Mind’s Eye and Tank nodded in agreement. Extinguisher seemed conflicted between what he had seen and what his idol was telling him. Hexagon looked completely lost.
“She is immune to my mental powers and is invisible to my visions, sir,” the Indian seer added. “How else could that be possible? No other normal person has been proof against them.”
Eric glowered a moment, then floated and turned to address his group all at once. I favored him with a slightly smug smirk. I knew even then that it was stupid to goad him, but I couldn’t help myself as I crossed my arms across my stomach.
“Very well, very well!” Epic proclaimed. “I will heed what you have seen and experienced. However, as our situation is so delicate, I feel I must do my proper duty and divine the truth of this woman’s origins.” He raised a calming hand. “Worry not, no harm will befall her ... if her claims hold true. If not, then she will be turned over from the proper justice for her falsehoods.”
“Hey now,” Hexagon finally spoke up. “Ain’t that a little, I dunno, extreme? Even if she ain’t technically got the pulse, she’s got somethin’!” Extinguisher threw in a nod of agreement.
While the reassurance felt good to me, I knew Eric far better than the rest of them, even with all of the layers of lies. Though concealed by his demigod facade, the eyes of the real Eric betrayed his mounting frustration with this apparent dissension. I glanced around the busy rail station. Even with the national crisis, the lure of the Push rally had drawn masses of people from around the country here. Eric hadn’t been shy to strike me when he was brought to the limits of his patience and I was someone he still professed to love. Who knows what he was capable of against people he didn’t share that affection for?
“Hold up, guys,” I raised both of my hands as I called out. “It’s OK. Epic here was at the start of all this and he knows more than everyone else.” That was pretty much the truth, I was proud to tell myself. “If he’s got concerns, I’m willing to go through whatever he wants to prove myself. It’ll be my sorority hazing all over again.” I forced myself to smile. “No big deal.” I could see tensions start to ease; most of them seemed eager to have the situation washed over. Only Medusa seemed hesitant, but I gave her another nod. “I’ll catch up to you guys soon, I’m sure.”
“A very wise course of action to take,” Epic nodded sagely. “Now, if you are all satisfied, stand close and I will teleport you to our meeting area. I will not be long, I am sure.”
The others gathered together and, with a dramatic gesture from Epic, were engulfed in one of those brilliant white flashes. The rush of wind from the sudden vacuum of their departure blew scattered bits of trash and train schedules like a mini-tornado. As I brushed my hair back out of my face, there was another sudden rush of wind, too fast for me to react to, and then I was gripped securely by the waist, being flown along at tremendous speed. Eric had me and what exactly he intended to do, I had no idea. I doubted it would be good.
“Trying to masquerade yourself as something you are not, Irene?” Eric shouted above the wind. I wasn’t sure how high up we were now, but the air was dangerously thin. “How very uncharacteristic of the woman who preached at me about the importance of trust! You do not even know what you are or what you are capable of, but still, you interfere!” Suddenly he shifted his grip, holding me in front of him, the front of my motorcycle suit bunched in his hands.
“If I still did not love you so much, I would destroy you, here and now.” The arrogance in his voice galled me. I was finding that I hated the feeling of helplessness the Whiteout was bringing on, that there were things so powerful as to make mankind an after note in history. I was done with it.
“Blow it out your ass, Eric!” I shouted. “Speaking of low, nice trick with the terrorists! How many people are you going to have killed just to boost your image?”
Eric looked genuinely confused for a moment as he dangled me in midair.
“What?” he replied indignantly. “I had no hand in that vile act! I thought you had somehow arranged that to cement your credentials with the Pushed. I could not sense it as it happened and you are the only thing I cannot sense in this world.”
He thought I did that? I didn’t know whether to laugh at the insanity of it or rage at what he thought I was capable of. I wasn’t the one who twisted all of reality into a pretzel for my own personal reasons. What I did realize was that the violence Mind’s Eye foresaw was probably going to be something that neither I or Eric was responsible for.
“That can only mean ... but how? Even the adjusted models do not indicate there could be more than a handful.” As Eric thought out loud, we were drifting slowly higher. Breathing would be impossible soon.
“Hey, Eric,” I shouted. “Air. Some of us need it, you know.” He gave me a look of annoyance at my mundane concern and hovered lower.
“I will have to analyze this further, after the rally,” Eric noted. “That still leaves you. I cannot destroy you, but I cannot afford to let you run free and continue to poison the minds of my fellows. You or your new government friends. We are at the cusp of a new world and -”
“Oh, get on with it and spare me the dramatic speech,” I interrupted. “I am sick to death of all the chatter and it’s only been three days of it now.”
Epic looked annoyed; Eric himself looked more hurt than anything else. Without another word, he secured another strong grip around my waist and flew back down towards Washington, arcing for it’s outskirts. I scanned around for some way out. I didn’t know exactly what Eric had planned, but he knew enough to certainly keep me well away from where I needed to be.
I had only one chance, with the speeds we were moving at, as I saw the glint of the Potomac River at the edge of my vision. I closed my eyes and concentrated with all of my willpower. If I ever needed that total focus, it was now. As I opened my eyes a split-second later, the biochemical rush had already dutifully started and time seemed to stretch.
My timing would have to perfect but I had no fear I would fail. Fear, like pain, had suddenly become a series of nerve impulses and biological triggers to be ignored as necessary. I found my mind racing through physics calculations I only barely remembered I had learned and, another tenth of a second later, I embraced that sublime surge of strength as I focused all my muscular power into one sharp elbow to Eric’s side.
The idea that I would resist him was still foreign to his thoughts, even after the times I had already struck him, and Eric made no attempt to defend himself as the impact blasted into first his ethereal shell, then deeper still into his actual side. In detached numbness, I took inventory of the damage I caused myself from the resulting backlash: muscles torn, ligaments sprained, a crack in my humerus, an impacted shoulder joint.
The result was fortunately just as spectacular to my target. Epic let loose a cry of pain that I am certain he had never let loose in his three days of physical godhood. I thought I may have even cracked one of his ribs.
Eric instinctively let me go and the distance between us was increased by the violence of my own attack. Ignoring all of the damage I had caused and the pain I was registering, I fought against the rush of wind to arrow myself into a diving form. Gritting my teeth and willing myself to keep my focus, I left everything else up to physics.
Mere moments later, I felt my body slice hard into the waters of the Potomac River like a human torpedo. Even as much as I had done to try to minimize the impact, I felt certain I would be sporting a full body bruise as I skipped a few times along the river’s surface before tumbling onto the banks of the river itself. I was shockingly still conscious, but the cold analytical state my focus brought chided my distraction and forced battered limbs to move.
I pushed myself under the cover of a small copse of trees and collapsed. This would have to be safe enough: I was proof from Eric’s more unnatural senses and he had his own problems to deal with for the time being. Satisfied as to my escape, I finally let my focus drop. Pain, wetness, and a sudden crippling
wave of full body fatigue came on and I felt consciousness slip away.
Chapter 14 Epiphany
I was dreaming. Considering I knew I was dreaming, it was the first lucid dream I had in my entire life. It was obvious but important to me that I had to be asleep, which then meant I wasn’t unconscious, which meant I couldn’t be too badly hurt. Considering what I had just been through, it was nothing short of a miracle I was alive. I had used that phrase too often lately and it was starting to annoy me.
“It would have been a miracle before the Whiteout,” another Irene told me. I decided contemplating my fate could wait for later and paid attention to where I was: my old classroom, back when I was doing lectures for the physical education department at Georgia Tech. I was in a front row desk and I, well, the me I was when I was teaching, was apparently giving the lecture. “Post-Whiteout, it is just uncommon. For you, actually, I’d wager on it becoming fairly common statistically.”
“Wait, before this goes on long, let me get this straight: I’ve decided I need to lecture myself?” I asked me.
“Actually, I’m not here to lecture you, er, me,” I clarified. “I believe you need some down time to sort out all the information you’ve absorbed, so the proper term is brain storming. With yourself.” I nodded slowly, then again with enthusiasm.
“Obviously! I’m the only one who knows everything that’s happened, from start to finish. Even what I recounted to Brooks and Choi is going to have holes and spots that I forgot at the time, not to mention all of this new data. I’m the only person it would be worthwhile to brainstorm with.”
“Precisely!” I looked pleased with myself. “Now, let’s look at what we now know.” I began writing on the large chalkboard.
“Well, about me, I’m guessing?” I thought a moment. “That’s been on my mind the most. Let’s see: I was at ground zero of the Whiteout. This may or may not have any significance depending on how the God particles work.”
“Ah, but we do know how they work! Eric said it himself.” As she wrote the words, an Eric head materialized and repeated them.
“Literally, conscious belief generates a subatomic particle that alters physical properties based on the density of the particle in an area,” it dutifully said and disappeared.
“So, let me get this straight then,” I theorized, “the God particle is generated by belief. Conscious belief. So Eric uses my biofeedback device to amplify his own thought patterns and feed them back, generating millions of Eric mind clones, generating a huge outburst of these particles, which then changed reality as per his beliefs.” The chalkboard seemed to now operate on it’s own, creating a series of chalk drawings that animated like a crude flip book, depicting the scenario.
“Right,” the other me replied. “But Eric is mentally unstable. He thinks he’s making utopia, but it’s obviously going to be affected by his psychosis. That would explain why it isn’t wine, roses, and super powers for all.”
“Sure, that was all obvious, but where does that connect with me? Unless, because he told me what was going on, I was generating my own counter beliefs? My own belief that this reality wasn’t the real thing, because I knew before the Whiteout hit that it wasn’t?” I paced and pondered my conjecture for a moment, then nodded.
“I think that makes the most sense. It explains part of the puzzle certainly. What remains unclear are two things ...” she began.
“ ... how could I put out enough of this God particle to affect my personal reality on my own and what has been causing this accelerated mental and physical state I keep dropping into?” I finished, then added, “Also, is this lucid dreaming state I’m in also linked to that? Am I still in that accelerated mental state right now?”
“I can’t answer the third one; I don’t know enough about this dream state to have a basis for a conclusion.” I shrugged at me apologetically. “As for the rest, well, I have been giving that some thought. We already know that the basic laws and physical properties of things have changed to some degree. You try not to consciously think about it, but in your head are two different sets of facts and figures: what existed before the Whiteout and what exists now. For most people, they only remember the new reality. They don’t even know these things have changed.”
“Where am I going with this?” I said to myself.
“Hold on, stay with me,” the other me pleaded. “So, yes, physical reality has changed. We can surmise then that mental reality ... the functioning of the human mind and there by the human spirit ... has also changed, even though they are subjects science has barely scratched. What I’m trying to get at is that you haven’t been changed directly but the rules of the universe have changed around you to let you do these seemingly unnatural feats.
"Think about Eric's source material. How could someone like all those non-powered vigilantes who fight next to gods possibly exist? You know full well that the human body has definite, if amazing, limits, making that impossible by a pre-Whiteout perspective. Those limits are not quite the same in a comic book world. Instead, they are elastic and often overcome with amazing training and mental discipline.”
“But wait, I was never any Renaissance woman like most of those characters,” I rebutted. “I took a few self-defense courses, I eat right, I stay in shape, but otherwise, I’m simply a scientist. I don’t see the correlation.”
“That’s right, you don’t.” I said to myself. “We don’t. But who set the rules of this reality? Eric does, or at least he set the starting ones. He made this new reality. The man that, despite his insanity, loves you and, despite his chauvinistic tendencies, thought you would be the only one who could ever find out about his plan.”
“Of course!” I, we, came to the realization together. “Eric put me on a pedestal. Not equal to him in his new world order, but he always expected me to be on his side. The effects of the Whiteout have already been shown to be fluid, capable of alteration. They are adapting over the course of time to his wishes, conscious and unconscious."
"When the Whiteout couldn’t directly transform me like the other Pushed, it worked around my immunity, altering the raw laws of the universe to change me without changing, well, me. It’s like the old ‘humans only use 10 percent of their brain’s potential’ myth, but turned into reality. I literally tap into that mythic potential, now made real, when I do that 'thing' I do. That’s how the Whiteout gave me a way to stay alive to play superhero with Eric.”
“Exactly!” I looked pleased with my conclusion. “Who knows what other widely-held myths are becoming reality in a similar way, only to play a part in Eric’s grand drama? Because he always thought of you as strong willed, the forces changing the universe used the concept of ‘mind over matter’ to make you this way."
"That would explain why he could calculate the possibility of there being others like you, by creating a mathematical model that described you, then ran the statistics. The fact he didn’t think there could be another one is flawed because in the infinity of human existence ...”
“ ... there’s always a chance for another match,” I finished my own statement once more.
“Technically, though, I only answered our second question,” I mused. “I don’t know how to answer the first one. I don’t know that we can ever find a true answer for it.”
“We can only be thankful that whatever ‘it’ is was the right ‘it’ to keep us safe from the Whiteout,” I said. “Okay, I hope I can wake up soon, because I don’t think I can take more of this existential experience.” As if on cue, I felt sucked out of that strange dream classroom and I was awake.
I couldn’t be sure if I had brought myself out of the dream myself or if it was Agent Brooks yelling in my earpiece. Whichever it was, I was thankful for it, regardless of how informative talking to myself had been. I opened my eyes to stare at the high noon sun peeking between the oak leaves canopied over my head.
Apparently, Eric hadn't found me. Either that or he decided I wasn’t worth the trouble to go after. I assumed the firs
t as I painfully propped myself up against the tree trunk and tried to get my bearings.
“Brooks,” I said, hoping the whisper mic still worked, “Brooks, I’m here. Slow down, and start whatever it is from the beginning.”
“Dammit, Roman,” Duane barked. “I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour now. We’ve been hit.”
“Well, I know I was hit ... or more that I hit something,” I mused. “But what are you talking about? I’m surprised you didn’t come collect me after that bit with -”
“I was on my way when this shit happened.” I let him overpower my part of the conversation; I was being unproductive anyhow. “Rachel was checking in at headquarters about your terrorist buddies when some Pushed blew the place up. A lot folks were hurt and some of them are dead. A lot of friends.”
I rubbed my temples. My impacted shoulder and cracked bones felt surprisingly usable, even if the pain was terrible.
“Is Rachel okay?” was my first question, followed very quickly with, “Do you know for sure it was Pushed folks?”
“Alive but badly hurt,” he replied to the first, then he added, sounding insulted, “I don’t know, Doc, the sudden white flash the cameras caught in the vault before the bomb, does that sound familiar to you?”
“Yeah, I guess it does.”
While I couldn’t fault his logic, at the same time, it just didn’t make sense. While Eric knew about the FBI people working with me, such as it was, he didn’t feel threatened by them, did he? No matter how crazy he might be, that much straight up unwarranted murder didn’t seem in character, at least not before they try to arrest him or the rest of what he considered his ‘people’. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a cohesive counterargument to put forth.
“I don’t like it though. It doesn’t make sense. Especially- wait, how long till the rally begins?”
The Push Chronicles (Book 1): Indomitable Page 12
