1 “The only value of this world lay in its power - at certain times - to suggest another world.” - Thomas Ligotti
If you are reading this then you are safe. The worst is over. You can relax.
Apocalypse. The end of the world. Blood, death and darkness. We were all there. We can't unmake the past.
I know you have questions. Hoping to hear the real story from the source. My account of what happened. It's probably going to disappoint you. There's a lot I don't know. Probably a lot that no one knows.
Since this is my version of the story I'm going to start at the beginning. My beginning. And it's probably going to take a while. I apologize in advance.
But relax. Really. Relax. Then let me tell you a story-
As I stood in front of the student housing supervisor and turned first white with horror then red with rage. Dreams of college freedom dashed in seconds by a few dozen words and an official seal.
“The Enhanced dorm? You have a dorm for Enhanced students? You're segregating us?”
“I think you're looking at it the wrong way.” Smiling like a toothpaste commercial, “Think of it as an opportunity to meet other students like yourself.”
I lobbed a few insults at her terribly smiling head. No effect. Tried pleading. Then begging.
It was useless. My only weapon, my otherwise undefeated charm, has no effect on women. Head hung low, I slunk away, defeated.
That woman, that paper, was the beginning. Because of them I came to know the man who would later be known as the Golden God.
The “Enhanced Dorm” ended up being quite a distance from the housing office and other main campus buildings. It was a squat concrete structure that looked like it had been build to survive a nuclear bomb blast.
“Do they think we're terrorists?” I muttered to myself, shocked.
At the time it seemed ludicrous, clearly unreasonable. But with the events not even a year later, I wonder now if it was a sign that the government at that time knew more than they let on.
At the age of thirteen I learned two problematic facts at the same time: that I was gay and that I was a Mind. As first crushes go it was fairly stereotypical. A particularly muscular gym teacher with a penchant for tight shirts and a shaggy beard. I spent a decent amount of time denying it to myself, catching occasional illicit glances from the corner of my eye while the other boys bounced various balls off various things, but nothing particularly obvious.
Then one day he motioned to me from the sidelines. Took me into his office. A setting that I found intimately close. I sat, shaking, avoiding his eyes.
“Now then, Calvin.” His eyes were cast nervously aside, “Do you know why I called you in here?”
That made me look up. Look deep into his eyes. At that moment I knew without a doubt I wanted him. That's when it came.
“That look. Definitely a fag. Don't know how the school expects me to deal with the swishy bastards. If I had my way-”
“I'm not-” I jumped up, blushing. Saw the look of shock on the teacher's face. Then I knew that I had Heard for the first time.
If I'm honest, I'm not sure which realization terrified me more. But why, you ask? Learning you were a Mind, that you had the potential to be an Elite. That much have been at least a little bit thrilling.
But even at that time I knew my chances at Elite status weren't good. Over 90% of Elites were discovered before the age of five. Often so powerful that they had to be taken from their parents for their own safety.
No, I knew immediately that I was destined to be a Reject. Forbidden from any government or military work, marked as Enhanced in such a way as to make any employer nervous. A terrifying unknown in romantic relationships that were already made more complicated by my now apparent homosexuality.
Still I went for the tests. They stuck me and probed me and ran me through machines to watch my brain tick. And in the end the technician just shook her head pityingly. Showed me a psy score so shockingly low I hadn't known it was possible. Even as a Reject I was pathetic.
Not to say that it's completely useless. It has one consistently beneficial use. It took me quite a while to be sure, but I now know that it is 100% effective for one purpose: knowing whether or not a guy wants to have sex with me.
The inside of the “Enhanced Dorm” wasn't much more appealing than the exterior. Stark dark hallways with grey tile floors. Only a few bare lightbulbs lit the nearly entirely windowless interior. At this point I openly gaped in horror at my new home.
Then I saw him. An angry blond streak that hit me like a train. I went sprawling, his body covering me.
He was warm. Large. As he lifted himself off of me with his muscular arms I locked onto his blue eyes and Saw-
An angry man. Older. Shouting something. Intense panic and arousal and-
“-sorry are you okay?” Looking down at me with those bright blue eyes of his.
“Ah. Ha. Fine. I'm fine. Just a flesh wound.” I jumped up. Brushed myself off. Extending my hand. “Hi, I'm Calvin. I've been assigned to live in this Nazi death camp with you it seems?”
“I'm not staying here.” Flat, icy tone, voice shaking. “They can't do this to me.”
“I already tried arguing-”
“I don't argue. I demand.” His entire 6'4” frame was suddenly very evident. He loomed over me menacingly.
“Look, if you go looking for a fight they-”
“There's no bed in my room! No desk. No chairs. Just this-” Face contorted with rage, “This foil everywhere. This isn't a dorm, it's a damn prison!”
“They certainly didn't make much of an effort, I'll admit.”
A girl stood in the doorway. Short, with bright orange hair. She smiled so that her teeth showed, but it didn't reach her eyes, giving her the look of an African jungle cat.
“It's inhumane.” He pushed past me and I staggered away, “My father's a lawyer. We'll sue.”
“It won't work.” She shook her head, “The precedent in Culver v. the State of New York was that Enhanced represent an unknown risk and that segregation was therefore acceptable as long
as it didn't measurably cause us harm.”
“Well it's causing me harm! There's no windows! There's no anything! It makes me sick.” Hyperventilating, the whites of his eyes showed.
“I don't think I'm a risk to anyone.” I laughed. “Generally I struggle against a strong wind.”
“This isn't funny.” The blond turned on me, “How can you joke about this? First my scholarship now-”
“Ah, you're Jacob Walker.” She nods knowingly, like she just solved a particularly satisfying puzzle.
“Why the hell do you know my name?” His hands balled into fists and I thought for a moment he might hit her.
“When they told me I would be here with you guys I Looked at your files.” She snorted, “They put us in a lockbox but despite my talent being written right in front of her the woman at the housing access gave me full access to all your information.”
“So you're an Eye?” I asked.
“Yeah. And you?”
“Mind.” Self consciously.
“Ha! We are a dangerous bunch.” She folded her arms across her chest and shook her head, “You might tell someone what card they're thinking of and I'll read a book over their shoulder. Now Jacob here is another matter. He's a damn Sp-”
“Don't call me that.” Teeth gritted.
“Spark?” Innocently.
“I'm not-”
“File says you are.”
“It only happened one time and-” He shook his head, looked away. “And it won't happen again.”
“They said you tested extremely high on the psy scale. Feds wanted you bad but daddy-”
“I said, it won't happen again.” He turned and threw open the door. “You two have fun in hell. I'm going to fix this.”
With that he was gone. My heart was beating fast in my chest. There was just something about him. A presence.
My talent has come in handy on many occasions. Awkward, obsessed with long dead authors, outed both as gay and as a Reject, my life in high school was pretty much hell. And as is usually the case my biggest harassers were generally the members of the school football team.
But after several iterations of being beaten to a bloody pulp I started to notice something. A rugged cornerback who always pulled his punches. Who often hung back from the crowd altogether.
And one day, when the team was really going at it, calling me 'Fag' and shoving me, I looked up and saw him looking down at me. There was something in his eyes. And just like that I Heard him, or rather I Saw-
An incredibly vivid image. Both of us naked in the locker room. Steam swirling around our bodies. Him moving close to me. Kneeling down. Leaning in and-
Another punch brought me back to my senses. The cornerback's eyes had gone wide.
Somehow he knew I Saw.
I didn't say anything. Continued to be beaten until the team got bored and wandered off. Waited until after school to go looking for him. We kissed. It was lust at first sight.
And that's the story of how I lost my virginity. As you might expect, the cornerback was never really comfortable with his sexuality. After a few hot hookups we broke it off.
However I met several others by the same method over the years. Like I said, 100% effective. And lucky for me, since my type are muscular man mountains who'd likely murder me for hitting on them if I was wrong.
I became comfortable with the fact that I was a Reject whose powers were only useful for getting sex. After a while no one seemed to notice I was Enhanced at all. I started to forget, to blend into the background.
“Anyway.” The redhead turned to me, “A Mind huh? So you’re Calvin then.”
“Yes. And although you apparently know quite a lot about me I think I still haven't had the pleasure of learning your name?”
“Patricia.” She tilted her head to the side, “Or Trish. Or just Sha if you like. Several good friends call me Sha.”
“Really?”
She smiled the tiger smile and said, “No.”
“Fine. Trisha then.” I peered down the dark corridor, “I'm afraid to look.”
“I went in mine earlier. There was a bed. Sounds like they really went all out for Jacob.”
“Well, a Spark can be destructive, I mean-” I blushed, “Not that it makes it right.”
“Right.” Trisha narrowed her eyes, “'First they came for the Sparks and I did not speak out', that sort of thing.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” She shook her head, “Clearly you're not reading my mind anyway.”
“I'm a Reject I'm afraid.” Shrugging, “If they had negative psy values I'd be one of those.”
“Really I'm not much higher than you. Two or three psy points tops.”
“That is abnormally low for an Eye. Can you only Look at something if it's two feet in front of you in large print?”
“Close to that actually.” She flashed her teeth again, “My range is about five feet and I can only See something if it's not obstructed by an opaque object.”
“Wow.” I laughed, “Sounds useful.”
“You'd be surprised.”
The door slammed open and I jumped. An African American kid stalked inside, looked at us briefly, and continued past us without stopping. After a minute we heard the sound of another door slamming.
“Friendly.” I noted.
“Peter.” She shook her head, “Poor kid. Black and a Mover.”
“How many more of us are there? I mean, there aren’t that many Enhanced in the world, right?”
“Five. The ones we met so far and then Thomas.” She shrugged, “It seemed like a lot to me too. Maybe that's why they went crazy and put us in here? They think it's a conspiracy or something?”
“Maybe it's a conspiracy by the university. Get us all in one place and experiment on us.”
“Cheery thought.” Her eyes became distant briefly, then cleared, crinkling with mischief, “You should go Out with me.”
Discussing this with people now, I tend to get a lot of the same questions.
1) Why didn’t the government acknowledge the threat the Enhanced represented sooner?
I am baffled by this one honestly. In the year 2035 the Enhanced made up 0.01% of the population. An extremely small minority. And at that time there had already been several federal cases denying us basic rights in the interest of public safety. The only way the government could have acknowledged the threat any more clearly would have been to put us all into concentration camps and slowly murder us all. Historic precedent shows how that sort of thing usually works out.
2) When did you learn about Project Bloom?
Honestly I still don’t know much about it. The effect became obvious over time. I think I probably heard the term ‘Project Bloom’ right around the time of the second Reckoning. At the time we were all still innocent college undergrads worrying about normal undergrad things. And considering how the Enhanced were being treated at the time, it didn’t seem that strange to us that they’d try to keep us isolated from the other students.
3) Do you believe there was a conspiracy between the government and Alden Co.?
Everyone really wants to believe this one I think. It makes everything so neat and tidy. I was and am close friends with Steve and Patricia Alden and I can say with 100% confidence that they had no idea what was happening. By the time anyone knew anything it was already too late.
I froze, mouth open, made some noises of negation. She just laughed, eyes more demonic than ever.
“Not like that. Out. With this.”
She reached into her backpack, pulling out something covered in randomly distributed wires. In the center there was a light that swirled and occasionally blinked.
“No way.” I reached toward her and she pulled the device back, smile flashing teeth.
“Yes. It’s my little Jumpy.” She stroked her fingers over the wires, “We’re very close.”
“How do you have that?” Trying to act cool but unable to keep the awe out of my voice.
“Dad always has three or four lying around. He doesn’t mind if I play with a few.”
“Your dad just has port jumps just lying around? Are you-” Suddenly it all clicked. My head began to spin. Holding the wall for support I asked, “You’re- you’re Patricia Alden.”
“Shh.” She lifted a finger to her lips and smiled, “It’s not a big deal. And you didn’t answer my question. Do you want to go Out with me?”
“Is-is that thing safe?” Eying the lose wires swirling around her hand.
“Perfectly safe. I used it to get here.”
“I’ve never seen one that wasn’t behind a security fence with a guard.”
“Paranoid overkill.” She rolled her eyes, “It’s perfectly stable with the standard containment field. Look.”
With that she reached into the wires, grabbed the light and pulled. I gasped, throwing my hands up in front of my face. When I failed to be completely annihilated on the spot I slowly
lowered them.
“See?” The light was sitting in her palm, suspended between two metal prongs attached by a metal bar, “Very stable.”
“They say those things have the destructive power of a thousand nuclear bombs.”
She rolled her eyes, “Well technically so do you. Matter is energy, you’re made of matter, therefore you are very dangerous.” She held the little light up to her cheek, stroking it lovingly, “But my little Jumpy would never hurt anyone, no he wouldn’t.”
I think a lot of people forget that at that time we were unofficially in the middle of our second Cold War. Territory grabs and energy dominance by the Chinese and Russians in the 2010s and 2020s gradually morphed into the Sino-Russian alliance. They had over two thirds of the world's population and more than half the world's gross domestic product, and everyone was rightly afraid they would want it all.
Even before the Enhanced existed there were rumors about new technologies, advanced weapons research that they were keeping to themselves. Nanotechnology and robotics both improved by leaps and bounds in that time. People lived in fear of a supervirus being unleashed on the population at any moment.
It's a miracle that extra-dimensional transport, or 'porting', was discovered in the United States first. The news was all about the end of the energy crisis and space exploration. Real 'Yay Humanity!' stuff. But of course, shortly after porting there were the port bombs, which lead to a new international arms race. We were always seconds away from destruction.
So of course they wanted to turn us into weapons. They were afraid of what the Enhanced were ultimately capable of, and they weren't going to let the SRs find out first. We were all expendable when the fate of the world hung in the balance.
“How does it work?” My fear was slowly being replaced by curiosity and excitement. Human teleportation at the push of a button has its appeal.
“Hmm.” She froze for a minute, fingers twitching, biting her lip. Then she smiled and said, “Nope. Too complicated. Let’s say it’s magic. ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ and all.”