"He's no different here. He thinks the 'Elite' and the government caused Doomsday." Dennis grunted out a contemptuous snort. "Anyhow, I thought you should know how things are. The government might not take kindly to someone flying around."
"From what you're telling me, I might not take kindly to your government."
"Heh," said Dennis with a nervous-sounding laugh. "Well, you did say you have superpowers. Anything besides flying and telekinesis?"
"I'm a bit stronger than your average person." Jamie gave him a dry smile. "We can talk more about that when I come back."
"Do you want me to call your dad? Give him a little heads-up?"
Jamie hesitated. Did she want to surprise him? Maybe some warning might be a good idea.
"If you don't mind," she said. "But it won't be much of a heads-up. I'll probably be there in a few minutes."
"You fly that fast?"
"The first time I flew I incinerated my clothes."
Dennis peered at her uncertainly. "You're not joking?"
Jamie smiled and shook her head. "What's the name of his store and where in Duluth is it?"
"The Buckhorn. It's on Landmark Street near the water."
"Thank you."
"Jamie..." His jaw worked. "I'm glad you survived in at least one world."
"I feel the same way. And Dennis, please do not tell anyone about me or what's happening. It's important to keep this quiet until we know what we're up against and have a plan to deal with it."
"I understand, Jamie."
Kylee, wrapped in a scarf and winter coat, came bounding up through the snow. Her blue wool stocking cap nearly matched her shining blue eyes.
"Sorry," she said breathlessly. "I know you told me to wait inside, Dad, but you've been out here so long."
"That's okay, baby."
"I'm leaving for a while, Kylee," said Jamie. "Some things I need to take care of. But I'll be back."
They hugged – Jamie with practiced gentleness. Her daughter shivered, or had it been a sob?
"You promise you'll be back."
"I absolutely promise." Jamie gazed gravely down into Kylee's blue eyes. "Nothing on this planet can stop me from that, I promise."
When her daughter from this world released her, Jamie nodded once to Dennis and launched herself into the air.
The father and daughter stood staring upward, but all that was visible in the afternoon late-winter grey-blue winter sky was a triangular speck that might've been either a hawk or a drone.
"Is Mom a superhero, Dad?"
Dennis shaded his eyes. "I think so, honey." Or a goddess.
Chapter 2
FROM ON HIGH THE world looked pretty much the same. Dennis hadn't been exaggerating about the drones: they really were everywhere. Mostly Predator-sized – often employed by DARE in reconnaissance missions – but also lots of smaller bird or even insect-sized incarnations buzzing through the air. What were they all looking for? Hardly anyone was moving on the snow-covered fields and roads below.
But forty or fifty thousand feet up, the skies were clear. From there she dive-bombed Duluth, dropping down into a small cluster of trees across from a building with a logo of a drunk-looking deer on its front window. Lucky guess. Jamie doubted more than four or five minutes had passed since she'd left Dennis.
Jamie made herself cross the street with sedate steps while her body ached to fly straight to the double doors. She eased through the doors into a shop stuffed with hunting and fishing paraphernalia. Her father – a variant of her father – stood with his back to her behind a gun display counter, a cell phone pressed to one ear. She couldn't hear the words, but his scoffing, annoyed tone suggested Dennis was on the other end giving him the bizarre news.
Jamie walked up to the counter, feeling so light that she had to focus on not leaving the floor. Cal turned toward her, his smile of greeting locking up like gears on a rusty sprocket. His phone hand lowered slowly to his side, Dennis's voice cracking from the cell's speaker. Eventually, Cal raised the phone and said, "Sorry I doubted you, Dennis. She's here. Got to go."
He set the cell on the counter with a trembling hand. His face worked through a mix of conflicting emotions – joy, shock, fear, disbelief. Tears welled in his eyes. He started to speak but managed only a gargling sound.
"I'm sorry to just drop in on you like this," said Jamie. "I couldn't think of any easy way to do it."
Her dad cleared his throat – a sputtering small engine that wouldn't catch. He waved her with him around the counter and through a door into a storage room. He stopped there, bracing himself with both hands against a steel work shelf, back half-turned from her, his head lowered as he battled his emotions. Jamie wanted to touch him, to hold him, but she wasn't sure that would help.
"Dad..." She watched him double up at the word. "Sorry. You're not my dad...not exactly. How much did Dennis tell you?"
"You're from an alternate world. Not a lot else." He turned to face her, drawing a deep, steadying breath. "I like to think I'm open-minded – more than most – but I didn't believe him...even though I know Dennis is a straight-shooter."
"I know. I was just a simple math and science teacher at Grand Forks High. I was dying of pancreatic cancer. Then this black cylinder smacked down on our land, and everything changed."
"You were dying."
"Yes. But what we came to call The Object saved me. It dispensed some form of a synthetic virus that made me and many others vastly stronger, resistant to disease and trauma. From what we could tell, our place – and I – were ground zero. The virus spread, infecting people with various what our government called 'augmented abilities.'" She summoned a shaky smile. "You tried out and made the Minnesota Timberwolves with your enhanced physical abilities."
He grunted out a skeptical chuckle. "One of my fantasies. How did that go?"
"Great, until everyone else started developing augmented abilities."
"Just my look." Cal's smile drifted away. "This is real, Jamie?"
"It's real."
"Please don't be offended, but I'm going to need some proof."
"Turn around."
Cal turned. And gasped. Every object in the room now rested on the ceiling.
"Oh, man," he said. "What Fringe episode did I step into?"
Jamie caused the room's contents to settle back to the floor. "I don't know. I never watched that show."
"How much weight can you move?"
"Our scientists measured telekinetic force as they would explosive force. They estimated that I could generate around 8 – 12 megatons."
"When you say 'megatons,' you mean as in a megaton nuclear bomb?"
"Yes."
Cal slumped in a threadbare computer chair by a computer station with a huge bulky CRT monitor that had to be fifteen years old. He smoothed back his equally threadbare hair and massaged his temples.
"As I said, I'm open-minded. Some might even say to the point of my brains dropping out. But this is too much, Jamie."
Jamie basked in the warm glow of her "alternate father" calling her by her name. "Why don't we skip past me, then? Let's talk about your world."
"My world is fucked. If you'll forgive my lower Latin."
"Dennis told me about Doomsday and the changes after it."
"What he didn't tell you is that Doomsday was a false flag."
With a great effort, Jamie resisted rolling her eyes or sighing. "Like 9/11?"
"I saw that look." He laughed. "It's one I'm used to seeing from you. My Jamie was a bit skeptical about my theories."
"They probably all are."
"I like to think that in at least some world I convinced my daughter to see the light."
"Well, to be fair, you were right about some things. For example, our government was hiding the truth about aliens."
"A-ha! I knew it!"
"But the whole committing atrocities against American citizens thing..." She gave him a firm headshake. "Not buying that."
"What did the autho
rities do when this alien object started spreading super powers? Did they try to stop it? Did they make up some cover story?"
"They tried both at first. But then President Morgan decided to tell the truth to the American people."
"Morgan? Robert Ulysses Morgan?"
"Yes. I'm guessing he's not the president here."
"No. He's the governor of Nevada. Assuming he's not another Robert Ulysses Morgan. And why would you guess he's not the president here?"
"Because he's a good man. He shot down suggestions to do nasty stuff to the civilians like detention camps and he decided to level with the American people. I don’t know exactly what's going on here, but all this Orwellian crap tells me that your government isn't leveling with you. I must've seen a hundred drones in the sky over this state alone. What are they looking for? Didn't North Korea and Iran attack you, not American citizens."
"Funny how foreign terrorist attacks always lead to American citizens losing more rights."
"It didn't work that way in my world."
"From what I can tell, our Morgan is a decent guy. I can't say the same thing for President Tomlinson. She isn't even a guy."
"I've never heard of her."
"Loretta Tomlinson was a U.S. senator who came out of nowhere, running on an anti-war, anti-corruption platform. She said the surveillance state had gotten out of hand and she promised to rein it in. People were tired of our 'nation-building' and she promised to make America first – to concentrate on our problems here at home. She claimed to represent the 'little people, the average working Jill and Joe' while coming from one of America's richest families. She won by a landslide. But then Doomsday happened and she reversed her positions on everything. Now we're occupying Iran and North Korea on top of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. And corrupt business and warmongering kingpins occupy key positions in her administration, while the national security state is off the charts."
Jamie didn't want to get involved in a political debate, but she had to know what was happening on this world. However skeptical she might be of her dad's theories, he was giving her valuable information.
"I don't know the details about Doomsday," she said. "But I can see how being brutally attacked by a foreign power could make you change your mind about a lot of things."
"And the military-industrial complex got its wish-list delivered. A little too convenient, in my opinion."
"So you think North Korea didn't detonate an EMP nuke and Iran didn't release a 'weaponized' Ebola virus?"
"Nope. North Korea couldn't even launch a missile a few hundred miles without dropping it in the ocean. And Iran didn't have any labs sophisticated enough to produce a virus of that type."
"I worked for the U.S. Government – I knew the President and many of his closest aides personally – and I can assure you, Dad, it wasn't conspiring to harm American citizens in my world. Pretty much everyone was working as hard as they could to protect people under difficult if not near-impossible circumstances."
"In what capacity did you work for the government?"
"I worked for the Department of Augmented Regulation and Enforcement." Jamie smiled, waiting for his incredulous stare, which arrived on cue. "I was a member of Team One, Division of Interdiction and Enforcement. An elite unit tasked with handling super-powered criminals."
Cal shook his head in slow wonder. "My own baby girl a federal agent. You even talk like one."
Jamie's chuckle sounded strained. "I never really thought of myself that way, but I can see how what I did wore off on me."
"It makes sense that criminals with superpowers would need some special attention. How did that go?"
"It was tough, but we did okay, I think. I worked with quite a crew..." She was surprised by a wave of nostalgia as she recalled her former team members. "I'm going to need help here, too."
"Against the aliens?"
"Yes."
"What are they like, and what exactly are they trying to accomplish?"
"They call themselves the 'Elementals.' They're related genetically to us, and they look like us – unless that was an illusion. On my world they'd sentenced us to death because we supposedly represent some terrible future threat to the universe. We managed – only barely – to convince them not to kill us."
"Convince? By threatening to destroy them with your superpowers?"
"I guess you could say we used our superpowers to get into a position of talking them out of it."
"You must be leaving a few things out, Jamie, because this isn't quite adding up. I assume some group of aliens sent this 'object' that gave you all superpowers?"
"Right. Sorry, it's a bit tangled, but there was one group within the Elementals who disagreed with their death-sentencing policy. They covertly helped us by sending the Object."
"A resistance group?"
"Right."
"And it worked."
"Yes. Though kind of indirectly." Jamie shrugged in response to his raised eyebrows. "It's a long story."
The front doors chimed. Cal rose from his computer chair.
"I'm gonna close the store for the rest of the day," he said. "Just give me a second."
Jamie heard him chat briefly with someone he obviously knew and then the clinking of deadbolts before he bustled back into the storage room.
"Are you hungry? I have next to nothing in my fridge. Why don't I take you somewhere to eat?" He gave her an uncertain smile. "Assuming you do eat."
"I can eat and drink, and I still enjoy it, but I don’t need to."
"Where do you get your energy?"
"The sun. Other ambient energy sources, too, but mostly the sun. I know it's a cliché, but..." She shrugged.
"But it's kind of reassuring." Cal smiled. "Let's sneak out back through my apartment. I'm not quite ready to explain you to anyone yet."
Jamie had only a glimpse of her dad's apartment – the usual mountain of dishes in the dish rack, the dusty counters and shelves, the lack of décor that cried "clueless bachelor – before they exited into an alley next to a green dumpster and a rusty white pickup.
"Your chariot awaits," he said.
His pickup coughed rheumatically to life. Jamie thought how Terry Mayes would make short work of its problems. He was definitely on her shortlist of people she wanted to contact here, along with Kevin and Karen Clarkson, Greg "the Hulk" Horner and his friend, Jake, and Matilda "Tildie," of course. Basically everyone on Team One. And...she resisted the inevitable flash of longing...Zachary. Just for his possible Washington connections, of course.
"I'm going to drive to somewhere a bit out of town," said Cal. "That way we're not as likely to run into someone I know."
"I'm glad you're thinking that way, Dad. Cal..." She noted his rueful nod. "I want to keep a low profile until I've decided on a course of action."
"Do you have any ideas about what you're going to do?"
"I'm thinking of starting with the people in my Team One. With any luck, their exposure to me will trigger the same superpower effects."
"That's how this alien virus is spread? Just by being around someone?"
"It's airborne. A sneeze or cough or probably just breathing around another person."
"So I'm going to be infected?"
"I think so."
"In theory."
Cal rubbed his jaw. "Can I expect to have the same abilities?"
"I don't know. But in my world, it happened in a couple of days, so we should know soon – "
A siren cut her off. She twisted to see a dark red vehicle that looked half-van, half-armored vehicle, lit up by a pulsing orange roof light that made Jamie shield her eyes.
"Oh, shit," her alternate dad whispered.
"What is that thing?" Jamie asked.
""TSA Highway Patrol Division." He eased his pickup to the side of a residential street. "Oh, shit..."
"What?"
"This old bucket's transponder is out of date – as of two weeks ago. I forgot to file the renewal, damn it."
"Transponder?"
"All vehicles are required to have them."
He clamped his mouth shut in a disgusted scowl as a man in a gray uniform bearing the circular TSA logo familiar to Jamie from her world – though the eagle more resembled a vulture. Cal rolled down the window.
"Afternoon, Officer."
"Your transponder registration is expired," the TSA agent stated.
"Yes, sir."
The officer raised a square device Jamie guessed was either a portable computer or a scanning device. A frown creased his jowly middle-aged face.
"Your companion's Internal ID is malfunctioning or missing," he said.
"Uh, well...you sure your scanner is functioning?"
"I downloaded all your information without a problem. I'm getting nothing from her." He lowered the device and fixed Jamie with a stern gaze. "Do you have any hard ID, ma'am?"
"No."
Jamie's cool voice drew an even sterner gaze from the TSA cop. He took a step back, his right hand dropping to the weapon at his side.
"Then I'm afraid I'm going to need to place you under arrest. Please step out of the vehicle."
"Officer, please, this is all a misunderstanding," said Cal. "I'm sure your scanner is just malfunctioning."
"Maybe so, but secondary ID is legally required –"
The scanner in his hand started spewing smoke. The officer stared at it in disbelief before flinging it to the ground. Cal gawked at the melting device along with the TSA cop until he glanced at Jamie and noted her cold eyes.
"Uh, see, Officer," he said. "It was malfunctioning, after all."
"I'm still going to need to take her in and confirm that."
"Why? It's obviously just a defective scanner."
"Regardless –"
Smoke started rising from the TSA van's hood, first in thin tendrils and then in thick, curly streamers. The officer grunted in shock.
"We need to clear the area," he said, stumbling away onto someone's front lawn. "This could be a terrorist attack."
"No problem, Officer. We'll be on our way."
Super World Two Page 2