Post by thecurtain on Nov 29, 2011 15:35:20 GMT -5
Just finding the bits of metal had been something of an ordeal. It took an entire week, but finally, travelling down-current of a stream in a secluded part of the park several kilometers from his house, Mac had picked out a decent collection of small magnetic objects: fishing weights, screws, washers, the buckle off a belt, and the little dog piece from someone’s now incomplete Monopoly set.
It was strange, he mused, walking along the bank. He had never really sought out metal before; it had always found him. But the early summer was nice, the weather still cool, and this area was isolated and calm. He could relax here, focus, without the phone ringing or his mother barging in to hand him the occasional nasty letter that still arrived from time to time. Here there was nothing to be afraid of, and he closed his eyes and took a couple steps, trying to feel the ping of metal beneath the scum on the slow-moving water of the stream. Human metal detector, he thought with a tiny, wry smile. He remembered once, a long time ago, before his powers awakened, a trip to the beach in East Bronze with his parents. It was a dim, distant memory, but he recalled walking with his father along the sandy beach, with that strange alien instrument, sending out its regular, dim beeps, searching for buried treasure.
It was something like that. If Mac cleared his mind, he could feel the pings of metal that had until that point given away his secret to those around him, and if he focused hard enough, he could draw the field away from his body, forcing it out into the air. Today, it was just him and the stream and all its hidden secrets, and Mac very carefully tried to uncover them. The pings were generally stronger the closer the metal was to the surface, he found. They resonated more strongly, louder beeps in the dim background of static from the detector. He got excited the first time, and the broken metal band of a watch startled him by flying out from the muck and sticking to his shoulder. Until he calmed down, it maintained a tenacious attraction to him and the magnetic field that had returned home to surround his body.
The further he walked along the bank, in those few days at the beginning of the summer, the more careful he became at extracting the metallic pings he discovered. By the time he found that lone dog piece at the far end of the stream, where it ended in a small, stagnant pond far away from his house, he was able to keep the other bits he found floating in a somewhat steady manner just above his palm while fishing for the new ping with a separate field. Two fields--or rather, a split field. Or was he just channeling it differently?
Mac decided it felt like a separate field, to him. One focused just above one hand, and one extending from the other, slowly drawing out the final metal ping from the stream bank’s muck. The dog was worn smooth by the flow of the water, his details mostly gone, but the shape was still there. Mac added the dog to his floating collection above his other hand and headed home, dropping each piece into the plastic bag he carried with him, one by one, before he stepped out of the cover of the trees.
---
On second thought, maybe the weights were a bad idea. They were small, but heavy, and when Mac tried to draw them to himself from a distance, his concentration wavered with impatience and they struck him, two on the forehead and one to his temple. He didn’t notice the bruises until later, but the weights were heavy, and they stung. After calming down and prying them from his head, Mac manually replaced them with the other pieces in his collection on the large, flat rock he had found, further apart this time. He hadn’t even been trying to get three at once.
Maybe he should stand closer. With the side of his sneaker, Mac dug a new line in the dirt, closer to the rock outcropping, and, standing behind it, took a deep breath. Okay, focus. Just one this time. He was only four yards or so away, now, but the targets were small, and their attraction to his field was strong. At least this time, when he tried to pick up the one on the end, only the one next to it went along for the ride, drawn in by his field. It wasn’t precise, but at least this time Mac was able to keep control of both objects, his field still separated from his body.
His attempts at returning the objects, however, were disasters; the further his field got from him the less control he had over it, and he caught up six of the eight pieces of his collection in a clump, out beyond the rock. Frustrated, he tried to shrink the field and shake off the objects, but they only clumped closer together, and the last thing Mac remembered was the field returning at an alarming rate with this amalgamation of metal in tow before he was opening his eyes to the setting sun through the canopy of leaves above him. He shook his head swiftly and rubbed at where the cluster had struck him in the side of the head and where the back of his head had met the ground. Disoriented, Mac remained for a while, watching the sky change color, before deciding that was enough for the day and walking home.
---
Mac spent little time in his house, that summer, returning only for dinner and sleeping and occasionally lunch, but through June he avoided his parents as much as possible, worried that the injuries he inflicted upon himself might be mistaken for marks of a fight. Early on he took to wearing a pair of sunglasses, with the biggest lenses he could find, to block most of the visible bruises, and that seemed to do well enough. In the meantime, now that Mac seemed to be causing no trouble or damage, his parents appeared willing to ignore his mysterious activities and disappearances, focusing their energy instead on converting the spare bedroom to a nursery. Dinners were silent, quick affairs, from which Mac retreated as soon as he could. By the time July rolled around, its long stretches of daylight serving Mac well, the calls at dinnertime had nearly ceased, and the letters left on his bed to find later became more and more infrequent.
It was July 12th when Mac realized he had two poles. The date stuck in his mind like metal stuck to his field. He had just begun a trial on how long he could keep his field trained on one particular object, an old, rusty piece of piping, without realizing that five whole minutes could go by and he was still able to keep this up. Eventually, he dissolved the field out of boredom, but then suddenly some of the other nearby metal bits flew to stick to the pipe. With a confused raise of an eyebrow, Mac carefully approached the enigma.
He’d magnetized the pipe, he realized, still from a safe distance away. It had gathered metal in its own temporary field like he used to, when his powers flared at the mercy of his emotions and lack of control. He stepped closer, curious, with his field buzzing lightly around him, but as he approached the cluster of metal and the pipe it surrounded began to shudder. Before Mac could think to jump back, the cluster spun a little and shot at him. The image of a large piece of metal heading for his head, with no provocation whatsoever, was familiar but old, hiding deep within childhood memories, and his mind blanked with that near-forgotten fear.
His reaction was equally deep-seated, more instinctual than cerebral. He pushed back at the incoming object, with all the force of his fear behind it, but in doing so he felt something switch inside him--outside him--both. It was strange and difficult to fully comprehend, but one moment the cluster of magnetized metal was hurtling towards him, and then there was that weird switch, and then all of the sudden it was far away, lying in the dirt. He sunk to his knees where he stood, staring at the distant metal and trying to remember to breathe.
Eventually, Mac rose to his feet to approach the pipe, with a thought in mind, but the clump of objects retreated in an odd sort of shuddering movement whenever he took a step too close. He stopped and circled around to the other side of the cluster, creeping forward again with his field as though trying to sneak up on a cat that may or may not have been sleeping. At first the clump just rattled, and then it began dragging itself like a starving desert wanderer over the ground towards him. Mac closed his eyes to better concentrate. The field was weak, and so was the attraction, so its movement was slow. With part of his concentration focused on keeping it that way, Mac tried to reach within and repeat that weird switch. It had felt kind of like a natural turning of his insides out, if turning his insides out could possibly feel natural. It made his stomach feel funny--not queasy, just kind of...different. Whatever the indescribable feeling was, it worked; Mac opened his eyes to find the magnetized clump of metal shuffling back obediently.
He smiled.
---
His mother had pitched a fit about all the magnets disappearing from the fridge, so Mac had eventually gone out and bought a small pack of them, a purchase he felt worthwhile even on his limited funds. It was easier to practice switching poles on actual magnets rather than taking the time to magnetize his metal collection, but more importantly, the magnets’ poles were marked. He learned north felt slightly different than south, a vague, subtle change in the way his field seemed to pull on his stomach, which he still felt if he concentrated on it. He spent the rest of the month perfecting the switch, making it easier to consciously change a field from North to South. He revelled in the ease of it that came with time, and practice, the feeling of having complete control over one aspect of his powers for the very first time.
When August rolled around, he realized he was wasting what little time he had left. His control over his fields’ strength was still fairly unpredictable, and he had yet to practice in a high-stress environment. Reluctantly, he left his magnets in his room and took the bag full of metal back to the park.
He didn’t have to look far for a high-stress environment. His mother had grown rather large in the midsection by now, large enough that even had he not been told about her pregnancy, he could not have missed it. Her due date was only about a month away. And she had been irritable and harsh with him before, but now she seemed to just hate everything in general. Until early that month, he had avoided most of her wrath simply by being absent, but then there was the storm.
Waking up to the torrential downpour outside his window put a damper on his plans to head into the park. Mac’s sleepy blue eyes blinked wearily at the way the water pounded at the glass, and the street below, and the nearby roofs. No matter how he looked at it, the walk alone was hardly worth it, not to mention hours of practicing in pouring rain with little cover. Rubbing his forehead, he leaned back against his pillows. “Now what...?”
The groan went unanswered in his room. Maybe, he considered, I can just stay here. All day. Been a while since I took a break. “Like all summer,” he added out loud. There was more satisfaction to be gained from the sarcasm, that way.
He faced, then, a dilemma. He didn’t want to move, but he had no idea what time it was. An eye cracked open, but the clock on his desk was too far away to see clearly. Mac sighed.
But only half the sigh escaped before he clamped his mouth shut and his eyes opened wide--and he laughed, shortly.
“God, I’m dumb.”
He squinted at the small clock, gathering a field around it. It was larger than most of the pieces in his collection, but there were paperclips and pens and a stapler and plenty of other metal things all around it that could be troublesome. He raised a hand, finding it easier to direct the field that way, and squinted his eyes further. The clock tipped forward a little, then rocked back. Okay. A little bit more now. It tipped forward again, then rose a centimeter off the desk.
Steady.
Trying not to get too excited, Mac increased the strength of the field just a little bit more. The clock slowly rose higher, closer. He began reigning it in, smile growing as the clock came closer and closer, until he could read the black digital numbers proudly displayed: 12:53. With equal care, Mac replaced the clock on the edge of his desk, and the clink of the small, battery-powered clock landing on the wooden surface could not have been more satisfying.
Well. Maybe he could practice today, after all.
He spent an hour trying to get the pile of paperclips on his desk to land in his hand one at a time (the best he could manage was four, and even that felt like a fluke) before he realized he hadn’t eaten yet, and his stomach was protesting.
In a terrible display of reluctance to no one in particular, Mac finally slid out of bed and into a crouch on the floor, peering around for clean clothes. Too bad they weren’t made of metal, too, or he could slip on the T-shirt and pull the sweatpants over his boxers with significantly less effort.
He tried to be careful and quiet, sneaking down the stairs to the kitchen, but his mother was in her chair in front of the television, which long ago had been built into the wall with strong wooden beams surrounding it, as if in defense of an attack by his powers.It was working, at least; the TV was still in one piece.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, from behind the bulge of her stomach.
Mac clenched his teeth and swallowed, pausing in the doorway just before the kitchen. She was glaring at him like she used to when she would have to be picked up from elementary school for causing some sort of damage. But this was her normal expression, now, whenever they happened to pass in the hallways once Mac had gotten home for the night.
Instead of biting his tongue like he should have, Mac instead said, as levelly as he could manage, “Not getting wet...?”
He couldn’t manage to be terribly level about it, though.
“Don’t you take that tone with me!” She raised her head from the reclining chair to better glare at him. “You’d better not be causing trouble! Lord knows what kind of trouble you’ve been getting yourself into, going off who knows where every single day...!”
“You haven’t heard about me causing any trouble, have you?” Mac asked, trying again at speaking in a calm voice, with a little more success this time.
“That just means you’re getting better at hiding it! Don’t think I don’t know!”
Isn’t that what you wanted...? Mac thought, growing impatient. “I’m not causing trouble, Mom,” he said instead, turning to head into the kitchen. “Promise.”
“Liar,” she hissed, behind him. “You can’t help it, it’s the way you are! It’s the way you were born! Ooohh,” she moaned, clutching at her swollen stomach. Mac stopped and half turned, worried that something might actually be wrong, but she didn’t seem to be in pain. And then she kept talking: “You’ll be normal, won’t you...? You won’t be sick and dangerous and hurt people, will you...?”
Mac’s shoulders tightened and his teeth clenched as she kept talking.
“No, you’ll be a good boy, and you won’t cause any trouble. You wouldn’t do that to me.”
He could feel his powers trying to burst out, to send a bubble of magnetic energy radiating outward, but he stood still, trying to quash it, trying to control it instead of just distract himself from it. Involuntarily, his hands reached up to take fistfuls of hair, but he just dragged his hands through the sea of blonde. Let it go. Let it go.
“We’re so blessed to have finally been given a son we can be proud of...!”
Don’t let her see! It was all he could think of, his fear of being shipped off very real, at this moment even more than ever. Where he felt his field leak beyond his control, he turned his attention, reigning it in before it could rattle her chair or the TV set or the blinds or...dammit, there was too much in here! He turned back around, and with long strides he desperately stepped into the kitchen. He could still hear her talking, but her words were muffled by distance, the image of her rubbing her belly hidden behind a wall.
He hated her. He knew he shouldn’t, that she was hormonal and upset and besides all that she was his mother. But she was doing this on purpose. She had to be. She wanted him gone and was making no secret of it.
He was going to prove her wrong, he thought, digging in the fridge for the bread, butter, and cheese. He wasn’t going to give them any reason, any chance, to be rid of him until he was damn well ready.
One more month, he thought, furiously buttering one side of a piece of bread. Game on.
---
The night before his first day of high school, Mac’s mother went into labor. At 11:02 PM, he watched his father hop into the back of the ambulance that would take them to the hospital, relieved for the first time that it wasn’t even a question whether he would go with them. He had no desire to see his perfect, normal little brother being born, and anyway he had had his fill of hospitals.
The house was empty, for the first time since Mac could remember, yet it was never completely silent, never completely void of the feeling of something living inside, for the walls were full of their metal skeleton and metal intestines, support structure and nails and pipes running throughout the house, keeping it standing, keeping it running. It was oddly comforting, though it had once made him feel uneasy, unnatural. Now the quiet resonance of metal surrounding Mac felt more comfortable to him than the knowledge that his parents were present.
He kept the lights off, wandering around in the dim, yellow light of the streetlights filtering in through windows and the sonar-like feel of the bits of metal all around him. All the excitement was just as well; he had expected having trouble sleeping that night, with the challenge of four impeccable, mistake-less years looming ahead of him. At least now he could spend those waking hours alone in this living house, without fear.
Fear.
He stopped in front of the door to the room that resonated strongest. It was his father’s office, set up, from what he could tell, almost exactly like the one in their old house, where Mac’s powers had first manifested. When they moved in, it had been refitted with a heavier wooden door and strong locks, which had honestly done nothing they were intended to do. The heavier door wouldn’t keep knives from flying through the walls, if Mac had managed to lose that much control, and the locks were made of metal, for fuck’s sake, not that he had ever had any desire to break in anyway.
Not before now. To his parents’ credit, until that summer he probably couldn’t have unlocked the door from the outside without somehow managing to tear the entire apparatus off its mount, but he was beginning to be able to “see” the shapes of things, metal objects, without actually seeing them. They all resonated differently, in response to a light wash of his field just over his body. He could feel the metal lock on the other side of the door, faintly, more through the crack between it and the frame. He couldn’t help himself. What if he could do this...? How cool would that be!
Inside the lock, he felt the tumblers. He had little idea how they worked, but they responded to him easily enough, and it was simple to shift them out of place. Mac felt the small knob on the other side of the door turn in response, and with a gentle turn of the door’s handle the office was suddenly open and unguarded.
Well. Not really unguarded. Mac shuddered the moment he stepped inside. The walls of knives, more now than he could remember, greeted him, sharp, grinning edges of blades resonating as if they were monsters placed there to take care of any overzealous intruders, and he had just woken them up.
Mac knew they would not hurt him. Couldn’t, not how they had caught him off guard that first time, almost eight whole years ago. He was too good for that, now--and that very thought allowed him to smile, briefly. He was good, wasn’t he?
But the smile did not last, as he looked around the room from just inside the doorway. The knives still seemed threatening, although he knew he could control them if he needed to. Funny how sharp the memory of a knife in your back could be after so long, but there it was, that dull, phantom pain that had drummed up before, when Miles had threatened him. He tried to shake it off and stepped into the room, reaching for his hair and then, after a moment, simply running his fingers through instead of gripping it.
This room had no power over him--on the contrary, it was he who had power over this room. As if to prove it, Mac began walking around, peering at the knives in their cases like they were caged animals, obedient to him alone.
The illusion wasn’t very strong, though, and after a while he had to look away, find something else to glance over. On the opposing wall across the room was his father’s cork board, where he used to hang his published articles with pride. He remembered the one from the old house, covered in pieces of newspapers and magazines, so many words that at the time he could not have hoped to read. Now, there were just two things posted in the center of the board, a place of honor indeed. It occurred to Mac that he’d never really bothered to read anything his father had written, and with curiosity he crossed the room, head tilting up to peruse the displayed documents. The first one was not an article, but a letter, written not by his father but to him:
Dear Mr. Farrow,
I would like to personally thank you for all of your hard work and dedication over the years. Your dogged persistence in bringing the important issues to the forefront and to the attention of the people of Sternbild City has been invaluable in promoting our agenda to keep our citizens safe and feeling secure. Beginning in September, our Knowledge is Power Act will go into effect in many participating schools around the city, and I believe this is very much thanks to your repeated contributions supporting our cause. On behalf of my staff and the entire Jackson administration, you have our deepest gratitude and thanks.
Mac’s eyes widened a little in surprise. He had no idea his father was so active politically. Then again, he rarely had the time nor the interest to keep up with current events, much less this past summer. What in the world was the Knowledge is Power Act? Maybe...
He turned to his father’s article, posted beside the letter. It had been written several years ago.
7 February, NC 1964 The presence of NEXT has been hounding us for several decades now, but it is only in recent years that their existence has enjoyed a greater spotlight, no small thanks to HeroTV and the OBC. As we become more and more aware of these particular presences in our midst, we learn more and more their impact on our daily lives. In this editorial, I wish to report, in particular, on the impact of young NEXT in our schools. It is a well-known fact that NEXT whose powers have recently awakened take a certain period of time to grow accustomed to them. Reports of criminal activity due to uncontrollable new NEXT powers are not uncommon. As my more up-to-date readers may remember, just two days ago José Fillipé of South Bronze was arrested for his unexpected presence in his neighbor’s empty, locked home, claiming that he suddenly found himself able to walk through walls.
As one may imagine, the difficulties facing children NEXT are even graver. School-age children, as well we know, face daily challenges in controlling their own bodies; these structures that are growing and changing every day allow little time to adjust to one stage of life before they rapidly move on to the next. The added burden of new NEXT powers in school children not only leads to disruptive actions and behaviors, but also potentially places their normal peers and instructors in grave danger. Imagine if our Mr. Fillipé had “accidentally” let himself into the girls’ locker room of his high school? Imagine the more out-of-control Sonja Bronski, the radioactivity-producing NEXT bomber from last December, becoming upset in gym class one day. Imagine a telepathic NEXT using his powers to cheat his way through class after class without ever learning anything at all.
Readers, this is not merely a rhetorical concept. This is happening all over our city. Despite dubious control over their harmful powers, NEXT children are allowed to remain in classrooms and gymnasiums with their normal, vulnerable classmates. In many instances we may not even know these NEXT are present in our schools, amongst our children. In some instances we may never know, and their influences could continue to harm children and teachers undetected.
Once more, I encourage our esteemed Mayor and the leaders of Sternbild City to take swift and potent action. Set up a registry of NEXT living and traveling to this city. Implement systems in schools designed to protect our normal children and teachers from the ungoverned, uncontrolled NEXT in their midst, with separate classes, separate facilities, and separate curricula, so that all children may learn equally. Protect our schools and our future, before it’s too late. Readers, I urge you: write to our Mayor and demand your God-given rights to knowledge and protection. Our livelihoods and the safety of our city are at stake.
Mac’s mind and expression fell further and further into shock the more he read. When he reached the end of the article, he paused, and slowly retreated from the room, locking it behind him the same way he had unlocked it. His feet moved as if on strings, without conscious thought, bringing him back up to his room and into bed. From under the covers he stared up at the ceiling, trying to comprehend what he’d just read. He didn’t sleep, and by the time the clock on his desk rang for his first day of school, he still had no idea what to think.
It was strange, he mused, walking along the bank. He had never really sought out metal before; it had always found him. But the early summer was nice, the weather still cool, and this area was isolated and calm. He could relax here, focus, without the phone ringing or his mother barging in to hand him the occasional nasty letter that still arrived from time to time. Here there was nothing to be afraid of, and he closed his eyes and took a couple steps, trying to feel the ping of metal beneath the scum on the slow-moving water of the stream. Human metal detector, he thought with a tiny, wry smile. He remembered once, a long time ago, before his powers awakened, a trip to the beach in East Bronze with his parents. It was a dim, distant memory, but he recalled walking with his father along the sandy beach, with that strange alien instrument, sending out its regular, dim beeps, searching for buried treasure.
It was something like that. If Mac cleared his mind, he could feel the pings of metal that had until that point given away his secret to those around him, and if he focused hard enough, he could draw the field away from his body, forcing it out into the air. Today, it was just him and the stream and all its hidden secrets, and Mac very carefully tried to uncover them. The pings were generally stronger the closer the metal was to the surface, he found. They resonated more strongly, louder beeps in the dim background of static from the detector. He got excited the first time, and the broken metal band of a watch startled him by flying out from the muck and sticking to his shoulder. Until he calmed down, it maintained a tenacious attraction to him and the magnetic field that had returned home to surround his body.
The further he walked along the bank, in those few days at the beginning of the summer, the more careful he became at extracting the metallic pings he discovered. By the time he found that lone dog piece at the far end of the stream, where it ended in a small, stagnant pond far away from his house, he was able to keep the other bits he found floating in a somewhat steady manner just above his palm while fishing for the new ping with a separate field. Two fields--or rather, a split field. Or was he just channeling it differently?
Mac decided it felt like a separate field, to him. One focused just above one hand, and one extending from the other, slowly drawing out the final metal ping from the stream bank’s muck. The dog was worn smooth by the flow of the water, his details mostly gone, but the shape was still there. Mac added the dog to his floating collection above his other hand and headed home, dropping each piece into the plastic bag he carried with him, one by one, before he stepped out of the cover of the trees.
---
On second thought, maybe the weights were a bad idea. They were small, but heavy, and when Mac tried to draw them to himself from a distance, his concentration wavered with impatience and they struck him, two on the forehead and one to his temple. He didn’t notice the bruises until later, but the weights were heavy, and they stung. After calming down and prying them from his head, Mac manually replaced them with the other pieces in his collection on the large, flat rock he had found, further apart this time. He hadn’t even been trying to get three at once.
Maybe he should stand closer. With the side of his sneaker, Mac dug a new line in the dirt, closer to the rock outcropping, and, standing behind it, took a deep breath. Okay, focus. Just one this time. He was only four yards or so away, now, but the targets were small, and their attraction to his field was strong. At least this time, when he tried to pick up the one on the end, only the one next to it went along for the ride, drawn in by his field. It wasn’t precise, but at least this time Mac was able to keep control of both objects, his field still separated from his body.
His attempts at returning the objects, however, were disasters; the further his field got from him the less control he had over it, and he caught up six of the eight pieces of his collection in a clump, out beyond the rock. Frustrated, he tried to shrink the field and shake off the objects, but they only clumped closer together, and the last thing Mac remembered was the field returning at an alarming rate with this amalgamation of metal in tow before he was opening his eyes to the setting sun through the canopy of leaves above him. He shook his head swiftly and rubbed at where the cluster had struck him in the side of the head and where the back of his head had met the ground. Disoriented, Mac remained for a while, watching the sky change color, before deciding that was enough for the day and walking home.
---
Mac spent little time in his house, that summer, returning only for dinner and sleeping and occasionally lunch, but through June he avoided his parents as much as possible, worried that the injuries he inflicted upon himself might be mistaken for marks of a fight. Early on he took to wearing a pair of sunglasses, with the biggest lenses he could find, to block most of the visible bruises, and that seemed to do well enough. In the meantime, now that Mac seemed to be causing no trouble or damage, his parents appeared willing to ignore his mysterious activities and disappearances, focusing their energy instead on converting the spare bedroom to a nursery. Dinners were silent, quick affairs, from which Mac retreated as soon as he could. By the time July rolled around, its long stretches of daylight serving Mac well, the calls at dinnertime had nearly ceased, and the letters left on his bed to find later became more and more infrequent.
It was July 12th when Mac realized he had two poles. The date stuck in his mind like metal stuck to his field. He had just begun a trial on how long he could keep his field trained on one particular object, an old, rusty piece of piping, without realizing that five whole minutes could go by and he was still able to keep this up. Eventually, he dissolved the field out of boredom, but then suddenly some of the other nearby metal bits flew to stick to the pipe. With a confused raise of an eyebrow, Mac carefully approached the enigma.
He’d magnetized the pipe, he realized, still from a safe distance away. It had gathered metal in its own temporary field like he used to, when his powers flared at the mercy of his emotions and lack of control. He stepped closer, curious, with his field buzzing lightly around him, but as he approached the cluster of metal and the pipe it surrounded began to shudder. Before Mac could think to jump back, the cluster spun a little and shot at him. The image of a large piece of metal heading for his head, with no provocation whatsoever, was familiar but old, hiding deep within childhood memories, and his mind blanked with that near-forgotten fear.
His reaction was equally deep-seated, more instinctual than cerebral. He pushed back at the incoming object, with all the force of his fear behind it, but in doing so he felt something switch inside him--outside him--both. It was strange and difficult to fully comprehend, but one moment the cluster of magnetized metal was hurtling towards him, and then there was that weird switch, and then all of the sudden it was far away, lying in the dirt. He sunk to his knees where he stood, staring at the distant metal and trying to remember to breathe.
Eventually, Mac rose to his feet to approach the pipe, with a thought in mind, but the clump of objects retreated in an odd sort of shuddering movement whenever he took a step too close. He stopped and circled around to the other side of the cluster, creeping forward again with his field as though trying to sneak up on a cat that may or may not have been sleeping. At first the clump just rattled, and then it began dragging itself like a starving desert wanderer over the ground towards him. Mac closed his eyes to better concentrate. The field was weak, and so was the attraction, so its movement was slow. With part of his concentration focused on keeping it that way, Mac tried to reach within and repeat that weird switch. It had felt kind of like a natural turning of his insides out, if turning his insides out could possibly feel natural. It made his stomach feel funny--not queasy, just kind of...different. Whatever the indescribable feeling was, it worked; Mac opened his eyes to find the magnetized clump of metal shuffling back obediently.
He smiled.
---
His mother had pitched a fit about all the magnets disappearing from the fridge, so Mac had eventually gone out and bought a small pack of them, a purchase he felt worthwhile even on his limited funds. It was easier to practice switching poles on actual magnets rather than taking the time to magnetize his metal collection, but more importantly, the magnets’ poles were marked. He learned north felt slightly different than south, a vague, subtle change in the way his field seemed to pull on his stomach, which he still felt if he concentrated on it. He spent the rest of the month perfecting the switch, making it easier to consciously change a field from North to South. He revelled in the ease of it that came with time, and practice, the feeling of having complete control over one aspect of his powers for the very first time.
When August rolled around, he realized he was wasting what little time he had left. His control over his fields’ strength was still fairly unpredictable, and he had yet to practice in a high-stress environment. Reluctantly, he left his magnets in his room and took the bag full of metal back to the park.
He didn’t have to look far for a high-stress environment. His mother had grown rather large in the midsection by now, large enough that even had he not been told about her pregnancy, he could not have missed it. Her due date was only about a month away. And she had been irritable and harsh with him before, but now she seemed to just hate everything in general. Until early that month, he had avoided most of her wrath simply by being absent, but then there was the storm.
Waking up to the torrential downpour outside his window put a damper on his plans to head into the park. Mac’s sleepy blue eyes blinked wearily at the way the water pounded at the glass, and the street below, and the nearby roofs. No matter how he looked at it, the walk alone was hardly worth it, not to mention hours of practicing in pouring rain with little cover. Rubbing his forehead, he leaned back against his pillows. “Now what...?”
The groan went unanswered in his room. Maybe, he considered, I can just stay here. All day. Been a while since I took a break. “Like all summer,” he added out loud. There was more satisfaction to be gained from the sarcasm, that way.
He faced, then, a dilemma. He didn’t want to move, but he had no idea what time it was. An eye cracked open, but the clock on his desk was too far away to see clearly. Mac sighed.
But only half the sigh escaped before he clamped his mouth shut and his eyes opened wide--and he laughed, shortly.
“God, I’m dumb.”
He squinted at the small clock, gathering a field around it. It was larger than most of the pieces in his collection, but there were paperclips and pens and a stapler and plenty of other metal things all around it that could be troublesome. He raised a hand, finding it easier to direct the field that way, and squinted his eyes further. The clock tipped forward a little, then rocked back. Okay. A little bit more now. It tipped forward again, then rose a centimeter off the desk.
Steady.
Trying not to get too excited, Mac increased the strength of the field just a little bit more. The clock slowly rose higher, closer. He began reigning it in, smile growing as the clock came closer and closer, until he could read the black digital numbers proudly displayed: 12:53. With equal care, Mac replaced the clock on the edge of his desk, and the clink of the small, battery-powered clock landing on the wooden surface could not have been more satisfying.
Well. Maybe he could practice today, after all.
He spent an hour trying to get the pile of paperclips on his desk to land in his hand one at a time (the best he could manage was four, and even that felt like a fluke) before he realized he hadn’t eaten yet, and his stomach was protesting.
In a terrible display of reluctance to no one in particular, Mac finally slid out of bed and into a crouch on the floor, peering around for clean clothes. Too bad they weren’t made of metal, too, or he could slip on the T-shirt and pull the sweatpants over his boxers with significantly less effort.
He tried to be careful and quiet, sneaking down the stairs to the kitchen, but his mother was in her chair in front of the television, which long ago had been built into the wall with strong wooden beams surrounding it, as if in defense of an attack by his powers.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, from behind the bulge of her stomach.
Mac clenched his teeth and swallowed, pausing in the doorway just before the kitchen. She was glaring at him like she used to when she would have to be picked up from elementary school for causing some sort of damage. But this was her normal expression, now, whenever they happened to pass in the hallways once Mac had gotten home for the night.
Instead of biting his tongue like he should have, Mac instead said, as levelly as he could manage, “Not getting wet...?”
He couldn’t manage to be terribly level about it, though.
“Don’t you take that tone with me!” She raised her head from the reclining chair to better glare at him. “You’d better not be causing trouble! Lord knows what kind of trouble you’ve been getting yourself into, going off who knows where every single day...!”
“You haven’t heard about me causing any trouble, have you?” Mac asked, trying again at speaking in a calm voice, with a little more success this time.
“That just means you’re getting better at hiding it! Don’t think I don’t know!”
Isn’t that what you wanted...? Mac thought, growing impatient. “I’m not causing trouble, Mom,” he said instead, turning to head into the kitchen. “Promise.”
“Liar,” she hissed, behind him. “You can’t help it, it’s the way you are! It’s the way you were born! Ooohh,” she moaned, clutching at her swollen stomach. Mac stopped and half turned, worried that something might actually be wrong, but she didn’t seem to be in pain. And then she kept talking: “You’ll be normal, won’t you...? You won’t be sick and dangerous and hurt people, will you...?”
Mac’s shoulders tightened and his teeth clenched as she kept talking.
“No, you’ll be a good boy, and you won’t cause any trouble. You wouldn’t do that to me.”
He could feel his powers trying to burst out, to send a bubble of magnetic energy radiating outward, but he stood still, trying to quash it, trying to control it instead of just distract himself from it. Involuntarily, his hands reached up to take fistfuls of hair, but he just dragged his hands through the sea of blonde. Let it go. Let it go.
“We’re so blessed to have finally been given a son we can be proud of...!”
Don’t let her see! It was all he could think of, his fear of being shipped off very real, at this moment even more than ever. Where he felt his field leak beyond his control, he turned his attention, reigning it in before it could rattle her chair or the TV set or the blinds or...dammit, there was too much in here! He turned back around, and with long strides he desperately stepped into the kitchen. He could still hear her talking, but her words were muffled by distance, the image of her rubbing her belly hidden behind a wall.
He hated her. He knew he shouldn’t, that she was hormonal and upset and besides all that she was his mother. But she was doing this on purpose. She had to be. She wanted him gone and was making no secret of it.
He was going to prove her wrong, he thought, digging in the fridge for the bread, butter, and cheese. He wasn’t going to give them any reason, any chance, to be rid of him until he was damn well ready.
One more month, he thought, furiously buttering one side of a piece of bread. Game on.
---
The night before his first day of high school, Mac’s mother went into labor. At 11:02 PM, he watched his father hop into the back of the ambulance that would take them to the hospital, relieved for the first time that it wasn’t even a question whether he would go with them. He had no desire to see his perfect, normal little brother being born, and anyway he had had his fill of hospitals.
The house was empty, for the first time since Mac could remember, yet it was never completely silent, never completely void of the feeling of something living inside, for the walls were full of their metal skeleton and metal intestines, support structure and nails and pipes running throughout the house, keeping it standing, keeping it running. It was oddly comforting, though it had once made him feel uneasy, unnatural. Now the quiet resonance of metal surrounding Mac felt more comfortable to him than the knowledge that his parents were present.
He kept the lights off, wandering around in the dim, yellow light of the streetlights filtering in through windows and the sonar-like feel of the bits of metal all around him. All the excitement was just as well; he had expected having trouble sleeping that night, with the challenge of four impeccable, mistake-less years looming ahead of him. At least now he could spend those waking hours alone in this living house, without fear.
Fear.
He stopped in front of the door to the room that resonated strongest. It was his father’s office, set up, from what he could tell, almost exactly like the one in their old house, where Mac’s powers had first manifested. When they moved in, it had been refitted with a heavier wooden door and strong locks, which had honestly done nothing they were intended to do. The heavier door wouldn’t keep knives from flying through the walls, if Mac had managed to lose that much control, and the locks were made of metal, for fuck’s sake, not that he had ever had any desire to break in anyway.
Not before now. To his parents’ credit, until that summer he probably couldn’t have unlocked the door from the outside without somehow managing to tear the entire apparatus off its mount, but he was beginning to be able to “see” the shapes of things, metal objects, without actually seeing them. They all resonated differently, in response to a light wash of his field just over his body. He could feel the metal lock on the other side of the door, faintly, more through the crack between it and the frame. He couldn’t help himself. What if he could do this...? How cool would that be!
Inside the lock, he felt the tumblers. He had little idea how they worked, but they responded to him easily enough, and it was simple to shift them out of place. Mac felt the small knob on the other side of the door turn in response, and with a gentle turn of the door’s handle the office was suddenly open and unguarded.
Well. Not really unguarded. Mac shuddered the moment he stepped inside. The walls of knives, more now than he could remember, greeted him, sharp, grinning edges of blades resonating as if they were monsters placed there to take care of any overzealous intruders, and he had just woken them up.
Mac knew they would not hurt him. Couldn’t, not how they had caught him off guard that first time, almost eight whole years ago. He was too good for that, now--and that very thought allowed him to smile, briefly. He was good, wasn’t he?
But the smile did not last, as he looked around the room from just inside the doorway. The knives still seemed threatening, although he knew he could control them if he needed to. Funny how sharp the memory of a knife in your back could be after so long, but there it was, that dull, phantom pain that had drummed up before, when Miles had threatened him. He tried to shake it off and stepped into the room, reaching for his hair and then, after a moment, simply running his fingers through instead of gripping it.
This room had no power over him--on the contrary, it was he who had power over this room. As if to prove it, Mac began walking around, peering at the knives in their cases like they were caged animals, obedient to him alone.
The illusion wasn’t very strong, though, and after a while he had to look away, find something else to glance over. On the opposing wall across the room was his father’s cork board, where he used to hang his published articles with pride. He remembered the one from the old house, covered in pieces of newspapers and magazines, so many words that at the time he could not have hoped to read. Now, there were just two things posted in the center of the board, a place of honor indeed. It occurred to Mac that he’d never really bothered to read anything his father had written, and with curiosity he crossed the room, head tilting up to peruse the displayed documents. The first one was not an article, but a letter, written not by his father but to him:
12 July NC 1970
Dear Mr. Farrow,
I would like to personally thank you for all of your hard work and dedication over the years. Your dogged persistence in bringing the important issues to the forefront and to the attention of the people of Sternbild City has been invaluable in promoting our agenda to keep our citizens safe and feeling secure. Beginning in September, our Knowledge is Power Act will go into effect in many participating schools around the city, and I believe this is very much thanks to your repeated contributions supporting our cause. On behalf of my staff and the entire Jackson administration, you have our deepest gratitude and thanks.
Most sincerely yours,
Senator Leonard Jackson
Senator Leonard Jackson
Mac’s eyes widened a little in surprise. He had no idea his father was so active politically. Then again, he rarely had the time nor the interest to keep up with current events, much less this past summer. What in the world was the Knowledge is Power Act? Maybe...
He turned to his father’s article, posted beside the letter. It had been written several years ago.
7 February, NC 1964 The presence of NEXT has been hounding us for several decades now, but it is only in recent years that their existence has enjoyed a greater spotlight, no small thanks to HeroTV and the OBC. As we become more and more aware of these particular presences in our midst, we learn more and more their impact on our daily lives. In this editorial, I wish to report, in particular, on the impact of young NEXT in our schools. It is a well-known fact that NEXT whose powers have recently awakened take a certain period of time to grow accustomed to them. Reports of criminal activity due to uncontrollable new NEXT powers are not uncommon. As my more up-to-date readers may remember, just two days ago José Fillipé of South Bronze was arrested for his unexpected presence in his neighbor’s empty, locked home, claiming that he suddenly found himself able to walk through walls.
As one may imagine, the difficulties facing children NEXT are even graver. School-age children, as well we know, face daily challenges in controlling their own bodies; these structures that are growing and changing every day allow little time to adjust to one stage of life before they rapidly move on to the next. The added burden of new NEXT powers in school children not only leads to disruptive actions and behaviors, but also potentially places their normal peers and instructors in grave danger. Imagine if our Mr. Fillipé had “accidentally” let himself into the girls’ locker room of his high school? Imagine the more out-of-control Sonja Bronski, the radioactivity-producing NEXT bomber from last December, becoming upset in gym class one day. Imagine a telepathic NEXT using his powers to cheat his way through class after class without ever learning anything at all.
Readers, this is not merely a rhetorical concept. This is happening all over our city. Despite dubious control over their harmful powers, NEXT children are allowed to remain in classrooms and gymnasiums with their normal, vulnerable classmates. In many instances we may not even know these NEXT are present in our schools, amongst our children. In some instances we may never know, and their influences could continue to harm children and teachers undetected.
Once more, I encourage our esteemed Mayor and the leaders of Sternbild City to take swift and potent action. Set up a registry of NEXT living and traveling to this city. Implement systems in schools designed to protect our normal children and teachers from the ungoverned, uncontrolled NEXT in their midst, with separate classes, separate facilities, and separate curricula, so that all children may learn equally. Protect our schools and our future, before it’s too late. Readers, I urge you: write to our Mayor and demand your God-given rights to knowledge and protection. Our livelihoods and the safety of our city are at stake.
-Bruce Farrow is a freelance journalist. The views
represented in this editorial do not necessarily
reflect those of
Sternbild Times or its affiliates.[/right][/i]represented in this editorial do not necessarily
reflect those of
Mac’s mind and expression fell further and further into shock the more he read. When he reached the end of the article, he paused, and slowly retreated from the room, locking it behind him the same way he had unlocked it. His feet moved as if on strings, without conscious thought, bringing him back up to his room and into bed. From under the covers he stared up at the ceiling, trying to comprehend what he’d just read. He didn’t sleep, and by the time the clock on his desk rang for his first day of school, he still had no idea what to think.