Off The Pages

“You should get your brother Luther something for his birthday!”

In a hotel suite in Manhattan, a thirty-one-year-old rolled his eyes at his mother’s voice on the phone. “Mom,” he argued, “you know Luther and I don’t get along, and quite frankly, I’m not going to get into it with him again.”

“Jericho,” she countered, “you need to cut this out, and…”

He clicked end call. Jericho Torvalds didn’t have the stamina to go down this road again. Wiping the sleep out of his eyes, he got up and walked into the bathroom. He reached into his toiletries bag and pulled out a fresh sponge. With a quick rip he tore open the package and deposited it in the can. The shower felt good on his skin as he rubbed the sensitive skin body wash onto the sponge and washed himself. After that, he reached out through the curtain and pitched it in the garbage. A handful of face cleanser went on and came off. Finally, he scrubbed shampoo into his hair and goatee, and washed it off, before using conditioner and repeating.

He dried himself in a towel, before combing his chin-length sandy brown hair parted in the middle. He regarded his appearance in the mirror. A Newsweek article about him had mentioned that “the young billionaire’s skill belies his youthful appearance,” and he thought about it as he scratched his goatee, questioningly. He’d been growing it for a week and a half now. Hastily, he reached for his shaving cream and razor. Screw it, he figured. If they could continue to underestimate his performance, he would lean into the “young” aspect of it. Time Magazine bothered to take the effort to describe how his “remarkable, almost supernatural ability to pick stocks,” was the main aspect to focus on, not his age or appearance. A towel dabbed the dots of cream and the strands of loose hair stuck to his now-smooth chin and upper lip.

After putting his boxers on, he donned a short sleeve undershirt and opened the wardrobe. He stared at the collection and weighed his options. The Armani or the Gucci, he pondered? Dark blue or black, which color scheme worked best with CNN? Ultimately, he settled on a Clamshell White dress shirt and Evening Sea Blue vest, suit jacket, and slacks, with his custom-made shoes. From the suitcase, he removed a small wooden box and opened it. The Rolex, or the Bulova, it was a difficult choice. After a long moment, he settled on the Bulova. Sure, it was only worth ten thousand, but the tv cameras probably weren’t high definition enough to give audiences much of a difference. In the process of testing each watch against his wrist, he noticed the back of his hands had minor pink spot, possibly from sweat from exercising having been poorly washed away, or a minor bug bite. He made a mental note to put makeup over it before the interview.

Right now, though, he had hours to kill and he had to get some food in him. He looked at the clock and saw that it was nine-thirty in the morning. He searched for a familiar name and found it on his phone, dialing. “Yes,” Jericho said, when his call went through. “I’d like to place an order. Delivery.”

“I’m sorry sir,” the man said, “our deliveries are on hold because we had a big order just ten minutes ago and our delivery crew had to go deliver to…”

“Wait,” Jericho interrupted, “your entire crew? You don’t have one delivery person free?” A sigh escaped his lips. Who could be so important?”

“Sir,” the man argued, “it’s just that last night, the King of the African nation of…”

“Never mind,” Jericho countered. “I’ll be there in person. Can I still place an order so I don’t have to wait in line?” This level of service was unacceptable. The idea that such a nation’s delegation could swoop in and interrupt service indicated this restaurant needed to plan for such an occurrence.

“Yes, what would you like?”

Jericho paused for just a moment at the man’s question. “I’d like,” he began, “the Mediterranean apple chicken sandwich with avocado on whole wheat bread, hold the cheese, with Dijon mustard.” He paused to receive confirmation. “Yes, lettuce, tomato, and black olives. I’d also like a small bowl of your deluxe lentil soup and a side salad with almonds and Italian dressing.” He received the total. “You have my card on file. Jericho W. Torvalds. Security code two-eight-seven.”

“Thank you, sir,” the man cried, “we’ll see you here soon!”

“No problem,” Jericho replied, and ended the call. He closed the wardrobe and put on a polo shirt and some loose-fitting khakis and headed out of the hotel towards the bistro. Exiting the front door of the hotel, he moved into the crowd of people. He felt at home in the bustle and the noise of street, as the people moved back and forth, serving as the lifeblood of the city. As people shifted around to avoid running into each other, he saw his destination over a line of heads. The bistro sat at the end of a line of restaurants and he picked them for a reason. They typically had the best light meal food in this section of Manhattan.

The front door of the bistro slid open, and the crowded early morning lobby had a line stretching to the condiment counter. He found a seat and removed his phone, texting a number. His order popped up on a large screen by the entrance. To kill time, he switched over to his news app, and it brought up a strange occurrence. The screen reported a psychedelic sight; in the sky, last night, over much of the world, otherworldly lights, moving in all different kinds of patterns, bathed millions of viewers in a sight unlike any ever seen before. A tap set the video playing without sound. The lights moved outward from singular points dotted across the sky and faded only as they crossed the horizon. It had been less than twenty-four hours since the event and he had missed it because he was researching stocks in his hotel room with the curtains drawn. Now that he thought of it, he’d assumed the lights in the curtain had been police responding to some incident.

Scrolling through related news, it seemed to him that no obvious effects had occurred on telecommunications, so his investments in those fields didn’t need to change. It would, however, mean that he would have to watch certain markets because countries with certain mineral resources also had very superstitions populations, and the market was, after all, a representation of perception of reality rather than reality itself. He scratched the back of his head as he felt a twinge somewhere in his mind.

“Mister Torvalds,” the waitress said, setting his tray down on the table, “your meal is ready.”

He pulled a five out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Thanks,” he said. “Your tip.”

She gave a fake smile. “You’re welcome,” she said. She left his table and walked back towards the front. Her foot landed on something and she slid, and in her rush to correct her balance, placed a hand on his neck.

Jericho’s eyes went wide.

In a heartbeat, he got torn out of his senses.

The scene in front of his eyesight was that of the waitress, standing in front of her mirror. Every thought she experienced flowed through his consciousness, and every sensation her nervous system had at whatever moment this was at came to him. He realized this was from shortly after the night before, where she’d realized the twinge in her mind not an hour after the lights in the sky. The twinge appeared to her as a trigger mechanism.

He felt her flip the switch in her brain and become aware of the objects in a field of ten feet around her and will her toothbrush holder closer to her. Exactly like she commanded it, the object left the sink and flew outwards and into her waiting right hand. Three more times she tested her newfound power on various objects in her bathroom.

All at once, he felt his mind get thrust back into its proper place. Gasping involuntarily, he jerked his head around to see the familiar sights and smells of the bistro. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, sir!” the waitress cried.

“Huh?” he exclaimed, looking up. “Oh! Oh. Yes, of course. No problem.”

As she pulled away nervously, he held up his cellphone. No time had passed while he was…where had he gone? Was that a vision, of some kind? Had he gone mad? Was there a tumor? In any case, he had to know immediately. He dialed a number. “Yes, Ruth?” he said to his secretary. “Get me a doctor’s appointment today and tell him to call me. Also, contact CNN and tell them I’m going to have to cancel. Thank you.” Hanging up, he put the phone down.

Out of curiosity, he decided to test this insanity. Superpowers couldn’t be real, but he also didn’t have an explanation for the lights. He stuck out his hand and focused his inner mind. The gasp couldn’t have been louder if he’d done it physically. There sat two separate trigger mechanisms in his mind, and he somehow knew that one belonged to the one the woman who’d just touched him.

As he desired, the fork slid across the table and up to his hand. His eyes went wide. It took him a moment to realize he had to breathe. At once he set about finishing his meal as quickly as possible. He’d never devour food with such reckless abandon, but a desperate urge overcame him. One of two outcomes would emerge, he decided; either he would prove himself insane, or, should this prove true, a wondrous opportunity would emerge. After all, if superpowers were, somehow, impossibly, real, then that meant they would become the new currency. It only stood to reason that if there were people who could do impossible things, and those that couldn’t, it would be the new market, so to speak.

After finishing the last of his salad and soup, he stood up, focusing on this power, assuming it was real.

In his mind, he somehow knew the distance and direction of people who, what, had powers? It seemed the only logical conclusion. The nearest one to him was less than fifty yards away, outside. Scrambling, he made his way out the door and pushed his way through the crowd. The man wore a flat cap on his head and a black t-shirt. He walked with hands in pockets and appeared to be looking left and right, nervously. The billionaire made a show of bumping into him from behind, brushing against his hand.

The man, in his living room, stared at the wall. He stood in his living room and focused on the room on the other side of the wall. The switch in his mind flipped, and he disappeared from where he stood and emerged in the room opposite the wall. The man blinked several times and let out a whoop of excitement. It then moved forward ten minutes as he discovered he could teleport from a seated to a standing position, and vice versa.

Jericho landed in his body with a mental thud. “Hey!” the man shouted, addressing the disturbance. “Watch where the hell you’re going!”

“Yes,” Jericho apologized. “I’m sorry.” He stepped away from the man and disappeared away into the crowd. Further up the street, he saw a boy sitting on a step, watching something on his cell phone. Drifting away from the street, as he approached the steps, he pretended to trip and caught himself on the steps with his hands. A hand drifted towards the boy’s exposed pant leg.

A young black boy watched the lights in the sky above. It had awoken him. The scene moved forward an hour or so when he should have been asleep. The boy flipped the switch, and an eyelid twitched. The television turned on. A moment later, he reverted it, and the tv went off. He repeated this experiment with the tv unplugged, and it continued to run until he stopped his power. The next morning, he watched from his seat at the kitchen table as his mother struggled with a jar. He tried his power, and she suddenly jerked the lid, a noticeable pop sound as it came open.

“Hey man!” the boy cried. “Be careful!”

Jericho got up and gestured an apology. He focused on the new power he’d gotten. The man’s ability was teleportation, that seemed obvious. The boy had, what, enhancement? Maybe he had empowerment? In any case, it seemed to be able to increase the power of things. Perhaps, Jericho thought, he could use it on his other powers.

Combining it with his normal ability, a mild push on it and he could sense the exact location and what power each person had for miles in every direction. Carefully, he drifted away from the crowd and into a hotel nearby.

The clamorous concert of the outside became a gentle breeze of the quiet interior of the front lobby. He walked into the public restroom perpendicular to the front desk at the end of the lobby and took his place in a stall, shutting the door behind him. Eagerly, he combined his enhancement power with teleportation. External reality seemed to pause as a three-dimensional map, showing twenty miles in every direction, appeared in his mental image. His consciousness could roam free around, looking for a place to teleport, and it would be updated for him in real time as soon as he came to it. Meanwhile, no time passed in the outside world. The mental image showed his hotel room, and he chose it, causing him to immediately disappear from the bathroom and emerge in his room, at once popping back into his normal consciousness.

Wow, that’s messed up, he thought, as he came back to his senses. He stood in his room. Everything had been as he saw it.

Bzzz!

“Ah!” he shouted, flinching. As he realized it was his cell phone, by his ringtone a moment later, a laugh escaped his mouth.

“Yes?” he asked, answering.

“Mister Torvalds?” his secretary, Ruth, said. “You have an appointment an hour and a half from now. Is that okay?”

His mind slipped him a moment. “Hmm?” he asked. It hit him. “Oh! Yes, the doctor’s appointment. Got it. That’s perfect! Thank you very much.” He hung up the phone and set it on the table. This was progressing quickly, and he didn’t know how to take it other than to simply sit down and ponder. In his mind, the powers and locations came up for him. Combining teleportation with enhancement and his main ability, he could see each person and their power, and location. It made him the ultimate voyeur. Comics hadn’t been his thing growing up. Still, even the casual movie-goer would know the obvious powers to start with included strength and durability. Moving through the mental image of the city, he came across a person who had both at once. It was a rather nasty looking individual in a parking garage.

Jericho appeared behind a pillar and looked out from his vantagepoint. The bruiser with the flat-top, who had to be standing at least six and a half feet tall, wore soot-stained jeans and combat boots as well as a wife-beater. At once adrenaline started racing as the billionaire knew he stood somewhere he didn’t belong. Still, if he could get those powers, he would.

“Hey, c’mon!” a shorter man next to the huge man whispered aggressively.

They took shelter behind a pickup truck and waited. Jericho looked to their line of sight and traced it to a balding, late fifties man exiting the building and reaching into his pocket for his key fob. A dark blue BMW beeped, and he opened the door and climbed in.

“Hey! Miss us?” the huge man half-spoke, half-growled.

At this the man shrieked and slammed his door shut. Before he could fire the engine up, though, the two approached and a giant fist smashed the window. Two huge hands wrapped around the man’s torso and pulled him clear out through the window. “Please! I was going to have the money tomorrow!” the poor businessman shouted.

A laugh escaped the shorter man. “Did ya think Benny was just gonna keep waiting?” he asked, sarcasm dripping.

“I’m gonna take the money you owe Benny outta yer ass!” the ogre-like man shouted.

Jericho returned to hiding. He slammed his eyes shut and forced himself to calm. Walk away, he thought, this isn’t your battle. It isn’t in your rational self-interest. He swallowed. Could he return to his hotel room and pretend this didn’t happen? The Objectivist in him said he could. Somehow, though, he didn’t think he’d be able to.

“Maybe some debts shouldn’t be settled out of court,” Jericho shouted, appearing thirty feet away from the brute and his criminal companion.

All three turned in his direction at once. A miserable scowl drew itself across the larger goon’s face. “Who the fuck are you?” the shorter goon shouted.

Jericho had acted. Now, he had to do his best to stifle his heart’s desire to shoot out of his body. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “That doesn’t matter,” he said.

“You just fucked up!” the huge hulking man shouted, dropping his original target, who scampered to his car.

The shorter goon shouted something and reached for his pistol at his hip. Instinctively, the billionaire activated his telekinesis and turned the enhancement on it up as far as he could. Both men stood frozen in place, held stiff as stone statues. Nervous as a cat, and ready to leap out of there at the slightest irritation, he approached.

His logical side protesting against him, he placed a hand on the brute’s chest.

The scene showed a man punching through various substances, such as concrete, steel, and his skin not marred by the sharpest of metal edges. His buddies and he had been up most of the night drinking and partying. Scenes played showing various skulls being bashed in as they’d served some late-night revenge to their boss’s less reliable clients. They banished sleep with hard drugs, which only stirred the brute up, no ill effects at all. Knives, pistols, and car impacts didn’t injure the man. Finally, a high-powered shotgun to the chest had drawn some slight beads of blood from the surface skin. All in all, a brutal montage of murder and violence played out.

Jericho came back to himself, sputtering. “Oh, Christ,” he uttered, almost forgetting to keep up his offensive attacks. “Good God, holy shit…” He blinked as his eyes began to water. When his eyes settled back on the goons, feelings of anger, disgust, and hatred filled his mind. Acting without thinking, he activated his teleportation on the two of them, banishing them miles out into the depths of the ocean.

He collapsed onto the pavement, in a seated position. Squealing tires echoed through the garage as the would-be victim hightailed it. Before anyone else could show up, he returned to his hotel room. At once he collapsed into his bed, weeping into the bedsheets.

How long he lay there, hands covering his face to stifle his tears, he didn’t know. At some point, a text message notification broke him from his stupor. Rolling to his left, he twisted position and wound up in a seated position. Somewhere the strength in his hands returned and he pushed himself off the bed, stumbling and shuffling like a zombie towards the bathroom. A handful of cold water splashed into his face, and it smashed his senses back to reality.

He blinked his red eyes as he watched himself in the mirror. The emotional storm hadn’t subsided, but he needed to get back to reality. The phone registered again. He returned to the table and unlocked the phone.

“You’ve got 30 minutes until your appointment,” the text from the doctor’s office said. “Please check in at 15 minutes before.”

He took a deep breath and wiped his face with his hands again.

Ten minutes later, he walked up to the front desk at the doctor’s office. “Mister Torvalds!” the receptionist noted. “Please fill this out.”

He hastily looked over the form and filled it out, handing it over. “Is there anything else you need?” he asked.

She looked at his record on the computer. “Is your insurance still the same?’ she asked. He nodded. “Great! Just have a seat over there and the doctor will be with you soon.”

He sat in the hard, wooden seat, with the too-thin cushion and forced his brain to stop pestering him with these ragged emotional outbursts. The fact that horrific violence occurred all over America was something he knew academically, but to actually see it, to actually experience it, overwhelmed him. He might never be able to forget the things he experienced.

“The doctor will see you now,” the receptionist said.

He stepped into the office, and the familiar sight of the doctor put his mind relatively at ease. Somewhere in his mind, comfort washed over the tempest, and he felt a sense of normalcy return. “Jericho!” The doctor announced. “I heard you had an emergency! You had to make this appointment in a hurry. What’s wrong?”

Jericho opened his mouth to speak. Words didn’t come out. A long moment passed, as he sat there, stumped. Finally, he closed his mouth and made a decision.

The doctor’s cell phone fell off his desk. He let out a gasp and reached for it.

Jericho pointed. At that instant, it froze in place midair.

The doctor pulled back, sitting up straight in his seat. A suspicious glance traded between him and Jericho. Finally, the phone levitated upward and safely back onto the desk. For almost a minute, no one said anything. “Tell me how you did that,” the doctor slowly asked.

“I’m willing to pay extra for all the tests,” Jericho said. “I want to know for sure whether or not I’m insane or if I have a huge brain tumor.”

“Well,” the doctor replied, tilting his head in confusion. “If you’re crazy, then I’m crazy too, because I just watched you do that.”

Over the next two hours, the doctor pulled every string he could, called in several favors, and lied his way into test after test. Enough blood had come out of Jericho to constitute a donation, and he’d been scanned up and down, left and right. While the billionaire waited in the doctor’s office, the doctor assembled the results as they came in, scrutinizing each data point, comparing all the numbers and values as best he could. “I gotta tell you, Jericho,” the doctor said, pushing the door open, “This is one hell of a result.”

The billionaire noted the lack of alarm in his doctor’s face. Instead, the expression seemed a mixture of confusion and apprehension. “Well, what’s the verdict?” he asked.

The doctor gave a single chuckle. “It’s clean,” he said. “Everything is normal. Brain scans, MRI, everything comes up negative for any lesions, tumors, damage, drugs. You’re basically physically fit as anyone in their early thirties.”

Jericho blinked, breathing in and out hard, and leaned back in the chair. “Okay then,” he said, surprised. “So, it’s either an incredibly vivid hallucination, or superpowers are real.”

The doctor pulled his phone out and showed it to his patient. “You ought to see this,” he advised. The screen showed CNN reporting on a man in the U.K. who caught fire in the middle of a crowded shopping center, and then returned to normal, unharmed. “Looks like you’re not hallucinating.”

“So.” Jericho’s single word held a mountain of weight in his mind. He drummed his fingers on the armrests of the chair. He swallowed. “So, this isn’t a dream, or brain damage. We’re in a brave new world.”

The doctor had no words, so he simply nodded. He sat down and looked around the room in silence for a few moments.

Jericho shrugged and got up. “In that case,” he continued, “I have plans to make and research to do.”

The doctor got up and extended his hand. “Always glad to help,” he said, putting on a cheery voice. “Send your bill to your office, as always?”

“As always, doc,” Jericho said, exiting the exam room. Out the door, he opened his phone and dialed his secretary. “Yes? Hi. Get the plane gassed up and ready, as soon as I get some research done, I’m going to need to fly out of here.”

“Destination, sir?” Ruth asked.

“Get back to you on that,” he ordered. “Just get it ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

“Yes, sir.”

He smiled. “Thank you,” he stated, hanging up. Outside the office, he saw no one in the hallway, and no cameras, and vanished, reappearing in his hotel room.

He’d seen only the comic book superheroes in movie form. True, some of them had been passable action films, he didn’t have the slightest idea about how their fictional worlds worked. One of the online retailers for digital comics allowed buying of multiple different companies’ comics, so he purchased their unlimited package, and started reading. The first place to start, he figured, were the ‘guidebooks’ that occasionally got published, the ‘encyclopedias’ of each comic book universe. It startled him the degree to which people categorized and archived each character’s powers and unique traits. Comic book fans took these things deadly serious, it occurred to him. Next, he read the origin stories of most of the mainstream supers and the most famous stories about them. None of these tales particularly fascinated him; it was mere research. He had to have a heads’ up if he wasn’t going to get left behind.

After almost an hour and a half of reading, he closed his laptop, and packed up his bags. Then he made a call to his secretary.

“Mister Torvalds!” the front desk receptionist announced, seeing him step up to the front with all his belongings on a cart. “You were scheduled to have the room until two days’ from now. Is everything okay?”

“Plans change in a heartbeat in the world of Wall Street,” he said. “I’m checking out.”

After the room keycard entered her hands, she checked him out. “Will you be staying with us again, Mister Torvalds?” she inquired.

He put on a smile. “Be delighted,” he exclaimed. “By the way, I don’t need a vehicle. I’m being picked up.”

“The best of wishes!” the receptionist cheered.

He waved. A bellboy pushed the cart outside as he walked. A Mercedes pulled up and the driver opened the trunk. As the bellboy loaded his luggage, Ruth stepped out of the car. “Mister Torvalds,” she said, “I’ve collected the information you asked for.”

He sat in the back as she took a seat next to him. “And?” he asked.

She opened a thin laptop and pulled up a series of documents. “There hasn’t been much activity so far,” she explained, as he read the information. “But by leaning into our connections, I discovered a small bunch of people who, so far, have shown powers and have been lazy or unaware enough not to have concealed it well.”

“Great,” he announced, pointing to a result. “That’s one of the ones I want the most.”

“That,” she explained, “is a woman in one of the towns outside Chicago who got shot during a botched robbery. By the time she arrived at the hospital, the bullet wound to her heart had been perfectly healed. The EMTs reported being startled by the dead woman reviving in front of them.” She thought about his words. “So, what are you planning, if I may ask?”

“I’ve got a power,” he explained, “and it’s to copy powers. I’m going to copy her ability, and there’s one thing everyone needs and that’s money.”

“Are you sure these people will go for that?” Ruth asked.

He looked at her like she’d asked how to eat a baby. “It’s basic Ayn Rand,” he explained. “Everyone wants money. I’ve got a lot of it. She has a power. Obviously, these people are going to go for that. Especially the ones who have a power but are living in the impoverished areas.”

Ruth did the math in her head. “But sir, even with your wealth,” she advised, “you won’t have enough to get them all.”

He laughed. “I don’t have to get them all,” he reminded. “Just the most useful ones.” He decided to take a risk and explain his motivation. “I got ultra-rich by being good at accumulating currency. Superpowers are going to become the new currency. Someone might be poor financially but if their power is incredible, they’re set. Set our destination.” Ruth dialed the airport.