***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***

While i was at work, on my lunch break actually, i fell asleep. when i awoke, i was back at home a couple seconds before i didnt wake up last time. i got up normally though somewhat perplexed for a short while. the clothes i was wearing at that moment were there in front of me, which didnt really seem possible. then again, whats impossibility to a meta-human? metas themselves should be impossibilities. i got up from my bed and went to pick up the clothes i was already wearing from the floor. i would have, but they glowed faintly for a moment, then vanished when my hand hit them. i didnt know exactly waht was going on because i thought i was in tomorrow. i thought i had accidentally slipped forward like sinking into a hottub. i hurried to work so as not to be any later, on the off chance that it was actually about an hour before i got to work the first time today.
usually when something kindof like this happens its all part of an elaborate dream or something and i wake up back in the present, even more bewildered.
i appoligized to Walter at the front desk signed it and ran up the stairs.
Walt didnt seem to know why i was so flustered, which confused me a bit. i got up the stairs (all seven floors of them) and sat down at my desk and unpacked my things from my bag. among them were some reports i was to transcribe for my boss Hank. Henry (hank) was usually pretty nice, and always very forgiving of me when i AM late, and even more forgiving of me when i already know something important he is telling me "for the first time"
he came in, having heard me enter the office.
"Whoa-ho, steve-o" i hate being called steve-o "whats the rush? i know you just love it here so much, but two hours early?"
i looked at my watch. nodded, because it had stopped. and looked back at him. "i guess so."
"i thought to myself this morning when i woke up, steve." he paused for a moment, feigning like he didnt already know what he was going to say. "that richardson kid is probably going to be late today. again, you amaze me. youre never late steve. not once in six years." he i stopped listening to him and continued my work which i appearently hadnt started yet "today" but that i had been working on for half of my day earlier "today"
when i withdrew the reports i had been working on, he looked surprised. "oh, good, i gave them to you yesterday?"
"huh? oh, yeah."
"good. take it easy steve. you look exhausted."
maybe i look exhausted because i will actually have been working for twelve hours at the end of my eight hour shift today. oh well.
the rest of my re-day was uneventful. now you see how i "somehow" manage to maintain a flawless attendance record. some times i can control it. most of the time, it happens when i feel strongly about something.
trouble is, its not like going backwards in time causes injuries suffered to "un-do" i once gave myself a papercut to test that little theory. i was still hurt when i went back an hour before. i wasnt sure how far back i was going to go, just i had made up my mind that i WAS going backwards in time.
i had this dream a while back that syrus and i were fighting another meta, i know it was a dream because i looked a lot older, and i could see myself. if i had a dream that is first person chances are good that its actually a memory of something i havnt done yet.
anyway, we were fighting this psychic meta. well, he was psycho-kinetic. PKs are nasty. my uncle is a PK, well, he was. he died of a blood clott in his brain. the one syrus and i were fighting was throwing shit around from everywhere. it was neat because i was bouncing around all over the place too, blinking from one place to another to another, like i could actually control my gift well enough to do that.
right now i can move the second minute and hour hands on the clock and confuse the shit out of myself. and make myself not late to work in the final version of the time line i live in.






same world but not part of the story:
other hero meta-humans
Claye Vostok: male age: 26 height: 5'6 weight 180lbs eyes: green hair: brown skin: white
ability(s): claye is a powerful psychic. his mind and body are lost in the collective unconscious of all humanity. he cannot read minds or predict the future, but he has and maintains a constant physical body in the real-world made up of his own will power. this body functions normally but needs no sleep. when claye decides, he retracts the "astral projection" into the astral plane. often he does this when he needs rest. this manifestation of himself is capible of all aspects of normal human interaction and and has limited powers bestowed by claye. often manifested are levitation, limited physical form alteration (able to make his limbs and such into blades or planes), phase shifting (ability to pass through most solid objects, excluding solid walls and the like) and "perfect" speed or strength. "perfect" is simply the word he uses to express better than average human potential

Romelle Gaites: female age: 20 height 5'3 weight: 100lbs eyes black hair blonde skin white
ability(s): can change her mass and density at will. not able to pass through solid objects, but is able to make herself extremely heavy and light at will. she is not unbreakable and cannot make herself intangible, and otherwise and even in altered states her body functions normally. she can, however, increase density in specific areas such as her bones, or her skin prior to an impact. these alterations are not instantanious, but can be very rapid. the speed of the transformation is largely dependant on the amount of space being altered. the changes are not ever externally visable, no changes in color or anything else occurr.

Lady Forester: female age 24 height 5'6 weight 130lbs eyes brown hair brown skin white
ability(s): can create constructs to move and act as she wills. number is determined by complexity of the constructs. she often calls forth a large humanoid statuesque male figure to do most of her hard work. at first she thought her ability was related to her having delved into witchcraft.

Daniel Sylvester: male age 23 height 5'9 weight 160lbs eyes blue hair brown skin tan
ability(s): the pores in daniels skin secrete a unique chemical the effects of which vary dependant of his emotional state. possible effects range from an acidic cloud to making vegitation and molds grow at alarming and harmful rates, drawing and or repelling insects and other animals and enducing sleep naursia or coma. his spit glands are also able to secrete this substance with similar but concentrated effect.
his blood also natively carries these effects in adition to being horendously toxic.

"I'm late?" i take a moment to think about that "how can i be late?!" it seems strange to me, but i am definately late. very much so in fact. "this cant be. its four fourty five. i was supposed to be at work at two oclock. im walking through the ground floor entryway. the good news is im almost there. the bad news is that i work on the seventh, and the building's owners dont believe that elevators are safe.
its okay because ive been here before, and i know that even though im never late, nobody will care that today i am.

i was late two months ago because my phone had died during the night which means my alarm clock had died during the night. i was thirty six minutes late that time. a week and a half before that i was late three days in a row because the janitor had taken my phone, which i accidently left at work, home with him thinking it belonged to a vile snake-bitch who i work with. i nearly killed him when i found out he had it, all three pieces of it. by nearly killed i mean "made him buy me a new one."
im not late often, but i am not never late. ive never... been never late, but i somehow manage to maintain that reputation.

as i head up the third stair well, or maybe its the fifth... or second? i find myself wishing my nightma--i mean roommates were in town. they arent, or maybe they will be leaving soon. i dont remember when it is, but i believe they wont be back. Loren and Syrus are brothers, they and their friend Andrew live in my apartment. rather, i live in theirs. theyre good fun, and good people. upstanding gentlemen if you want to use the word gentlemen to describe binge-drinking over-sleeping cursing loud rowdy post-college kids.
as i said, loren and syrus are brothers, seperated by a year and a half. thick as theivs, they are. they are fairly similar, but not alike. their greatest commonality is their friend andrew who happens to be both of their best friend. he is several years younger than them. a prodigy, he was in the same class that the brothers and i were in at the university.
the three of them are loud and lewd.

then, there is me. im fairly quiet. silent by comparison to my comrades. and i mostly keep to myself. its hard enough to tell whats going on most of the time without muddling things even more by adding intricate interpersonal relationships.
i used to hate them. now i find them an everpresent in sometimes undesirable constant in my life.
we all shared a quad, not terribly dissimilar from our current situation. not the same exactly, but not diffeent. just fewer people living around us. thats the only real difference between dormatories and appartment buildings: population density.
im almost never home now, so even if i did dislike them it wouldnt really be much of an issue. i wade through the sea of beer cans and pizza boxes to my room which basically only consists of four white walls, a bed with one thick heavy comforter on it, one pillow and a TV plugged into the only power outlet in the room.
"Ste*BUUURP*ve, dude buddy, you wanna come live with me and." loren paused for a moment taking in a very nasal breath. "sy and andy? it'd be really sweet to room with you again man." loren came from a well-to-do family, which you wouldnt expect upon meeting him, or hearing his name. he was tall and muscular, which fit fine, but his hair was long and often-unbrushed, and usually fairly greasy but never savage looking. his mouth perpetually hung slightly open because his nose was always full of snot, save for a brief period after he would (frequently) evacuate it by covering one nostril with a finger and blowing hard out the other. as his mouth was usually open slightly, he often breathed heavily passed his lips which made a vacuous sound akin to air blowing passed the mouth of a tunnel.

now quiet some time ago, he had left that message on my voicemail. when i called him the next day, having not talked to him in however long it had been since we had graduated. two or three years. or maybe only a few months. probably years though. Syrus' girlfriend picked up saying that they were both still slobbering drunk, something i knew to be an act on their part to get her to take care of them for a brief period of time. they drank life fish most of the time we lived together in college. despite this, i have and will never see them hung over.
Lindsay was a nice girl. clueless, but night. at that point i hadnt met her in the Now, but i already knew that the i would come to live with my college roommates again, and that one of them was dating her.

my lease was up in two weeks, give or take, which is why i jumped on the opportunity with such vigor.

i called back two days later. i know because i made a note in my phone so that i wouldnt think it had already happened in this Now.
Loren, who answered his phone this time, didnt know what i was talking about.
"WHOA! man, steve, i havnt talked to you in about 2 years! whats up, howve you been?" i talked at him for a few minutes while he dutifully pretended to listen. "well, i dont remember any of that, but then sy and i thre one hell of a rager four days ago. if you say so, it probably happened. i mean, youve never lied to me before."

that pretty much settled it. they added me to their lease agreement and i moved my meager posessions in the next day. turns out the "give or take" on my agreement was more "take" and less "give". i moved the last of my things as the appartment manager came to tell me i had 12 hours to move out. he was always a snake of a man.

all of them are meta-humans. i am too, actually. thats why i have such trouble with time. loren and syrus both possess flawless immune and digestive systems. the main way they differ, apart from physical appearance is how the waste their bodies produce is processed, i suppose.
Loren has mutated thyroid glands in his throat, and an extra pair of properly functioning ones in the small of his back. the ones in his neck instead of functioning normally, produce a hyper-acidic compound similar in color to bile. this compound is so acidic, it is able in seconds to near-completely dissolve most anything it comes in contact with. this compound is even more acidic when he has been drinking large amounts of alcohol. he also has over-developed neck muscles which allow him to vomit with fair accuracy large hunks of the bile-colored acid. because of the nature of his meta-gift he does not need to pass stool, however, his urine is sometimes acidic enough to melt urinals, if he has been drinking a lot or has not unirated in a long-ish time. his sweat is also a fraction as acidic as his other secretions, and if he has not enough water in his sytem it can get strong enough to eat away his clothing...

Syrus' body processes waste entirely differently. he does not need to pass stool either, however he does not need to uirinate either. his body processes all waste and nutrients nearly instantly, and reprocesses waste-proteins multiple times until absolutely everything has been used. it goes through this process with all reaction byproducts as well. he only needs to eat food once every fourty-eight hours and his body builds muscle exceedingly fast. he once spent eighteen hours strait working out at full tilt.

their friend andrew's meta-gifts awakened comparatively late. mostly because his awakened at all, versus the brothers whose abilities were awakened at or before birth.
their friend got accepted to the university at the same time as the three of us. (andrew is three years younger than any of us) he was "awakened" for a few months before he told anyone about his abilities, he thought he had gone insane. the way he describes it, he can hear how people are going to move. it sounds sortof like he gets a kind of constant dopler-esque effect which allows him to predict where things are going to be in the near future. he has, i hear, always been extremely spacially aware, to the point that he could invision in his mind the entire city, and plot routes to his destination(s) in an irrefutably efficient way. its good that his gifts are based on hearing, because his eyes are terrible. he doesnt wear glasses because he doesnt need them as long as his ears are exposed to the open air. i know ive never seen him get hit by anything. you can shoot a straw wrapper at him and take as much time as you like lining up your shot and making corrections for any air-flow that might alter its course. doesnt matter. he can even dodge bullets.

myself? Steven Gaelen Richardson? i have trouble with time. have you ever done one of those magic-eye things? where you look at the pattern and eventually your eyes see an image emerge if you look ait it right? thats kindof how my gift works. i suffer from precognition. sortof like Merlin in The Once and Future King: The Sword and the Stone. when i space out or im at that point immediately between awake and asleep, where its still a conscious choice to move or not. moving would wake you, and not, well, then youd be asleep. like the pupils of somebody who is high dialate, so to for me does time.
the way time works for normal people is that yesterday they were in one place and tomorrow they will be in another. for me, as far back as i can remember, its been a strugle to do things in the now because ive already done them in either the then or the when. ive never failed a test because ive taken every test i will ever take already. i seem to know everything because everything i have ever heard i have already heard. i can be someplace where somebody should have been to catch the plate full of dirty dishes in the restraunt around the corner because i was there last time it happened when it happened next tuesday. i know how i will die because i died before i was born. not a past life, but a future life in the past. Now is a construct mixed of willpower and fate. the harder you Will, the less fate has on you. the trouble is, you cant Will when youre asleep. i will die in my sleep one night, because even though NOW im alseep, tomorrow when im awake in the day i wont be able to stop myself from getting crushed under a the weight of a subway car careening (above ground) having been thrown by another meta-human. i dont know what tomorrow it is, but i know whats going on around it.
Thats why i live with Loren Syrus and Andrew.
there are other Metas out there. you see them in the news sometimes. most of them awaken when their lives turn to shit. the stress brings about change. i guess its a function of evolution. how many pre-humans were born before some realized they could actually USE their thumb? same thing...kindof...

so why am i late today? im late today because i was late yesterday, or tomorrow or something. i forgot my phone because i thought it was two days from now, when i have my phone again. i knew the janator took it a few months ago because i remember being furious with him two weeks later when i initially found out he took it. but then, if i didnt always know, how do i know now, if i already know now because i figured it out in the future?

light a candle at both ends, and youll understand how time works for me. its a skewed moebius strip. im literally always. im not everywhere, but i AM always.
yesterday will be here because i was tomorrow.

WAAAH!!!!!! andrew and laurel got me a laptop and a wacom!!!! holy cow!!! hell yeah ^_^ so stoked!

"... i have come to doubt all that i once held as true. i stand alone without belief. the only truth i know is you."

haha, im a sucker for ideas like that. really, though, who isnt?
love and all its many manifestations, its all a great idea. the practice is somewhat...less than stellar unless ya happen to be very lucky or very crafty, or both.

haha
anyway enough about that
series im watching: Avatar (currently book one, i have book 2 and am downloading book 3) Death Note (slowly because its mind-fucky and its hard to watch lots of mind-fucky stuff all at once) Read Or Die TV (having finished the OVA, im on to the series) Naruto because ive been a fan of it for the entire like 5 years of its run on japanese TV, and bleach which is MUCH less cool than Naruto. OH, Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagann, and Gundam 00 too.

basically; i like Ninjas, Giant Robots, Magical-ish-stuff, fantastic sci-fi and ...whatever you would classify bleach as. and shonen stories.

and dogs. large dogs.
and pretty ladies and food
OH!! and good books and well told stories.
there you have it, you now have insight into my mind.