Microstory 167: Mason Palomino

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Though she was the founder of Bellevue, The Keystone was considered to be a failure of a leader, and was responsible for a handful of major snafus. As members began to lose faith in her, she decided to read the writing on the wall and back Mason Palomino for leadership. He had already inadvertently gathered a following, and had garnered a relationship with the man who controlled the money. Mason’s second-in-command, Valary provided the vision for the organization, and Mason expertly executed her ideas and advice. Along with Flora Canto, they pushed Bellevue into the 21st century, and made it the most important organization in the world. But before all of this, Mason worked desperately to act like a normal person. He had an incredibly special form of telekinesis that acted on his behalf without his focus. Upon waking, his television will flip on and turn to the weather channel. The faucet will run on its own, the water will boil, and then the pot will fill a cup where a tea bag was already placed. His body will float in the air a few centimeters and drop itself into his shoes which will tie themselves. The doors will open, the car engine will turn over, and as the car is driving itself down the roads, every single traffic signal will turn green for him. And all of this will happen unless Mason makes a concerted effort to stop it, and that’s exactly what he usually does. Mason was a highly educated person, but he pursued a career in construction to prevent himself from becoming complacent. Working with his hands kept his ability in check. He was afraid that, if he let his telekinesis take over every aspect of his life, he would become a meaningless shell of a man. It was this attitude that caused people to gravitate towards him, and trust him to make the right decisions for them. He even later lost his telekinetic ability, but did not miss a beat. He just went on with his life, and worked hard to better the world in every way that he could. A group of immortals took notice of this, and provided him with the opportunity to continue his work across the universe as a Mastermind.

Microstory 166: Stephen Berg

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When Stephen Berg was eleven years old, his parents were both killed in a plane crash on their way back from Florida. His sister, Amana was only fifteen years old at the time, but she was able to convince the court that she was old enough to act as Stephen’s guardian. This was a tough sell since Stephen had an anger issues, and needed a tough hand to keep him in line. A few months after the loss of their parents, Stephen was rampaging through the house downstairs. He was knocking over lamps and ripping out cabinet doors. The whole place was a mess. Amana woke up while he was in the middle of his tantrum, and went downstairs for a glass of water. She found him there, still tearing the house apart, but she could hear nothing. There was dead silence. Stephen stopped when he noticed she was there, and admitted to her what he could do. He was actually intending to reveal his secret to the parents upon their return from vacation. He was an extremely powerful sound manipulator, and could form invisible barriers that directed sound towards a particular target. The more he practiced, the stronger he became. When he was older, he was even capable of having conversations with people on the other side of the planet without anyone else hearing. A couple of years later, Bellevue approached the Berg children, hoping to give them some closure regarding the plane crash, but had no idea that he was an anomaly. Once the details came to light, Stephen and Amana joined the organization. Amana worked in real estate, helping new residents find homes in the fledgling city. Meanwhile, Stephen finished his education alongside his best friend, Quang Phan. His anger problems continued into adulthood, past the point of his and his friends’ mysterious disappearance, but his relationships with Catriona, Chase, Cassie, Sonya, and even Marinko helped keep him grow and mature.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 20, 2044

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As Mateo was handing Reaver his wingsuit, Leona began to let down a pilot ladder. But Reaver loudly whispered up to her, “no! We can’t leave from this side.”

“What are you talking about?” Mateo whisper-yelled back. “This is the plan.”

“I’ve already done all this once, remember?” he asked. “Both of you die, and I get caught.”

“Well, what would you suggest?” Leona asked from the wall.

“The other side has better wind.”

“You expect me to run all the way over there?”

“It’s our only chance,” Reaver insisted.

Leona growled. “Fine! Hurry up!” She bolted along the wall, and carefully made the turn towards the opposite corner.

“Come on, you son of a bitch,” Mateo ordered. He and his enemy, Horace Reaver sprinted across the lawn, staying as low and inconspicuous as possible.

About halfway there, they ran into Gilbert Boyce, the man who Mateo had tricked into thinking that he was there to break him out last year; their pledge. “You,” he said to them in disgust. “So you were trying to break him out. Do you know what you did to me? I spent eleven months in Dismal Key Penitentiary because of you. It’s in a swamp! If you hadn’t shown up, I would have been released from this place by now.”

“Get the hell out of our way, Gilbert.” Reaver spat.

Gilbert prepared to yell as loud as he could, “they’re breakin’ ou—!”

Mateo covered Gilbert’s mouth with his gloved hand. “I am extremely sorry for what I did to you last year. You were our best shot at making this happen, and I know you didn’t deserve it. I read your file, and if you’ve done your time, then you’ve done your time. Come with us now.”

“Are you serious?” Reaver asked. “He’ll slow us down.”

Mateo sighed angrily. “This is your second day, right?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re stuck with these decisions. I want to find the powers that be as much as the next guy, but I have half a mind to cut my losses and just kill you right now. You have less leverage than you think.”

“We only have three suits,” Reaver argued. “Those things don’t handle two people.”

Mateo pulled an extra suit out of his bag. “You were saying?” He handed it to Gilbert who was still bitter about last year, but becoming humbled and grateful. “Let’s go. She’s waiting for us.”

Leona had already dropped the pilot ladder, and was likely working on disabling the gun turrets. The two prisoners climbed up after Mateo, and then listened as he gave them instructions. “After you jump, pull the string on your left. It will electrically charge your wingsuit so that it expands on its own. If you don’t pull it, you’ll have to hold your arms up the whole time, and we won’t make it far enough, because you’ll get tired. You can resist the charge with enough force, and it will snap back into place once you relieve some pressure, but it will stay open if you’re just resting normally. We have no real obligation to either of you. If you fall behind, you’re left behind. Nobody’s going to be pulling their arms to their chest and losing altitude just so you can catch up. Understood?”

“Yes,” they replied in unison.

“The string on your right is for a little parachute,” Mateo continued. “You’ll fly behind us, and once we release our chutes, you release yours. If you don’t, you’ll come in too fast, and die. Boyce, I don’t want you to die. Reaver, I do want you dead, so that choice is all on you, buddy.”

“I’ve done this before,” Reaver said, referring to the first time he experienced this day, in an alternate timeline.

“Yeah, and how did that work out for ya?”

“Could have been better.”

“Do your best not to screw it up this time.” He looked down at Leona who had slid down the curved wall to work on the gun turrets. “Honey? How are we lookin’?”

“Nice timing,” she said back. “I’m done.”

“We’re ready,” he replied.

They slid down to the outer ledge to stand next to her before putting on their goggles. “Were I you,” she said to Mateo, now code for I love you.

“Were I you.” He took a beat. “Let’s go.” He jumped off and spread his wings. His body dropped down more than he thought it would, but he spread his legs out a little and settled into a nice glide. The two of them were wearing special goggles with little computer screens in them that displayed a map and other information like distance, altitude, and speed. These also kept them in contact with Harrison so that he could move into position depending on how far they got. This was not scary like the skydiving. This was blissful. It felt more like flying, and less like falling, even though he could still tell that he was constantly growing closer to the ground.

Twenty meters, two hundred meters, five hundred meters, a kilometer. They kept soaring with no problems. He could see Leona next to him at all times as they battled each other for first place. He occasionally looked behind to make sure his two wards were still close enough to them. His goggle readings indicated that they were falling downwards at a slightly higher rate, and were therefore widening the gap between them. Nevertheless, Leona assured him that they would all four break the two kilometer range, and that they wouldn’t land too far from each other.

Two kilometers. Yes. He looked over to Leona who shook her head. They would still be able to fly farther, so they pressed on. At around twenty-five hundred meters, she spoke through her communications device. “We could get farther before reaching our lower limit, but the others would be too low. It’s time to pull.”

“Got it,” Mateo said. “Count us down.”

“Five, four, three, two, one.” They pulled their strings simultaneously.

Mateo watched as Leona’s parachute opened and drew her upwards and behind him, or rather he continued to fall forwards. “Dammit,” he said out loud. He tried his string several more times, but nothing. It was faulty. He was going to die. But for real this time.

Leona screamed to him, “pull your string! Pull your string!”

“It’s broken!”

“Mateo! No!” she cried. “Harrison, you have to meet us and scoop Mateo up! His parachute won’t open!”

“That would never work,” Harrison explained. “He’s going too fast. He would be safer taking his chances with the ground.”

Mateo spread his wings once more, hoping to find water, or fall at a horizontal enough angle to hold back his death. But then a figure flew up and grabbed him.

Horace Reaver, the man who had tried to kill him on multiple occasions, twisted around so that he was on top. “Hold on tight!” he screamed. Once Mateo had done what he was told, Reaver pulled his own string and released his parachute. They drifted to the ground slower than before, but still at a pretty good clip since they had technically passed the lower limit. They crashed into the earth and rolled over one another several times before finally coming to a stop.

The two enemies crawled away from each other and panted heavily until they could catch their breaths. “I can’t really complain, but...” he started to say.

“I saved your life out of instinct. For a second there, I forgot how much I hated you. And that was enough to keep you alive. I promise that it will not happen again.”

“You promised to stop trying to kill me.”

“Yes, but if your life is ever in danger, never again will I make an effort to save it.”

Mateo stood up and nodded with understanding. “Yes. That makes sense.”

Leona ran up to Mateo and jumped in his arms like a gorgeous little cliché. “I’m pissed at you for scaring me like that.”

“I would hope so,” he said.

Harrison landed his aircraft and opened the hatch. “They know about the escape. We have to go.”

The four of them climbed in and took off. Leona grabbed her tablet and sent the instructions to their dummy airplane. It automatically rose into the air from a few hundred meters away and flew off in a different direction. “It’s easier to spot,” she told them. “Once they detect it, they won’t be looking for another one. By the time they catch it and bust it open—or better yet, shoot it down—we’ll be long gone.”

“That’s genius,” Reaver said. “You’re just how I remember.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind.”

Harrison had programmed the plane to take them to Brazil, but Reaver had a safehouse in Panama, so the four of them jumped out with a new set of parachutes. They left the plane to Gilbert to go wherever he wanted, suggesting he jump out sometime before that. The authorities would likely find it at some point, and they didn’t want to be in the same country when that happened, even though Mateo and Leona would be safe after the jump to the future. Reaver said that he would meet them there in one year’s time, but they knew they couldn’t trust him. He would have plenty of time to turn the house into a prison like before in Mission Hills. Ten minutes before midnight, they burst out of the house and ran into the jungle so that he wouldn’t know exactly where they would land in 2045. It didn’t work.

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Superpowers: The Hegemon (Part I)

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On the eighth day of the eighth month of 1927, the first nuclear weapon was detonated near Black Crook Peak in Utah, Usona. During that period in history, the nation of Amadesis was more outwardly violent. They had secured a relatively large island in the middle of the Pacific ocean, and used their insidious resources to develop an arms program rivaling that of any legitimate country at the time. Though the blast radius was comparatively small at that point, and significantly far from populated areas, there were several casualties. These people happened to be camping, hiking, or just generally enjoying nature within range of detonation.

The Amadesins insisted that they chose that spot, on that day, for the specific reason that no one would die. The Day of No Death was a well-known but mysterious phenomenon that occurred every year. There were a number of ways to subvert death on that day. Bullets will bounce off of bodies, or the guns will jam. An unseen force will slow down falls. Fires will not grow out of control. But for the most part, death is halted by more subtle means, simply by manipulating reality so that no one is ever put in danger. The Amadesins, however, were big on going against the natural order of life, always claiming that they know the right way to do things. Experts ended up concluding that the reason the Amadesins were able to get so close to causing death was because they essentially did not believe in truth.

The dozens of survivors of the blast were left mutated, and in some cases, horribly disfigured. They demanded the Usonan government charge the Amadesin Nation with crimes against humanity, and force them to pay reparations. Unfortunately, Usona was composed of a few dozen independently governed states, and the national government was still in its infancy. Even with the help of its closest allies, they were no match for the Amadesins, who had already proven themselves to be technologically and militaristically more advanced than anyone else. And so, the survivors garnered assistance from private corporations. They stormed the Amadesis island stronghold, and after days of fighting, managed to take it over.

In response to this, the Amadesin Nation attacked Utah with ground troops, and began an occupation. Following years of concentration camps, diplomatic negotiations, and war, boundaries were redrawn. Usona agreed to hand over most of Utah as long as they released the roughly 500,000 non-Amadesin citizens. The neighboring states each took a chunk out of the borders, and left the wastelands to the invaders. Furthermore, the private citizens who had taken control over the original island were left alone, and allowed to form their own nation there.

All of the survivors had been rendered infertile from the radiation, however, one of them was already pregnant at the time of the disaster. She died months later in childbirth, but her son survived. Frederick Stockton showed no signs of damage from the radiation. He appeared to be perfectly healthy. He was a beloved citizen of the new nation of Federama, and though he was not part of its origins, he rose in power quite quickly. By the time he was 20 years old, he had been elected as the head of state, and given the title of Governor. Because of his parents’ eventual deaths, and because of all the pain that the Amadesins—and many others, for that matter—had caused throughout history, he formulated a plan.

Step one of Governor Stockton’s plan was to convince Federama’s allies that he could disarm Pakistan of its nuclear weapons, something India in particular was very interested in doing. But this had to be done in secret, of course. It would be a foreign relations nightmare for any of the other nations to admit that they were involved in such subterfuge. And so Stockton agreed to keep them out of it, and used all of his own resources to achieve his goals.

But they could not just steal or disable the weapons and call it a day. Such an act would cause international tension, but not prevent Pakistan from simply restarting the program. They would also have to destroy all technical documents regarding the bombs, demolish every facility tailored to design or manufacture the bombs, and also kidnap every Pakistani loyalist who was educated and intelligent enough to engineer further bombs. This took some time, and the allies were not privy to the entirety of their plans for Pakistan, let alone the rest of the world.

The attack was executed on a single day after months of spying and gathering intelligence. An assault team stormed the royal palace and made it look like rebels were trying to overthrow the government. Leadership fell into lockdown, and the military was mobilized to key strategic locations, leaving Stockton’s true targets vulnerable. They raided the manufacturing plants, and stole the weapons. They burned the documents and kidnapped the engineers. Overall it was a successful mission. The teams returned having accomplished everything on their lists, and Stockton was satisfied. But this was the easy part. They had taken more from Pakistan than anyone knew they would. Kidnapping was certainly not part of the arrangement, and so there was terrible backlash from the allies. Though the island was on its own lockdown, they allowed The Confederacy to send in the Usonian Ambassador to open up a discussion. The Minister of Foreign Affairs accompanied him.

Ambassador Rakin shook Stockton’s hand and nodded politely. “Governor. This is my translator, Tai Guo. He comes with me even when I’m not speaking to someone in a different language.”

“Is he okay?” Stockton asked.

“He doesn’t know everything. But he is sympathetic to our cause.”

“What about the minister?”

“She is not, but she’s not going anywhere,” Rakin explained. “We might as well speak freely.”

“Then we will proceed, and keep her here.”

“Yes,” Rakin agreed. “But I want details on the mission. I want to make sure that we’ve cleaned Pakistan out completely, and that we learned from any mistakes so that they do not occur during Stage Two. We have reason to believe that China is already gearing up for retaliation.”

“What is this?” the Minister of Foreign Affairs asked, horrified. “What is happening? You’re in on this?”

“I’m terribly sorry, Minister Wilkers,” Rakin said to her sadly. “But you insisted on coming with, and now no one comes in or leaves this island unless they’re on a nuclear assignment.”

Wilkers instinctively looked for the exits, but she knew she was trapped. “You two planned this all along? Why? What is Stage Two? What are you going to do now?”

“Now?” Stockton began with sincerity. “Now for the hard part.”

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Microstory 165: Ling Guo

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Ling Guo was born in a region of China where a lot of different dialects converged. Even though most of the dialects were mutually unintelligible—that is, a speaker of one will not understand another—Ling was able to understand all of them. Her family was surprised by this, but assumed her to simply be smarter than most people, and that her exposure to the variety at any early age was responsible. And they were right about that, just not to the right degree. When she was about ten years old, a couple of Swedish backpackers came by, clearly in trouble. They were sick and hungry and thirsty. Though these signs were obvious, and her community was able to provide them with help, they were still trying to convey something important and urgent. After only several minutes of hearing them speak, Ling could suddenly get by on the basics of Swedish. They were astonished and grateful to be able to describe to them what the snake that bit one of them looked like. She translated the information to the neighborhood doctor who provided them with the antivenom, and saved their lives. Her parents drove her to the nearest big city the next day. They found a group of Hungarian tourists, and sort of shadowed them for the next hour. By the time the tourists left on their bus, Ling could speak Hungarian fluently. The be-all, end-all of organizations, the Confederacy had strict employment requirements, and so Ling’s parents spent all of their money to get her into a private boarding school so that she could have the best education possible. She was a successful and happy student, and the Confederacy was more than glad to hire her. She ultimately transferred to the world headquarters in Hudson, Usonia to work in the Interpretation and Translation department. Only her supervisor and a few of her coworkers knew about her condition at first, and only a select few of those understood that it was superhuman. But slowly, word spread, and she became the best kept secret of The Confederacy. She met a couple of other anomalies in person; namely Denton and Dathan, but she also stumbled upon evidence of Sandro, Máire, and Seoc. One night, Milo Chombers found himself unwillingly teleported to the Confederacy Building, and ended up introducing her to Bellevue, but she chose to remain at her post for the time being. It was not until Bellevue decided to reveal themselves to the world that she left Hudson so that she could support the new organization with public relations.

Microstory 164: Dathan Shapiro

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Dathan Shapiro shared his ability with Hankford Apolomure, though in a much broader sense. His brain was extremely efficient, which allowed him to collect a wide variety of skills, as well as retain episodic memory with 100% accuracy. While his protégé, Denton Wescott could absorb knowledge by simple proximity, Dathan would still have to learn new things the old fashioned way, but he would be able to do it at a far faster rate, and without the neurological side effects. Dathan found himself in the midst of a constant internal struggle, though. On the one hand, he wanted to know as much as he could about the world, but he also felt overwhelmed by his knowledge, and was never able to stop thinking. All of the things the brain does while in sleep mode, he was evolved to do manually throughout the day, but this meant that his body lacked the rejuvenation that sleep also provides. Unlike Jen or Tamra, he would have to gather that missed energy by eating a bit extra and by consciously slowing down activity. As a coping mechanism, he developed a grand sense of superiority and entitlement. He went back to college several times over, and earned licensure degrees in a few different fields. After he was bored with that, he moved on to receive magnatoral degrees, and ended up one of the handful of people to become a supermagnus, which basically meant that no one in the world knew more about a given subject than he did. Still feeling unfulfilled, he went ahead and attended law school for the standard six years, medical school for the standard nine years, and finally pursued a teaching degree for the standard eight years. Just about the only thing he didn’t do was become an aidsman, because he was both a pacifist and rather selfish. Not happy with teaching at any one institution for too long, he decided to become a guest lecturer for anyone who asked. When he was in his 70s, he and Denton joined Bellevue together, but did not work with each other very much. Denton focused primarily in genetics while Dathan worked with Cambrio in general research. When called to action, he participated in Team 8 to provide them with a plethora of useful skills out in the field.

Microstory 163: Hankford Apolomure

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While the ancient rogue scientists were long ago experimenting with Generation Alpha anomalies, they came into contact with an ethical opposition. Though there was no official regulation of scientific endeavors, a small faction of moralists took it upon themselves to prevent people from breaking the laws that they felt should have been in place, and were in fact in place at one time. They traveled the globe and either put a stop to those they considered to be criminals, or tried to guide them towards a path of righteousness. Unfortunately for them, the organization ultimately responsible for anomalies was their most powerful opposing force. The regulators knew that they would not be able to stop them, so they built a failsafe device. One of their bravest associates volunteered to undergo a new experiment. Hers was the only anomaly bloodline not technically connected with the others, though they did have to steal the chemicals and technology from the rogues, which meant that the ability they attempted to imbue her with was already in another bloodline. Their intention was to foster all subsequent generations of the original volunteer, but time had other plans. Years later, Hankford Apolomure was activated with a stable version of the ability, but had no knowledge of its history. He was capable of recognizing other people’s abilities, understanding how they worked, and most importantly, dampening them, or even taking them away. But since the regulators had not been able to keep track of his ancestors, he was born with no preconceived notions regarding his purpose, and assumed that he was just like any other anomaly. He ended up pursuing a career in genetics and biochemistry, and contributed to the needs of Bellevue by heading their science department, and his ability was just a bonus. Even though his ability led to an innate understanding of itself, and all of its components, Hankford never once used it to remove someone else’s ability. He considered that a violation of a person’s right to their individuality, even if it meant that they were a danger to society.

Microstory 162: Denton Wescott

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Born to park ranger parents in the middle of nowhere New Brunswick, Denton Wescott was a very precocious child, having figured things out long before his peers. He attended a one room schoolhouse and didn’t so much as step one foot in a city until he was eleven years old. He pretty much always knew that he had the ability to passively absorb semantic memory from others. He knew more than he wanted to about the forest, how to teach children, and a little about farming. He was known as a vowel student for having never earned any grade below a U. He was bored at all times. After graduating from tertiary school, he decided to turn down the Tier 1 elite colleges, and instead attend Raiford University. He chose this not only because it was a nice change in scenery, but also because it boasted the highest number of students in North America. The more people he was around, the more knowledge he could absorb from them. Things were going well, as he was finally in a school that included A’s, E’s, and even I’s as grades. Unfortunately, his life took a turn. He was being inundated with all this semantic memory, and none of it could be applied to procedural memory. That is, he could learn in theory what it takes to be a car mechanic, but he would have to be trained the old-fashioned way if he wanted to actually repair a vehicle. As more time passed, things only became worse. He started to lose episodic memories. Events from his early childhood began to disappear from his mind little by little. His brain was only designed to handle so much. By the time he graduated two years later, he could not remember a single thing that had happened to him from his entire life. He didn’t seem to be perturbed by this, but soon found himself struggling to perform simple actions like driving, or even tying his shoes. He was beginning to lose his procedural memory, and if he continued on his path, he would eventually be nothing more than an encyclopedia with a beating heart. He was moved to beautiful Brooks Lake in a remote part of Wyoming. He spent a good portion of his life there until Bellevue was able to treat his condition. They were never able to retrieve his missing memories, but they were able to salvage his procedural memory, and taught him to control his ability. He eventually learned to pause his knowledge absorption, and also delete erroneous knowledge to make room in his brain.