Infectious Thinking
Book 3 of The Experiment
Micah Edwards
- Copyright -
Cover art by Micah Edwards.
Copyright © Micah Edwards 2017.
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Basically what this boils down to is that if you steal my stuff that I worked hard on, I’ll be sad. And I’d rather not be sad. So help me out on this one, would you?
First printing, 2017.
ISBN-13: 978-1542866774
ISBN-10: 1542866774
Want to talk to the author? I want to talk to you! Send me your thoughts at [email protected]. If they’re not mean, I will respond. If they are mean, I will delete them; please see the above note about not wanting to be sad.
The production of this book was made possible by CreateSpace (http://www.createspace.com), an Amazon company.
- Table of Contents -
- Prologue -
- Chapter One -
- Chapter Two -
- Chapter Three -
- Chapter Four -
- Chapter Five -
- Chapter Six -
- Chapter Seven -
- Chapter Eight -
- Chapter Nine -
- Chapter Ten -
- Chapter Eleven -
- Chapter Twelve -
- Chapter Thirteen -
- Chapter Fourteen -
- Chapter Fifteen -
- Chapter Sixteen -
- Chapter Seventeen -
- Chapter Eighteen -
- Chapter Nineteen -
- Chapter Twenty -
- Chapter Twenty-One -
- Afterword -
- About the Author -
- Prologue -
They say that when you look at someone else, you never really see them. You see your own ideas overlaid on them instead, filtering who they are through your perception of how the world is. And complicating matters further, none of us present our true selves to the world. We all wear masks, pretending to be who we think others want us to be. So that's human interaction: people in masks trying to see each other, making up their own stories about who's beneath them.
This means you can never really know another person. You can only know the stories you tell yourself about them. It's sort of a depressing metaphor – but let me tell you, it's a frankly terrifying reality.
As usual, I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Let me back way up; I'll tell you about myself, or at least about my standard mask. I'm Dan Everton. I'm your basic-model white guy. I'm a little big, a little clumsy, a little goofy. I used to try to pass as cool, but I've pretty much given up on that these days. Oh, and sometimes I get superpowers.
They show up when they feel like it, and they always seem to have one purpose: stop some other superpowered individual from ruining things for everyone. I took down a lady who was causing city-flooding storms earlier this year, and just last month I kept a guy from overrunning the city with an army of clones.
Man, that just does not sound any less weird, no matter how many times I say it.
Anyway, once I've done my job, my superpower vanishes, leaving me with just the vaguest ability to do what I used to. I'm smarter and stronger than I used to be, I can magnetize stuff with my hands, and I can set flammable objects on fire without a match. The main power that sticks with me, though, is that I'm super-unable to keep a job.
I got fired from my museum job for being there when I was attacked, and I got fired from my burger-flipping job for not being there when I was attacked. They should be happy, honestly; I was at the police station, and it burned basically to the ground. For which I'm technically responsible, in that I started the fire. Look, you try stopping a clone army without damage, okay? If you want to make an omelet, you've got to break a few eggs. And set the kitchen on fire.
The point is that I need work, and intermittently being a superhero doesn't pay the bills. Fortunately, one of the policemen, Officer Peterson, knows about me and appreciates what I do, and he gets me hooked up with Tanger Construction, the guys who won the bid from the city to rebuild the police station.
In my head, this means I'm going to get to drive bulldozers and earthmovers and other big machines around the lot, and maybe swing a wrecking ball to take down some of the walls that are still standing. And absolutely, there are guys out there doing that – while I'm stuck inside watching safety videos and going through mandatory training about not dropping heavy objects on my toes. Trust me, video: I have done that once. I'm not doing it again.
My foreman is a guy named Mr. Steele, a slightly pudgy guy with receding red hair who's clearly got iron muscles underneath his padding. He looks like he spends his free time bowling in the kind of league where it's more about the beer and camaraderie than about getting 300. I spend most of the first day trying to figure out a joke about Steele in construction that he hasn't heard before. None of the ones I come up with seem good enough to risk ticking off my new boss on day one, though, so I keep them to myself. He looks pretty easygoing, but strange things set people off sometimes.
You know how in A Clockwork Orange they strap the main guy down and make him watch videos of violence until he can't take it anymore? I think those same people made these training videos. I spend about a week watching construction accidents happen on tape, and when they finally let me out there to work, I have a borderline-unhealthy fear of all of the equipment.
This lasts for about twenty minutes, until Steele says, "We're gonna put you on the bulldozer later," and everything I learned about the danger is crowded out of my head by a single thought: all right! Bulldozer!
I may be an adult, but some stuff you just never grow out of, all right? Don't act like you don't know.
Steele clearly knows that this is a reward, though, because while I'm scheduled for training on the bulldozer in the late afternoon, I'm stuck unloading piles of materials until then. I'm partnered up with a guy named Christopher, who's got some sort of Minnesotan or maybe Canadian accent. He's extremely polite, so probably Canadian.
At first, there's a lot of talking and readjustment as we move stuff, like when you're helping a buddy move furniture to his new apartment. Pretty soon, though, Christopher – not Chris; he was polite but firm about that – and I get into a pretty good rhythm of grip, heft, walk, drop, and our chatter drops off. We're at it for nearly an hour before the load's moved and we can sit down for a brief break.
"Not bad for a new guy!" Christopher says admiringly, wiping sweat from his forehead. I'm sweating pretty profusely myself, which is putting a bite into the November air.
"Hey, man, I was just trying to keep up," I tell him.
"Oh sure, just keeping up. I swear you never even got tired! If you weren't sweating, I'd call you a machine."
"Well, you know. I work out," I say, flexing a muscle that does not support this claim. I do work out, sometimes. But mainly it's the remnant of superstrength.
By the end of the day, we've unloaded a couple of dozen tons of material, and superstrength or not, I'm definitely feeling it. I'm drinking a soda and daydreaming about how good sitting on the couch is going to feel when I see Steele walking up to me, and I try to look efficient. Since I'm not doing anything at the moment, this mainly involves gripping my soda with more determination.
"Good work today, Dan," Steele says. "You ready to
work the bulldozer?"
"Yeah, let's do this!" I respond enthusiastically, which is not as professional as "yes, sir!" or any of the other things I probably could have said there. But Steele grins, so I think it's a decent answer anyway.
You ever build something up in your head so much that it becomes this massive promise, and then you do it and it's a letdown – not because it wasn't great, but because you'd built it up so much? Driving the bulldozer was like that, except that it wasn't a letdown. It was even better than I'd imagined. It's loud and ungainly and shuddering, and you run over things and push things out of the way and leave the ground flat behind you. Also, you control the whole thing with what are basically two joysticks, which just makes it even more like an amazing toy.
I'm grinning like an idiot while I'm steering this around, and Steele is smiling, too.
"Looking good, Dan!" he calls over the rumbling of the bulldozer. "Always good to see a man who enjoys his work."
"Can I drive this home?" I ask.
He laughs. "Keep up the good work, and I might forget to take the keys out one night!"
I've forgotten my exhaustion in the exhilaration of working the bulldozer, but it hasn't forgotten me. I'm waiting at the bus stop after punching out for the night, and I can barely keep my eyes open. Heaving myself off of the bench and onto the bus is a heroic effort, and once I'm on the bus, I give up the fight and take a catnap against the window on the way home. Luck or intuition wakes me up just before my stop, and I stumble the blocks home like a drunk.
Inside, I throw my sweat-stained shirt and jeans over the back of a chair and flop onto the couch in my boxers. The remote, unfortunately, is more than arm's length away, so I just gaze at it reproachfully for a minute before falling asleep without even having turned the TV on.
- Chapter One -
I'm awakened some indeterminate amount of time later by someone knocking at the door. It's probably Brian, my sleep-addled brain tells me, but that doesn't make any sense, because Brian would have texted before coming over, and also would have let himself in without knocking.
It has to be Brian; you don't have any other friends, my brain insists, and that part unfortunately does make sense. The knocking repeats, and I wander back to the kitchen to pull on my pants and shirt before opening the door. I fish my phone out of my pants pocket while I'm walking over to check for messages, but as I near the door, it starts fritzing out and shuts off.
"Weird," I think, and so I'm shaking my phone and only half-paying attention to the ragged blonde woman on my porch when I open the door.
"Dan?" she says hesitantly, and my head snaps to attention as I stumble back inside and slam the door, because I know that voice. That's Regina, the stormcaller, and the last time I saw her, she was trying to kill me with lightning and ice. Then I broke her powers by turning her magnetic, and then she got briefly committed for insanity – it was sort of a weird day all around. It ended badly, though, is my point.
I don't know why she's on my porch right now, but I doubt it's to sell me girl scout cookies. There's nothing in the entryway that could serve as a decent weapon, so I run to the kitchen and grab a frying pan out of one of the cupboards. Then, armed like a 1950s housewife, I creep back toward the front door, ready for battle.
As I creep back toward the door, I'm running through scenarios in my head. If she's got a gun, I'll duck low and sweep upward with the pan, knocking the gun away. If she has a knife, I'll block the initial attack, then do a two-handed strike to the side of her hand to make her drop it. If she has her powers back – well, if she has her powers back, I'm going to throw the pan at her face, run back inside and cower while I figure out a better plan.
What I'm not prepared for, as I put my ear to the door to try to hear if she's still out there, is the gut-wrenching sobs coming from the front porch. She's still there, all right, and in the middle of a full-on breakdown. For a split second, I think that it might be a trick to get me to open the door, but I discard that thought as soon as it forms. These aren't some fake tears forced for attention. They're too raw.
I was at a funeral once, and I saw a guy whose only friend in the world had died. The sound he made when they put the coffin in the ground – that's what Regina sounds like on my porch right now. It's absolute abandonment, total loss made manifest through throat-tearing, guttural howls. I can feel the wall next to the door shudder when she sucks in each fresh breath.
It'd take a heart a lot harder than mine to walk away from this. Cautiously, I open the door. Regina is slumped down against the wall by the door: knees pulled up, arms wrapped around them, head down, hair in her face, absolutely bawling.
"Regina?" I ask. "You okay?"
Nice one, Dan. Why do I even talk sometimes?
Fortunately, Regina doesn't seem to have heard me at all. She continues sobbing, and after a few seconds, I awkwardly step over her and slide down the wall to sit at her side. A moment later, she leans against me, and I hesitantly put my left arm around her. I have no idea what I'm comforting her for or if I'm helping at all, but she doesn't push me away, so I stay there.
We're still sitting on the porch like this a few minutes later, when an older man pushing a stroller walks by and looks at us quizzically.
"Her dog died," I mouth at him, trying to convey this idea by gesturing with my right hand. Since I'm still holding the frying pan, this is even less effective than it might otherwise have been. He gives me a look of confusion, points at Regina, makes an "OK" gesture and raises his eyebrows questioningly. I don't have the slightest idea if she's okay or not, so I just nod and give him a thumbs-up with my left hand. He nods and continues on his walk.
Regina's been steadily pulling herself together, but it's probably another five minutes before the tears taper off entirely. We sit there in silence for a couple of minutes more before she runs her hands over her face, raises her head and looks at me.
"Do you have a tissue?" she asks miserably.
"Oh! Yeah, sure. Hey, come inside," I say, standing up and offering her a hand, which she takes. I look her over as she stands up, and come to a quick conclusion: she's a mess. Her hair is tangled and unclean even where she hasn't been crying into it. Her clothes are dirty, her fingernails look bitten and she has a general feeling of frailty about her.
"Why do you have a frying pan?" Regina asks me, and I realize I'm not the only one who's been doing a spot assessment.
"I, uh – I thought you were going to attack me," I say as we walk into my house. This actually gets a smile from her.
"So you got a frying pan?" she asks. The refrigerator's normal quiet hum surges weirdly as I seat Regina at the table.
"Look, it was nearby!" I call back over my shoulder as I retrieve a box of tissues from the bathroom. Returning to the kitchen, I slide them across the table to her, and she blows her nose noisily. To give her a moment's privacy to clean her face, I go to the cupboard, get two glasses and fill them with water. When I turn back around, Regina's rubbing at the inside corners of her eyes, but she looks a good deal more composed.
"So," I say, putting a water glass down in front of her. "It's something of a surprise to see you."
"Yeah."
There's a pause. I wait it out. Eventually, she says, "I came looking for you."
"How for?" I say, because I meant to say either "What for?" and "How did you find me?", and instead said both. I sort them by most pressing and try again. "Sorry, I mean: how did you find me?"
"White Pages."
"Huh. I'm in that? I should probably get that off of the internet."
"No, the actual White Pages. The book. I looked it up at the library."
"Wow, that thing's still around? And my name is in it?"
"Your last name, yeah. I just wrote down the Evertons and started looking. There aren't too many people with your last name around here. Who are Samuel and Melissa?"
"My parents. They own this house. Seriously, this is way too much information to just have out there."
<
br /> Regina shrugs. "Nobody said lack of privacy was new."
"Okay, but why are you here?"
Regina stares into her water glass. "I don't hate you anymore."
I start to say something, but she keeps talking over me. "I thought it was all your fault at the time. Not just thought, knew. You singled me out, tracked me down, got in my face and wouldn't leave me alone. All I wanted was to get on with my life and you just kept being there, ruining things.
"But then after the fight, after I woke up in the hospital and everyone there was telling me I was crazy, I tried to explain it to them – and I realized I couldn't. Nothing that had motivated me made any sense. I had been crazy, and I hadn't known.
"Not like they thought I was crazy, though. I remembered the feel of the rain, the pull of it. That was real. It was amazing, to be connected like that."
Regina looks up finally, meeting my eyes. "I don't blame you for taking it away from me. I'm glad you stopped me. My mind was screwed up. But I'm better now, and I miss the rain. Can you – is there any way you can give that back to me? Undo whatever you did?"
She looks so plaintive and hopeful, and my heart breaks. I screwed with her personal magnetic field to block her powers, but that's not why she can't "feel the rain" anymore, as she put it. The abilities came from the nanomachines inside of her, and they powered down after I neutralized her. She was just a test put in my way.
It sounds egotistical, yeah, but it's what's going on. I don't make the rules here. When I find out who does, though, they're going to have a lot to answer for.
"I'm sorry, Regina," I tell her, as she starts to tear up again. "I wish I could give it back to you, but I can't."
"No, it's okay," she says, sniffling to hide the tears. "I just sort of hoped. I used to love the rain. Now I can't even go out anymore if it's thundering. Lightning's drawn to me. I can't even use a stupid phone anymore."
The Experiment (Book 3): Infectious Thinking Page 1
