Chapter 1

I had my computer open, positioned the new terabyte hard-drive I'd bought online just right, and reached for the screwdriver. It was just out of reach, and then in a blink of the eye it was in my open hand, fingers closing convulsively over the handle's cool plastic. For the first couple of minutes I was in denial, putting the screws in, connecting the power supply, finishing up the installation, putting the computer case on the wheeled carrier, the power line in the socket, and then it hit me. Exultation, a total rush in the knowledge that I had power now, never more a flatscan, norm or baseline. Power made you matter, turned your life upside down, made you special, and who doesn't want to be special? Admittedly, a bit of telekinesis isn't all that special...

The emotional roller coaster hit me again, and fear choked me, made my heart go thrum very loudly, the hollowness in my stomach expanding. Assuming I actually had some sort of mutant power, I was now on the hit list of some major bad guys. The Jews think they have it bad? There's an international agency keeping its thumbs on mutantkind, and pressing down hard. The MCO, the mutant commission (or control) office, keeps the lists, and winnows the numbers down (if unofficially). Just a couple of months ago a guy from school, one of my best friends, plain disappeared, and no - his parents didn't move. Supposedly, he got sent to a private school somewhere, like we never heard that before. Not to mention the Humanity First "movement" and its offshoots, or the Goodkind monetary clout (and mercenary assassins in power armor, secret labs and who knew what else).

The beeping noise of the computer booting up jarred my thoughts, and I started searching for information about mutants. Lots of hate sites and love sites, but hard information was difficult to come by. It was unequivocally stated, however, that all mutants had to have an MID, a mutant identification card, provided by the kind services of the MCO. Well, except for army dependents, who got an MMID, though I couldn't cobble up a convincing explanation as to the difference between the two. Just to make sure I wasn't imagining things, I spent a few educational minutes moving things around with my mind. I was no mind-Hulk, as even my bed was too heavy for me to lift, but maneuverability and moving multiple small objects were a breeze.

I had one serious problem in my search for information, in the form of the international ban on mutant websites, coded.mut and well hidden, so only someone who knew the url could find them. Of course, I could work up a specific search program, but I had a notion that that sort of thing would light up a few, or perhaps not so few, alarms. It was yet another thing to investigate, when I got around to it.

The bottomless well of mostly useless knowledge that was the baseline Internet provided me with some insight into the nature and type of powers, after a few hours of winnowing through a distressing amount of dross. There were Exemplars, who had what was call a BIT, a body template image into which they transformed physically and mentally (or more rarely, just one or the other), and became more, stronger, hardier, smarter, better looking. It was the most common mutation, representing perhaps a third of all mutants. There were Energizers, who either controlled or emitted energy, which could be used for a great many things, including forcefields, energy blasts, super-speed, increased strength and durability, and lots more. There were Psychics and Wizards, Gadgeteers who were super scientists and Devisors who weren't bound by the laws of physics and could twist reality with mad scientist devises, as opposed to devices. Speaking of reality, there were the Warpers, who warped reality in any of a double dozen ways, from teleportation to size shifting. Of course, there were Shapeshifters, Manifestors who conjured "stuff" from elsewhere, and even Avatars, who sort of ate spirits and used their powers. There was also something mentioned about Astral Projectors and Manipulators, but it was too vague and muddled to make sense of, nor could I figure out the difference between Alchemist and Wizard. Presumably, one was a subset of the other. Then there was the danger of GSD, gross structural distrophy, in short, turning into a gross monster, and the fatal risk of burnout if you overused your powers or something bad happened. In sum, if you can imagine it, it probably exists, and if you can't, it's probably out there too.

Which left me with a tidy list of things to check out, especially when I noticed the current of churning ideas I'd been trying to ignore. The open guts of my computer were the trigger, and means of improving things, making it faster, increasing storage, the possibility of building my own artificial intelligence, ideas from science fiction books, anything from a personality package upload to a glass motherboard and memory that relied on phased light, they were boiling up. The ideas were incomplete, just sketches, because there was so much I didn't know. The hunger for knowledge woke up a corresponding yowl of neglect from my stomach.

Cooking with TK is so very much easier, though judging a pinch or a spoon of something took a bit of practice. So did forming a cutting edge to replace a physical knife. Moving liquids around also required a few tries, two changes of clothes, and a lot of mopping.

While changing clothes, I took the time to check all the bumps, incidentally making sure my dick hadn't gone bye bye, as some mutations involved serious body modification, and noticed that the warning was accurate - it all starts with the eyes, and mine had changed color exactly the way they were supposed to, from mud-brown to a rather startling shade of bright cobalt-blue. Looking at the roots of my hair, I didn't see any difference, same old dark brown, same old tan-looking skin with its profusion of zits. Eating healthy is not one of my vices. I'm too fond of chocolate to say no.

My to-do list was getting crowded, but I had my priorities. First, hide! Which meant finding colored lenses to hide the change, and buying them somewhere not close to home, with cash ... or I could just say that I was using contacts, given my lack of enthusiasm for putting anything in my eyes. The thought of putting anything there got my gorge rising, and that was just wasteful of food. Recalling a really old clip, maybe the Cranberries, with eyes that impossible blue, I started searching, going by the sole recollection of a pretty blonde singing. It wasn't the Berry girl, but something clicked in my memory and I found the name and photo. Such lovely eyes, I've never forgotten them, though I'd never mentioned that secret little obsession to anyone. Finding a clip on Youtube of one of her songs, I sent the link to my friends list, mentioning my new eyes - if you've got it, flaunt it, so it can't be a secret or embarrassment. You know, blackmail material.

My second priority was to find out just what it was I could do, while being super-extra-careful to avoid exposing my new condition. Argh, that made my very existence sound like a disease. Make that my new circumstances. The fact that I could move things around mentally meant that I was psychic, at least in one way. There were a large number of recorded psychic powers, and I made a neat little list of the more common ones and ways to experiment, then went about it.

I started with telepathy and empathy, by looking out my window at Amanda, who was sunning herself topless in her back yard. A year ago, my first thought would have been bubbling excitement over telling her all about it. She used to be my best friend, but then high school came around, and being a pretty girl, well ... all I can say is that she had the worst taste in guys. Steeling my thoughts and concentrating, I tried to reach for that mental buzz a telepath is supposed to hear, then reach out and sense whatever I could, all the while trying not to stare at her tits, which actually weren't all that much of anything, at least not with her lying on her back. As it turns out, I'm not telepathic or empathic, but a sudden close-up view of her virtually bare, oiled up body, in 360 degree technicolor, showed that I had ESP, very much a net gain if I were a pervert voyeur.

Being a mere pervert and feeling somehow dirty about looking at her so intimately when I no longer had feelings for her, I merely got dizzy and wobbled, ending up falling on my bed. The all around sight thing is very confusing at first, especially when you also have your eyes open. So down the eyelids went, and I started looking around, trying to see more than just the ordinary. Aura sight, magic sight, spirit sight, there were all sorts of things I might be able to perceive once I got used to having an all around pin-point of a remote eyeball moving around. And it sure could move around, the viewpoint just jumped wherever I wanted it to go, as long as I had a reference, and getting used to the unusual mode of perception was astonishingly easy. Getting accustomed to double vision, walking and doing normal stuff while using farsight, was a lot harder, but I still managed to acquire the hang of it after a couple of hours of spastic movement. After which I took an aspirin and caught some sleep, the headache was brutal.

As for aura sight, I didn't quite know what to think of it, as there were flashes and colors and things I didn't understand, and I could also 'see' in complete darkness. For sure, I had something more than plain vanilla farsight. Experimenting further, I tried to focus my vision on a single grain of sand, then go to even finer resolution, recalling my microscope experience in biology. The view wasn't especially fascinating, but eventually I started to get a tearing headache, presumably a not very subtle hint that I was stretching myself too far. Continuing when you feel that way is a sure path to meltdown, no, it's classified as "burnout". Disappointingly, that was all for the first day of wonderful mutant me, falling down to sleep in major pain and some weakness. I woke up sometimes during the night, and blearily made more food to ease the empty stomach complaints, then collapsed right back. Obviously, I was going to need to employ considerable care about more than just hiding. The pain was truly excruciating, spreading from my head down to everything, especially the bones. Eschewing pills, I just lay there, sweating in pain, biting on a pillow, more than ready to return to good old geeky me. This mutant schtick was not proving to be any fun and games.

Sunday, wonderful last free day of the weekend, I woke up with a groan at about noon, dealt with the empty stomach complaints, checked email and Facebook, updated my online profile, and wrote a few replies. My parents work really long hours, so they take their vacations abroad, where no office emergency can lure them back to the sweat pits. Dad's a lawyer and Mom's an accountant, and in New York, that means they make some serious dough and work about eighty hours a week. Unfortunately, they came up from the bottom, student work, heavy loans, the usual American dream, i.e., great promise, long hours and hard work, and they're really cheap. So while sweet sixteen is coming up in a mere four months, I'm not expecting a car. In fact, I pay rent by doing a lot of chores and babysitting my nine year old sister, the baby darling of the family, and work part time at a computer store/lab for spending money, as the babysitting money isn't much. Even I would admit, under duress, that Emily is super cute, and unlike me, she's also super social, so there's not all that much sitting to do, she's usually over with one of her giggling little friends, even on school nights. Not that our schools are particularly good, but when I mentioned that, just the once, I got a very painful hour-long lecture over making something of yourself, good study habits and self discipline. Getting mostly A's wasn't particularly difficult, and that was as far as they cared to look, so I never mentioned school again.

I tried doing a bit of TK to help with the chores, and when it didn't hurt, used even more of it, which made the cleanup and laundry go much faster, especially the ironing and folding parts. Fortuitously, I also discovered my next mutant powers, I mean other than whatever gadgeteer or devisor skills I have. Probably gadgeteer, since I needed more science knowledge rather than making it all up out of whole cloth, but the ideas for incredible things, which were still buzzing way back there in the back of my head, also hinted at devisor. Both would be very welcome, as if I'd had a choice about it, the super scientist path seemed the most lucrative and open-ended of all powers, with the possible exception of the really powerful wizards. Anyway, back to new powers. After finishing all the housework and homework, I tried remote viewing two locations at the same time, which, while proving successful, gave me yet another tearing headache, what with three incoming views. You just don't get used to that sort of pain. Closing my eyes instantly, I lost my balance, falling to the floor ... in slow motion, which I noticed as I lost my televiews and opened my eyes in no-longer-blind panic. I didn't quite manage to stop my fall, but the excitement of the new discovery made the pain irrelevant. Immediately, I tried two other new things, looking back into my room mentally, and moving things around with my mind through the teleview. It worked perfectly. Then I teleported back to my room.

Swaying on my feet, I fell back on my bed with a grunt and started laughing in pure joy, tears leaking from my eyes as the echoes of the recent self-inflicted agony slowly faded. The research I'd done gave me labels, I was a temporal warper and a space warper. I could feel things around me now, not the special aura sight thing, but something very different from sight, the sensation of the ticking movement of time, the rigid bindings of space, and I understood them and how to play with them ... about as well as your average first grader understands your basic college physics textbook. Reading the lines and humming along were possible, but there was lots of practice ahead of me. A good thing I wasn't afraid of hard work. What I was afraid of was being tracked back. According to popular fiction, e.g. the Cognitive mutant detective series, warping left traces behind, traces magic, psychics, other warpers, and maybe some devises or other tech could trace back. Coming up with a solution was instantaneous, it was just so obvious.

After a bit of practice teleporting objects around my room and trying to slow and speed time for those very same falling objects, I learned that I wasn't actually a time warper. Or at least, not outside my own personal self. Experimentation showed that all I could speed up were my perception and thinking time. In effect, I could take a time-out and think before acting, so my physical movement and responses were pre-meditated rather than instinctual. It was a bit of a disappointment.

After swallowing that bitter pill, I tried out my anti-warp-tracking idea, and looked out to sea, far away, then went down to the bottom, and below that, a few hundred yards below sea bottom. Then, with my eyes closed, I used another teleview to pick a remote location on the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and popped a cube of rock out from beneath the ocean, creating a small air-filled storage place as I physically exchanged the two cubes. Not caring to risk myself, I popped a few dozen ants into the storage space, then took a break. I was drenched with sweat after all the porting effort, so after a shower and some more food, I looked in and popped the ants out, replacing them with the rock. The ants were alive, well, until I stomped them telekinetically. I really don't like insects. In short, anyone who tried to track the teleport would hit a wall, quite literally, well beneath the sea. Tracking me back should be close to impossible, especially if I made several jumps. Ideally, I'd have breathing gear and protection before visiting the undersea storage emporium, so for now I'd avoid porting myself in anything other than a true emergency. Now I just needed some sort of defense from magical scrying and psionic tracking, as well as something to screen me from precogs and astral-whatevers, and I'd be a lot safer. That wouldn't be anywhere near so simple and easy.

After a bit of thought, I tried activating bullet-time again, staring at a clock and moving my arm. It turned out that thinking twenty times faster than normal has more than one use. While I couldn't move faster physically, telekinesis and teleportation were not so restricted. Ah, if only I could lift myself at any speed, I could fly so fast!

With a basic understanding of my warping powers, assuming bullet-time isn't something psychic, and some energy back, I prepared some weapons for when it hit the fan. It didn't take all that long to locate a nest of fire ants, some pepper and mace sprayers, and swarms of rats and cockroaches. Having no particular interest in killing or hurting anyone, I figured dropping some of that on anyone bearing me ill will would be sufficient to, at the very least, disrupt their concentration so I could get away. For pranks, I found a convenient deposit of sewage, thanking god for the lack of smell in the teleview, wondering if and how I could get some sound, and added lip-reading to my list of stuff to study. After my stomach settled, I thought about possible techie approaches for sound, when my mobile began to sing.

"Derek!" she sounded breathless.

"Em?! Is everything okay?"

"Renata fell and broke her arm!" she just about shouted into my ear.

"Right, so I'm guessing you won't be staying the night, and her parents can't drop you here. Give me the address, I'll come over and get you. Oh, just how did she break her arm?" I was curious.

"Oh, Maya dared her to... ," I could almost hear the blush over the phone. "Never mind how, she just did! Wow, and she really screamed, it must have hurt a lot. I'm never breaking an arm!" she announced with the certitude of a determined nine year old. After a bit of prompting, she gave me the address.

Calling a cab reminded me of the money issue. Finding a number of bank branches several states away, small ones without mystic protections which I assumed the serious banks have everywhere, I rock-ported a lot of bills my way. Enough to pay for college, including graduate school, about five times over. I hid most of it in a couple of suitcases, one below the foundations of our house and another somewhere under the Atlantic ocean, hid about ten grand in cash in my room, and put a round thousand dollars in my wallet. Robbing banks isn't really a victimless crime, as we all eventually pay for the insurance, but I couldn't resist the temptation, telling myself it would be a one-time thing.

I prepped some food in bullet-time with TK, quickly ate a snack and got dressed, and waited for the cab, spending the time making a list of books I needed to read to bring my understanding of science up to snuff at warp speed via teleview. The wait wasn't that long.

The cabby was distressingly loquacious and took a bit of rude discouragement before I got some peace and quiet. I went back to looking into bookstores and used bookstores for more information about science, mutants and powers, and actually found a few gems. Some seriously thick books from something called Whateley Press, with a print date of a few years back, textbooks for some interesting-sounding courses, including such things as Powers Theory and Introduction to Mystic Arts, were hidden away in a secluded little corner of a really nice-looking used bookshop whose outsides had one of those glows to it, and insides had some other glows. There were lots of other mystic sounding books there, and weird paraphernalia. Presumably, the shop was protected by a magical ward or masked by an illusion of some sort. Some of the books had their own auras, which, among other things, kept my remote viewing from looking into them. I weighed the pros and cons of visiting physically, which would be problematic because it was really out of the way, and decided that for now I'd read the books I could remotely. It would give me something to do at school and help me practice stretching my mental muscles. Of course, that was also how I could get a college education or five without paying for them, and without certification, which at least at present wasn't important to me.