which is why these are called microrealities. While you’re determining how you should proceed next on the staircase, your friend upstairs is wondering which sock to put on first, an insect on the screen door is deciding whether to crawl one more millimeter or stay in place and do nothing, and a child in another galaxy is choosing a piece of a candy from a bowl. This results in an incalculable number of simultaneous microrealities waiting to be adopted, as well as an incalculable number of microrealities collapsing in on their own irrelevance. Alter was born with the ability to perceive any and all possible futures. Fortunately, he was also born with natural precision, which allowed him to tease away the minute differences between realities, and only focus on the major potential changes. When looking into the future, the world appeared with a red tint, and so he named this RedTime. For whatever reason, he could only ever see 14 minutes and 73 seconds in the future. He would often use his ability to protect people from harm, warning them which decisions would be physically dangerous, and which were safe to make. He spent a lot of time working in the Special Projects department of Bellevue, since it was the most dangerous.

Microstory 132: Adam Nicks

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No one in the entire universe was busier than Adam Nicks. He was involved in every major historical event, if only in a small way. He appeared to be drawn to trouble, but the truth was that he had in his possession an incredibly powerful and comprehensive security system that alerted him to the goings on of his peoples. He could perform some tasks remotely, however many things needed to be done in person, and so he would rush off without notice, much to the dismay of whoever he was helping at the time. He was not an anomaly, and would have to spend vast amounts of time away from Bellevue due to a particularly gruesome war in another galaxy, so he was considered more of an honorary member; a consultant, as it were. But he made vital contributions to the cause, sometimes without others even noticing. Adam was an immortal, and the only one of his kind. He presumably had zero weaknesses; he didn’t need to breathe, he didn’t feel pain, and he could not be injured in any way. He refused to tell anyone exactly how old he was, though there was a known minimum to his age. Other certain immortals and long-living people had encountered him earlier in their lives, and knew him to have been around for at least several thousand years. He came across the founding members of Bellevue before they had started recruiting strangers, and helped make some initial decisions. It was his idea to set up headquarters at an unused hotel, somehow aware that its owner, Basil Ploutos, would be open to an unusual arrangement. Though Adam wasn’t always available to Bellevue, he would often show up when he was most needed to provide advice and even advanced technology and expertise. It was the ability of a very special anomaly who ultimately let him finally find peace in death.

Microstory 131: Radimir Lazarov

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There were a number of completely unrelated people who could either sense or, in some way, manipulate waves on the electromagnetic spectrum, but they all sat in their own spot. Radimir Lazarov was capable of sensing radio signals ranging from high frequency to very low frequency waves, but could not transmit or manipulate them in any way. This allowed him to receive data being transmitted across the FM and AM bands, analog television, and shortwave radio signals. He was born and raised in Russia and actually never stepped foot in Bellevue, or anywhere outside of Europe, for that matter. He grew up not really having any idea what he could do with his ability. He was able to listen to music or watch television no matter where he was, and without anyone knowing, but he never thought that to be very useful to others. Once joining Bellevue, however, he was assigned to the Communication and Handling division for all of Europe, working closely with Tracy Wickham and her team of field operatives. As the result of a conversation two early members of the organization had regarding the mere possibility of someone with Radimir’s abilities, he was jokingly addressed as the Human Police Scanner upon first discovery. In fact, European operatives would come to refer to the HPS system when learning or discussing the details of their missions.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 13, 2037

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Thank God Leona’s mind processed information at the speed of light. With only seconds to think, she switched on both of their jet packs. Though they were not designed to operate within the atmosphere, they did the job in a pinch. Their descent was slowed enough to keep them from splattering onto the ground below. The problem was that they also weren’t designed to work in tandem like that. Had they had enough time, and had Mateo been born smarter, they could have done it on their own, but since Leona was pulling all the weight, she wasn’t able to exercise full control over their movements. The jets propelled them over and back up and down and all around, like a rebellious firehose. She was finally able to keep them pointed towards the water long enough to stave off their death for one more second. She switched off the jets and they fell, only to begin sinking into the depths.

Feeling the need to contribute something to the effort, Mateo tore off their spacesuits and pulled them back to the surface of the...lake. It was definitely a lake. And that tree looked familiar. Yes. It was Sherwood Lake. They were back in Topeka. As he was crawling up the beach, he saw a pair of legs run past him. A set of arms that belonged with the legs reached down and helped Leona to her feet. Her own legs were shaking, and she was having trouble standing up. He had always seen her as the strong one in the relationship, but this showed that she had been just as traumatized by the event as he had.

“Thanks, dad,” she said.

Mr. Delaney began to help her take more pieces of her suit off while his wife ran down and wrapped a towel around her. “I have her. Check on the boy.”

“No, I’m fine,” Mateo insisted. “Just a little out of breath.”

“I have a towel for you too,” she said.

“My mother? Samsonite?”

“Oh, yeah. We need to call them.” She took out her device and stepped to the side.

“What happened to them?” Leona asked of her father.

“They both lost consciousness in the water,” Mr. Delaney explained. “Don’t worry, they’ve alive, and suffered no brain damage. But the old fisherman who pulled them into his boat couldn’t remember exactly where he had found them, so we separated to look for you.”

“They’re on their way,” Leona’s stepmother said.

“Call Theo too.”

“Oh, right.” She went back to her phone.

“I don’t know how much you know,” Mateo said, accepting a bottle of water. “But there was an android woman who saved us.”

Mr. Delaney nodded, indicating that Mateo didn’t need to continue his question. “Her nanites are in the water, but they apparently lost their...cohesion or something. They tell us that she would be, for all intents and purposes, dead. I’m sorry.”

Mateo nodded understandingly. “Figures.” He looked to Leona. “How did Mirage pretend that she jumped with us?”

“I was thinking about that,” Leona replied. “She wouldn’t have been able to turn invisible, but she could have separated her nanites quick enough to make it look like she was disappearing.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

They engaged in the latest of their long line of reunions. Leona noted how much larger Theo had grown since she last saw him. Normally, that would be a cliché, but it was relevant in this case due to the time difference. He was now 18 years old, and indeed taller than his older sister. Mateo’s mother and Samsonite, on the other hand, had not changed a bit. They were as young as they had been when he first caught back up with her seven years ago. Advances in medicine in cosmetics might have accounted for such a thing, but Samsonite posited a mathematical factor. Because of Mateo’s cousin, Danica, they already knew that the powers that be were capable of immortality. And Aura and Samsonite were on a specific timeslip pattern, broken only to allow them to switch from jumping backwards to jumping forwards. According to that pattern they, along with Theo, were due to remain within the present timestream for another 300 years. They assumed the last two centuries would be finished up by their corpses, but their feelings of vitality now suggested otherwise. Theo called it their gift for following the rules for so long. Samsonite was curious to find out the truth about it. Aura was suspicious.

They drove a car that was registered to a friend of a friend of a friend, so that they were far enough removed from the prying eyes of Reaver. Paper money was still a thing that existed in some circles. It was so rare that it was relatively easy to trace, but only if you knew where you were looking. Mateo’s and Leona’s family had spent the last year turning themselves into ghosts by converting their cash to other currencies, buying innocuous goods at random places, and bartering in rural areas. They moved to the most remote place they could find in the middle of Wyoming.

While Reaver had lost control of his own company and was currently awaiting trial for his latest blunder with the exploding space probe, he was still a threat. As much trouble as he was in, he surely had friends on the inside of the outside, and they were a risk to Mateo and anyone close to him. It made him want to run away again, but this time actually do it right. Leona seemed to sense this and convinced him otherwise. She explained to him in no uncertain terms that every major attempt at his life had occurred while Mateo was isolated from his family, or only with Leona. They were all better off sticking together, even if it meant Leona’s father and stepmother had to destroy their old lives. None of this was their fault, and he should have been more careful about keeping them out of it. It was actually surprising how safe they had been throughout the years. It was only recently that they were really in danger. Though, Leona was right. Reaver wasn’t interested in hurting his family and friends, if only to get to him. Mateo seemed to be Reaver’s one and only purpose.

“But see, that’s the thing,” Leona said of this after finding some privacy in their very own cabin in the woods. “You first encountered Reaver more than a thousand years in the future. He had already been dealing with you, but you hadn’t even met him yet from your perspective.”

“Right,” Mateo said, prompting her to go on.

“In fact, every time we’ve encountered him thus far, he was already pissed off with you.”

“Yeah, I still don’t know why.”

“He hasn’t even bothered to tell you. We’re already pretty sure that you and I and any other salmon are capable of altering the timeline. That’s probably what we’re doing here. Either he’s a complete moron, or there’s some reason why he hasn’t so much as attempted to ask you for help with changing whatever has been done to him.”

“That’s true. I don’t know what I did, and he has to know that. There must be some reason he’s keeping his past-slash-my future from me.”

“And what’s his pattern? Is it random? Does he have control over it? If so, why doesn’t he jump out of jail? Is he a rogue member of the power that be? Or worse,” she started, “is he not rogue?”

“These are all brilliant questions.”

“We have to ask them,” Leona said, straight-faced.

“Yeah,” Mateo chuckled. “Wait, what?”

She drew closer and lowered her voice, even though the nearest people were in a separate cabin. “Maybe you were right about running away.” She weathered a brainstorm in her own head. “He’s not going to stop. He can’t. And we can’t stop him. He might not be convicted of any crime. He may retake his company. He might even be able to teleport out of jail. Hell, he could go back in time and kill your mother before you’re born.”

“What are you saying, Leona?” Mateo asked.

“We have to take the fight to him. We have to get our answers, and barring any sudden conversations with the puppeteers of all this bullshit, we have to get those answers from him.”

“We could contact the Delegator.”

“How?”

“Danica?”

“We’re not allowed in the Constant. Not even Theo can get back in. I think we’ve been put on the naughty list.”

“This sounds reckless.”

She kissed him with both the passion of a new relationship, and the ease of an old marriage. “We’re time travelers. The world could plan for an asteroid heading towards us, but we would be falling down the crater tomorrow. Reckless sounds like a casual stroll in the park to me at this point.”

Mateo yawned. “Let’s talk about it next year. We can’t do anything today. Like you said, we could jump to our death tomorrow, and none of this would even matter.”

To spite their exhaustion, Mateo and Leona finally consummated their twenty-year relationship that night.

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Crossed Off: Isolate (Part VII)

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Starla and Alec arrived at Marissa’s house just before dinner time. Things were a bit awkward at first, so Mrs. Mendegale decided to make things more awkward by starting the conversation. “So, Miss Wakefield, I am pleased to finally have proof that Marissa’s penpal isn’t a forty-year-old man in his mom’s basement.”

Alec nearly spit out his food.

“Mother!” Marissa chastised.

“Don’t insult the company, dear,” Mr. Fanchild complained to his wife.

“I’m just trying to lighten the mood,” Mrs. Mendegale insisted.

Alec nodded and spoke before finishing his green bean, “that’s what I’ve been trying to convince my friends.” He squinted and jabbed his fork towards her. “You and I understand each other, Mrs. Mendegale.”

She smiled, and for a few minutes, the only noise heard was the sound of silver on porcelain.

Starla caught Mr. Fanchild eyeing her wheelchair a few times, unable to resist his curiosity, but also unable to voice it. “I have a rare degenerative disease,” she volunteered. “They haven’t even had time to name it after someone yet. The full name is something I can’t pronounce, but that’ll probably change to Wakefield Syndrome in a few years.”

“I’m sorry, I was staring.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she told him genuinely. “The disease operates with a bottom-up structure. It started in my toes and has worked its way up to my waist. Eventually, it will reach my neck and I’ll be fully locked in. The doctors aren’t sure whether I’ll even be able to move my eyeballs or eyelids.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, but this time for a different reason.

“Starla, Alec, and I are going to meet some friends at the skating park,” Marissa said, changing the subject. “We’ll need to leave soon.”

“I wish you wouldn’t go there,” Mrs. Mendegale said. “It’s far too dangerous. And what about her wheelchair?”

“Well, it will roll down the ramp a lot better than my feet do, so I think she’ll be all right.”

“That’s not funny.”

“So is your face.”

Mrs. Mendegale closed her eyes and sighed before looking to Alec, the only other adult in the room besides her husband. “She learned how to think for herself last week, and we haven’t figured out how to reset her to her factory settings.”

She gave her mother a playful grimace as the only reply.

Marissa pushed Starla down the sidewalk while Alec meandered in the street nearby. “I’m not sure if I’m up for a large crowd tonight,” Starla admitted. “Do you think there will be a lot of people at the skate park tonight?”

“We’re not going to the skate park. We’re going to The Dust Fountain.”

“No one goes there,” Alec said. “Why are we?”

“I have a present for you.”

“And what might that be?”

“Well,” she began, “Tristan found that superhero league in Missouri, and Sendoa met that cloner guy in France, I figured it was time for me to contribute.”

“You don’t mean...”

“I do. I too found someone else with superpowers.” Marissa reached down to give Starla a hug around her neck. “It would seem that you’re all coming together like a jigsaw puzzle. I say that it’s meant to be.”

“Marissa,” Starla whined. “I came here to isolate myself from these people.”

“She’s not a these people. She’s my best friend.”

“Therasia?” Alec guessed.

“That’s right.”

“Why didn’t you tell us about her before?” Starla asked.

“You asked me to keep your secret, and she asked me to keep hers. But you’re here now, and I’ll be the last to admit that death comes for us all, but I kind of feel like you should meet her before you stop being able to speak. Don’t wanna be morbid or anything.”

Alec looked like he was planning an escape route.

“It’s fine,” Starla said to calm him down. “She’s right. I’m not going to be myself for much longer. I have very little to lose. Maybe René was wrong. Maybe I’m the one person who doesn’t have to fear people finding out about abilities. What’s the worst they could do to me?”

Alec moved over and stopped the wheelchair by the armrests. “I can think of a thing or two, and I’m not the psychopath. Imagine what they could come up with?”

“If I do imagine that, am I not one of the psychopaths?”

“Starla,” he said in his fatherly voice.

“You can leave,” she said.

“Like hell,” he said, releasing her.

They came up on the Dust Fountain, an ancient relic of a time when the local government was attempting to revitalize the area decades ago. The commissioning of the large fountain nearly bankrupted them. If not for a rich man dying during his travels west who fell in love with the town and bequested his fortune to it, the fountain could have been all that remained. Instead, it was left almost perfectly alone; a kind of holy ground to act as a reminder of what might have been. It was never cleaned or maintained, and was only allowed visitors on rare spiritual occasions, but still it remained standing tall. Through rain and wind, it never crumbled, and no one really knew why. “Won’t we get caught here?” Alec asked as they approached. “I assume people walk by all the time.”

“Sure, if we’re above ground,” Marissa agreed. “But we’re going downstairs.”

After they had finished lifting Starla’s chair into the fountain, Marissa took a water bottle out of her purse and stuffed it inside the mouth of the large horse statue. “Therasia’s cousin discovered this,” she went on as the water drained from the bottle. “Rain can’t reach it accidentally, but some kind of catch is released when it fills up with enough water.” Once the bottle had been emptied, the entire statue twisted and revealed a winding ramp. “She’s hoping to use this as her superhero lair some day. No one else is aware of its existence, as far as we can tell.”

“Oh, my God,” Starla said. “This is amazing!”

“It’s like it was designed for you. You would think they’d have built it with stairs.” She took control of the wheelchair and headed down backwards, keeping Starla from rolling too quickly. “We have to hurry. Once the water drains all the way, the statue closes back up on its own.”

“This is brilliant,” Alec admired.

“Be prepared to say that again.”

They reached the bottom of the ramp and found themselves in the lair’s antechamber. Lit torches lined the wall, yet it was unrealistically cold. A girl walked in from a door on the other side of the room. She outstretched her arm while she was still a good distance from them, as if to shake their hands. “You must be Alec and Starla.” A large flame slowly grew from her hand and crackled softly. “My name is Therasia Jarvi. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

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Microstory 130: Therasia Jarvi

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Therasia Jarvi might have been the most powerful anomaly of all. She could manipulate the movement of atoms, exciting them or slowing them at will. This allowed her to make the immediate area hot, cold, or windy. With better control, she was able to generate fire, ice, and water. Other anomalies could do one or two of these things, but Therasia could do them all. The more she practiced, the better she became, and the wider her range. It was theorized that, if she worked hard enough, she would be able to alter the climate of the entire world. That she wanted, she could have destroyed the planet. Therasia lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba which was one of the coldest cities in the world. She was excited when she discovered what she could do, and hoped to one day use her abilities as a superhero. Unrelated to her abilities, her parents had trouble understanding her. She did well in school, and got along with her classmates for the most part, but she also had a strange way about her. The world of psychology was only recently starting to investigate autism spectrum disorder, and history would later suggest that she would have been diagnosed as belonging somewhere on the spectrum had the field been ready for her. She expressed ideas and made connections between things that people had trouble relating to. There were concepts in her head that made sense to her, but not to most others. She was one of only a handful of people to be put on a list by the founders of Bellevue, so they were able to find her with no prompting. They insisted that she complete tertiary school, but in the meantime, was allowed to visit the hotel regularly. A boy who was only a couple years older was just finishing college at the same time and was placed in a similar sort of probationary period. They quickly latched on to each other, but the other members made her feel equally as valuable. Before Bellevue, however, there was really only one person who loved her without question; her best friend, Marissa. And it wasn’t even until later that Marissa learned of her secret...

Microstory 129: Andrew Langlais

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There was something very poetic about Emmanuelle and her brother, Andrew Langlais. They were package deal. Through a rare process called superfetation, their mother became pregnant with Andrew at a time when she was already pregnant with Emmanuelle. The doctors were worried about complications, what with Andrew being three months premature, yet they were both born healthier than most. In fact, they grew up never having gotten sick even once. Though not considered twins, the two of them were inseparable. They did practically everything together, and knew all of each other’s secrets. One day in primary school, Emmanuelle broke her arm on the Vector field and was sent to the school doctor. An older girl was in the office at the same time with a painful illness. She was suffering from stomach pains, a migraine, and aches throughout most of her muscles. Out of instinct, Emmanuelle approached the girl and tried to comfort her by holding her hands. They both began to shake and their pores widened spontaneously, yet they were unable to let go. Blood drained out of the girl’s arms and forced itself into Emmanuelle’s. After the process was over, the girl was feeling better than ever. Emmanuelle, however, was not. She started to feel the same symptoms that the girl had before. She had somehow removed the illness from her and taken it into herself. Feeling his sister’s pain from the other side of the school, Andrew raced down the halls and burst into the doctor’s office. Again out of instinct, they grasped each other’s arms and repeated the process. Andrew pulled the disease into himself, but did not become sick like she had. Instead, he nullified it. He even managed to heal her broken arm at the same time. Apart, Emmanuelle’s and Andrew’s abilities were useless. He couldn’t heal anyone on his own, and she couldn’t heal anyone alone without suffering from their condition. They gladly joined Bellevue so that they would have the resources they needed to start a healing foundation. They could not heal other people’s physical injuries (though Andrew could heal both his own and his sister’s), but together they healed literally countless people of otherwise incurable diseases. After enough time, they stopped aging, and were discovered to be incapable death. They turned out to be two of only three true immortal anomalies.