Sticks & Stones
Chapter Two
Dana had crawled into bed and pulled the sheets over her head. Whatever the hell this event or whatever was, she wasn’t going to handle it without sleep. In her dreams she floated through a void, blue and violet waves undulating above her, orange and red waves undulating below. Each wave looked like a carpet made of light, stretched out wide but thin as a hair. As they traveled, they bobbed up and down with various amplitudes and frequencies, never changing. A pulsing kaleidoscope of light patterns rose and fell in intensity and circled around, passing in and out of each other.
Her mind woke up about five minutes before her body. An inability to stay asleep crept over her like a restless animal. Eyes opened, and she sat up, the sheets sliding off her. Despite the confusion and apprehension roaring through her mind, she felt wide awake and well-rested. The texture of the yellow nineteen-seventies carpet brushed against her feet as she shuffled to the bathroom. The cold porcelain gave her a shiver as she did her business before she washed her hands and brushed her teeth.
Before anything else, she returned to her room and lifted her bed with one hand.
Nope, she thought. Didn’t imagine that.
Pulling her phone off the charger, she saw the date, November 28, 2010. It was eight oh-three in the morning, and she unlocked it to look at the news.
“What?”
She didn’t even realize she’d spoken. Some forty-five text messages from friends and acquaintances all seemed to have the same message: some strange shit was going on.
“It’s an incredible sight,” a news anchor on CNN’s YouTube channel said. “A significant portion of the population has developed powers seemingly out of fiction. Some are saying it’s a sign of the End Times. The government is struggling to make sense of it all.”
She stared in disbelief as the video cut to footage of people flying, some people lifting cars, some running impossibly fast, and crowds of people engaged in group superpowered activities. “What in the ever-living hell?” she thought out loud.
“The President of the United States has insisted,” the anchor continued, “in a speech this morning, that laws still apply, and no special exceptions will be given for people, quote, ‘behaving like in a comic book.’.”
Dana closed the app. She’d read comics and watched cartoons where people gained powers, but normally, it was a few people or even a tiny portion of people. The video she’d seen showed one out of every three or so people doing impossible things. Her mind drifted to dark places; humans weren’t the nicest things in the world, and with that many people having powers, bad things were sure to happen.
Before worrying about that, though, she strolled to the fridge and retrieved some leftover chicken takeout, and microwaved it until she heard sizzling noises. A press of a button, and a loud pop later, and the door opened. Her hand touched the hot plate, and she instinctively pulled away.
Huh?
She looked at her hand. Despite the intense heat, it didn’t hurt. Eating went a lot faster without having to wait for the food to cool down. Her tongue not getting burned, now that was a new one, she realized. It felt odd to eat something that normally would be blistering to her mouth. That’s something they don’t show in the comics. Powers might lead to some nastiness in the world but in the short-term, she knew, she might as well get some upsides out of them.
After disposing of the remains of the breakfast, she washed her hands again, ran some deodorant over her armpits, and got dressed. Some loose-fitting jeans slid on and she pulled on a comfortable top. Running her fanned-out fingers through blonde hair, she tamed her bedhead.
She dialed the hospital. “Hi, this West Bordhaven Central Hospital,” the operator said, “how may I direct your call?”
“Um,” Dana uttered, “my mom was admitted last night after a car accident. Elizabeth Westbrook.”
“Hold on,” the operator replied. A minute and a half of hold music later, and she returned. “I’ll connect you to the nurses’ station.”
More hold music played. “Nurses’ station, first floor,” the RN stated. “How can I help you?”
“Elizabeth Westbrook was admitted last night,” Dana explained. “I’m her daughter. What’s her condition?”
“She’s not in a coma,” the RN pointed out. “However, she’s being given an IV drip of morphine due to pain. She’ll probably be able to be released tomorrow. Tonight, though, she needs to rest. She suffered a nasty fracture to the skull.”
“Her condition’s stable?” Dana asked, swallowing to keep her voice from breaking.
“I think she’s past the worst of it,” the RN said. “But she’s going to need more rest. You don’t go through what she went through and get discharged in one day.”
“Yeah, I know,” she replied. “Thank you for everything. Should I visit or let her rest?”
“You should let her rest,” the RN pointed out. “We’ve got her stable.”
Dana wiped her eyes. “Thank you, again,” she said. She hung up.
Flipping the TV on, she sat and stared. Every station broadcast the same topic. The fact that people were developing superpowers like out of a comic book dominated the national conversation. Scientists sat beside incredulous news anchors talking about the impossibility of the physics violations seen in various clips of people defying gravity.
“You see here,” one prominent astrophysicist said, as footage of a man holding up an enormous concrete statue as he hovered above the ground. “We’ve seen this in cartoons but here in the real world, this shouldn’t happen.”
“How is that, doctor?” the anchor asked.
“It’s like picking up a watermelon with a safety pin,” the scientist replied. “His hands are really small surface areas, and a tremendous amount of pressure is applied across it. The structural integrity of the stone of that statue shouldn’t hold up to that.”
Dana flipped the channel. Talking heads were discussing the implications of powers from different angles. She rolled her eyes and turned off the TV. Putting her sneakers on, she headed outside. The morning sun greeted her, along with a sight that caused her mouth to drop open.
Several of her neighbors had taken to their new powers.
At least ten people had already taken to the sky. Some of her neighbors decided their new strength could be put to use. The Richardson’s across the street stood in their yard, while their ten-year-old son had pulled the old tree stump out by the root.
“Holy shit,” she whispered, taking in the sight.
She stood in her driveway and crouched down, leaping into the air.
About three hundred feet up, she reached out with her mind, grasping at anything. C’mon, she thought, fly!
Her fear of heights kicked in and she had to resist the urge to scream, clenching her teeth and forcing herself to breathe as her heart hammered away at her. Wind rushed upward as she plummeted. The uneven distribution of her body set her tumbling. A scream escaped her moments before she planted on the asphalt.
“Erh,” she uttered. Planting a palm against the pavement, she pushed herself to a kneeling position. “Ow.” Crawling to a stand, she tilted backward, hearing her back pop. A cursory examination revealed no damage done to her body. The kaleidoscope from her dream came back to her. What in the…? She couldn’t help but be confused.
This time, it wasn’t a dream. It appeared in the back of her mind as a visual image. Arranged around a central point, lines of various colors undulated up and down. One of these lines sat quiet. A dark blue line sat calm, in stark contrast to its brethren. After a few moments of experimentation, she found she could manipulate it.
Let’s see what this does, she thought. A bit of mental effort and the blue line shot upwards to form a sharp triangular point.
At once, perception of lines of force announced themselves to her conscious mind. From nowhere, she could tell kinetic energy vectors for miles around. “Okay,” she uttered. A singular thought creeped into her mind: Up.
Wind blasted against her face as she shot into the sky like a rocket. Like a fastball knocked out of the park, she found herself hundreds of feet in the air in under a second. “OoooOOHH GOD!” she shouted, as her ascent slowed and she began falling. The whole time, she sensed the kinetic energy wearing out and gravity pulling against her. “No no NO NO NO!” She instantly gave herself a shot of kinetic energy, less this time, and shot up about ten feet.
A solid minute passed of her bobbing up and down, until she figured out how to equal gravity.
Okay, she thought, I’ve got this! I can fly! I can…OH SHIT!
Floating was easy. At least, it was, until she forgot that she was only giving herself kinetic energy in the upward vector. Then she tilted the wrong way and started tumbling in place.
“I got…WOAH!”
She gave herself a shot of kinetic energy in the opposite direction of the tumble, and only succeeded in reversing its direction. Oh God, I’m gonna throw up. Finally, after a solid forty-five seconds of head-over-heels motion, she found the equilibrium to stay upright, continually adjusting her vectors of kinetic energy to stay in whatever position she wanted.
“I…” she uttered, breathing in and out to stifle her nausea, “I got this.”
She looked down from her position, and her heart started racing again. Slowly, she adjusted her upwards vector so that she could descend at a reasonable pace.
A moment later, she sat down on the bench outside her garage. Oh Christ, she thought, that was scary, that was terrifying… An open-mouthed grin began to materialize. That was amazing! I can fly!
The wind pushed against her as she took to the sky once again. Taking great care, she kept mindful of all her kinetic energy vectors to keep from tumbling or falling. In under a minute, her neighborhood sat hundreds of feet below her. She balanced horizontally and pushed in one direction. Gusts kicked against her skin as she accelerated. Her clothes flapped in the wind. The horrifying realization came that her clothes would tear if she didn’t do something.
Let’s try…this. With her thoughts, she pushed against another of the colored lines in her mental image. The field surrounding her flesh declared its existence to her conscious mind. Like stretching a tarp over a car, she found she could pull it outward and around. It enveloped her clothes and shoes and suddenly, she could accelerate to hundreds of miles per hour and they wouldn’t tear.
“Oh crap oh crap OH CRAP!”
She had to hit the brakes to avoid breaking the sound barrier. Stopping so suddenly, she made a crack like thunder, she rebalanced herself upright, stuck her hands out to her sides and began breathing exercises.
Nerves tingled as she scanned below her. “No shattered windows,” she thought out loud. Her eyes shut and she sighed in relief. “Thank God. That would’ve been bad.”
From her vantage point, she could see where her mother’s car had been abandoned. She descended towards the damaged vehicle. It had multiple windows broken, the driver’s door lay in the snow where she’d ripped it clean off, and the frame had been bent.
Okay, she thought. How do we do this?
One thing she remembered from high school science was a cursory understanding of physics. If she tried to pick up the car as is, it would be like picking up a Jell-O the size of a pumpkin with a pin. Furthermore, the car would push down on her equally, meaning she’d sink her feet into the frozen soil.
Planting her feet behind the car, she placed two hands under the carriage. “Kinetic energy vectors,” she reminded herself. “Don’t forget to protect the car.” She pulled her force field into the car, protecting it against breaking. Her hands could create more force than the metal could stand, and she didn’t want to rip any more of it off. Pulling upward, she sensed the car pushing her down into the dirt with equal force. She put kinetic energy into her feet going upward with increasing force, proportional to the car’s pushing down. As a minute progressed, she found herself pulling the car upward without sinking into the dirt.
Now, she had to subtly change her kinetic energy vectors in order to shift position under the car. Holding the rear up with her right hand, she scooted under the car, taking care not to sink into the soil. A cautious left hand wrapped around a portion of the frame, and she spread her fingers out.
“Here goes nothing!”
She stood straight up, pressing the vehicle overhead. It shifted a bit before she equalized the car’s vectors of momentum as well, standing firm and still with it pressed overhead.
Now, up!
She focused her mind and increased the kinetic energy going upward, instantly adjusting all the other vectors as well, reaching a calm altitude of ten feet above the ground, the car stable in her grip over her head. Floating in the direction of her house, she kept calm and collected attention on all her kinetic energy vectors. As the minutes passed, a smile appeared as it became easier.
Yeah! She thought. I got this!
At a hundred feet, she zoomed by at no less than three hundred miles per hour, the car kept carefully in place with judicious use of kinetic energy manipulation, and her body’s field extended to protect the structure of the car from the wind.
“Softly!” she reminded herself. “SOFTLY!”
Taking care, she touched down light as a feather, despite the three thousand-plus pounds held overhead. About ten seconds later, the car sat safely in the driveway. She went back for the door and a minute later placed it on the driver’s seat.
Well, she thought, it’s fucked, but at least I got it here in the same condition I found it in! She’d gotten her first “superpower achievement” under her belt: picking up a car and flying it without breaking it. Go me!
“So!” one of her neighbors said, approaching. “You’re one of the Potents! I was wondering if you’d be.”
She turned. “Mister Alderton!” she announced, noticing the middle-aged insurance salesman who lived three houses up the block. "This is just…wonky as hell, you know? I can’t make heads or tails of it.” She shook her head. “Wait, ‘Potents?’”
He scratched his big gut. “My wife, she been watching the TV all morning,” he explained. “The government’s taken to calling everyone with powers ‘Potents,’ after the Latin word, uh…”
It clicked with her. “Potentia?”
He snapped his finger into a point. “Yeah!” he exclaimed. “That’s it!” He coughed. “Apparently, they’re not calling them ‘powers,’ because apparently that makes it sound like a damn comic book. No, the government wants to be all serious and crap. They’re calling them ‘NSCs’ for ‘non-standard capabilities.’” He let out a laugh. “All their damn acronyms.”
She laughed. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Just can’t…you know, leave it alone, I guess. Gotta have a three-letter name that’s short for just about anything.” She scratched her head. “Anyone in your family a…‘Potent?’ God, I feel stupid just saying it.”
“My daughter and my son are both showing,” he said. “Wouldn’t you believe it? This…whatever the hell this is, skips both me and my wife and hits both our kids?” He shrugged. “Now we gotta make sure they don’t do something stupid and now we’ve gotta be extra careful.” He paused to think. “You know they’re saying it could be as much as half the population?”
She blinked. “Crazy,” she thought out loud. “Just, out there, I think. All our world’s gonna be different, you know? All the crazies. Just hope there’s enough decent peoples out there to even it out.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Good luck with that.” He blinked. “Oh shit! I was too busy with your powers, I didn’t even notice! The hell happened to the car? Your mom alright?”
“In the hospital,” she answered. “Got pretty dinged up on the head, just heard from the doc’s that she’s gonna pull through. Just gotta sleep tonight and she’ll be ready in a day or two, you know?”
He cringed. “Shit,” he uttered. “That sucks. Tell her I hope she gets better.” He turned around. “Sorry to jet like this, but I got to get back and make sure the rascals aren’t causing a ruckus.”
“No problem,” she said, waving.
She sat for a few minutes, thinking about the state of things. If the experts didn’t know, she figured, that meant either the government knew and hid it, which wasn’t very likely, or that nobody knew. Logically, if the government had the information, they’d have used it. There wouldn’t be all this unrest in the middle east and Asia. After all, if they couldn’t hide the Business Plot, they wouldn’t be able to hide superpowers. Still, a chill came over her when she pondered all the people who’d have powers. It wasn’t like a small group with powers would be much better, but at least there’d be fewer to deal with.
“Screw this,” she said to no one. She took to the sky. As her kinetic energy moved her in different directions, she had no destination. The air buffeted her from different directions as she rode the momentum through the atmosphere. High above her house, she looked in all directions. Returning to her mental color wheel, there were colors that lay flat against the center and didn’t extend outward. A silvery color wouldn’t budge. She pulled on it, to no avail. The hell do these do? She thought. Budge, damn you! Straining, she put all her effort into it. It poked outward a fingernail’s width.
Colors never seen before flashed into view. “Holy…CRAP!” She refocused effort back into balance before she’d have fallen. Her eyesight returned to normal. It blew her mind. For a brief instant, her vision became sharp as a hawk’s, and she could see in more than trichromat vision. Her efforts redoubled on the silver line. It still put up a fight, but she got it.
Street signs and people’s faces could be made out clearly even from hundreds of feet up in the air. Flying on she found it easy to navigate given that she could read the signs from up high. The countryside passed by as she felt the wind rush against her.
She landed in the parking lot of the hospital.
“Hello,” the receptionist asked. “How can I help you?”
“Elizabeth Westbrook,” she said.
The receptionist checked on the computer. “Let me call the nurses’ station,” she said. “Yes, there’s someone here about Elizabeth Westbrook.” She paused. “I’ll check.” She looked up. “Ma’am? What’s your name?”
“Dana Westbrook,” she replied. “I’m her daughter.”
The receptionist lifted the receiver. “She’s her daughter,” she repeated. “Okay. Thank you.” She hung up. “Your mother is asleep right now, she’s eaten and been given medication and they’ve changed her wound dressings twice now. She’s stable. If you need to visit, please don’t disturb her.”
Dana shook her head. “No,” she replied, “It’s, well, if she’s alright, then I’m okay with that. Thanks for your help.” She waved. “Just gotta check.”
“No problem,” the woman said.
Dana left the hospital. Your mother’s fine, she told herself. After all, she’d been in their care for almost a day now, and the doctors had checked on her repeatedly and she’d been coherent enough to eat. A more pressing concern, she realized, was how much of this her mother’s insurance would pay. She’d graduated and wasn’t going to get a decent career until God knows when.
Until then, she could distract herself from the real world by focusing on her new powers. Within a few moments, she found herself in a wooded area outside town. Rural Missouri had plenty of forested areas in which to test her abilities.
Standing next to a large fallen tree in a clearing, she touched the log and felt her power go through it. If she looked into her power, she could feel each part of the tree’s internal structure as her body’s protection field extended into it. All its details, down to how the fibers are held together, appeared to her mind. It weirded her out a tad, to experience the…woodness…of a tree. Nonetheless, this aspect of her power could come in handy.
Her basic understanding of physics helped out as she hoisted the log overhead. Points of momentum mattered as she had to focus on the direction of the kinetic energy so as not to tip over or sink into the soft soil. On the plus side, though, it meant she could carefully avoid all the problems that comic books simply ignored.
The log thumped against the soft soil and made a squish sound as it sank a few inches when she dropped it. She sat down on it in order to focus. In her mind, the mental image of the circular center surrounded by colored lines of various shapes looked like it held secrets.
She attempted to rotate the image.
She gasped.
Holy crap!
Her mental exclamation came when the image rotated, revealing another secret. There’s spheres within spheres! The outer image resembled a spherical solar system with colors arranged in circles around a center point. For a certain arc around the center, that part of the circle had a different color and the lines could extend upward or downward away from the center. But when she rotated a part of it to face a certain color into her view, it revealed that each color had its own sphere. Each color’s sphere had its own lines around a center point and different extensions towards or away from the center. If she had to hazard a guess, the outermost sphere’s colored segments represented an overall average of that color’s inner sphere.
For a good ten minutes she sat there, pondering. By placing her focus on a specific color, she could get a feel for what power it represented. Durability, for example, seemed to be orange. After a minute of focusing on orange, she got a feel for the physical. It gave her an impression of flesh and bone and muscle. Its inner sphere had a multitude of different peaks and valleys.
“Wow,” she thought out loud. The idea that durability had multiple layers of complexity made sense, but at the same time, shocked her. In fiction, they normally portrayed such characters as nearly indestructible. When one thought about it, though, it made a bewildering amount of sense. Chemical burns, for example, acted differently than fire or electrical burns.
It also held a darker implication.
I’m gonna have to work to get stronger against specific types of harm, she thought.
She let out a sigh as she realized. There was really only one way to train such a thing.
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