Off The Pages

At a familiar home in Alton, a cell phone rang. Manny woke up from his nap to his anime ringtone. “Yeah?” he said. Although he had been doing the superhero thing for a while now, this was the first time Davis had called this early.

“Remember how I said you’ll have your opportunity?” The FBI agent said. “Well, you’re up.”

Manny pulled himself to a seated position. The alarm clock indicated ten in the morning. The previous night, he’d been all over the world, handling minor emergencies. This day, he’d wanted to take the day off and relax. Still, for Agent Wilson to call him this early, indicated something serious was going to happen. “What’s going on?” he asked the agent.

“We’ve been monitoring some QAnon assholes,” Davis revealed, “and one of their own just blabbed and said that some guy they know is planning on hitting a campaign stop of a Representative Jan Dunsmith. It’s in California.”

Manny’s eyes went wide. “When?”

“Any time now!”

“Oh shit!” Manny cried, standing up and shifting into his female form. “Why didn’t you tell them?”

“I did!” Davis cried. “But you need to be there.”

“I’m going!” Jennifer shouted, dropping the phone onto the bed.

She shifted and zoomed out of the house, and up into the atmosphere. Scanning the countryside, she came across the sight of the fairgrounds which held the rally. In a few moments, she stood in back, scanning the crowd for any kind of weapon. Nothing came up. No one except for the federal agents surrounding the congressman had any guns of any kind.

The air erupted with a loud crack.

A second pop sounded as a projectile crashed into Jennifer’s outstretched hand, inches from the congressman’s face, and vaporized on contact.

“Sir!” she shouted. “Are you alright?”

“You!” Jan Dunsmith cried. “You’re that woman!”

A pop sound echoed, and she caught another projectile as it came from a different angle. This time, the assailant had made a mistake. He’d allowed himself to be seen. She hovered over him in a moment, looking down. The crowd instinctively parted, seeing the imposing woman flying overhead. He turned to run, but she reappeared in front of him again. “You’re not escaping,” she warned him.

He pelted her with pieces of gravel and various screws at orbital velocity. They collided with her hands moving at a blur and she held them up to reveal the dust that his objects left behind, with her skin unmarred. Her arms blurred for just an instant, and then all the small bits of debris on his person lie on the ground around him.

“YOU! ON THE GROUND!”

The shout of several federal agents at once caused the man to kneel.

“Thank you so much!” Jan Dunsmith said, stepping off the stage. He approached; his bodyguards looked nervous as he stepped closer to the powerful heroine. As a handful of large, suited men wrapped handcuffs around the assailant with pistols pointed at his vulnerable bits, the attacker decided to go quietly, as his attack had failed, and he wasn’t likely to pull a fast one with this woman here. The congressman watched the would-be assassin carted off and looked just a bit up at her. She stood about two inches taller than him. “What’s your name?”

“Jennifer,” she replied. “Jennifer Black.”

He gave her a confused look. “No codename?” He thought about it further. “I thought they were calling you Capacitor, after the character you look like.”

She shook her head. “I’m a real person,” she protested. “Besides, if you could fly and were super strong, would you put on a Superman costume and call yourself Superman?”

He pictured it. “No, I think you’ve got a point there,” he replied, a chuckle in his tone.

“Well, do you think you’ll be safe now?”

“I hope so,” he shot back. “Oh! Wait a minute before you go.” He reached in his suit pocket and produced a business card. “I’ll be back in Washington in a few days. Get in touch.”

“I will,” she said, nodding, “because there’s something I definitely want to talk to you about.” She took to the air, and looked into the distance, seeing the cop car carrying the would-be assassin, and she saw he had no objects on him to use as weapons, and the agents kept their eyes on his hands as they drove him away.

Less than a minute later, she sat in her bedroom once again. She dialed her phone.

“I heard you stopped him,” Davis replied.

“Hey, uh,” she said, miffed, “how about next time you give me a bit more warning? What if I’d shut my phone off before taking a nap?”

“Well, um,” Davis countered, “you didn’t, and that’s very responsible of you!” He sighed. “Look, I figured the gunman might not be a gunman, and it turns out I was right.”

“Next time, please try to give me more warning,” she chastised. “Right now, I’m going to take a break. If there’s an emergency, I’ll handle it, but as of right now, today’s a day off. Got it?”

“Gotcha,” Davis said. “You deserve it. Talk to you later.”

Manny was back again, getting his equipment ready. He had a purse for Jennifer, but also, he had a burner cell phone, set up just for her, and some plastic bags and waterproof containers with GPS locators. He put on casual clothes and got in his car. He’d avoided anyone seeing him, super speed was truly his most useful power, but still, he wanted some wiggle room. He drove to the Fairview Heights Wal-Mart, some thirty minutes away by highway. In the bathroom, he shut a stall behind him and transformed. From there, she took to super speed again.

The air rushed past her as she zoomed through the atmosphere. The bugs and rain droplets collided with her power and got shoved out of her way. Flight was a real treat; she doubted she’d ever get tired of doing this to unwind. From high above the Pacific Ocean, she saw to the bottom. Impacting the water, she shoved through like a bullet, the cool water flowing past her skin. Her power provided waterproofing to all her clothes and anything in her pockets, so she didn’t worry about anything she carried. She activated her vision powers, and the pitch blackness of the depths gave way to sights no human had seen without specialized camera equipment.

She planted her feet at the lowest level of the ocean, the Challenger Deep of the Marianas Trench. The incredible water pressure—eight tons per square inch—produced in her a unique feeling. It felt like walking through pudding to her impossibly durable body. Clothes and hair sat compacted against her skin by the enormous weight of water. She knelt and scooped up some of the soft soil of the bottom. Simple life forms began to float around her, with her body heat making her akin to a torch in the near freezing water. She smiled as she examined the shrimp-like creatures as they floated by. One thing she noticed was how loud the ocean was. She’d read somewhere that sea creatures were dying, killing themselves by beaching, to escape the noise, but now that she heard it herself, it was ridiculous. She heard all kinds of sounds, from whale and dolphin sounds, to a faint tapping sound.

A tapping sound, she heard, over the din. It had the distinct sound of fist on metal.

Three short taps played, followed by three long, then three short.

It was the international code for SOS.

She closed her eyes and hovered upward, focusing all her effort into her super hearing. A general sense of where the sound came from began to appear. She turned her body and squinted.

She saw, some nine hundred kilometers away, a research submarine with four scientists stranded in a vessel taking on water, with a crack in its window. It had torn free of the line connecting it to its ship on the surface.

A firm grip allowed her power to hold the vessel together while she floated it back to the surface. Soon, she sat the vessel down on the platform of the ship it had been launched from. The scientists took pictures with her and she decided to sit for questions for a few minutes.

“So,” the Korean man said, sitting next to his American fellow scientist, “How is it you can lift heavy objects with your hands? Wouldn’t you punch through?” Though accented, she found his English impeccable.

“I’m guessing my power holds things together while I’m touching it,” she answered. “There’s a lot to this I don’t know.”

“What brings you out into the ocean?” A man with a Russian accent asked.

She shrugged with her hands. “I’m just out, exploring,” she said. “I like traveling.”

“How come your clothes aren’t wet?” The American asked.

“That’s my power again,” she confirmed.

“Will we see you about?” The Korean scientist inquired.

“I’m always about,” she replied. “Anyway, I’ll leave you guys to your work.” She took off from the vessel.

After flying away, she soon stood atop the summit of Everest, feeling the frigid, thin air colliding with her skin. It would have been difficult to breathe for a normal person. It honestly struck her as one of the most amazing sights on Earth, staring out into the mountainous terrain, the clouds all around. After having her breath taken away for several minutes, she grabbed some stranded climbers and brought them back to base camp before heading off to her next spot.

Rocketing over the terrain, she felt free. Even stopping to help people here and there didn’t bring her down. For the first time in her life, she had a sense of purpose. Years of coasting by, terrified to step out of the comfort zone, and just a few weeks after getting actual powers, the liberation felt total. Sure, the responsibilities were enormous. Every time she ventured out to secure peace or to rescue victims from some horrific catastrophe, her every action, her every decision, determined whether people lived or died. She’d had to stare down guns, and carefully handle people burning from natural explosions or terrorist bombings. Occasionally, the horrors she had to witness brought tears to her eyes. Even so, she finally had something she knew she was good at.

The dry desert wind blew over her as she hovered over the Great Pyramids at Giza. She took in the sights from angles the tourists never got to see. The city nearby bustled, the sounds of vehicles and commerce echoing in her ears. She saw the Sphinx and marveled at the sights she never would have seen on her own. Scanning, she saw down through the layers, to the inner tunnels, and burial chambers. It amazed her how men without modern equipment built such a thing.

A gunshot rang out.

Hastily, she turned in its direction, and saw a man standing on the roof of a building in the city of Giza. She caught the bullet and hovered towards the man. At a football field’s distance, she saw the middle age man, police badge on his uniform, and the years of dealing with criminals painted on his bronze skin.

“Sorry!” he shouted, in heavily accented English. “I saw you floating there, did not know how to get your attention!”

“What do you need?” she asked.

He gestured down, and she landed on the roof. “Hostage situation,” he said, holding up a tablet with pictures taken by military and police who surrounded a tall office building. “Local political leaders and businessmen. They want prisoners released.”

She looked away from him, and a quick scan of the city showed her the building, and the incident currently underway. Then she returned to looking at him. “Okay,” she said. “Special instructions?”

He displayed several pictures on screen. “Rescue these men first,” he said. “No one gets shot. Okay?”

She nodded. “Got it.”

She took a deep breath and steeled her will. From the safe distance of the police building, she could see the floor where the eight VIPs were held. Ten terrorists in all, six carrying machine guns, the rest armed with pistols. A duffel bag of explosives sat next to two in the lobby. Alright, she thought. Here goes.

She took off. Everything stood frozen as she zoomed in through the front entrance, up to the seventh floor, and snatched the important rich people from gunpoint right away. From the police perspective, they suddenly appeared behind the safety barrier erected around the building, along with a duffel bag full of explosives farther away.

The six patrolling the lobby saw a white woman appear in front of them, and all six converged on her position and fired. Her hands blurred as she caught the rounds in midair. A few seconds later and they ran out of ammo. In the blink of an eye, they found themselves tied up in ethernet cable from the I.T. office. Upstairs, she appeared before the remaining terrorists. She zoomed from one to the next, yanking the pistols from their hands and crushing them. Then she knocked each one to the ground, draped one under each arm like a sack of potatoes, and flew them outside two at a time. In moments, the entire ordeal was over, with ten terrorists safely in police custody, and lots of hostages freed.

One officer went to say something to her, but she remembered her lesson from China and fled at once.

On the way back to the states, she stopped by the Eiffel Tower, Stonehenge, and a few other important spots. Not much for tourism, she didn’t feel the need to take any pictures. After each stop, she’d grabbed her waterproof containers and brought them with her and hid them. Her next stop included one of her favorite items: deep-dish pizza. She stopped outside Chicago, set down her waterproof container, and got out her spare change of clothes. While flying across the world, she wore one of her cheap tight t-shirts, double layers of yoga pants, and cheap rain boots. The goal in such cases was to attract attention. While on the ground and in relaxing mode, she wore a different outfit. This way, she had a ‘costume’ without wearing a costume and was less likely to be noticed. The shoes weren’t heels, but looked stylish nonetheless, and the pants and top were what Annie had recommended, so she felt secure wearing them. A change at hyper speed later, and she was now just some redhead.

The restaurant had a surprisingly long wait time, considering it wasn’t convention season. She took her seat, waited, and surfed the net on the prepaid smartphone. The news reported her deeds in Egypt and how she’d saved Representative Dunsmith. What caught her attention was they had stopped calling her “mysterious woman” and interchangeably called her by her name and sometimes as the hero she resembled. She played the video with low audio and used her hearing powers.

“It turns out to be a busy day for the heroine some call ‘Capacitor,’” the black female news anchor said. “Her real name is apparently ‘Jennifer Black,’ and she first stopped a superpowered assassin who tried to take out the Democrat from one of California’s less populated districts, Jan Dunsmith. In this fantastic display of power,” a quarter of the screen changed to display the footage, “you see her first catch a projectile just inches from the congressman’s face, and then, if that wasn’t insane enough, she then disarmed and helped capture the would-be hitman seconds later. But that wasn’t it.”

“Right you are, Julie,” the male news anchor explained. “Just minutes ago, we got word that a tense terrorist hostage situation in Egypt had been defused handily.”

“Excuse me, miss?”

She looked up at the waiter’s voice. “Yes, I’ll have a Diet Coke,” she said.

He nodded and smiled. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

She stopped the video and sat up straight, feeling giddy. Guns and bullets still unnerved her slightly, but she was getting better, facing her fears. Some elements of spending most of her life as a normal person would do that, she figured. Even so, a positive vibe passed all through her, powered by the knowledge that she was doing something she not only loved, but also made the world better.

“Hey, is this seat taken?” a young man said.

He looked ordinary, slight tan with short black hair, brown eyes, and a vague mix of Italian and Greek facial features, modestly good looking. She gestured forward. “No, I guess not.”

“Great!” he exclaimed. “I’m Gary, by the way.”

“Okay,” she replied, hoping he would take the hint.

He didn’t. “You come here often? I like the tutto mare.”

“I’m just here for the deep-dish pizza,” she countered.

“Meeting someone?”

She sighed nasally, which he either didn’t notice or didn’t care about. “No,” she answered.

“Oh, cool,” he said. “So, what do you do?”

“I save lives,” she stated.

He tilted his head a bit. “So,” he replied, “you’re like an EMT? A nurse?”

Good lord, she was used to guys randomly striking up a conversation when she went somewhere alone—something that happened approximately never as Manny—but their fishing for dates was so transparent. No, she figured, she would give him the benefit of the doubt. If he genuinely wanted a real conversation, he would stay after she revealed it. “No,” she replied. “I’m a super.”

He stared, a look of confusion on his face. As he pieced together the red hair and her face from pictures, his mouth drifted open. “No,” he said, incredulous. “Really?”

She held up two fingers, index and middle, and with caused a tiny bolt of electricity to arc between them. “Really,” she affirmed.

The waiter arrived and set her drink in front of her. “Sir?” he asked. “Do you need a menu?”

Gary glanced quickly between him and her. “Uh, no,” he answered, pushing his chair back and getting up. “I was just leaving.”

“What would you like to order?”

She opened the menu to the second page. “I’d like a large pepperoni deep-dish pizza,” she replied.

He took the menu with a smile. “Right away!” he said.

“Thanks,” she cried.

“Don’t worry,” a familiar voice said. She looked up and saw another guy sit opposite her. At first, she felt confused, and then she looked with her super vision, and saw underneath the disguise transformation.

“Jericho?” she said, trying to be quiet.

“Just wanted to see you,” he said. “You really changed my mind.”

A slight chuckle escaped her. “It was all over the news,” she replied.

He returned a single laugh. “Yeah,” he agreed, “I guess the news people were mad that she decided not to release the video, so they cornered me, and I needed to give them a sound bite.” He shook his head. “Anyway, let’s not discuss it here. I’ll be at your house when you’re done. That okay?”

“Sure,” she said. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

“Sure am,” he said, getting up. “See you soon.”

She sat and waited, and when the pizza came, she dug in.

“You’ve just been sitting here the whole time?” Manny said, as he opened the front door to his house and walked over to set the pizza box with leftovers in the refrigerator.

“Why not?” Jericho asked. “It gives me time to just sit and think.”

“So,” Manny began, sitting opposite the billionaire, “how far have you gone?”

Jericho let out a vigorous laugh. “Yeah, you sound just like the CNN business analysts,” he remarked. “I’m not sure of where I sit on the political spectrum. All I know is, I’m woefully behind in the ‘helping people’ category, and I want to fix that.”

“That’s not the big problem,” Manny argued. “The big problem is the sheer amount of wealth being hoarded.”

A guilty sigh escaped the man. “I can see that,” he replied. “Man, would you believe I actually thought because my mother had been disinherited that I was somehow not rich?” He closed his eyes and opened them wide. “Yeah, that’s…that’s bad.”

“Help me understand,” Manny implored.

Jericho gathered his thoughts. “Much of this is public knowledge,” he said, “but here goes.” He inhaled and exhaled sharply. “My mother was a party animal before I was born, you know. Everyone knows. It was a famous controversy in the nineteen seventies. She was into drugs, alcohol, pills, you name it.” He gestured with open palms. “Well, she got disinherited because my grandfather, Johann Torrell, thought she was a disgrace to the family.”

The name seemed familiar. “You mean,” Manny asked, “Johann Torrell of the Torrell Group?”

“Yup,” Jericho replied. “That’s the one. ‘If it sells, we’re involved.’ That’s right.”

“Got it.”

“My mother,” Jericho continued, “she actually took this lesson to heart, and parlayed her considerable college education into a teaching job at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She met my dad on campus, and in the eighties, yours truly came into the picture.”

Manny reclined in his seat. “I’m guessing family history had something to do with that,” he noted, “even if she wasn’t in the will anymore.”

“Hah!” The billionaire laughed. “Old me would’ve gone to blows with you over that, but yes.”

“Gotcha.”

Jericho pointed. “So, fast forward,” he continued, “I get into Harvard Business School at eighteen. I graduate at twenty-four with an M.B.A. and get this.” He leaned forward. “You’re really going to love this. I get a job straight out of Harvard at a Manhattan investment firm. It’s literally waiting for my graduation.”

Manny mouthed a ‘wow.’ He shook his head. “Let me guess,” he added, “you thought it was because you were simply that good.”

“I did!”

At Jericho’s affirmation, they both erupted into fits of laughter. After almost a whole minute, they both had to wipe their eyes. “Oh, that’s beautiful,” Manny exclaimed.

“Oh,” Jericho said, “I happen to be good at picking stocks, sure, but who the fuck am I? It never occurred to me that, wait, why is a major Wall Street investment bank hiring some twenty-four-year-old kid fresh out of college?” He smacked his temple. “Oh! Right! I’m the grandson of Johann Torrell.”

Manny pointed. “You started on third base!”

“And thought I hit a triple!” Jericho completed. He wiped his eyes while laughing. “Oh, how much it irks me, knowing what I know now. Literally having other people’s perspectives to look at. So, I want to help change the world. Make everything better for everyone. Because maybe that will be something I do that is genuinely mine.”

“Let me guess,” Manny replied, “you figured that just doing what I’m doing isn’t enough.”

He gestured. “Don’t get me wrong,” he argued, “what you’re doing is great. You’ve already saved lots of lives. You inspire people just by not being one of the random people who shows off their power in public and then doesn’t do crap, or the chuckleheads that pull something and get busted. Decades of comics and here you are, actually doing the whole super thing.”

“I thought there were others doing that,” Manny shot back.

“They are,” Jericho countered, “but you’re the most prominent. Anyway, back to my point. The piecemeal approach isn’t going to solve systemic problems.”

Manny pondered this. “You’re absolutely right,” he said, “and that’s what bugs me.” A thought occurred to him. “Super intelligence is the game changer.”

“I see what you’re getting at,” Jericho noted. “I agree, but that can’t be the only game changer. I think empathy is a bigger game changer.”

“Very true,” Manny realized. “The right people, given empathic experiences, like you’ve done, will change everything. But the question is, who and how?”

“That’s something to worry about,” Jericho said. “We’ve got a lot to go over and I’m going to want to have that conversation, but right now, I’ve got just a few final stops to make.”

“Still collecting powers?” Manny asked.

“Just two more,” the billionaire said. “After a Reverend Jack Hurst in Oklahoma, and a scientist at Caltech named Raymond Weiss, I’ll be done.”

Manny rolled his eyes. “Reverend,” he noticed. “That sounds fun.”

“Yes,” Jericho said, his lips a straight line. “So much.” He waved. “Anyway, see you.”

“You flying solo?”

“People know what I’m doing,” the rich man countered, “so I’m flying without the plane for a while. It’s more fun.”

“True,” Manny said. “See you.” With those words, the billionaire left.