***this and all other About Time entries are, as you might guess, comPLETEly fictional***


ive been trying to categorize my meta-gift. im not psychic, at least not in a conventional sense. ofcourse, what is conventional? psychic tendencies arent conventional, so how can there be conventionally unconventional things? anyway, ive been thinking; decidedly not psychic because i cant extract information from people, or hear thoughts and i dont exhibit psycho-kenetic abilities or anything of the sort.
Its not super-speed, because i can go backwards and forward and there is never any environmental clues to indicate ive slipped forward or back. no motion blur, accelerating or decelerating of environmental constants or anything like that.
The japanese and roman and greek societies had this idea that everyone had a chord along which they traveled through their lives, if that were the case, instead of being a single-directional thing, mine is more like a cable-car in as much as i can move either direction, sometimes at will.
ive been thinking a lot about the dream i had not long ago. a lot about it. it seems to me, that if it was me i was watching, it could be like an echo in time created by my gift. something that i, and only any other metas if there ARE any other metas like me are sensative to. which would mean that there will come a time, perhaps, when i can control my gift well enough to be useful on the battlefield.

If my gift does consist solely of moving forward and backward in time, then the "bliknking" phenomena i saw in the dream may be an extension of that, being able to pause MY reality long enough to move someplace else and unpause it again. thus to everyone else, it would appear to blink around here, then there then someplace else. i HAVE noticed much to my detriment that i can move spacial distance as well as temporal, so maybe its an extension of that.

anyway, for now, i would be content to come up with something that would easily explain my gift to other metas i know.
as of now, im more or less known as the guy who is always tired because he is always working and is never in the same place for long. clearly a meta gift but one without real use or merit, aside from what ive expounded upon.

i was sitting in my room for a long time thinking about all of this when loren burst in.
"Steve, dude, you gotta come check out the news!" the door hit my wall hard enough that the knob got caught in the wall making it stick fast to the wall, having punched a circular hole in it. good bye security deposit.
"DUDE!" he shouted again. this time, it occurred he was talking to me. i started to get up. "not slow! FAST, hurry!" i wasnt sure what he was going on about. what could POSSIBLY be so interesting that it demanded my attention at six oclock at night on a wednesday afternoon?
when i got to the livingroom which wasnt very far from my room, i saw exactly what could be so interesting.

**"This is the Channel Nineteen Nightly News interrupting your regularly scheduled programming to bring you a live situation as it unfolds at the Fifth branch of the National Bank at Thirty-second and Wash. something truly amazing is going on here tonight! Constance Wright reporting to you live, as what seems to be a man on engulfed in fire is attempting to break into the bank.
Spectators at the scene reported that the man who has been identified as Johnithan Ghastbane, formerly a resident of Upton Heights until he was evicted for what his landlord described as 'nefarious activities' two months ago, approached one of the guards on duty during the weekly cash-exchange by which the large volumes of cash on hand are transfered to an armored car and carted off to the City's South Hall Treasury. Ghastbane was said to appear agitated for some time, mumbling to himself before assaulting the guard. With a single punch, the guard was thrown through the brick and concrete wall, killing him instantly. It was then that the remaining four guards opened fire on Ghastbane, who then ignited into the large mass of blue and white flames we see below us now. that was one hour ago."
as the anchorwoman spoke, facing the helicopter cameraman, mic in hand, another man appeared below, out of nowhere.
"There he is again, another man who appears to be trying to stop Ghastbane from stealing the money!"
the second man appeared just as i appear, out of nothing from nowhere, holding a large piece of metal in one hand and a car door in the other, like a shield. from some fifteen or so feet away, the second man charged in, blinking behind Ghastbane just before impact. it was then than he swung the metal club. it would have hit, but for the intensity of the flames surrounding the firey meta-human. the flames ate away the metal just as it had the bullets fired by officers on the scene.
with a punch, the car door melted away in a bright orange flash and streams of molten metal. the impact knocked the smaller man back ten or so feet. phased, he stood still for a moment. without blinking, he at first appeared to be running away. with a second camera, the helicopter followed the man trying to stop Ghastbane, while still watching as Ghastbane was held fast by a near-constant hail of gunfire and fire-extinguisher fog from inside the building. this merely slowed and seemed to make the meta-monster angry, as he redoubled his efforts to gain entry to the huge ancient bank building.
meanwhile, the other meta-human had reached a fire-hydrant. he stood over it, in a state of confusion for a few seconds.
with a rapid series of blinks that at first appeared to be futile, he lept back and forth from one side of the hydrant to the other, kicking it each time. for a good five minutes, this continued to no avail until finally it could be seen that the hydrant was heating and bending gradually. eventually it gave way, and shot a huge torrential stream toward the bank.
partial success, the robbery had been thwarted, but the resultant explosion caused by the ground-cold water hitting the unblievably hot meta-human caused a massive and devastating steam explosion which heavily damaged the building and severely wounded many of the bank's inhabitants.
As for Johnithan Ghastbane, his body was damaged badly by the sudden and thorough temperature change. that change tore all his skin and hair off, and slammed him against the side of the building with intensity enough to render him unconscious.
As quickly as the second Meta-man appeared, he vanished after taking a moment to collect himself and recover. still, winded, he blinked twice about ten feet each time and after the second blink, paused for a moment once more catching his breath. in that moment, his face was captured and immortalized on film.
"What an amazing turn events! the as-yet-unidentified man who seemed to teleport from one place to another freely defeated Johnithan Ghastbane, doing what even the City's Finest couldnt do! We are awaiting damage and casulaty estimates, and will bring you further news as it becomes available. This is the Channel Nineteen nightly news reporting, we are now returning you to your regularly scheduled programing."

the screen went black for a moment before cutting back to the studio, where the lead anchorman was sitting, a somewhat blurry picture of the day's reluctant hero illuminating the left half the screen. "who is this man? if anyone knows, call the police and our station. there is a cash reward for valid information pretaining to this man and the nature of his super-human abilities. This is Simon Holloburton returning you to the Scrubs Marathon. thankyou and goodnight."

i stood there for a minute, in awe. the picture that had recently lit up the left half the television was clearly and without mistake, me. somewhat older maybe, more fatigued looking, underfed maybe. definately me. mouth hanging open, i stared as Doctor Dorian making wise cracks about nothing in particular, my mind thuroughly affixed on the idea.
"im a hero."

"youre a hero, Steve. that firey prick proves it." Loren planted one open palm firmly on my shoulder. "its you, dude."
for the next week, i called in sick to work. not that i can afford the time off, but i wanted to make sure that nobody would think it actually WAS me out there. the resembalence was too uncanny. obviously same features, definately similar style of dress, and similar if not the same abilities, if absolutely more controlled.

That broadcast changed my life, really. not in as much as anyone knowing my face suddenly. seemed only people who knew me closely even noticed it. but it did set me in mind to understand and contain my powers. to be able to create a reality where i could live normally, and use my abilities normally. i didnt care, really, if i was some kind of super-hero. i just cared about getting my shit together.

Syrus and Loren were both pleased, knowing i was one off from what everyone else considered normal, they had come to understand that was just how i was. now, seeing the... future me there kicking metahuman ass, on TV no less, they seemed to regard me differently.
Loren was fanatical about the Gym. seemed if he wasnt working out he wasnt complete, so he did. He was already a big guy, and bigger he got. he became determined, as did his brother, to create some kind of super-hero squad, to combat meta-humans.
ofcourse, this was only the first time that a metahuman had been seen on television.

the phrase was first coined about two months later, when the results from autopsy on mister Ghastbane came back...abnormal. his remains were later buried in a small unassuming graveyard at the far western extreme of the city, where many of the social filth also found their resting place.
from that day forward, things changed for the weird.

Metas began to spring up all over the place. special task forces were created by the government to attempt to contain the hostile ones and educate (hopefully endoctrinating) the passive or compliant ones -particularly children-.
Crime became something entirely different.
The only metas i ever was very close to were Syrus, Loren and Andrew, who aso pretty much kept to themselves.
Syrus' girlfriend stayed in the picture for a long time too. she was there the day of the report, which demanded some degree of explanation. i tried my best to explain, failing miserably until Loren drew a large drinking stein off one of the shelves and winged it at me. i saw it out of the corner of my eye, coming toward me, then i was behind it, standing, watching it fly out the open window. before i knew it, i was on the street, catching it and back up in the apartment. all of this without any thought involved. like a reflex.
thats how it came to be thought of. a reflex, in my case anyway. She understood somewhat, with the conjunction of my explanation and her having whitnessed first hand my abilities in their purist, if most reactionary form.

it was another six months before i actually managed to gain some degree of control. i found that the insomnia i had been suffering my entire life was a part of my powers, in as much as traveling as i do backward and forward fatigues me greatly to the point where i cant sleep because my body is too tired to enter that state on its own. i did, however, learn how to visualize when im going to go, so i ca wake up late, undo it and have been awake early enough. being in close proximity to my past self ereases my past self and overwrites that me with the "future" (present) me, so i try not to go back because literally that is losing time. if i am twenty five and go back to when i was twenty, and get too close to my twenty year old self, my twenty year old self stops existing, andi am left with me having lost five years of my life. im not sure how it would work if that happened then i jumped back to real-time present, so i dont EEEven mess with it. i dont mind losing a couple hours here and there but more than that and it could get really costly really quick.
zipping from place to place is exactly as i surmised it would be, its bending time. i pause everyone else, so to speak, and move where im going to move then unpause. makes it LOOK like ive vanished and reappeared. there is another kind, i call flash stepping where by i visualize where and when im going to be and travel through time to that point instantly. its much faster and more effective, but more fatiguing and more stressful, so i try not to do it too much.

*** i must be getting to bed so im going to have to put this on hold again***