I mean, I’ve gotten praise from my bosses before, obviously. I’m not that bad of an employee, no matter what Edgar thought. It just never mattered to me before. I accepted it as my due, maybe also viewed it as a veiled attempt to get me to work harder, and moved on with my life.
This, though, feels like someone returning friendship. It’s unexpected, it’s nice, and goofy as it sounds, it’s put a spring in my step.
This positive attitude is, I’m sorry to admit, very unlike me. I’m much more of a fatalist, or as I usually call myself, a realistic optimist. I believe that people will behave exactly as poorly as they think they can get away with; it’s a lot like being a pessimist, except that I also believe that people could really get away with behaving a lot more poorly than they do. Thus, realistic optimism. Realistic: things are usually pretty bad. Optimism: they could be a lot worse. Weird, maybe, but it works for me.
I’m about halfway home when it occurs to me that this could be my new power. I’ve got infectious positive thinking! Matt, my coworkers, the customers — not everyone was cheery and whistling while they worked, exactly, but everyone was at least a bit nicer and happier than I expected them to be. If this is the case, then beating my nemesis is going to be a snap. I’ll figure out who it is, invite him out to a bar, and we’ll bond over the game or something. No irrational hatred of me means no knock-down drag-out fight, no collateral damage, no problems. I can get behind that sort of resolution.
Of course, this power could be a double-edged sword. It’s possible that I’m just broadcasting emotions in general, and it could just be a coincidence that I’ve been in a good mood lately. If that’s the case, any day that I’m in a bad mood, the whole world could be against me. I mean, probably not literally the whole world, but any part of it that I interact with, which is the whole world as far as I’m concerned. So I’m egocentric. Sue me.
It’s not until I get home that another, less pleasant thought hits me. What if this isn’t my power, but someone else’s? I didn’t come into Børger expecting to like the job. Every step of the way, I was surprised to find how pleasant everything was. My attitude was reluctantly dragged from negative to positive, and the main motive force there was Matt. Matt, with a smile for everyone. Matt, who was employee of the month for half of the last year.
This sends a cold shiver up my spine. If his friendliness really is a power, then he may have had it for a long time, maybe even since before I started getting powers. I remember how my magnetism advanced and strengthened as I worked at it, and that was over only a few weeks. He might have been working at this for months.
And yeah, it’s hard to see how there’s anything dark or sinister about a guy who makes other people feel better about their day. So maybe it’s nothing. Or if it is something, maybe all it means is that I’m not alone, not the only focus of whatever bizarre experiment I’m caught in. Maybe I really should try not to expect the worst of everyone all the time.
Then I remember that Matt’s the one who told me that, and I shiver again.
- - -
I wake up the next morning sweating and tangled up in my sheets. Padding over to the thermostat, I turn off the heat; it tells me that this house is at 70, but wherever it’s measuring from, it’s not where I’m standing. I’ll have to get someone in to look at it, but since it’s winter and the problem I have is that my furnace is heating too well, I figure it’s not really an emergency call.
The really annoying thing is that I meant to sleep in. I’ve got nothing on the schedule for today, since Matt says he doesn’t like to “throw new employees straight into the meat grinder,” and therefore has scheduled me for only three days this week. This behavior is deeply hard to reconcile with supervillainy, but the paranoid part of my brain is determined to try, and keeps worrying at the idea in the back of my head.
I flip on the local news briefly so I can pretend to be informed about the world I live in, but it’s the usual morning nonsense. Happy birthday to old people, look at these pets, someone thinks the city should fix some potholes, police would like anyone with information on a recent robbery to contact them. After a few minutes, I switch over to my standard distraction of Netflix.
This proves much better at keeping the negative thought process damped down, and so I lose a few hours to creature feature movies and an extended, couchbound breakfast session. My phone buzzes at a text from Brian reading, “Blood draw now?”, so I send back, “Sure,” and keep watching attractive people make poor choices in the woods.
When Brian arrives, he raises a quizzical eyebrow and says, “This is the sterile environment you want me to draw your blood in? You’re gonna have to lower the temperature a lot more than this to kill off all the germs you’re collecting.”
I look at the carton of milk, box of Cheerios and bowl with spoon sitting in front of the couch and offer the witty rejoinder, “Shut up, I was having breakfast.”
“It’s 2 in the afternoon!”
“What, like you work such normal hours, Graveyard Ghoul?”
“Yeah, but you’re not even working today, man.”
“Whatever. I worked night shift so long, I don’t even have circadian rhythms anymore. I sold them on eBay for extra cash.”
“Who’d buy that?”
“I don’t know, maybe some vampire wanted to be a daywalker. Speaking of which, if you’re here to take my blood, shouldn’t I have had to invite you in? Late shifts, pale skin, taking the blood of others — what is the difference between you and a vampire?”
“It takes a lot more certifications to be an EMT than it does to be a vampire, man.”
I can’t top that one, so I shut up and let Brian swab my arm. As he’s tying off the rubber strap around my upper arm, he says, “Hey, you feeling all right, man? Feels like you’re running a fever.”
I touch my forehead, which feels fine to me. “Nah, I think I’m fine.”
“All right, cool. I guess you were probably just under a blanket or something. Just keep an eye on yourself.”
I watch with morbid fascination as my blood wells up into the vial Brian’s affixed to my arm. “What? No, no blanket. I was just sitting on the couch.”
Brian clamps off the tube and switches to a second vial. “Yeah? I figured you were just layered up against the cold or something, you know?”
“Dude, it’s nice out.”
Brian looks at me strangely. “It’s freezing in here, man.”
I look at him strangely, too. “One of us is very wrong about how temperature works.”
He closes off the second vial, withdraws the needle and puts a bandage over the pinprick. I stand up — nearly stepping into my cereal bowl, which elicits a snort from Brian — and walk over to check the thermostat.
According to that, it’s 59 degrees in the house right now. And in jeans and a t-shirt, I’m still a bit too warm.
“Hey, come outside with me for a second,” I say to Brian, and he follows me out the front door. It’s like a pleasant spring afternoon out here, breezy, temperature maybe in the high 60s. “What’s it feel like out here to you?”
“I don’t know, like 40?” says Brian.
I check the weather app on my phone. Temperature: 41° F. Feels like: 38° F.
Thinking back, no one else seemed to be remarking on the unusually nice weather yesterday, either. And I woke up sweating. And if I’m very, very lucky, then that fire at work was just a coincidence.
I don’t feel all that lucky.
“Hey, when you check the blood,” I say to Brian, “is there any test you can do to see if it’s…fiery?”
Brian laughs, then quickly sobers up when he sees my face.
“Fiery, huh? So — not a fever, then?”
“Yeah, I’m thinking not,” I say, and catch him up to speed.
Brian nods. “Any idea how to control it? Is it like before, like emotion-based, you know?”
I shrug. “I just figured this out about eight seconds before I told you. I don’t know thing one
about it.”
I give it a shot, though, focusing on a nearby clump of grass and getting furious. In my pocket, I can feel my keyring pressing gently against my leg as the remnants of my magnetism kick in, but the grass remains totally untouched. After a half-minute or so, I relax and shrug again.
“Nothing. I don’t know. Doesn’t look like it’s the same trigger.”
“Maybe you just need something more flammable, man,” Brian tells me. “Only thing you’ve burned up so far was hot oil, which goes up a little bit easier than grass.”
“Yeah? Should you really be telling me what you know about burning grass? That seems like the sort of thing that’d get you kicked out of being an EMT.”
“Oh man, did Børger Boy just call ME a deadbeat?” asks Brian. I pull a face at him, and he grins. “See, man? THAT’S how you deliver a burn.”
I give him a mock shove in the direction of his car. “Don’t you have some blood to test before the hospital revokes your certifications?”
“I’m going, man, I’m going! Let me get my stuff from inside. Don’t get all hot under the collar.”
“Dude,” I say.
“Sorry, man. You got me all fired up.”
“Okay, seriously. Get out of my house.”
- Chapter Five -
I spend the rest of the day trying to set things on fire, with little success. You’d think that this would be a binary sort of equation: either things catch fire, or they do not. But I’m trying to help myself out, so among my possibly-successful experiments are a ball of newspaper that I lit and then blew out, and a pan of oil heating on the stove. Both of these catch fire, but it’s entirely possible that the fires are entirely unrelated to pyrokinetic intervention.
Turns out “on the edge of fire” is not an easy place to keep a flammable object. Who knew?
By about dinnertime, I still haven’t made any progress in getting this under control, so I call into Børger to report that I’m sick. The assistant manager who answers, a guy who goes by the name of B-Rock, sounds unimpressed.
“Testing the goodwill limits already, eh?” he says with mild rancor.
“Hey, come on!” I protest. “You can’t possibly be telling me that I should come in to work in food services with a cold.”
“No, you’re right. I can’t possibly be telling you that,” he says in a flat tone that makes his meaning perfectly clear.
I’m not going to be swayed, though. I actually like working at Børger, and I don’t want to see the place burn down because I haven’t got a hold of this power yet, and accidentally start a fire in the grease trap or the cleaning supplies or something else harder to put out. “Look, I’m sorry. I’ll probably be better by the weekend. This feels like a passing thing.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. I’ll get someone in to cover your shift. Enjoy your concert or game or whatever you’re going to tomorrow.”
“It’s not like that!” I say, but he’s already hung up. I put my phone down on the counter and glare at it.
That buys me two days to figure this out, at least. I can work with that.
- - -
Two days later, I’m sitting on the couch again, frustrated and angry. 48 hours of experimentation has left me with almost exactly nothing to show. I can’t get anything to light from a cold start, not even things designed for the purpose like matches or candles. I can’t put fires out once they’re going. Basically, the fryer fire at Børger is the only real evidence I have that I can produce fire at all.
Honestly, I’d doubt that this was my power, if it weren’t for the fact that the house is currently at a balmy 41 degrees, and I’m still pleasantly warm. I’ve taken my temperature a few times, and I’m hanging out at right around 102° F. At the very least, this probably means I can get a doctor’s note in case work wants to see proof that I was sick.
As fiscally responsible as the ability to save money on my heating bills is, though, I’ve really got to get a handle on the rest of this before I go back to work. No one was hurt last time, not counting the blisters on my fingers, but I can’t count on luck to stay with me. I haven’t called out of work for tomorrow yet, but if I can’t solve this in the next couple of hours, I’m going to have to.
Right now, though, I’m on break. I’m sprawled out on the couch, glass of cola on the floor and a slightly-too-hot plate holding a slightly-too-cold microwave burrito balanced on my leg. While I’m waiting for the temperature between the plate and the burrito to equalize, I turn on the TV to have something to do.
It’s on the local station I left it on previously, and it’s in the middle of some security camera footage. It’s black-and-white, doing that two-frames-per-second thing, and I idly wonder why that’s still standard — digital recorders and storage space are dirt cheap these days, and it seems like it’d be in a store owner’s best interests to have a camera that actually recorded someone’s face and actions clearly, instead of making a weird, blurry flipbook.
In this case, though, the clarity of the device wouldn’t help, because the man in the picture is wearing a ski mask. His gun shows up perfectly well, though, as he motions for the man behind the convenience store counter to empty the register. At the door, a second ski-masked man watches outside for any incoming customers. He holds a length of pipe in his right hand, tapping it against his left palm like he’s an impatient British cop.
The cashier hands over the money, and the gunman clubs him over the back of the head. The cashier’s head bounces off of the counter and he disappears behind it between one frame and the next. The two robbers take off through the front door, and the screen cuts back to the local news anchors looking serious.
“That was the scene last night at the Con Plus mart,” says the female anchor. “Police believe that one of these men was also involved with the Apple Liquor robbery earlier this week. Both perpetrators are described as being white males in their mid-20s, 5’8″, roughly 130-150 pounds, with brown eyes. Due to the masks, no other distinguishing marks could be seen. If anyone has any information related to either of these robberies, please contact the police tip line immediately. Remember, you can do so anonymously.”
The male anchor adds, “And thankfully, the cashier, Emmond Dyerly, was treated for a mild concussion and released last night.”
“Yes, we’re very grateful that he’s all right,” agrees the female anchor. “This could have been much more tragic. We’re lucky that it didn’t escalate.”
I sneer at the TV, redirecting my pent-up frustration. “Oh, admit it. If that guy were still in the hospital, you’d be salivating right now over the ratings you could get. You’d love it if it escalated.”
After all, I’d stayed tuned in to watch the robbery happen, right? So if a robbery brings viewers, an assault is even better. One person hurt is good, many is great. A convenience store is fine, a bank heist is super! Ratings through escalation!
Just then, my burrito catches fire.
- - -
It takes a little while longer to figure out precisely what I’ve done, but now that I’ve got something that works, it’s a lot easier to replicate. After a few false attempts at focusing on bringing disaster or frustration to my targets — and really, I should have known it wasn’t frustration, or my whole house would have been on fire by now — I discover the key.
It’s escalation, intensity. If I ramp things up mentally, things around me get warmer. Without a target, it hits everything broadly, and whatever’s hottest and most flammable goes up in flames first. If the burrito hadn’t been there, I might well have set my couch on fire. My terrible eating habits have paid off!
Now that I know what I’m doing, though, it’s pretty easy to pick a target and just intensify it specifically. I can’t say for sure that I’m not heating anything else up, of course, but I do some tests with arrangements of matches, and I can reliably set just one of them on fire, leaving the others alone. So that’s a pretty solid indicator.
I also discover that it’s much easier for me t
o focus on raising the intensity if I physically raise my hand. I have no idea why this helps, but it absolutely does. Maybe it’s just that it gives me something to visually focus on. Whatever the reason, it significantly cuts the time it takes for things to catch fire.
You know how superheroes have catchphrases? They’re usually these cool things that they shout in battle, to intimidate the bad guys. I need to find a comic book writer, because in addition to raising my hand like I’m conducting half of an orchestra, I find myself repeating a word each time: “Uuuuupppppppp!”
I tell myself that I’m not planning on doing it in front of anyone, but I still feel pretty stupid. It works, though.
Out of curiosity, I also take a shot at gesturing downward to reduce the temperature, but no dice. It seems that I can set things on fire, but not put them out. Not with my mind, anyway.
And yes, I try saying “Dowwwwwn!” Shut up.
- Chapter Six -
“Morning, Dan!” Matt greets me. “Glad to see you’re feeling better.”
“Hi, Matt. Yeah, sorry about the other day. I was running a fever, and I really didn’t think it was a good idea for me to come in and spread around whatever I had.” Both true statements. My temperature is well above normal, and spreading fire around at the restaurant was unlikely to be appreciated.
“It’s okay! You might want to wear a jacket on days like today, though, to help stave off those winter colds.”
I eye Matt suspiciously, scanning his face and body language for any sign that he’s being sarcastic or questioning my alleged illness, but he looks open and relaxed.
He notices my stare and laughs. “Sorry, was that too much of a mother comment?”
“Heh. No, it’s fair. It’s just — B-Rock gave me a hard time about calling out, and I sort of expected you to, too.”
Matt shrugs. “If you can’t make it in, you can’t make it in. I don’t love having to juggle the schedule at the last minute, but it’s part of the job. At least you called the day before; morning of, hours or minutes before shift, is the more standard technique. Which I’m not advocating,” he adds hastily.
The Experiment (Book 2): Making Friends Page 3