Rough Passages: The Collected Stories
Page 16
I: Series Designations:
A: not used this letter is reserved for the secondary variant. It indicates a pure specimen of a particular primary power. For example: someone classified P1A has pyrokinetic powers in the top power tier, but has no secondary powers (telekinesis or air control are common) and no physical characteristics distinguishing them from non-powered people.
B: Perceptive powers like enhanced senses, inexplicable ability to sense specific traits or conditions. The variant letters for this series narrow down the nature of the perception.
C: The slang term “carnie” refers to any rollover who exhibits a radical change in physical appearance. Physically deviant individuals who exhibit other powers are assigned to that series, with a variant indicator. Individuals assigned to a primary C-series designation are bascially furry, scaled, or feathered people. (See also: S-series, T series.) This Hazardous Variant tables for C’s runs several hundred pages long.
D: Doctor. Individuals who can cure—or cause—disease or injury by laying on of hands or by proximity or any number of other ways laid out in the variant listings for this series. Most of the higher power-class rollovers in this series can heal and harm at will.
E: projective empaths and manipulative telepaths. Not as rare as the general public believes. Sequestered on discovery and treated as deadly threats until certified safe by specialized F-series pyschics.
F: F for fortuneteller. Precognition, telepathy, receptive empathy and telepathy, and clairvoyance that isn’t tied to a sensory element—most of the typical psychic powers. Why F? The first psychic identified was a precog, and by then someone had already assigned P, T, and E to more obvious, common, and dangerous powers.
G: Gaia. Second-rarest series. If it’s alive, a G-series can affect it in some way. Most G’s do not survive the rollover transformation, falling prey to the overwhelming and distorting effects of their own powers.
H: H for hydro. Water elementals.
I: not used. (yet) Too easily confused with H or lowercase L
J: from jockey. Animal and/or plant control and/or communication
K: from kryptonite. A rollover whose power negates other powers. Usually specific to another power series which would be indicated by the variant letter.
L: not used yet. See I
M: not used. W got assigned first.
N: Nature-related powers that don’t fall into any other designation, including air-benders and weather-workers.
O: not used yet. Too hard to distinguish from zero.
P: Heat and flame elementals without a concurrent earth manifestation. Various manifestations of pyrokinesis.
Q: see O.
R: Earth-movers, magma-summoners and other stone or seismic-based powers.
S: S for superhuman. Enhanced strength, speed, senses, or any combination of the three. Also used as a variant letter for carnies who are also super-strong etc.
T: see also carnie. T from troll. Various manifestations of skin/ height/ muscle/ weight/ strength /hormonal changes. Most have enhanced senses, all can boot their strength, speed and regeneration to enhanced levels under stress.
U & V: not yet used
W: W from weird. Telekinesis and teleportation in a variety of forms from personal and passenger movement or translocation to portal opening and summoning things/people from a distance.
Y: Like A, reserved for describing variants
Z: Elevated R-factor detected, but no power develops. The rarest of primary designations, only discovered/added after the blood tests for rollover were invented.
Additional letters — or doubled ones– are often assigned for cataloging precision, but they are rarely noted outside official paperwork. (think of the extra 4 digits in a zip code)
DPS staff with personal agendas or quotas to fill can bend definitions like pretzels to justify putting particular power manifestations into designations, and the whole set-up is vulnerable to misuse. Annual scientific conferences hold high-powered discussions about the need to revamp the whole system, but no one has come up with a better one yet.
II: Power ratings
A rating is only meaningful within a power series. There’s no attempt to compare the “power” of, say, a B1 rollover who can see through foot-thick lead walls to the power of an R1 rollover who can measurably move a continent, or a W1 who can create a point-to-point teleportation gate big enough for a truck to drive through.
The number is assigned through a comprehensive set of objective tests. Results are compared to collected historical measurements, providing a consistent and impartial result.
1 indicates the strongest manifestation if the designated ability series, a rating of zero means practically no sign of the ability indicated by the primary series letter can be detected.
The change in power between rating tiers is even, but the rollover population distributes unevenly into the space. This, like primary series designations
III: Variant designation
Every power series has an alphabet’s worth of variations, far too many combinations to detail in a simple work like this. Before databases, the catalogues required multiple bindings, like an old encyclopedia set or the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature. The early inclusion of additional letters to define powers was a white flag of cataloging surrender by the system’s creators. Here are some of the complexities:
Multiple abilities are more the norm than the exception, and some power series show more variation than others.
The variants are all series dependent — the same letter means different things connected to different primaries. J stands for “jump” attached to a W teleporter, meaning altitude control, but it means a medium weight restriction when applied to a W telekinetic, and something entirely different when attached to each of the assorted B sensory powers.
Each primary variant series has its own letter/number set of deviances, and some of those have variances.
Series and variant assignment still relies on subjective observation and human judgment as much as hard data.
All in all this a lousy cataloging system, but its limitations stem from its origins. The people who designed it never expected it to be permanent. Picture the poor doctors, police, doctors, firemen and air raid wardens tasked with organizing the thousands–even tens of thousands–of hysterical, confused rollovers on that first, dreadful night in the summer of 1943. Those first responders were working in total ignorance and facing a bewildering array of symptoms. An inspired few created quick-and-dirty rules of thumb to triage their charges as quickly as possible. Accuracy and precision were not priorities.
It worked well enough to be imitated and implemented on a international scale before anyone with more sense could protest. The military and the scientific community adapted the flawed template to suit their needs and stamped it with their own flourishes, and the newborn Department of Public Safety chiseled it into the stone of bureaucracy.
It’s unwieldy, and no one likes it, but unlike the Metric system (adopted by the US in 1969 and finalized in 1976 in this world) no one has come up with anything better yet. Or to be precise hundreds of excellent proposals have been offered up, but none have been effective enough to justify the upheaval and expense of changing now.
People being people, amateur cataloguers keep their eyes peeled for rare rollover types as diligently as any birdwatcher works on an Audubon life list. Trainspotters have nothing on monster buffs.
Glossary and Slang Terms
A handy glossary of slang terms and jargon common in the reality of my Rough Passages stories.
Arsenal: a combat-trained squad of bangers
Banger: anyone with a dramatic destructive power. R’s and P’s in the higher power tiers, telekinetics with dramatic range or weight abilities etc.
Burnouts: slang term for early onset individuals—those who develop powers at puberty rather than middle-age. Few burnouts live past 20. Those who do are usually bangers and spend their functional years in military or law enfor
cement specialty units.
Carnie: a rollover with major physical manifestations. See also: geek, pistol.
Cherry bomb: female burnout
Crow: female rollover with dangerous powers
Dip: from DPS, the abbreviation for Department of Public Safety, the federal bureaucracy responsble for R-factor testing, education, and all other rollover-related issues.
Dollie: female rollover with innocuous or attractive powers
Early-Onset: the official term for pubescent rollover
Flare: a power surge that accompanies a rollover exercising their abilities. Invisible to the eyes of nulls, but an auroral glow can be seen by some rollover types and appears on some visual recording media.
Joe/Little Joe: male rollover with superhuman powers but otherwise normal appearance.
Midlife Monsters: obsolete nickname for USMC Mercury Battalion
Monster Buff: fan of all things rollover-related. Many buffs keep extensive lists of rollover variant types they’ve ID’d “in the wild.” They scour public record information for likely rare variants and share data with other buffs. Clubs meet to swap sighting information, plan sighting trips, discuss the faults of the designation system and argue over validity of each others’ IDs.
Monster Marines
Null: someone with no powers/someone whose R-factor blood test is negative for rollover potential.
Pigeon: middle-aged or older female DPS employee.
Pistol: someone whose rollover power is more like a disability, likely to suicide
Poz: from R-factor positive. Someone who tests positive for the blood factor that indicates a possibility of rollover at midlife. Not a complimentary term.
Punk: a rollover with human appearance and minor powers
Pyro: pyrokinetics and anyone else with rollover powers that cause fires
R-factor: the blood marker that indicates a chance of developing fantastical powers. Appears in the blood at or around puberty. Mandatory testing begins at age 13.
Ranking: numerical indicator of a rollover power’s strength. 1 is the highest down to 9 as the lowest, with 0 being an indicator of no measurable abilities.
Riffie: crude nickname for people who have developed midlife powers. Taken from the official designation R-Factor Active. (RFA)
Rollover: the metamorphosis that hits a small percentage of middle-aged people and invests them with superpowers and/or dramatic physical changes.
Roll cool/Roll hot: Hot rollovers develop their full active abilities in minutes or days. For the first few years after the rollover phenomenon began occurring, hot rollovers were the only kind. In recent years cool, slow rollovers have become more numerous, with a buildup to full power over weeks or months becoming the norm.
Rouster: military personnel charged with assisting the DPS in policing the powered population.
Series: official power designation. Indicated alphabetically. Each letter indicates primary disruption type using a numerical rank scale 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0 with 1 indicating the strongest manifestation The series and rank will usually have a sub-category letter indicating common variants that manifest with the main powers.
Slag: an insult term for particularly animalistic carnies.
Teke: Telekinetic
Torpedo: militarized water elemental or anyone with ranged water-based abilities.
Variant: letter-based system of common clusters of sub-abilities or physical variantions that occur with each power.
Willie-Pete: a pyro who loses control and self-immolates.
About K. M. Herkes
K. M. Herkes writes and publishes stories that dance in the open spaces between genres. Damaged souls, triumphs of the spirit, and dialogue loaded with sarcasm are the house specialties. Professional development has included classroom teaching, animal training, aquaculture, horticulture, retail operations, and customer service. Personal development is ongoing. Cats are involved.
She lives in the Midwest and works in a library, which is exactly as exciting as it sounds. When the weather is fine she can be found in the garden more often than in the office, and at least once a year she disappears into the woods for a week to disconnect from the modern world.
Follow her author page on Amazon to receive the latest news on releases, and visit her website, dawnrigger.com, to load up on extras like story-inspired art, extended excerpts, and other free fiction. You’ll also get her random musings on life and links to all the social media channels where she lurks.
List of Published Works
The Rough Passages Collection
Extraordinary
Powerhouse
Nightmares
Lockdown
The Stories of the Restoration
in recommended reading order
Controlled Descent
Turning the Work*
Flight Plan
Joining In The Round*
Novices
*collected together in a print edition as Weaving In the Ends