Meili: ## I don't think so. I've never met another Meili. ##
WDoe: ## So then, when my son tells me an elite-tier girl named Meili is training him, it wouldn't happen to be you, would it? ##
WDoe: ## Are you the same person who suggested transferring to Wellston Private High School? Are you the one coming to our apartment to help him with the application? ##
Meili: ## Wait. You're saying that John's your son. ##
WDoe: ##
Meili: ## Well, that is me. But John never talks about you. ##
Meili: ## William Doe and John Doe, both living in the city… I really should have put two and two together. ##
Meili: ## I guess I'm finally getting my books signed? ##
…
I sat down at the Doe family dining table, having just arrived in their apartment, and set my overstuffed backpack of William Doe's novels on the kitchen floor.
It was July Fourth (in this world, a day only notable for hot weather), and my favorite author was filling tall cups of ice water at the kitchen counter to stem the heat. I found myself with the unfamiliar mixture of being guilty and starstruck. Simultaneously, we made casual conversation: how it was 'such a coincidence' that I already knew John, and how nice it was to finally meet in person.
William wanted to know my opinion on living away from my parents, given recent events. I gave him my sincere impression that it was a mixed bag. Then it was my turn to satisfy my curiosity – about his status writing Unordinary – and while he considered his answer he squeezed freezer-trays of ice cubes into a massive refill pitcher.
All of this seemed to distract him from noticing that I was unloading the books from my bag. William came to set his pitcher on the table once it carried more ice than water, but my spread of novels had already expanded to cover the wooden surface like a second tablecloth. The seventeen hardcovers left barely an inch of space.
"When did you…?" He blinked down at the table and huffed in amusement.
He set the pitcher on the counter and sat down. "The ruthlessness of the strong has defeated me," he observed, joking. "I guess I'll just have to sign all of these first. "
I tossed him a pen with a smile. "I said I would bring my full collection, didn't I?"
We were alone in the kitchen – John was apparently taking a morning shower, although it was almost noon. While he engraved his signature, William explained that he'd essentially overcome his writer's block, having moved to a pace of five pages per day. He could manage a quick pace because, as I knew from our online conversations, he was the type of author who planned out all the major plot points and character moments ahead of time. He'd outlined the story to me before he even started writing.
I was about to ask for details about his current chapter when John walked into the kitchen. "Hey Meili," he said, gesturing in the air with his laptop, "are you ready to-"
John did a double-take at the table. "-Uh, Dad, if you want to pay her for application help, I don't think your books are the right currency."
I stifled a laugh. William was midway through signing the second row of novels, out of three rows in total, and we gave each other the same look.
"All of these books are mine, John," I said. "If anything, the payment is a signature. I brought them here to get signed."
John tilted his head a little, clearly confused.
"But… I never said my dad was William Doe. You shouldn't have known to bring them."
William turned around to face his son. "Actually, I've known Meili for a very long time, John. Just as an online fan of mine. But when you told me the name 'Meili,' I recognized it and got in touch."
"And I've been wanting him to sign my collection for a while," I added. "This was a good opportunity."
John just stood there, alternating glances between the two of us, maybe thinking he was getting pranked.
"Really." William kept an admirably straight face. "I don't know if I've told you before, but high-school girls from god-tier families are my best-performing demographic. A lot of them are big fans. It's a little unlucky that they're too small a group to boost sales, but I have some young superfans like Meili. "
"…Are you being serious?"
William let a laugh slip and waved his son to the table.
"Of course not. My target demographic is low-tier men. But everything else is true- Meili's just a bit of an outlier."
William was mostly finished signing the hardcovers, and I returned them to my bag with satisfaction. John sat down to my right, placed his laptop on the table, and raised an eyebrow at me. I gave him the 'this world is full of crazy coincidences' shrug.
"Let's see those application essays, John," I said instead of explaining. "You're already more than strong enough to get a scholarship, but I don't know if your writing is."
His face scrunched up. "I-"
"And that's the truth." William shook his head with exaggerated disappointment. "You would think that, with me as the father, he'd inherit at least a bit of the talent. But nope, nothing. After reading your writing, Meili, I would have thought you were the one born to an author."
John's cheeks were reddening, and he seemed flustered, hesitating to open his laptop. To be fair to him, meeting a girl your age, 'by chance,' and then realizing she was a friend of your dad by 'total coincidence,' and then getting verbally tag-teamed was a pretty uncomfortable situation.
"This is the worst ambush I've ever been a part of," he said, which was obviously untrue.
"In all seriousness," I patted him on the shoulder, "I first talked with your dad online just a few months ago. This is the first time we're meeting, and it was a surprise for us, too."
.
.
.
Of course, I was lying. I'd known they were father and son from the literal moment of my (re-)birth. The surprise came a day before, when John had informed me about what he'd been up to, making sure his five 'nemeses' would be unable to return to New Bostin High. This was actually a comparatively minor event – he'd been slated to hospitalize a literal army of his classmates, according to canon – but it had still caught me off guard.
Thankfully, he hadn't injured them that badly, around an 8.0 on the severity scale. Most of them were already out of the hospital. Much more importantly, some combination of my reincarnation-fueled butterfly effect and my personal influence had put John on the path to reaching Wellston two years early.
Which was precisely what I'd been wanting to happen. Maybe it was a bit earlier than expected, a bit luck-dependent, but I was happy to take any luck that I could. Hopefully, as a Wellston student, John would have Headmaster Vaughn's protection from The Authorities. This was the path with the highest chance of keeping him out of their hands, hopefully spoiling their plans to have him as a 'spare resource,' a replacement for his mother.
Hopefully. Knowing as much as I did, I was adding 'hopefully' to a lot of my positive thoughts.
…And John would actually have to send in his application first, for me to start feeling relieved.
"I know I taught you better than this." William scrunched his face in displeasure, literally jabbing a finger into the computer screen. "Look at that paragraph again. Read it with fresh eyes."
"And what is it now?" John threw his hands in the air. "First you say all my sentences are too wordy, too many conjunctions in a row- so I throw in some smaller ones, little clarifiers. Then you say the tone isn't formal enough, so I switch to fancier synonyms. Now I read it over and think, 'this looks great.' I can't even tell what the problem's supposed to be!"
"Just look. I'm not being a nitpicker; Meili knows what I'm talking about."
John turned to me with a mildly aggrieved look, which was fair after over an hour of criticism. I sipped on my ice water and leaned closer to read the laptop.
"I guess there's not much in the third and fourth sentences that I can't infer elsewhere," I said. "So you could say they're a bit unnecessary?"
The essay prompt was, 'Explain a time when you took the initiative to improve your place in life.' The paragraph under fire explained the arduous research and experimentation John did just to make his ability usable, without the help of any kind of mentor.
"The third and fourth sentences, exactly." William smiled and looked at his son. "You first tell them you searched for success stories, late bloomers who started from a situation like yours. Great. Then you talk about Mikaela Conley as an example. But isn't she enough of a celebrity that the reader already knows her life story?"
"But there's still a chance they don't," John protested.
"Even then, they can still infer everything they need about her from earlier in the paragraph. Why give them someone else's biography when this is an essay about yourself?"
"…There's no way the application reader catches it." John jerked the laptop closer to our side of the table, clicking around. "See- the same stuff was already in there the first two times you looked, and you didn't even notice!"
"Right. Because there were worse things to distract me."
"Psh. That's a crappy excuse for a pro author."
"I was in culture shock seeing six conjunctions in one sentence, what can I say?" William shrugged, grinning. "Look, it's just a few lines of cleanup, then we can move on to the next one…"
I found myself rolling my eyes a little as they squabbled. William was, in fact, being a nitpicker – at least compared to the typical strength of a fifteen-year-old's writing. John was great for his age. He'd chosen a good story, then executed it in a way that earned sympathy while also seeming admirable, which was the best approach to a scholarship essay regardless of what world you lived in.
William knew as well, I was certain. Before making a single correction, he'd known that the first draft was more than good enough. I'd been confused about what he was trying to do, but I was beginning to figure it out.
John had told me a little about his conflict with his father, and my prior knowledge filled in the remaining story. As it was, their relationship stood on unstable ground, which meant this current play-fighting was a way of testing the waters. To see if they could still function as father and son, to see if they could still bicker lightheartedly with lower consequences: where John could 'lose' without becoming a violent brute, and William could 'lose' without becoming a spineless weakling.
Back-and-forth around writing was probably something they used to do a lot, before, never with anything resembling personal stakes.
Whether all of this was conscious on John's part, I didn't know, but it seemed probable for William. And after we finished the first essay, my assumptions were quickly confirmed. William sent John on a thirty-minute round trip to 'grab our lunch.'
I had felt it coming for a while. He wanted to talk to me alone, probably about John. That was the actual reason I was here in his apartment.
When his son's footsteps in the outside stairwell diminished to faint echoes, William met my eyes. The table wasn't large, and I found the urge to be truthful settling in on me, a horrible feeling when you also had a hundred-or-so reasons to do the opposite.
"I've done a little digging into Wellston Private High," he said. "I know it's a terrific school academically, especially in the past few years. But you can't know everything just by looking online."
He finished his ice water, then refilled his glass with the pitcher. The air conditioning was weak to nonexistent, and the room was overly warm.
"John's probably already complained to you," he said. "And you've read all my stuff, Meili, so I'm sure you have something of an idea, but I'll just say it outright: I can't stand the present mainstream of strong preying on weak. Especially someone who can't fight back. There are almost no justifications I would accept, and it doesn't matter how disrespected you feel; you don't have the right. With that in mind, the environment at Wellston Private High..."
"Is pretty terrible," I answered. "To be honest."
"I thought so," he sighed. "And, just to get an idea, how many of the students there do you think would like what I have to say?"
I considered it for a while and came up with Rei.
"If you mean consistently?" I clarified. "Not only when the ideals benefit you, but when you're feeling angry or violent and have to hold yourself to the full standard… I think one and a half. But the 'one' is graduating."
William looked unimpressed. Having me as the 'half' and nobody else was a depressing state of affairs, so I explained:
"I'm trying my best to be a 'one,'" I said truthfully. "I want to improve things, as the Jack, and I'm trying to get some of my classmates to 'half.' I gave two of your novels to next year's Queen. I think a few of them would like UnOrdinary, too - and all of these people are elite-tiers and higher, so they have a lot of say in how the school is run."
"I'm glad to hear that," he said, nodding. "I'm not going to say I'm thrilled, but at least it seems a whole lot better than here."
He ran a hand through his hair.
"I guess I should come clean and say that I've been studying you a little. I'm sorry - with your level, it's just something that I have to do. Of the few higher-level people I've met, who say that they don't care I'm a cripple, I tend to have my expectations betrayed."
"In what ways?" I couldn't resist asking.
"At best, they don't mean it," he answered. "Only unconscious disrespect in dozens of little ways. Talking over me, not listening when I'm speaking. Forgetting to ask if what they've planned fits my schedule - as though it's some impossibility that I could have plans they don't know about. They'll say things like, 'It's such a shame that so-and-so's only a 3.3,' knowing exactly who they're talking to."
I felt a little self-conscious. "Did I…?"
He grinned. "Not at all. Sure, maybe you'd be the most respectful person on earth if I were your favorite author and a 6.5. But as it stands, Meili, I can hardly tell that you're strong enough to turn this apartment into rubble, so I'll just call you an exception to the rule."
I knew my expression was doing some kind of embarrassing dance, trying to decide between self-hating and pride. "...That might be the best compliment I've ever gotten."
"I don't hand them out for free."
I laughed a little, but then William shook his head.
"I'm serious," he told me, looking me straight in the eyes. "I want to ask you for a favor. I'm sure you've noticed that John is… Well. Let's just say that I'm worried for him. A new start will help, but none of the issues will magically disappear, and I won't be there physically. So I can only ask you to help him, however much you feel you can. I would be incredibly grateful."
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I felt my stomach twisting. "I'm… I'm not sure that I can-"
"You can," he said. "With the way you've treated me, the simple fact you're taking me seriously right now - that's enough for me to know. And I know that no amount of signed books would be repayment, but this is a request. Please."
Feeling how earnest he was, I almost wanted to tell him that he was being fooled – that I was going to use John as a resource, the metaphorical coal to power my industrial revolution, barely different from what The Authorities were doing with his wife. But it was this exact knowledge that had gotten him murdered, and the truth would ruin both of us.
"I'll try my best," I said.
He let out a breath. "Thank you."
I should have just taken the gratitude and moved on, but I couldn't. "I hope you don't have the wrong idea," I told him. "No elite-tier at my age can have clean hands. If you could have seen what I've done-"
"I know how the world works, Meili." He smiled at me. "But it tells me something, that you feel the need to make sure I understand."
My prior waves of guilt grew large and crashed ashore. I quickly reached for a distraction, downing my water and all the ice in it. More than the warmth of the room was making me sweat.
It was all too much for me, and I was far too close to making a mistake.
I managed to calm myself, and eventually asked some questions about Unordinary that I had. It seemed like I was out of the woods. But right as John returned with lunch, William pushed me to the edge without even knowing it.
"I've been making tweaks to the plot," he said. "Especially the arc where The Authorities control the protagonist by threatening his family; I don't think it'll sit right with people. They won't find it believable, controlling someone so massively powerful just by using their family against them."
.
.
.
After we ate, I helped with John's 'Why are you applying to Wellston Private High?' essay, which had (ostensibly) been my main reason for visiting. But the essay was just as well-written as the first, leading me to suspect that John's mediocre grades in canon were more the product of constant trips to the infirmary than a lack of skill. Still, it was already evening when we finished and submitted the application, and I went back to my apartment to see Alicia.
I found her working furiously on a whiteboard in our new research room.
The room had always been there, really, but before Alicia's arrival it had been an empty, unused box. Now there were couches and fuzzy carpeting, along with three giant whiteboards leaning against the wall, all of them dominated by marker scribbling on both sides.
I kept far fewer secrets from her than I did from everyone else, which had allowed us to work together on continuous, unrestrained brainstorming for the two weeks since her arrival. We had to hide the whiteboards when John or someone else visited (that was the nature of the theories and plans written on them), but they were otherwise a permanent fixture in my apartment. Alicia was actually the primary contributor.
When I got closer, I noticed that her whiteboard was a new one, the fourth, and the many paragraphs on it were new to me. I made a token try to call her name.
"Alicia?"
"Have to copy it," she was murmuring. "Have to copy it…"
She didn't react or look in my direction, continually staring at the whiteboard with gleaming violet eyes. I promptly went quiet. Her hand was jerking a black marker with machinelike precision, literally printing Times New Roman text onto the board. I circled around her to read it from behind.
Directly after a 'vision-sharing session', Alicia could now pull herself into a trancelike recollective state, during which she could reproduce parts of what she'd seen with supernatural accuracy. From experience, I knew that the Times New Roman text meant she was reproducing a legal document; Arial font would have implied an email.
Her silver hair had fallen over her eyes – and a few days ago, we'd even tried giving her a blindfold. But a lack of vision didn't affect her ability to perfectly copy digital text, which meant she was using something else to do it.
Alicia could control whether or not she went into the trance. What she couldn't do was pick the exact material that she 'photocopied.' While I skimmed through the whiteboard text, I realized that she was reproducing the 'definitions' section from a Wellston City building code.
Then the marker in her hand squeaked to a stop. She jerked, whipped her hair back, and spent a few seconds blinking down at the whiteboard with normal, non-glowing eyes. She palmed her forehead and moaned.
"Oh no. Please," she said, and then realized I was behind her. "Meili, don't tell me this is-"
"Residential Level R-1," I read, a little cruelly, "is defined by domiciles that house eight or fewer persons."
Defeated, Alicia rolled onto her back on the floor.
"I knew it. I had a feeling I would just end up copying something useless. But then I thought, it would be so cool if I could pull it off…"
"At least spying's good practice," I said, only half-trying to be consoling.
"'Good practice,'" Alicia whimpered. "My wrist has literally been ground down to nonexistence."
She had increased her level to 1.9, so I wasn't exactly wrong. I knew she was secretly overjoyed about the progress, more than she wanted to let on to me. Still, I played along, pulling her onto a couch while keeping her on her back. I went to the freezer and brought her one of our many overpriced ice packs.
She took it, exaggerating her desperate gratitude like a cartoon character crawling through the desert and finding an oasis. After making sure that she was actually exaggerating, I said, "Now I'm curious about what it was you wanted to copy. If it wasn't a building code."
Alicia snorted.
"Freya Lingard was looking at a Venn diagram," she answered. "It sorted everyone in the Lingard Clan into the two voting factions, with a few people in the middle for dual allegiances. But she didn't look at it for long enough. Not enough for me to memorize all the names."
"But enough to get some of them?" I asked hopefully.
"Right," she said. "I'm 99.99 percent sure Valerie was in the left circle, with Linette and her husband in the right one. They had roughly the same number of names. But I was mostly paying attention to the labels the diagram gave the two circles."
Alicia got off the couch and grabbed our theory board.
"Your idea about them was right," she said, drawing a little check mark on the whiteboard. "The left circle was labeled 'Outward-facing, Pro-Authorities.' Valerie's faction. The other one was 'Inward-facing, Anti-Authorities.' That's as explicit a breakdown as I think we're ever going to get."
"...Which explains why they were voting by turning those weird crimson flowers toward the windows or away," I realized. "Facing it outward means you're literally 'outward-facing.' Open to working with outside forces."
"Exactly," she agreed. "There was something confusing, though. The diagram also had a few non-Lingards. Like your school headmaster, Vaughn, he was on the right. Inward-facing, Anti-Authorities."
I recalled my old observation, months ago, that Vaughn kept the same breed of spikey, crimson flower in a vase on his desk – the same rose-like flower that the Lingards were using to vote. The flower had faced me, I could remember, opposite the direction of the only windows in Vaughn's office. Inward-facing, in other words.
"He had the same flower on his desk," I muttered. "Do you think…? I wonder if every strong clan in the sector knows to use the same system. Not just as a secret way to hold elections, but also to make other clans aware of the results."
As was typical when we made any sort of breakthrough, Alicia was already scribbling it on a whiteboard, her wrist suddenly a non-issue. "Definitely convincing enough to put on the theory board," she said. "And a bit ironic, if all these god-tiers are the only ones doing elections."
I nodded. She had been spending most of her effort on the Lingards, but Alicia also had the hair of other god-tiers to use her ability on, so we decided after some discussion that she should switch over to them as her targets of observation. This would let us see if I was right or not. I wrote it as a point on our planning whiteboard, then started adding new ideas for the Doe family that I'd just thought of.
Reading the board reminded me of how many points came from Alicia. I still found myself surprised by how committed she'd become, especially with her initial reluctance. It probably said something about the kind of life she'd been expecting to live, if she was so ready to accept months of effort and potential danger, all for an uncertain chance to accomplish anything significant.
Uncertain chances were better than none.
When I was done, I put the board back up against the wall. To be safe, we really should have been using notebooks instead of whiteboards… but it made me feel hopeful, having our effort constantly on display. It was convenient, a nice-sounding idea, that with enough effort our chances would be good.
"We should go out for dinner tonight to celebrate," Alicia said unprompted.
I blinked at her. "Celebrate?"
"Now that you have access, you're going to visit Jane's facility first thing on Monday, aren't you? I know how long you've been waiting."
A bit longer than you think. I smiled.
"Sure, but nothing too extra," I agreed. "Save the real celebration for after I come back with good news."
……
Theory Board
Summaries
1. Structure of The Central Authorities.
Publicly, the largest private banks and tech companies have leadership with levels in the mid-8.0s. As such, we can assume you need to be at least an 8.5 to enter The Central Authorities, but there's still a range of levels beyond that to account for. Because of Jane, we know levels in the lower nines are possible, and it seems unlikely that she stands at the pinnacle, given her situation.
Whether or not a real level 10.0 exists is another question, but 9.5 wouldn't be at all shocking, which leaves us with a range of 8.5 to 9.5. Assuming a 9.5 can defeat an 8.5 with the ease of a finger snap, I doubt that the members would all consider themselves of 'equal standing.' This leaves us with a mini-hierarchy at the top of the hierarchy, and some additional implications for how this world really runs behind the curtain.
See section 7 of our notes for more thoughts.
2. Ability-Modifying.
There are short-term ability enhancers that can improve the user's level by 50%, but with hangover effects and drawbacks. On the other end of the spectrum, Valerie Lingard was a test subject for a procedure that permanently increased her level by 0.2 with no obvious physical downsides. There's obviously some relation between these two, and I'll make a guess as to the underlying processes here.
I think the enhancer drugs introduce a large amount of foreign aura to the consumer's channel system, but somehow packaged or manipulated in such a way that it can be temporarily utilized. Jane might simply have the ability to modify and preserve aura in such a state, or she may be one step in a long manufacturing process. This would imply that stronger ability users are more difficult to boost using temporary enhancement, which is consistent with our observation that there are no records of any test-subjects with a (boosted) level of 6.5 or above.
On the other side, Valerie was picked for the enhancement procedure because of her body-toughening passive. This suggests that they might have had to do an intense procedure, possibly a traumatic surgery that would have killed an average person. They might have literally 're-wired' or 'straightened out' Valerie's channels, removing some prior flaw or inefficiency, and it's unlikely that they introduced any outside aura to her system. Jane may have an inherent sense for improving other people's abilities in this way, which they utilized.
See sections 8-10 of our notes for details, including direct evidence gathered by Alicia.
3. The Lingard clan's involvement.
If we're correct about the above, there are some additional implications. Many Lingards have body-toughening passives, and there's little chance that The Authorities are satisfied with just the data from a single test subject. Additionally, I found good evidence that the clan is voting on something related to Valerie's procedure – never an outright statement, but the number of times it was implied through email leads me to write this here.
It's stated outright that, as part of their deal, Valerie owes The Central Authorities a favor when it comes to the decision-making of the Lingards. What if this favor is getting the rest of the clan's main-line members to agree with the procedure as test subjects? This would naturally bring them closer to The Authorities, which is what we already think is the main disagreement between the two factions.
See sections 11 and 12 of our notes for supporting evidence and further thoughts.
4. An ability beyond Time Manipulation.
From the messages we've gathered between Seraphina and her mother, Time Manipulation can evolve into something called Time Control. Time manipulation is already supremely powerful (capable of stopping time and reversing life-threatening injuries), so it's been hard to envision how it could possibly improve.
More recently, based on my surveillance of Seraphina, we think that past users of Time Control may have affected time on a macro-level scale. There are records (of admittedly sketchy quality) about these people 'retrying' a difficult conversation after it went poorly, or even constructing a groundhog day-style time loop on particularly important days.
What if, using ability-enhancing drugs, we could artificially create a temporary Time Control user? It wouldn't have to be temporary, at that point, if Time Control allows the user to sustain a temporary condition indefinitely!
See the planning whiteboard for related possibilities. See section 13 of our notes for more detailed thoughts and hypothetical scenarios.
5. Are high-tiers going extinct?
The child of a high-tier and mid-tier will be an elite-tier on average. High-tiers don't have a particularly high birth rate, compared to other tiers. All the data we can find shows just the opposite. Combine these two facts, and it seems plausible that high-tiers would shrink as a proportion of the population over time. Each generation, some fraction of them will produce children of lower tiers than they are.
Suppose that, in every generation, two percent of all people (including high-tiers) marry and have children outside their rank. After a few millennia, the level distribution would concentrate around the mean: in other words, there would be proportionally far more mid-tiers and fewer of everyone else. In this scenario, would there be enough high-tiers to run the world from the top down? Or would a level of systemic dysfunction set in, eventually requiring some kind of reform? (Like allowing elite-tiers to 'join the club,' for example).
If this is a possibility that The Authorities are at all aware of, they should already be taking countermeasures to prevent their own gradual collapse. One countermeasure would be, for example, research into ability-modification… and would you look at that, that's precisely what they're doing!
(Alicia Comment: this reads conspiratorially, Meili. Like, especially. Are you okay?)
*Ahem. A more detailed analysis can be found in section 14 of our notes.
6. Why is level 7.8 Vaughn 'only' a school headmaster?
Vaughn is powerful enough to be nearly anything he wants to be – so why the administrator of a private school? We've collected some circumstantial evidence that points to……
7. John's maternal clan.
When Jane was essentially being blackmailed into becoming a research subject, what in the world was her family doing? It's possible they were unaware, but there also could have been……
8. Ability Evolution Frequency in the Strauss clan. (What exactly is ability evolution?)
For the past few centuries, a member of the Strauss clan has had their ability evolve in every generation. This would be probabilistically impossible if everyone truly has an equal chance to evolve, so it seems much more likely that……
9. Necessary Equipment for Ability-Modification Research.
We'll have even better information after Meili visits Jane, but for now, we can only make guesses about the facilities and equipment we would need. We can say for sure that we definitely want our own level-gauging device……
.
.
.
The theories on the theory board weren't supposed to remain there forever. We planned to confirm them as fact. For this purpose, Monday morning before sunrise, I made my way to the NxGen compound and swiped my card on a card reader.
A twenty-ton door, toughened by Density Manipulation, creaked open on its hinges. I stared past the doorframe, down the slightly ominous stairwell where the special research facilities were contained.
Whenever I'd envisioned Jane's facility in the past, I always settled on a particular image, a cramped room in a lightless basement under the NxGen compound. I had been half-right. As I stepped down the stairs into the special facilities hall, my first impression was the color white. There wasn't a hint of another color, and even the white was a consistent shade that extended through floor, wall, and ceiling to form an eerily variationless tunnel.
The lights were also white, along with my mandated facemask and anti-contaminant uniform. It was easy to understand why. White was the easiest color on which to see grime and imperfections. Keeping a static, perfect environment was surely important for the work being done.
It was hard to tell how far I was walking, though, with my surroundings so consistent.
This is like a police interrogation room, I thought when I arrived. Jane's room was vast but sparse, with a shower, bathroom, and large bed. There was nothing 'unnecessary' for survival but a single framed picture on her desk. I peered in at the room from the hall through what was surely one-way glass, but Jane wouldn't have reacted even if she could see me.
Jane was asleep, lying no more than ten meters away from me. She was on her back on the bed, positioned like a pharaoh in her coffin.
I activated my ability, eyes flashing with piercing light. My main goal was to find any specialized equipment or machinery. There was an odd-looking silver compartment plugged into a socket, like the distant cousin of a refrigerator, and I recognized a high-resolution aura-imaging device. But it was nothing like what I'd feared, no wall of impossible machinery, nothing that would be inaccessible without government funding.
Jane was likely special enough, then, that even NxGen couldn't do much with equipment to enhance what she did.
And I can use John in her place, I thought with a smile.
…My self-awareness set in a few seconds later, and the smile dropped. They aren't materials. Get it together.
I shook my head, almost choosing to leave for the other facilities, but the framed picture on Jane's desk drew me in.
It was a man and a woman, both beautiful and young, with a cheerful two-year-old son. The Doe family. In contrast, Jane's skin was now cave-dweller pale, with pronounced wrinkles in her face even as she slept. She wore a prisoner's jumpsuit, though it was pure white instead of orange, and her lips were so dry that the outer layer had calcified to crust.
I contemplated waking her up, but it was quickly apparent that I didn't know what the hell I would tell her.
I'll help you escape! I'll get you out of here!
I deactivated my ability and snorted at the thought.
Level 9.1, strong enough to turn a city into ashes, and you don't think that she could leave if she really wanted? She's here because the rulers of the whole goddamn planet are keeping her here. They're keeping her here, this literal god, and you still think that you can try to–
"–Jane, I was in your home just now," I blurted. "Your husband and son are doing okay."
I blinked, a little surprised at myself. My voice wouldn't go through the glass.
"They still think that you abandoned them," I said to nobody. "I guess that's what you wanted. But because of that, it feels like William sees your face whenever he looks at me, and John has a terrifying inferiority complex."
…
"I'm not trying to blame you or anything. Of course, I want John to blame you, but that's only so he understands who to blame once I finally… Anyway. The point is, The Bureau of Authorities stole your family, and I'm going to do something similar. The difference is that I want to give them back."
.
.
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WDoe: ##
To tell you the truth, Meili, John's been the cure for my writer's block.
Which sounds horrible, now that I'm putting it into words. But the early plot of Unordinary is so remarkably similar to what I'm witnessing unfold every day – enough that the connection is automatic. You suggested it a few months ago, the protagonist using his new power for revenge before anything else, and real life followed suit.
Sometimes, the story I'm working on merges with the story of my life. My characters become real people, and I can think about what they're going through with realism. For Unordinary, a god-tier protagonist on a planet of only cripples… I can feel exactly how hard it would be to know what to do, for a person in those circumstances. With no precedence to emulate, no examples of similar people who came before you.
I have the same thought about John. In a different way. He does have examples of high-rankers to follow, but only ones I'd rather he didn't have, like gladiator fighters and action movie characters. I'm not blind to the effect it's had on him. That's probably the reason I'm writing Unordinary now, because I want to give him something better to emulate, someone else he can become.
For the same reason, I'm glad that he's getting to know you, Meili. I hope he can emulate you.
##