STAR CHILD
By Leonard Petracci
A story of superpowers
Dedication
To my family, friends, and online community - without them, this would not be possible.
Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?
-Richard Feynman
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
INTRODUCTION
Superpowers are based on the topography of where someone is born.
Chapter 1
It was an accident, of course.
My birth, my being in space, and well, I suppose I was an accident as well. An accident from the director of engineering screwing the fat janitor after hours when the rest of the shuttle team had retired; the odds that my mother had been able to hide her baby bump for nine months, the chances that she had been a nurse before being selected from the program and knew how to give birth herself, in a maintenance closet, mere days before the mission was to return to earth. Keeping me hidden was difficult in the small confines of the ship, but the other hundred and fifty crew members had been too busy to pay a mere maid much attention. After all, many insisted that it had not been worthwhile to bring her along, that a maid had been a waste of tax dollars. I suppose that makes me a waste of tax dollars as well.
But there were those that spoke to her unique abilities as a maid. For she had been born deep in the snow of the north, during the first blizzard of winter, that like the first snowfall, she could smooth over any differences in her environment and make it appear uniform. As a maid, it meant that she had an extraordinary sense of cleanliness. As a mother, it meant she could ensure I was overlooked, that my crying was muffled, and later in life, that I appeared no different from anyone else.
Star Child, she had called me as she smuggled me back into the atmosphere, tucked deep in her suit like a kangaroo would carry her young. Star Child, she whispered to me when the project disbanded, and she took me to the inner city apartment where I spent my early life. Star Child, she reprimanded whenever I started pushing and pulling at the equilibrium of our apartment, when she would arrive home from work and all the furniture would be clustered at the center of the room, pulled together by a force point.
“When will I go to school?” I asked her when I was eight, watching the uniformed children marching up the street through the wrought-iron gates of the academy, one of them flicking flames across his fingers like a coin while another left footprints of frost in the grass.
“You already go to school, Star Child,” she said. “And your teachers say you've been learning your numbers well, and your reading has been progressing.”
“Not that school,” I had said, pulling a face. “I want to go to the academy. The special school, for the others like me!” I held up a fist, and items on the desk in front of me flew towards it, pens and papers and pencils that stuck out like quivering quills out of my skin.
“Star Child, listen and stop that at once,” she said, her eyes level with mine. “There are no others like you. Those children; they are all classified, they are all known. You are not like them, you never will be. And they can't know, do you understand me?”
“I guess,” I answered with a huff, watching as one of the children cracked a joke and the others laughed. “But I don't like my school. Everyone there knows we can't be like them, that we can't be special.”
“Star Child, you are special. One day, they'll know that too. But not now – if they knew, they wouldn't take you to the academy. They'd take you somewhere else, somewhere terrible.”
And as I grew older, I realized that she was right. That when our neighbor started developing powers, a police squad showed up at her front door and classified her on the spot. That they left her with a tattoo on her shoulder, a tattoo of a lightning bolt, symbolizing the storm during which she had been born. Just like the tattoo of a snowflake on my mother's shoulder, colored dull grey, to indicate a low threat potential.
So instead of going to the academy, I created an academy of my own, in my room. Mother made me turn the lights out at ten, so during the day, I collected light outside, keeping it in one of the dark holes I could create when I closed my fist hard enough, and letting it loose at night to read books I had stolen from the library. From the section for the special children, that I could only access if the librarians were distracted.
But distractions came easy to me.
As I grew older, the city streets became more populated with the blue uniforms of police. The academy became increasingly harder to attend, and the gifted girl next door disappeared one night without a note. Mother stopped letting me outside after dark, and the lines for the soup kitchens grew longer. The skies grew darker, the voices accustomed to speaking in whispers, and the television news seemingly had less and less to report. It was as if there was a blanket thrown upon us, but no one dared look
But I would. And when I did, I realized the earth needed a Star Child.
Chapter 2
“Why can’t anyone else know?” I asked my mother after school when I was ten. “Is something wrong with me?”
“Quite the opposite, Star Child. Let me tell you a story, the story of my early career in medicine,” she responded as she set dinner down on the table. My stomach grumbled – I had skipped school lunch that day, preferring to deposit it in the waste bin rather than my mouth. Though he tried his hardest, our school chef had little control of his own powers, weak as they were. He claimed he was from Rome, one of the cities that produced the greatest chef power types, and that our meal was Chicken Parmesan, but neither of those statements held much merit. As I started shoveling food into my mouth, my mother continued to speak, her chair squeaking as she shifted.
“Before you were born, I was a nurse, specializing in the delivery of children. This was back in the north, near my home. But unless your power has a direct medical property, hospitals fear the effect it can have on children, so I was eventually removed from service. But by that time, I’d seen enough to make me want to leave.
“Not everyone is lucky enough to have powers, Star Child. But those who are, their power is altered, depending upon where they are born. Think of it like the seasoning in the meal you are eating – the food holds energy, but with the right spices, it can become enhanced. Similarly, a location can make a power pop. And people are willing to pay dearly for the locations.
“The fee my hospital charged was three times my personal salary per child. If there were twins, the couple was stuck with double the bill. And if there were no powers, the bill was still due. This particular hospital was high in the northern mountains, in an area statistically proven to produce the best powers of snow, ice, and weather. If your child had a power, here they would be the strongest. And if they didn’t, well, I’ve heard too many stories of children entering orphanages after the parents wasted a fortune.
“The name of every child born in our hospital was placed on a list submitted to the police, who tracked them for the next two decades. Should a child commit a petty crime and have their name on the list, it was the same as committing a felony since these children were considered high risk. Unless you were still wealthy, of course. And it was strange, those names identified as having strong powers but belonging to a lower class, it seemed like they always committed a crime, without fail. That the police just happened to be waiting, watching them for when it happened. Ready to take them in and to send them to rehabilitation camps, where they would enter the military or the guard, after several years of conditioning, to sacrifice their lives on the front lines. And the more powerful you were, the more likely you were to be classified as a delinquent.
“So listen to me, Star Child. The hospital I worked at was a level three facility out of five. Level twos are even more dangerous, and level ones require a massive fortune to even step in the door. And as you know, having a baby in an unauthorized location is a crime punishable by death. Where you were born, that would be off the scales, a level zero location. Fortunately, you’ve been overlooked, but my power can only do so much. They’d use you or kill you, as a weapon or as a precaution. And you are destined for neither fate. You were fortunate enough that the space program that employed me ended early, due to solar flare activity, otherwise you would already be in the hands of the government. So you listen to me, and you tell no one, do you understand?”
“Yes,” I answered, sighing as I finished my plate, and her hand rested heavily upon my shoulder. And that night, when I retired for sleep, I pulled out the first book I had ever stolen from underneath my bed. Opening my palm, I called forth the small black orb from where I had kept it hidden, in a small pocket just above my wrist. Not an actual pocket, but almost like the void under my tongue, or behind my ear. A place where it almost felt as if I had turned the space inside out, and could reach inside with my pinky.
Taking the orb, I unwrapped it slowly, letting the light trapped within escape in a small beam. Over time, it would grow smaller, until eventually with a flash, it would collapse, and I would have to make a new one during the day.
A Directory of Known Powers, the book was titled. Capabilities and Locations.
Introduction:
Little is known about what, precisely, determines the chance that a child will develop any abilities. Conversely, the factors playing into the type of power innate in a child are well studied and well documented within the pages of this directory.
There are many dimensions in which a child’s power can be analyzed, but for simplicity, the following shall be mentioned due to their high correlation with observable outcomes: locations, power strength, and power type. Other minor effects include genetics, location and passion of conception, and diet during pregnancy. Environmental factors at the time of birth are also known to play a role in power development, though less documentation exists to confirm claims.
Yawning, I flipped through the pages to the pictures section, where a compilation of artists had depicted powers in use. Some were copies of pictures over a hundred years old, documenting powers that had not been seen in so long they were rumored to be myth. Others had so many occurrences that I skipped them, having seen them so often in real life, they now bored me.
Entry 348, Speaking in Tongues, read the title, while the picture showed a girl surrounded by people of all ethnicities, their ears tilted towards her.
Description: A condition in which languages no longer bond speech. Those born with this power have the ability to converse in multiple languages at the same time to multiple audiences.
Strength: Typically a lower level, measured by number and variety of languages that can be spoken, and whether the power can be extended to the written word. Owners of this power are also susceptible to side effects of Silver Tongue (see entry 427) and Pied Piper (see entry 201), which can increase the power by an order of magnitude.
Location: Documented cases occur in hospitals near border regions or in countries with multiple spoken languages.
I flipped backwards to an earlier entry and read another, yawning again as I felt sleep coming soon.
Entry 56, Diamond Exterior. This picture was of a glinting man, half his skin sparkling, the other half normal flesh.
Description: The ability to change portions of the body to rock or diamond, often razor sharp.
Strength: Typically a medium to high power level. Power is measured by mobility after transformation, as well as ability to change objects outside of their own body. Nearly indestructible and difficult to contain, those with strong abilities of this power are weighted extremely high.
Location: Documented cases occur in volcanic regions, with high frequencies at Magmar hospitals (LVL 1), located just above active Hawaiian volcanos. Prior to civilization, it is documented that entire islands once held this ability.
With a small pop, my reading orb exploded, illuminating my room like a camera flash for a split second before immersing me in darkness. I frowned – I was just getting to the section where hospitals of all levels were listed, but I’d only stored one orb today, as I had used most of mine reading the night before.
I lay back on my pillow as I drifted to sleep, dreaming about the academy despite my mother’s words. Where I could maybe even see some of the rarer powers, where I’d be able to share my secret. Just like the other special children.
But before I had the chance to apply, when they accepted new admissions entering higher education at age fourteen, the academy moved.
Chapter 3
“You know, you would have to be an idiot to be caught here,” said the voice behind me, and I nearly fell out of the tree branch where I perched.
I’d been skipping school, again, a regular occurrence now that I was thirteen – this time, during a career fair where parents of the children arrived to show us opportunities for our futures. Jim, the short kid with glasses held togeth
er by tape so old it had started to dry rot, had turned a bright red when his father pulled the garbage truck into the school lot like a massive show-and-tell.
“You see here,” said his father, his new school-provided name tag reading Jim already tarnished with a fleck of grease, “ev’ry day, we cart the trash away. That trash goes to the Calorie Exchanger teams, typically born near peat swamp regions, who convert what they can to petrol. Which keeps the lights on, kiddos. So next time you think of garbage, remember what you throw away always has value.”
The class nodded, several staring towards the next location we would be herded to by Mrs. Whip, a low level Distraction Attenuator. Of course, she had never received any training for a power so minimal, but she was a Saturant, so she didn’t have to – for Saturants, powers were involuntary. They simply flowed from the wielder like a type of charisma that could only be slightly enhanced with focus.
Turning right, I saw the Secretary Career location was next, and as we walked over, one of the parent's head snapped up as his face twitched.
“Kids! Oh, kids, futures! You have futures,” he said, and his eyes jumped rapidly between each of us, yet never seemed to focus properly on any of our faces. This was Jessica’s father, and she forced an encouraging smile as he entered a silence too many seconds long to be acceptable, his face strained as he fought for his next words. “Oh yes, futures! As a secretary, you are one of the most well, most well, most well paid out of all…”
He stopped, entering another silence, and Jessica spoke up, biting her lip.
“Go on, Daddy, out of all the Regulars,” she prompted, and his face lit up, having found another train of thought as he continued, blinking several times in rapid succession.
“Like anyone would take that job,” whispered Stephen from next to me, one of the children Mrs. Whip’s effect seemed have no effect on, and who lived in an apartment several doors down from my own. “Working for the Specials, writing down every word at their important meetings, then having appointments with a Memory Drain at the end of each month to make sure you don’t retain any information. By the looks of this one, he must work for someone really important. I bet they memory drain him every day.”