Off The Pages

The President of the United States took the podium. The graying hair around the edges of the black statesman’s temple combined with his serious expression broadcast a sense of command and sternness befitting a statement in response to a once-in-a-lifetime event. He placed his hands on the lectern and approached the microphone.

“My fellow Americans,” the Commander-in-Chief spoke. He glanced from left to right, taking in the silent sea of journalists hanging on to scrutinize every word that came next. “I have been in close communication with the top scientific minds of the United States of America, as well as the leaders of every field of academia the world over. CERN and NASA have been in nearly constant contact with one another and with my top advisors in their respective fields, and no event has gone unreported or unexamined.” He paused for effect and to take a breath. “As best as can be determined, effects similar in appearance to those before seen only in fiction have appeared in the real world. We exhausted every imaginable effort to disprove this as a hoax, to locate potential efforts by terrorist or other nefarious organizations to create distrust and confusion through grand-scale misdirection, or to simply prove a mass hallucination.”

He let his words hang in the air for several long moments. “Our efforts have concluded that this is not fake, this is not a hoax, this is what is really happening. People are gaining superpowers functionally similar to those seen in comic books, fantasy novels, and cartoons. Some of them are members of our own Federal Government.” A paper got shuffled from the top to underneath the stack on the lectern. “There have been those who have reacted nefariously, who have used their newfound abilities to cause harm. Thankfully, these individuals are in the extreme minority. Furthermore, well-armed law enforcement has proven sufficient to tackle most of these cases. Nonetheless, we are operating under the assumption that, just like in fiction, individuals with powers much greater, possibly those that would prove difficult to contain should they turn rogue, will inevitably appear. Do not be alarmed, as we are acting at this very moment to establish a contingency plan, and we are looking for ways to get those with powers to either agree not to harm others, or to actively use their powers for the benefit of all the people.” He shuffled another paper. He also stared directly into the camera. “To those of you who are already utilizing these new powers to save lives, I wish to thank you. To those of you who are finding themselves filled with newfound power, and have no idea what to do, I would implore you to actively choose not to harm your fellow Americans.”

He took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. “However, I must also insist that you not act as a vigilante. Law enforcement is designed to be answerable to the people, and we will not tolerate extrajudicial actions. You are not the law, so please do not take it upon yourself to fight crime. You are not trained, and your actions will be treated as criminal. Together, we will move forward as a nation and as a people, and this is an opportunity like no other. We will not rest until we have a firmer understanding of the situation. We will not rest until an answer is able to be provided to Americans by the best minds we have. Thank you.”

The questions started, but Manny turned off the television. He had showered, eaten, and dressed. He’d found that he could store not just his body but his entire clothed self, while transformed into Jennifer. This gave him greater security. It meant he could transform and blend into a crowd. The next thing he did was take a risk; he called in to the warehouse and quit his job. It could be a mistake, and his heart was pounding the whole time. Nevertheless, being able to turn into Jennifer meant he could get money easily if he could. Hell, if nothing else, there were probably rich people who would be more than happy to receive protection.

He shifted into Jennifer’s form. She turned on her phone and started scanning for problems. The news mentioned a breaking story. A major dam had failed in China. A lake had emptied into what was effectively farmland. That, combined with the population density of the area, meant some thousands of people could drown. She set the phone down and headed for the door.

Out the door, she froze where she stood. Ed’s car was parked in the driveway, and he sat there with Annie and John.

He had his gun in his jacket pocket.

God dammit, Annie, she thought.

“Hi there, Jennifer,” Edward said, a thin veneer of politeness over a nervous fear. “Do you mind letting us talk to Manny?” Ed felt close to soiling himself. He’d seen the scant video footage of the few incidents she’d been confirmed to have been at, but thanks to Annie, he knew who she was. Thankfully, he’d had the sense not to tell anyone, and no one outside this trio knew.

Jennifer stood there, inches away from wanting to scream. Her entire strategy had fallen apart. “In the house,” she said, pointing.

As Ed headed towards the house, he kept facing her the whole time, hand in his jacket pocket. They ascended the three steps and entered the house, sitting on the couch.

Jennifer stood in front of them, hands on hips. “Unbelievable,” she said. “So much for secrets.”

Ed, to his credit, was not the kind of person who would back down in the face of a friend being in danger. It gave Jennifer a sense of pride that she knew he would fight against what he thought was his friend in danger. The fact that the tall black man had driven across town to be here with his gun in the car proved his devotion. In the age of racist cops, one false traffic stop could have been a serious tragedy. It put a smile on her face even as she was worried about him.

“Look, we’re just worried about our friend,” Ed explained. “It doesn’t make logical sense that he would give you his money to spend on clothes.” He nervously scratched his short, stubby hair.

“And if it was your money,” Annie continued, “why didn’t you stay at a hotel?”

“I know you can probably kill us right now,” Ed said, swallowing, “but we’re not going to…”

Jennifer shifted back into Manny.

No one could speak for several long moments.

“This is why I wanted to keep it a fucking secret,” Manny said, gesturing aggressively.

“What the fuck?” Edward said, putting thoughts into words.

“Hold that thought,” Manny said. “I’ve got an actual crisis to deal with.” He shifted back into Jennifer and took off. The discussion had to wait. People were drowning. In a heartbeat, she made it up to the stratosphere. A glance gave her a destination and she took off like a rocket.

On an elevated roadway above the flooding plain, emergency crews and military officials watched as makeshift levees failed and a giant wall of churning water smashed through houses and carried away bridges, cars, and other debris. A blurry pulse-like object zoomed down from the sky like a comet and flashed through the villages in the path of the water in an instant. On a higher point several miles behind the roadway, a crowd of people materialized, startled, and bewildered, but otherwise okay. News cameras caught a lone glimpse of a redhaired white woman for just a moment, before she disappeared again.

Jennifer paused for just an instant to scan the massive surge of water with her vision powers and energy sensing, before taking off like a particle beam into the water. Her arms latched around three people at a time, and her otherworldly power flowed into them, protecting them from the laws of physics while she flew them away from the water like a bullet.

The hill on which the road stretched out provided plenty of open space between groups of emergency vehicles to deposit people. Jennifer decided these were the best spots to put people because of the immediate access to medical experts. Plenty of ambulances dotted the road in expectation of the survivors emerging from the water. The otherworldly power that surrounded her body shifted with her mental effort. When she emerged into air, it filtered out solid particulates so she wouldn’t fly into insects or other small airborne objects at supersonic velocities. In water, it prevented her body from being harmed by the fluid, rendered objects close to her body hydrophobic, and made her travel through it sleeker, as if moving through the air. It allowed her to rush up to people in the water without crushing them with a sudden current.

The rescue workers on the high ground saw a huge collection of victims materialize out of thin air around them. A bedlam ensued, with initial shock and shouts giving way to rescue workers madly rushing, sprinting back and forth to save the nearest victims. Some of them had already swallowed enough water that they choked to death less than a minute later. A hasty count and she recognized that some nine hundred living people lined the roadway from beginning to end. Rescue workers began moving the dead out of the way to move the survivors closer to help. She shot back into the water and opened her vision and energy sensing powers as far as they would go. Post-human senses scanned for signs of active nervous systems, heat signatures from survivors, and movement from struggling survivors. They stretched out for tens of kilometers. Her energy senses told her most of them were corpses. A few hadn’t been dead very long and might yet be saved. She rocketed towards them and scooped them up, three or even four at a time in her arms.

An ambulance crew who had treated a family of five, the survivors seated near an ambulance, looked up to see a figure hovering near them. The redheaded woman set down some people blue in the face and water pouring from the mouth. Their initial confusion gave way to shock as they looked to her left and saw a dozen more in the same condition. A shout she didn’t understand drew more medical staff. An angry shout in either Cantonese or Mandarin, from a powerful, elderly voice sounded near her.

“Excuse me!”

A young man’s shout in English caught her attention.

She turned her body. A graying officer, wearing an obviously important uniform and hat stood, lines of age and sternness on his face. Arms were folded. Next to him, a younger man with a subordinate uniform and no hat stood, arms clasped together in front of his abdomen. Only apprehension and a desire not to be punished lined his face. “Yes?” Jennifer replied.

The young military man stood, awed by the powerful woman hovering a foot off the ground less than a car’s distance from him. Her clothes, two layers of black yoga pants, and an orange, short-sleeved t-shirt, tight against her skin—so as not to catch wind during flight, he guessed—dripped water but looked very dry. Her wet hair, past shoulder length and tomato red, sticking to her skin, dried out as water poured from it and pulled away from her skin to return to normal. She looked the image of divinity to him, her arms not rounded and bulky but still presenting the image of muscularity, and her weightlifter thighs pressing outward against fabric. In between the two, an abdomen thin but not skinny, probably possessing chiseled definition, he thought, though he could not tell through the shirt. He swallowed to dampen his fear. “My commander requests that you leave,” he relayed in English.

The woman looked at the old man, and back at him, a look of concerned consternation. “I’ve been doing nothing but helping!” she pleaded.

The young man relayed this to his commander. The senior officer pointed at her and said something aggressive. He turned to the woman. “He says now that you’ve saved lives,” he explained to her, “You are not likely to save any more lives, so leave before an incident is created.”

“This is absurd!” she cried. She saw something out of the corner of her eye, and gestured. “See! Some of the ones I thought were dead are coming to!” A few of the drowned had started coughing up water and breathing again.

The commander said something, and his younger officer turned from one to the other. “It comes from above,” he told her. “Higher officials do not like China looking bad. Please leave.”

Without a word, she was gone.

Jennifer flew back home, tears streaking across her face and vanishing into the wind. A storm of emotions raced back and forth, the excited pleasure of seeing the happiness on the faces of those realizing they would live, comingling with the horror and sorrow of seeing those too far gone to be saved, even with her great speed.

She pushed through the door and collapsed into a loveseat.

“Oh my god,” John said, motioning to the television. “You saved all those…” He paused because he noticed she looked lost. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s weird, you know?” Jennifer asked, turning her head to face the group and wiping her eye with a thumb. “I’m happy and sad at the same time and,” she clenched and released a fist, “really fucking frustrated at bureaucracy.” She sighed.

“If it makes you feel better,” Annie said, “we’re all really sorry for jumping to conclusions about you.”

Jennifer literally waved it off. “Ah, no problem,” she replied. “I’m the idiot who couldn’t read a conversation.”

“So,” John said, broaching the subject, “you’re Manny…and Jennifer? At the same time? Or does one go to sleep?” A thought occurred to him. “Wait a second. What are your powers?”

Focusing on something else got her out of her funk, or at least, distracted her from it. It put a veneer over it, she guessed. “Energy manipulation, flight, strength, speed, durability, enhanced intelligence, self-sustenance,” she rattled off.

“Red hair,” Ed said, the gears turning in his head. “and that power set.” His eyes went wide. “You’re the Capacitor!”

A confused glance between John and Ed saw them arrive at the same realization. “Wait,” Edward cut in, “I thought the character’s name was Michelle De Lanter.”

John switched his glance from his black friend to Jennifer. “Also, I thought the character’s boobs were smaller.” Ed smacked him in the arm for this.

A laugh escaped her mouth. “They would be,” Jennifer corrected, “if I ate nothing.” She looked at her friends. “You might find this odd, but when I could transform my body, I could transform parts of my body. I gave her most of my body fat…” She realized something. “Oh, I’m going to talk about me in this form as a separate person just so it’s easier. Okay?” They nodded. “Anyway, I gave her most of my body fat so my mom’s clothes from before would fit.” She shrugged. “Then her post-human metabolism burned most of the fat away in a couple days, I guess treating it like some kind of impurity to be removed.”

“Right,” Annie cut in, “because her body is constantly regenerating away problems.” She’d jumped ahead in her train of thought and returned. “Wait, so are you Manny or what? If you can change parts of your body, can you have powers in your male form?”

“No Jekyll and Hyde,” Jennifer reiterated. She paused to collect her words. “I’m one consciousness, one person. It’s just that when I’m her, she’s smarter than me in my male form, and also she has a female gender identity. That means that, yes, I can have powers in my male form, but that would cause dysphoria, so that’s a no-no for me.”

They seemed to accept this. “Hey,” Ed said, “I have a thought.”

Jennifer turned to him. “Shoot,” she replied.

“If you keep taking off from here, won’t that lead people to here?”

His question hit her like a gut punch. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said.

“You ought to drive somewhere and go into like, a bathroom or something, and transform,” John said, “and that way, you can speed out of there and no one will see you. “

Annie snapped her fingers and pointed for effect. “Yeah!” she agreed. “That way, people will see Manny leaving and coming back, and they won’t have any recourse to suspect you!”

“What if the Feds find out?” Ed cut in. “Like, they can dedicate entire teams of people to search through hundreds of hours of parking lot footage.”

Jennifer pondered this important point. A thought came to her. “What are the Feds afraid of?” she asked.

Edward and Annie exchanged shifting glances as if this were a trick question on a test. “Uh,” Annie finally said, “they’re afraid of things they can’t control?”

“Right!” Jennifer said. “They’re also afraid of secrecy and if they catch me being shifty, their suspicion might lead to bad things.” She paused to think about it a moment. “Let’s say they see me drive to a parking lot as Manny and leave as Manny. Let’s say they somehow prove it was to do exactly what you said. What can I say? I can say, ‘hey, I wasn’t trying to be nefarious.’ It’s better than being all secretive.”

“That might be true,” John interjected, “but do you think they’ll buy it?”

“Hey,” Jennifer shot back, “I don’t know if they’ll buy it, but I know that if I’m going to have a life as Jennifer, I’m going to need to deal with the federal government at some point.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Annie agreed.

“Hey,” Ed said, “I know it’s probably really tacky of me to say this, but…” He shuffled his feet nervously. “Do you think you could show us your powers? Like, in person?”

“Edward!” Annie chastised.

“No, it’s alright,” Jennifer replied, blinking her eyes dry. “It gives me something else to think about.” She paused. “What about that big park in Fairview Heights?”

“Longacre?” John recalled.

“That’s the one,” Annie said.

“See you there,” Jennifer said. “I’ll meet you there.” A thought came to her. “Oh, and Ed? Leave the gun here in case you get pulled over.”

He laughed and pulled it out of his jacket pocket, placing it on the table. “Yeah, that was dumb of me,” he said. “You know how cops are about black people this day in age.”

“I’ll take it to your house later this evening,” she said. They filed out of the house and into Ed’s car. It would be a half-hour drive to Fairview Heights, Illinois, so Jennifer waited a few minutes, resting and stretching her legs as she reclined. In all the mental turmoil of being responsible for human lives, she’d forgotten that the reason she’d longed to have superpowers was because having powers, ultimately, was fun. Sure, she would never forget the faces of those she couldn’t save but being even partially human meant that perfection was an impossible standard. Flying still gave her a rush like no other, and the surge of empowerment she felt when lifting things impossible by her male, normal human self had no peer.

She stood up and turned into Manny. He locked the door and got in his car and drove to the Wood River McDonalds. He parked, and went into the men’s bathroom, getting into the stall. He didn’t need to lock it, as he shifted into Jennifer, his male self and keys vanishing. Speed powers active, the world froze around her, and she zoomed out of there. Forty-something miles vanished in a blink, her seeing and processing every step at unimaginable rates of brain power. Finally, she took her last step and came to a stop in one of the more wooded corners of the ninety-nine-acre public park.

Her friends’ car arrived about ten minutes later. She walked out to greet them arms extended outward.

“Nice to see you waited for us,” Annie quipped.

Jennifer looked around with super senses and saw no one looking in her direction. She gestured for them to huddle together, and when they did, she wrapped her arms around the three of them. From their point of view, one instant they huddled together for her to grab them all at once, and the next instant, they arrived at an opposite end of the park.

“Whoa,” John said, throwing out his arms to stabilize himself. “I don’t think I’m getting used to that.”

“Wait,” Annie cut in, “I took physics freshman year of college. Our brains aren’t connected to our skull. How come you didn’t just kill us from whiplash?”

“My power protects you while I or something I’m touching is touching you,” Jennifer explained. “Because I want that to happen.” She shrugged. “I don’t get all the intricacies of it either.” She looked for an example. She saw a log roughly ten feet long and two feet thick. “Watch.” A short stroll later and she wrapped her right hand around it. As she squeezed, fingers dug into the wood, crunching through bark. Once she had a firm grip, she raised her right arm. The log went up to waist height. “Tell me what’s wrong with this picture.”

“You’re not on concrete,” John noticed, “you’re standing on grass. That log is huge. Why aren’t you sinking?”

Ed’s head whirled to his friend. “Right!” He exclaimed. “The log should be pushing down on you!”

Annie placed a hand over her mouth and chin, thinking. A moment passed. “Also,” she noted, pointing, “you’re putting a lot of force into that little area of the log you’re grabbing. How come it doesn’t break off?”

“That’s the problem comics never address,” Jennifer said. “How can Superman pick up a building? It should be like lifting a Jell-O mold the size of a beach ball with a safety pin.” She reached out with her other hand and poked a finger into the log. Bark cracked and wood crunched as she stuck the finger deeper. She pulled it out, revealing the hole. “Somehow my power responds based on what I want it to do.”

“Maybe it’s a psychic power,” Annie thought out loud, “some form of tactile telekinesis, where you have to be touching it but it’s obviously not just strength.”

“Could be,” Jennifer agreed.

“Didn’t Superboy in some of the comics have tactile telekinesis?” John said.

“But he could disassemble things just by touching them,” Jennifer stated, “I can’t do that.”

“Still useful as-is though,” Edward thought out loud.

“Yes,” Jennifer agreed, nodding. “Very, very useful.” She set the log down gently so as not to get dirt on anyone.

“How does the speed work?” Ed asked. “I always thought of it like slow motion, but then everything would take forever.”

“No,” Jennifer said. “I have two separate speed powers. One is like you said, everything is frozen around me, so maybe it’s some kind of time manipulation or something, I don’t know, but the other is actual hyper velocity.”

“So,” Annie cut in, “that’s another problem the comics never address. Do you have problems with bugs flying into you? Or breathing at hyper speed?”

“I don’t have to breathe,” Jennifer said, “it’s just nice to be able to. Also, my power takes care of that for me, and the running into things at high speed issue too.” She shrugged. “I’ve been focusing on these things and it’s still a bit of a mystery.”

“So,” John said, trying to wrap his mind around it, “your power just…moves them out of the way?”

“There’s a field around my body,” Jennifer explained, “that changes depending on what environment I’m in. When I’m moving so very fast, it moves the air out of my way so I don’t kill people I’m running past, and it makes it so I don’t create a sonic boom that breaks everything around me.” She vanished and reappeared several yards to the right. “Anyone feel that?” They shook their heads. “Yeah, that’s what it does.”

“Amazing,” Ed said.

“Oh,” Jennifer said, realizing she missed a point. “Energy manipulation. I believe my super seeing and hearing is an offshoot of that. I can sense different kinds of energy if I focus hard enough. Electricity, heat, so on, and I can emit different kinds.” She held up two fingers in the shape of a ‘V’ and with a thought, electricity arced between them. She pointed a finger at the log and a bright beam of light shot out, catching the dry wood on fire. As it spread to the size of a dinner plate, she waved her hand and the fire slowly died. “I didn’t figure all that out until after the wildfires. This whole thing’s a learn-as-you-go experience.”

“It’s crazy,” Annie said. “And to think there are still lots of others out there with powers.”

“I’m not looking forward to having to fight lunatics with powers,” Jennifer admitted, “but honestly, it’s only a matter of time.”

“Still,” John said, “it’s good that so many people are too nervous to go out there and fuck things up for the sake of it.”

“Did they say how many people have powers?” Ed asked.

“I heard the news reported that New York City had offered a cash prize to those coming forward,” Annie said. “So far, I believe, three thousand people had demonstrated they had actual powers from the Lights.”

“Let’s say that’s about fifty percent less than the actual number,” Jennifer said, “just to be safe. There’s eight million people in New York City, just to use a nice round number, and four thousand five hundred actual people with powers.”

Ed lowered his eyebrows in confusion. “Why?” he asked.

Jennifer shrugged. “Just quick math,” she argued. “We might be wrong, but let’s just ballpark it.” He nodded and accepted this. “Okay, so forty-five hundred actual people in NYC with powers, out of a population of eight million. World population?”

Annie pulled out her phone. “Seven point three seven…” she said, rounding up. “Seven point four billion, roughly.”

“So,” Jennifer said, “that means that five point six two five times ten to the negative fourth power percent of the population has abilities, roughly speaking. Assuming New York City isn’t a special cluster of powered people, that means that out of a world population of seven point four billion people, four million, one hundred sixty-two thousand, five hundred people have powers.”

Everyone digested the information. “Roughly estimating, of course,” Annie said, qualifying the statement.

Jennifer nodded. “Yes,” she agreed. “very roughly estimating. And we might be wrong, but I think it’s a decent assumption.”

“Yeah,” John said. “After all, I don’t think it’d be this peaceful if a decent-sized chunk of the population had powers.”

“I think you’re right,” Jennifer agreed. “If, let’s say, five percent of the population had powers, that’d mean that three hundred seventy million people worldwide would have powers, and I doubt things would be this peaceful almost a week and a half out from the Lights.” She looked around. “Fair?”

“Yeah,” Annie said, recalling what she heard on the news. “Other than a small women’s uprising in Saudi Arabia, there hasn’t been much in the way of big stuff.”

Jennifer rolled her shoulders, breathing in and out, calming herself from this train of thought. “Well,” she said, “that’s enough serious implications for one day. Is anyone else hungry?”