Corrupts Absolutely?

by Peter Clines

  All of which was routine. Just about everything about Robert Hanover was routine. Only his delusions of power were exceptional. More precisely, the nature of his delusions set him apart, for Robert Hanover believed he could see exactly seven minutes and twenty-two seconds into the future.

  But not all the time.

  When he was calm, he would always qualify his claim.

  He couldn’t do it on command either. His premonitions came unbidden. They were violent and painful. They were like lightning, sudden and unpredictable. And when they did come, they left Hanover exhausted and frantic.

  Like now.

  Dr. Lange studied the man, remembering when Hanover had told him about his supposed visions. He had barely been able to contain his smile in fact. The fantasy was thoroughly banal and absolutely unoriginal, straight out of a Stephen King novel and half a dozen episodes of the Twilight Zone. It was such a tired conceit that Dr. Lange was less intrigued by the delusion itself than by the very precise timing involved.

  Seven minutes and twenty-two seconds.

  Exactly.

  But why that length of time?

  Dr. Lange expected Hanover to have some pat answer. A fragile ego like Hanover’s, one that believed itself superior to everyone else around it, should have had a ready retort to explain why that amount of time was important. But Hanover insisted he had no idea, and nothing in his history, and nothing in their sessions, offered any clues.

  Still, Dr. Lange knew there was something there. If there was a key to unlocking Robert Hanover’s condition, that odd length of time was it.

  Dr. Lange began cataloging the events Hanover claimed to have predicted, hoping that he might shed some light on the problem that way. Most of Hanover’s visions were insignificant and ultimately unverifiable. His mother running over a cat in front of their house. A bird flying into the kitchen window. His dog killing a squirrel in the backyard. With no way to prove those claims, Dr. Lange was forced to dismiss them.

  But there were some that could not be dismissed so easily.

  When he was nineteen, Hanover saved a three-year-old little girl from getting hit by a taxi. Half of the lunch crowd gathered on Boston Common had been there to witness his heroism.

  He’d once called 911 to report his elderly neighbor’s heart attack, which seemed to have just started when the ambulance arrived.

  He’d saved at least four people from drowning.

  He’d once pulled a woman from a burning shop on Boylston Street.

  Dr. Lange had the newspaper clippings for all of them. In fact, he’d been able to verify a total of forty-seven incidents where Robert Hanover had clearly saved another person’s life.

  For a time, the Boston Herald was calling him the Miracle Man.

  The news show 20/20 even did a segment on him.

  The man’s record was nothing short of incredible, and personally, Dr. Lange believed the media would have fallen head over heels in love with Robert Hanover if he hadn’t been such a self-absorbed prick. He was twenty-five, a good-looking guy, at least when he wasn’t acting like a raving lunatic, and fairly well-spoken. But he loved the adulation that came with saving lives.

  No, Dr. Lange thought, love wasn’t the right word.

  Robert Hanover’s motives were decidedly less pure than that.

  He craved adulation and fame like a glutton. He swam in it. Wallowed in it like a pig in slop. There was something greedy and repellent in the way he begged for praise and recognition, and people had a tendency to back away from him, sensing instinctively that there was something wrong with him. Dr. Lange had even caught himself doing it a time or two.

  The media, in an unusual example of discretion, marginalized him.

  And just like that, the greatest American hero turned into a zero.

  The predictable downward spiral of failed personal relationships and financial disasters that followed led Robert Hanover to the Paulsen Institute and to the ministrations of Dr. Lange. And Robert Hanover might have remained a pathetic, failed narcissist—at least to Dr. Lange—had he not made a fateful prediction during one of their sessions.

  “The man’s got poisonous shit!” Hanover had shouted as the orderlies dragged him away. “You have to listen to me!”

  They were in the hallway outside of the common room. Patients were milling about, but they all stopped and stared after the raving Hanover. When he was gone, they turned back to Dr. Lange, questions lingering in their drugged expressions.

  Dr. Lange smiled back at them, assuring them it was alright. Then he’d smiled at Ms. Reynolds, the stunningly gorgeous young nurse on watch at the time. In fact, his gaze lingered for a long moment on Ms. Reynolds. It was easy for the eye to linger on her. Even in baggy scrubs, her body made Dr. Lange’s mouth water.

  Suddenly, a patient stumbled out of the shadows. He was a middle-aged man in green pajamas. His eyes rolled crazily from side to side.

  “My bowels,” the man said. His voice had a tremulous quality, making him sound like some mad Baptist preacher calling forth hellfire and damnation. “It comes out of my bowels. My bowels!”

  As Dr. Lange and the gorgeous young Nurse Reynolds stared at the man, he reached into the seat of his pants and rooted around in the crack of his ass like he was digging clams out of the mud.

  Dr. Lange didn’t understand what was happening until he saw the clod of shit in the man’s hand.

  Then he remembered what Robert Hanover had said. The man’s shit was poisonous. Hanover had raved that the man was going to throw his feces into Dr. Lange’s mouth, and suddenly, Dr. Lange knew what he had to do. Beside him was an autistic woman with an intense fear of being touched. He stepped behind the woman, who in her bovine-like stupor had no chance of reacting.

  Bowel-Movement Man hurled his waste at the spot where Dr. Lange had just been standing. It splattered against the autistic woman’s face, bits of it landing in her mouth, in her eyes, up her nose.

  Late, shaken, but nonetheless convinced, he confronted Robert Hanover.

  “Your premonitions,” he’d said. “Everything you’ve told me indicates that they only concern life-threatening incidents. Having a handful of waste tossed in your face is disgusting, but it’s not life-threatening.”

  “It is a life-threatening matter,” Hanover had said. “That man is dying.”

  “But how do you know?”

  Hanover just stared at him, angry and bitter yet poignantly sad.

  Two days later, when a court-ordered test of Bowel-Movement Man’s blood came back positive for HIV, Dr. Lange finally understood the bullet he had just dodged. He started keeping a separate file on Hanover’s premonitions, one he nicknamed Cassandra, the young woman from The Iliad, who was destined to tell the future and cursed never to be believed.

  For Robert Hanover was such a figure, a latter-day Cassandra.

  From the moment Bowel-Movement Man hurled his clod of shit, Dr. Lange was sure of that. He believed, without reservation, that Robert Hanover could foretell the future.

  Yet Hanover was not credible and never would be. His status as nutcase prohibited any sane man from believing in him.

  It was a tough nut to crack.

  Still, Robert Hanover, the Miracle Man, had just saved his life.

  What was he to make of that?

  What would any sane man make of having his very own private oracle…and the intoxicating knowledge that he alone could control its fate?

  Hanover’s screams jarred Dr. Lange back into the moment. “For God’s sake, Gene! You have to believe me!”

  Dr. Lange smiled graciously. Then, he looked at his watch and was surprised that two full minutes had gone by. He had to hurry.

  Orderlies were banging at the door.

  Dr. Lange let them in.

  “It’s okay,” Dr. Lange said. “Everything’s fine. Just take him back to his room.”

  “Gene, please!”

  The orderlies ignored his sh
outs but were careful not to release the hold they had on him. “Any medications?” one of the orderlies asked.

  “Aprazolam ought to do it. Let him sleep it off.”

  The orderlies dragged Robert Hanover out of Dr. Lange’s office and down the hall, the man’s screams echoing into the recesses of the Paulsen Institute’s winding passageways. A lull settled over the patients in the common room. “It’s okay, everyone,” Dr. Lange said. He smiled and waved, and soon, the patients went back to their routines, milling about as though nothing at all had happened.

  A nurse came up to him.

  “What is it?” Dr. Lange said.

  “Doctor Pendergrass is on the phone for you, sir.”

  Dr. Lange grimaced. Wayne Pendergrass was the Paulsen Institute’s director of operations and, ostensibly, Dr. Lange’s boss.

  “Tell him I’ll call him back,” Dr. Lange said to the nurse.

  “But sir, he said it was urgent.”

  “It always is, Nurse—” he made a furtive glance towards the woman’s name tag, “Cowell. Unfortunately, I have somewhere I have to be. Tell him I’ll call him back.”

  And with that, Dr. Lange walked toward the stairs.

  He glanced at his watch. He had exactly three minutes and eighteen seconds to make it the gorgeous Nurse Reynolds’ new station on the second floor. Robert Hanover’s latest premonition had been of her and of the raving lunatic with the snapped-off broom handle who was about to bludgeon her beautiful, blonde head into a bloody mess.

  Dr. Lange had a life to save.

  He smiled, thinking how very appreciative the pretty young nurse was sure to be.

  Afterwards.

  Pride

  Wayne Ligon

  I was in line at the local Chinese buffet waiting for a free cashier when the robbery went down. They weren’t pros; that much was apparent right off. It’s just two of them, and they do way too much yelling and screaming. “Down on the floor! You move, you die!” That sort of thing. And of course, they’re robbing a Chinese buffet instead of a bank. Maybe they were working their way up to that.

  I squeezed the bridge of my nose. My therapist says it helps relieve tension. This was going to make me late back from lunch, and I’d probably get canned because of it. I did not get down on the floor. It was damp outside, and my left knee was giving me problems.

  Thug One stuck a gun against my head and screamed, “You a fuckin’ hero, man?”

  Well, as a matter of fact…

  Two seconds later, both of them were screaming like little kids as my telekinetic field flared up and clamped down, blue foxfire light flickering along their bodies. I twisted the guns around and into their mouths, forcing their fingers to stay on the triggers. They give off muffled screams as they go to their knees, fighting not to blow their own brains out. “Down on the ground!” shouted a Concerned Citizen of Detroit, pointing his Second Amendment penis substitute at me.

  “Do not pull that shit with me, Cornfed. I am not in the mood,” I said. “I’m regis—” BLAM! I go for my card, and apparently, it’s not slow enough, so Barney Fife shoots me. The bullet hits my reflex field, and there’s a little show as I bleed off its kinetic energy into waste light and heat. Then, I let it drop. He stammers, and I pretzel his gun before he shoots someone’s mom.

  I flash the bright red card since none of them will be able to tell it’s worthless. “Do Not Panic,” I say in a calm, steady voice. “I am a registered freelance law enforcement specialist. I am also off-duty. Can I please get some orange beef to go?”

  For once, things go my way, and the manager takes care of my food. The cops are there by then; I release the would-be robbers to them and avoid the looks the rookies give me. At twenty, I’m not old enough to join the force even if that was allowed, and I put away a good fifty or so guys like these before my license was placed “under review.” They didn’t know that though. I slip out the side door before I have to talk to one of the plainclothes. It’ll take too much time.

  It doesn’t much matter though because I’m still ten minutes late. I trot outside and push off from the sidewalk, the flickering light surrounding my body as I vault into the air. I wince at the sound of a fender-bender below. Another looky-loo whose inattention is going to make my metahuman tax (sorry, I mean “insurance”) go up another five bucks. I hopscotch over rooftops and drop down into an alleyway to wolf down cold orange beef and rice.

  It’s 12:13 when I go over the back fence of the construction area. Immediately, I pick up a pile of bricks and have the mass follow me like a dog. Calm, casual, just been around the back of the site and already diligently at—

  “I got my eye on you, Carmichael,” says a gravelly pack-a-day voice.

  “I know you do, Matt—Mr. Foster,” I correct hastily. I put on that neutral smile I’ve been cultivating and meet the man’s eyes square on. “Sorry, I was just looking for these for the facing. They need ‘em up on third.” Butter would not melt in my mouth.

  Foster’s left eye twitches, and I think this might be the day he goes for me. He likes to mess with me because he knows he can take me in a fair fight—powers aside, I’m just a skinny slacker kid—but if I hit back with my gift, I blow my probation and do life in Leavenworth for powers use on a normal. I keep the smile neutral. It does not move a millimeter.

  Foster’s boss saves about ten thousand a day using me as an illegal substitute for earthmovers and other machinery and their operators. My alpha-class gift means I can juggle I-beams if needed, but union rules were strictly pro-norm. No super-strength, no robots, no cyborgs, no alchemists, no teeks like me.

  Hundreds of class-action suits were still grinding their way through the legal system like huge paper glaciers along with all the other meta-rights legislation. We were people; wait, no, we were corporate property; no, we were classed as WMDs. In nine states, we could marry. In six, we were barred from coming within a hundred feet of any concentration of children. I could not eat from a salad bar in Rhode Island. Every school kid in Alabama was required to be tested for “genetic abnormalities” before the onset of puberty, when most metanormal gifts got a kick in the backside from the hormone stew and decided to manifest. Fear of just this kind of shit is why heroes wore masks for real before JFK convinced them otherwise.

  “Ask what you can do for your country,” my ass. In twenty years, I might be able to work legally somewhere. Probably flipping burgers ten at a time with my mind.

  Foster looks me over and walks off. I keep up the neutral smile until he’s out of sight. He’d love to bust my balls on general principles because I was everything he wasn’t—slim, young, able to get a date—but he got a bigger cut under the table than normal because of me, so he usually let it slide.

  I walk around to the side and stack the bricks. One of the Mexicans crosses himself, and I shake my head. I try to explain in halting Spanish that it’s just a talent like anything else, but he’s not having any of it. He spits out “brujah,” witch, and gets in the lift. I shrug and send the bricks up after him, ten at a time, to the third floor. He sends down a huge hawk of spit that I flick aside. I snap one of the bricks in half and then quarters with the strength of my mind, keeping my eyes on him. I give him the same smile I gave Foster. He pales and backs off into the interior, muttering curses.

  “Carmichael! Peterson wants you. Emergency,” comes over the loudspeaker. I leave the remainder of the bricks behind and bolt for the basement. Peterson isn’t someone to cry wolf, and he’s trying to get the plumbing into shape. I levitate down an open shaft and fly through the narrow maze of maintenance passages, dodging valve wheels and other workers. Most of them are heading the other way; a couple point the way, and I give them a nod as I blur past.

  I flash into a flooding basement room, and Bill Peterson screams at me, “Pressure valve is broken; this whole set of pipes is going to blow! Please, can you—” He’s cut off by the squeal of metal even as I reach out with my gift.

 
; I usually say it’s like a small electrical shock that keeps going, which is a barely adequate description of what it feels like to use my power at its peak. I reach out and clamp down on the entire assembly, letting my power permeate the metal into the rushing water behind it. I brace and strengthen the pipes from the inside and the outside, but the welds are not going to hold.

  My power flares out from me, light strobing gently around me like a fluorescent bulb about to go out. The room shakes. Some of the onlookers scream and run. Yeah, you better run, you monkeys. This is what an alpha-class gift is really like.

  Alpha-class or not, there’s nothing I can do. The whole assembly starts to break apart in my grip: substandard metal, faulty welds, parts forced to fit together that shouldn’t be within a hundred miles of each other. It all comes to a head. I throw Bill and two other guys out of the room and let go. The valves burst apart, and the pipes explode under the pressure, shards of metal flying out like spears shot from a gun. I sink waist-deep in water, nothing left to levitate myself, and throw up a shield across the entire length of the room. Shrapnel floats, caught in nothingness. Water surges and batters against a barely-visible, flickering blue wall. My eyes are glowing white by this point.

  I wave my hands like fucking Harry Potter and then make fists so tight my palms bleed. I know, intellectually, it doesn’t do a damn thing, but it helps my concentration. And that’s all that counts. Half of the room fills with water as the pressure eases, but then it starts to mount again. Shouts come from behind me.

  “Get everyone out! I can’t hold this for very long!” I yell, already hoarse. I start to back out, the wall sliding with me. I can hold the door better if the physical walls will hold. I send feelers out into the concrete and steel, sensing the weight of tons pressing down on them from above. The walls will hold at least. I back out, eyes closed, hands up and open. The sound of evacuating workers dies away. Slowly, I pull back on the wall, sliding it across the room and then contracting it until I’m just blocking the door. I can feel blood running down my face: nosebleed.