IX
I’m sitting in the back of a van, stuck in traffic, on the way to exchange myself for my fake-kidnapped wife so the Rebels can use my telekinetic powers to end the endless war.
No, really.
I’m surrounded by body-armored rebels so jittery from the stims they’ve taken that they can’t sit still. Fingers tap, legs shake, tongues lick lips, old war stories are told, weapons are field stripped, unloaded, loaded. The heavy rasp and click of them frightens me. Me, Mr. God-Like-Power. I’m frightened of guns.
They wanted to make the exchange in a neutral area. Not in the States, and nowhere near the Peninsula. So here we are, in Shadrach’s old stomping grounds, heading for an old Stasi training camp to make the exchange. Bennett tells me that as soon as Aisling is out of their reach, to turn on whatever switch I’m supposed to turn on. I tell him that unless he can find a way to torture a small animal right before the swap, not to count on any miracles. He laughs – but not immediately.
Now I can see a cluster of army vehicles. There are men standing around and as soon as we get out of the van, about three hundred meters distant, a door slides open and I see a woman emerge with a black hood over her head. Bennett and his men bring their rifles to bear and fan out around me. Once the Forces have seen me, they remove the hood and I can see her – Aisling – for the first time in two years. I can’t make much out from this distance and I don’t have time. Bennett tells me to start walking towards them, and I do. Once they see me start, they send Aisling on. We’re getting closer. Each step brings us into clearer focus. Her hair is longer than I remember, and the color is slightly different. Her face is somewhat leaner, but it’s her and she smiles just as I think it. At this moment, I realize just how much has been taken from me over these past years. How much I’ve lost – how much of her I had to put away, or gloss over with memory. I want to run the rest of the way but two things stop me: one, it’s really fucking cliché and two, I don’t want to spook any trigger happy soldiers. We’re close now, only meters apart and she reaches out her hand.
There is a shot, and now shouting. Then more shots. Suddenly I hear the stressed groans of a spider tank climbing out of the earth a dozen meters behind Aisling, turret rotating, legs groaning as it pushes itself up on six legs, clumps of ruptured earth breaking apart around it. I scream and dive towards her, but she bolts away from the tank, veering away from it and me, running for Bennett’s people. The trap has been sprung, and too soon. I know what Bennett has in the van and before long, so does the driver of the spider tank. He and it are incinerated by a inflammatory round that bores through the tank’s armor and torches everyone and everything inside.
Then out of nowhere come Forces troopers in their red-edged armor, grabbing me, trying to get hold of me. I scream out Aisling’s name and over the din of the battle I hear something that sounds like her voice. Then I hear the streaking of RPG’s and the resulting crumps of explosions. Another spider tank comes from somewhere unseen, the gyros in its rapidly rotating belly turret screaming with overstress as the tank target officer sights on Bennett’s position. The troopers are holding me, dragging me away from Aisling, taking me towards the other side of the exchange. I can’t even turn around to see if Aisling is ok because they won’t let go of me.
Then, it begins again. The unstopped dam – the ocean fed through the bathroom pipes – the power, the loss of control. But this time it’s a bit different. I can feel the power now as an ability to control any substantive matter nearby; as if my mind has extended itself as a thousand giant fists that cannot be withstood. My eyes are wide and Aisling’s name is on my lips as I scream for her, desperately needing to see her and make sure she is safe. But everything around me is disintegrating. Something impossibly large is punching huge jagged craters into the ground. I can feel the dirt and the concussions from the blows. The spider tank shreds like paper as I put a invisible fist through it. And then I am bathing in joy as the power screams out of me – raw rage as a roiling hurricane.
There is nothing like it. Imagine the dream of every ruined adult, pulverized from childhood by the steady gnashings of brutal life who, having been rejected by everyone and everything around him has come to that dark impotent place as so many before him have. The dream of the eighty pound weakling is my reality now, and it is intoxicating in a way that the best high you’ve ever had can only hint at. I can tear men apart like paper, starting in small strips, or I can pulverize them with giant fists of air, or I can tear out any part of their bodies. I can smash tanks, upend bunkers, ground fighter jets streaking overhead, smash building flat, hurl dozens of vehicles around like swirls of dust. The joy doubles, trebles, quadruples. I am gorged on power like a god and just as near in omnipotence, I can’t even see straight but ten thousand miles away I can see a man with a shock of red walk out of his house holding a baby….
Why is this happening…what?
Aisling?