Off The Pages

At a suburban home outside Chicago, a man stepped through the front door and set his suitcase and guitar cases down beside the front entrance, and after locking the door, slid into the loveseat and closed his eyes. Luther Torvalds had just done a tour with his band, Blood Fury, and the struggles of the road had weighed on his mind, leaving him exhausted. Gentle dreams of wind over the ocean passed through his mind, until he awoke after dark.

A quick glance at his cell phone told him it was seven thirty. He was hungry; he hadn’t eaten since he’d gotten off the bus. As he got in his car and headed for the local burger joint, he flipped through the news channels on the radio. A chuckle escaped his mouth as he heard, once more, about his brother journeying about the world. The news media had finally revealed what he’d suspected all along. His brother, Jericho, had long since proven his love of all things Ayn Rand, and had made himself into a billionaire off the privilege brought to him by his family history, although he’d never admit it. The fact that he’d gotten the power to collect abilities had been precisely what Luther thought the man would get after powers became a thing. He himself had gotten an empathic power, although he doubted he would be the only one. Each time his band went to a new city, he found opportunities to use it to spread acceptance by forcing people to experience the histories of others.

It ate away at him that his brother had become the type of person Luther despised the most: the worshippers of wealth. Sure, he’d made the big time with his band, but at least it required him to actually possess some real skill and talent at playing the guitar, singing, and writing songs. His bandmates and he had sweat, bled, and clawed their way to the thirty million albums sold so far and counting. They’d fought off greedy corporate executives that hated their leftist lean and political songwriting. Still, they’d gambled on a deliberately anti-fascist sound and had rode the controversy all the way to the bank. The drive through woke him from his reverie.

“Yeah,” he replied, “I’ll have a double cheeseburger combo, large, and a Doctor Pepper, no ice.”

After paying, and getting his order, he drove home, and sat in his living room, eating. He got a phone call.

“Luther,” his mother, Suzanne, said, “have you heard from your brother?”

Luther rolled his eyes. “Mom, you know I don’t talk to him anymore unless it’s an emergency,” he said. “Why? Did something happen?”

“No,” the mother said, “it’s just that, I feel like something’s going to happen. I mean, I knew he was on the news already, what with his stock tips and all that, but now he’s on the news for this…well, whatever the hell this is he’s doing. It bothers me.”

“You know what it is,” Luther remarked. “Powers are the new thing he has to collect. Before it was just money.”

“Yes,” she replied, “I’m just not sure about all this. I just wish grandfather hadn’t gotten his hooks into him.”

“Tell me about it,” Luther said. “He used to be fun. Now he’s just so drab. And this culture of wealth, I just can’t handle it. I mean, I’m rich, and I’m not worth a hundredth of what he’s worth. I couldn’t imagine what I’d do with so much.”

“Oh well,” she replied. “As long as you’re okay. How was the tour?”

He half-grinned. “Good,” he replied. “We sold out all the dates and we don’t have to turn in our next album for eight months. I’m looking forward to taking some vacation time.”

“That’s great to hear,” she told him. “Now that the semester’s over, your father and I are taking some time off from the university to go on a little vacation of our own.”

That piqued his interest. “You’re not worried about this whole ‘powers are real’ thing?”

“Not really,” she replied. “I feel like if things were to have gone awry, they’d have done so already. Besides, you’re the one who can feel other people’s emotions. You tell me.”

He pondered the situation. Over the weeks, he’d gotten inside the heads of quite a lot of people with powers. “They typically are afraid to rock the boat,” he revealed. “I mean, they are mostly people who, until the Lights, were just average people. There are a few psychos out there who got powers, but the vast majority of them just want to live their life.”

“Makes sense,” she agreed. A news story she’d heard came back to her. “Did you hear about the preacher in Oklahoma?”

He lowered his eyebrows. “No,” he admitted. “I want to hear about that one.”

“Well, nobody’s saying anything.” She paused to recollect. “But basically, he somehow got a meeting with that televangelist, oh, what’s his name…” She stopped and thought harder. “Uh, Masterfield?”

“Hiram Masterfield?” Luther remembered. “You mean that disgusting megachurch guy in Oklahoma City who fleeces old people out of their money?”

“That’s the one,” Suzanne agreed. “I wonder if he used some kind of power on him.”

“Hmm, maybe,” Luther said. “Maybe. I don’t know. I just want you to be safe.”

“Thanks,” she replied. “I love you, son, if you hear from your brother, get him to call me.”

“Love you too, mom,” he said. “And I will. Bye.”

“Bye.”

He hung up. Throwing the wrappers in the garbage, he grabbed a soda from the fridge and headed upstairs. He’d loved playing music since he was fourteen, but the tours and the concerts took their toll on him. Right now, he wanted to unwind from the constant grind, the endless hours of riding in a bus, and the risk of putting himself on the line to use his powers. Sure, it made him feel great, but it ached him to have to experience the worst feelings and memories of people, and to share them with others. Bringing different communities together took a lot of empathy, and that tired him out, mentally rather than physically.

On his computer, he booted up a Sega Genesis emulator and played Sonic 2. The bright colors and simple electronic music made him happy. Controller in hand, he finished the game in a couple hours. After that, he pulled out his Kindle and read until his eyes began to droop low.

He set it on his desk, and stripped down, crawling into bed in just his briefs.

The light streamed through his curtains and woke him up. He wiped his eyes and climbed out of bed. According to his cell phone, it was ten thirty. He had five texts, three of which were from the record label, and he answered them right away. He also had two missed calls from his brother. No voicemails were left. Ah well, he figured. If Jericho wasn’t going to tell him why he should return the call, he wasn’t going to bother. He sure as hell wasn’t going to endure another debate about politics or the economy.

After getting dressed and having a quick protein shake for breakfast, he drove to the gym with his duffel bag. Stepping through the door, he swiped his card at the counter and strolled towards the locker rooms. “Hey, Luther,” Andy, who often worked there, said. “I heard your new album. I think it’s better than your first one.”

He smiled. “I should hope so,” he bragged. “The guys have gotten better at playing.”

The weight room took a few hours. The road didn’t give him much time to work out, so he had a full body exercise to do. By the time his arms and legs burned, and his torso cramped up, it was past lunch time. It wasn’t over, though; next he headed over to the cardio room. He put his earbuds in and jogged on the treadmill while listening to podcasts. An hour later, he switched to the stationary bike. By three-thirty, his body gave him warning bells and stood up, blinked sweat out of his eyes, and headed towards the locker room.

Plopping onto the locker room bench, he replaced his earbuds in their case and opened his locker. The shorts and undershirt went in the plastic wash bag, and he pulled his casual clothes out from behind them, along with a bottle of body wash.

“Oh, fuck,” he uttered, as the hot water hit his body, sticking his long black hair to his neck and upper back. He let out a soft gasp as he let the water soothe him. After lathering, rinsing, and repeating just once, he shut off the water and reached for his towel.

After having dried off and dressed in his outside clothes, he turned to his phone.

Then he found himself staring in disbelief at the news story presented before him.

“Billionaire investor Jericho W. Torvalds shocked the world today,” the CNN anchor began, “when he announced, after meeting with civil rights activist and Black Voices of America spokesperson Sharon Francis, that he had been wrong about race.”

The focus then shifted to Luther’s older brother. “You see,” Jericho said, wiping an eye, “the last time Miss Francis and I spoke was eight months prior on Fox News, and at the time, I said several things that were either misinformed, or based entirely on ignorance.” He looked solemnly into the camera. “I had been operating under a complete lack of black perspectives in my views, and I’ve corrected that to some extent over my journeys across the nation. I will be donating a large sum of money to black causes and activists. I do not believe this makes up for what I have said, but I hope to begin the process of making amends.”

The anchor returned. “Sharon Francis met with Jericho Torvalds earlier today,” he explained, “and had agreed to film the encounter. However, she has now stated that she prefers not to release the interview, as it was a very personal conversation, and said merely that, it was, ‘an eye-opening back and forth.’ The billionaire says he will put more effort into taking other perspectives into account in the future.”

Luther clicked off the video. He knew the look he saw in his brother’s eyes. It was the same look lots of people had when he’d given them the memories and feelings of others to show how wrong they were. He dialed his brother’s number. The voicemail greeting greeted him. “Jericho?” he yelled. “It’s Luther. Call me. I know something’s up, I know that look, you call me, you hear?” He sent the message.

“Luther,” a text message reply said. “Call you back later. Much to talk about, I assure you! Business right now.”

After lacing his shoes, he stuffed his phone into his hip holster and grabbed his bag. There would be quite a lot to talk about, and he wanted to see if Jericho was honest or if he had simply decided to sell himself at a different angle.

The thought came to him that he’d avoided.

He could use his powers to read his brother’s feelings.

“Dammit,” he whispered, getting into his car. The idea of privacy was one thing, but what really bothered him was the disappointment. He typically avoided experiencing his brother’s memories because they were so superficial and lacking substance. The older brother he enjoyed playing with as a child grew up into a boring man who worshipped capital and the hoarding thereof. “Ah, screw it.”

He plunged in.

Jericho walked into the meeting room at the Waldorf, a new suit adorning his much more built frame, and the greeting was cold, to say the least. “Mister Torvalds,” Sharon Francis said, ice in her voice, extending her hand.

“Miss Francis,” he replied, taking her hand. Eagerly, he tripped his power on and lived years of her life in an instant of real time. It seemed to be days, a clear sign of his improvement. He got to experience her time as a youth on the unforgiving streets of Chicago. She had an uncle who had a ‘real job’ but lost it when the company downsized. After every legitimate attempt to survive went without success, he turned to selling weed to feed his family, only to be murdered by police. She got to see a family friend arrested and sent to prison for being a lookout for a drug deal, when in fact, he just happened to be waiting at a bus stop less than forty yards from where one took place. She got to see every time her mother drove thirty miles a day to her ‘decent job’ she got, and how half the time they got pulled over for driving while black. All of these memories and more, years of systemic racism taught to a young girl who would grow up and swear to fight back, he got to experience as she had.

Pulling his hand back, he blinked rapidly and crushed down his emotions, a skill he had developed since the first time with Manfred Voren. A storm brewed in his mind as everything he ever thought about race in America was proven wrong right before his very eyes. The active racism of far-right conservatives and the passive racism of lukewarm centrist liberals alike got shown to him first-hand. There was nothing like experiencing it for oneself, and he had just gotten the biggest lesson of his life on race relations. He’d vaguely heard of things like the bombing of Black Wall Street or redlining, but now he knew about it the way she’d learned about it. She’d learned about it from black leaders and civil rights teachers, and he saw how horribly skewed the education he’d gotten growing up had been. None of these things had been taught by his high school history professors, and now he knew why.

“Let me begin by saying,” Sharon began, “I want to address the issue we argued about last time, that is, the fact that you didn’t think the civil war and slavery had as much impact on the black community today as some black activists say. You specifically said,” she pulled it up on her phone, “that ‘we didn’t have to go all the way back to slavery to talk about black communities’ and that ‘personal responsibility takes precedent first and foremost.’ What do you say to that?”

He breathed in through his nose, and let it out, slowly, deliberately. “I was simply, utterly, wrong,” he admitted.

This statement caught her so off guard her head jerked up from the phone. “Excuse me, what?”

He nodded. “You heard me right,” he repeated. “I was wrong. After the civil war, laws were specifically put in place to prevent black people from acquiring wealth. When the first suburbs were built, clauses in the leases prevented them from being sold to blacks. I was so incorrect, it’s laughably sad to even look at old interviews of mine. It’s an embarrassment.”

It took her a few moments to decide whether he was genuine, or, if this was a progressive air he was putting on to save face. “So,” she said, realigning, “what’s with the dramatic change of tune from just months ago?”

“Let’s be brutally honest,” he confessed. “I’m a billionaire, I live in a fancy penthouse New York City, I grew up in a nice suburb of Chicago, I’m sheltered. I’m a textbook example of white privilege. What changed my mind? I spent the past few weeks travelling around to meet real people, and I got to talk to them.” That last part hadn’t been a lie, he just didn’t need to tell her he’d spent only the last few days reliving the memories of dozens of random people.

She gasped a laugh. “Alright,” she stated, embers glowing in her voice, “you’re messing with me. You know I’m going to post this on YouTube and you want to discredit me. They’re going to think you’re joking.”

He leaned forward and extended his hand. “I can show you how serious I am,” he offered.

She looked at the hand and recalled that the FBI had revealed he was going around paying people to let him copy their superpowers. “Why should I trust you?”

“I am many things,” he replied. “Many of them are not good. But the one thing I’m not is a liar. I’ve honored every promise I’ve made. I’m telling you that you have nothing to fear.”

She nervously took his hand. He showed her everything he’d experienced up to that point, making it so it would feel like only a few hours to her. He felt particularly proud of that; it had been his best job so far of compressing the data experienced.

She startled, pulling backward and gasping. “Wow, that’s…” She blinked hard a few times. “That’s…something else…”

“I’ve even given you free copies of some of the powers I’ve got,” he told her, “free of charge. You have to live a long life and perform more charitable service, after all.”

She had regained her steady breathing. “How,” she asked, “how did you come across this?”

He shrugged. “Hey, I didn’t think about it at the time,” he admitted, “beyond just thinking, ‘hey, an empathy power seems useful.’ It wasn’t until I met Manny that I found just how useful it was.”

She reached, shut off the camera, and turned off the audio equipment. “You go out there and make the world a better place, Jericho Torvalds,” she told him. “I don’t know how much I actually like you, but damn it, you convinced me.”

“Believe me,” he said, standing up, “I’m going to.”

“Keep in touch.”

He waved as he left the room. “I will!”

Luther pulled back, after experiencing his brother’s and the woman’s memory of the event. He didn’t know what to think about it. A wave of feelings poured over him. It pissed him off that his brother was such an idiot for so long. He felt overjoyed that the cool older brother might be back. He drove to Subway and got a footlong chicken sandwich with all the toppings. As he ate, he waited for his brother to call. This would be the first conversation that he genuinely looked forward to having with Jericho in literal years.