The Law of Averages

Book 2: Chapter 3: Cosmetic Surgery for Fun and Profit

Dimension A had never known a war on drugs. Between the White Sands Incident, the Vigilante Years, and the Genius Wars, there hadn’t really been time to care about what kind of non-radioactive substances people stuck inside themselves. If taking a pill or snorting some powder didn’t give you superpowers, nobody really gave a shit about the legality of the act. It wasn’t worth worrying about. That’s not to say certain substances weren’t outlawed, but there was no concerted effort to purge such things from the country. No, this dimension took an entirely different turn.

With the seventies, came the invention of mods. The first mod ever released was a simple aesthetic augmentation. It worked with a single upgrade, the Sunny Delight, which gave people a weak kind of photosynthesis. While in use, one’s skin darkened into a leafy green, which faded once deactivated. Approximately one upgrade in sixty-five thousand manifested slightly differently, but not enough to be called a mutation. It was a simple change. Rather than green, one’s skin turned a brilliant gold. The Sunny G mod simply altered one’s upgrade so that this manifestation always occurred.

It sold like hotcakes, and with that success, a new industry was born. Albeit one heavily regulated by the government, with thousands of safety checks and acronymed organizations watching over every product. Despite ever-present fears of tampering with upgrades, the demand for new mods was incredibly high. Progress was slow, but profit was immense. Naturally, criminals took notice.

Back then, most criminal enterprises revolved around securing cosmic generators, then either selling access or just using them to create new naturals. Gangs used these naturals to hold territory, charging protection money for the citizens trapped within. While the Vigilante Acts had greatly empowered the police, there never was, nor had there ever been, an end to crime. Violence was commonplace.

Mods gave criminals an easier, less overt outlet for making money. Technically speaking, any upgrade can be modded with any given cosmic generator, the original upgrade pattern, and a few simple tweaks. The generator need not be powerful, weaker was preferable, in fact. It made them easier to hide, yet produced nearly the same result. These black market mods were in no way safe, nor consistent, at least at first, but few people cared. Up until then, upgrades had been static choices. People, being as they are, tended to look back on their decisions with regret, wondering ‘what if?’ Now they could answer that question, if only a little bit.

Mods were minor things, after all. Aesthetic changes, or small adjustments in how an ability manifests. Sometimes they changed the feeling one felt upon activation, less a flexing of a muscle than a jolt of adrenaline, or ecstasy, or terror. Sometimes they changed the limb one used to project a power, with people sending flames from fingertips or palms or even their eyes. With black market mods, these things were not consistent. It was a gamble, one that couldn’t be changed. Something irreparable. Mods could not be removed, only added to. In those early days, there were more than a few casualties, illegal mods gone wrong in ways that permanently altered a person’s life.

Dan genuinely couldn’t comprehend why people had flocked, en masse, to purchase these horrific things. It escaped his understanding; there was some disconnect between his culture and theirs, that could not be reconciled. Dan could sympathize with a drug addict. Pleasure he could comprehend, or desperation, or a desire to briefly escape a life of misery. But what drove people onwards in those early years, to mod themselves again and again, Dan would never understand.

It hadn’t stopped, some forty years later. The Scales were a prominent Austin gang whose members deliberately mutilated themselves with mods. Every Scale was guaranteed to have at least one aberrant physical feature, and some were so heavily modded that they barely resembled humans. Even in a society that generally encouraged aesthetic mods, the Scales were shunned for their overindulgence. They went well past the bounds of safety, almost exclusively using their own black market mods, and encouraged their members to do the same.

They were completely deranged, and they knew it. Embraced it, even. At least when things went wrong, and it was almost inevitable that they would, the Scales looked after their own. Rehab centers like the one Abby worked in were seen as sacred ground by the gang. Ex-members who had taken their mods too far were checked in nearly as often as those who had experienced genuine accidents. These people were generally expelled from the gang, a sort of ‘honorable discharge,’ and given the rough equivalent of a severance plan. Crime, it seemed, paid well. The demand for illegal mods had not slowed in the slightest.

So, yes. The law had bigger things to worry about than drugs. Daniel understood this intellectually. It didn’t make it any less weird to see a baggie of psilocybin mushrooms for sale at the grocery store. Dan idly checked the label, skimming over the large warnings plastered across the back, then snorted in amusement. The shrooms had been placed in the refrigerated section, between the broccoli and the cabbage. Absolutely surreal.

There was a cannabis dispensary a short walk down the isle, built into the store like a Starbucks. That was less odd to him, though seeing one in Texas, in a family friendly grocer no less, had Dan doing a double take. An eight year old toddled past the glass case displaying various big ol’ piles of weed, trailed by his mother. The woman caught him glancing curiously and simply shuffled him forward without a word. Dan had half-expected her to shriek bloody murder, but no. Nothing.

It wasn’t often anymore that Dan felt like an alien. It wasn’t often anymore that he saw something that made him feel utterly out of place, lost in a big, strange world. He allowed that feeling to settle into him, drinking it in. It was no longer an open wound, or even a scab. It was a scar, old and faded, itching briefly. It was right to remember, Dan decided. It was right to miss things, every now and then. To feel homesick.

Then he turned away, and the feeling fled him like it had so many times before. Dan picked up a bottle of pickles, and stuffed it into his basket. The glass clinked merrily against a jar of salsa, a rhythmic tapping that kept in tune with his steps. This was his home now. He was here to stay, and he had errands to run.

Home sweet home. Dan appeared on his couch, groceries in hand, and flopped down against the cushions. He sank into it like it was made of quicksand, quickly drowning in pillows and blankets. His hand blindly scrabbled against the heavy wooden coffee table that he’d placed in front of his television, searching fruitlessly for the remote. After a minute of half-hearted effort, Dan sent his veil dancing across the surface. His clever power quickly found the device’s shape, and a flex of his will sent it from the table into his hand. The crystalline projectors mounted on his wall hummed as they filled with light. The screen appeared, and noise followed.

Perfection.

Next, the groceries. His veil skittered across the plastic bag, sinking through it and into what lay within. More of the sapphire energy leaked through the couch, through the shag rug and wooden floor beneath. It scampered to the kitchen across cold tiles, until it reached the fridge. Up and up and up Dan’s veil raced, through sheet metal and insulation, across metal racks and into plastic containers. His veil pulsed, swapping the contents of each bag, and delivering the groceries into their proper place.

Dan smiled in satisfaction. He’d come a long way with his power, especially given the relatively low amount of time he’d had it available. Most people picked out upgrades well before they hit twenty. If someone became a Natural in this world filled with upgrades, it would happen earlier rather than later. Dan was extremely late to the party, but he’d made up for it in his own way.

His veil was nearly unique as far as natural powers went, in that he could use it essentially constantly in his every day life. It wasn’t flashy or overt, and it was actively useful. Practicing with it was just… natural.

Dan imagined a drumbeat, then a pair of cymbals crashing together in his head.

He wouldn’t claim mastery by any means; Dan wasn’t certain that one could ever master a natural power. How can you master something that’s ever growing, ever changing? His had certainly passed well beyond its original bounds. His weight limit had increased vastly, though to what degree he did not know. Some part of Dan scoffed at the idea of testing the specifics of his power. It was easier to demand, rather than to know. His power responded to his needs, and it had yet to fail him.

Or maybe Dan was crazy, and all of this was just post-hoc rationalization for the fact that he preferred to practice his power while splayed out like a starfish. The point is, Dan was getting really good with his power. Good enough that there was something he was ready to try, that he hadn’t been before.

He shifted. In the darkness of t-space, Dan stood upright. There was no horizon here, in this false space, only stars. There was no up or down, no left or right. No gravity, no light. But he could see, and he could stand, and he could move. Direction was just a matter of perspective.

Dan closed his eyes and leaned backwards. It was a trust fall, except he was handing his fate over to an obscure, formless existence that took its cues from his subconscious. It didn’t catch him, not only because the Gap was lacking in hands. but because Dan wanted to fall. He felt gravity (not gravity) tugging at him. He felt the air (not air) brushing past him. He felt that sudden lurch that falling brings about in his stomach and in his head. He kept his eyes closed, letting the feelings take control. Opening them might break the spell, break the illusion.

He was falling, faster and faster. Falling down into a bottomless abyss. His arms and legs drifted upwards carried on a nonexistent wind. He could hear his clothing fluttering. He could feel the cloth pulling at him, dragged steadily upwards and away. He was ready.

Down is up. Dan willed himself back into the world, at what he’d ballparked as about a thousand feet above a very deep lake. He figured that would give him something like five seconds to get oriented, before needing to drop back into t-space. That should be plenty of time to determine which direction he was going, especially given that he appeared looking straight down at the lake.

Reality snapped back into existence and Dan opened his eyes. He stared downwards, and the lake stared back from far below. The wind howled past his ears; it tugged at his clothes, chilling his skin. Inertia dragged him inexorably in one direction, as gravity pulled in the other. For a brief few seconds, Dan flew upwards.

He shifted back into t-space before his brain could process how insanely high in the air he was. Another flex, and he appeared back on his couch, prone, unmoving, unharmed.

Dan blinked up at the wooden beams crisscrossing his ceiling, his mind still replaying what he’d just accomplished.

“Holy shit,” he said.