Only Superhuman

by Christopher L. Bennett

  “Do you know? How do you know? He was, he was so … broken and, and it was all bleeding out and I felt things squish in him! I’m sorry, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to, I just got so angry! I didn’t know he’d break so easy! I only wanted him to take it back, Mommy!”

  “Take what back, love?” Her voice was the most beautiful sound Emry had ever heard. Every night that voice sang her to sleep, made her feel safe and loved. Sometimes she thought she remembered being tiny, still small enough to be carried in Mommy’s arms, and hearing that sweet, soft sound as she was rocked back and forth. And even here, even now, that voice was so gentle, so forgiving. It made her feel like everything was all right. But she knew it wasn’t.

  “What he said.”

  “Did he insult you?” Daddy asked.

  “No, he—” Emry didn’t want to repeat it.

  Daddy knelt closer. She was already big enough to be eight or nine—Sean was nine—but he was big too and had to kneel pretty far. “Emry, tell us from the beginning. The whole story, okay?”

  So she told them. Starting at the beginning was easier. The kids on the block had decided to play Annie Minute and the Time Trippers. Emry asked if they’d let her play Annie this time, but they never let her play Annie, or Millie Second, or even one of the Groupie Gang who carried the Time Trippers’ instrument/weapons. When they let her play at all, she always had to be a Zelkoid or a Neanderthal or a Mega-Golem. They never even let her be one of the cool bad guys, like Kali or Tyranno Sora. Sean always got to be Ringo Planett, and he always blew Emry up with a cymbal mine the first chance he got, and she had to spend the rest of the game being dead.

  “So I got tired of that, and I asked them why they never let me be Annie or Millie or anyone but a monster. And, and Sean said it’s because I was a monster.”

  “Oh, Emry,” Mommy said. “We’ve been through this before, right? You know not to listen.”

  “But that wasn’t it. He said, he said Daddy was a freak who … who should never have been born.” She was embarrassed to repeat it. “And then … and then he said I’d never have been born either if … if you hadn’t been such a … someone who’d marry anybody.”

  Mommy caught what she tried to hide. “Emry, love, what did he say? Such a what?”

  “He called you a slut! He said you were dirty! He had no right to say that about you, Mommy! I couldn’t let him get away with it! So I…”

  Emry stopped when she saw the look in Mommy’s eyes. The look of horror and shame that Sean was in the hospital because of her. Emry broke down in tears. She’d wanted Mommy to be disappointed in her, in Emry—not in herself.

  * * *

  Richard and Lyra strove to contain their anger and sadness at the prejudice their neighbors still showed them after seven years. It was more important, they knew, to help their little girl make peace with her own power. Richard began giving her martial-arts instruction, seeking to pass on the discipline and emotional balance it had brought him. But she was an intense, impatient child. Because her mind was so quick, her body so energetic, she was always eager to race on to the next thing. Learning stillness and slowness was a labor. Only her fear of her own strength and her determination to tame it kept her focused.

  But Emry needed more. She needed role models that could help her deal with both her power and the prejudice of others—something she couldn’t get from the mindless action of Annie Minute or the violent Striders-and-Earthers games of her peers. But Richard and others like him had faced the same need for role models, finding them in the imaginative literature of the past: Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Cyborg Corps, Lady M. Characters born or endowed with exceptional power they hadn’t sought, often struggling with their inner demons or with a world that hated and feared them, often making terrible mistakes that would take a lifetime to atone for—but always choosing to dedicate their power to the good of others, to the defense of truth, justice, freedom, and life. Richard and Lyra read these classic stories with their daughter, discussed their ideas and themes with her, kept her engaged and delighted as they pursued a solemn purpose together.

  But the fiction was not enough for Emry, to whom superpowers were an everyday reality. She craved to learn if such mighty heroes had existed in real life. Her parents told her about the ninjas of legend who had defended commoners from noblemen’s abuses, creating a mystique around themselves with disguise and deft illusions; about Muslim women who’d used their veiled anonymity for protest and resistance, smuggling everything from literature to weapons to cameras under their hijab; about masked Mexican luchadores who’d used their glamorous secret identities as a platform for speaking against state corruption without fear of retaliation; about eccentrics who’d organized their own online communities of “real-life superheroes,” usually just playacting but sometimes promoting social causes or deterring minor crimes in their own ways. And Emry already knew about the so-called Troubleshooters and watched their exploits on the news with great excitement. But none of these satisfied her curiosity; she wanted to hear about people like her, and like her father. And this was when Richard grew abashed, while Lyra pressed him to tell Emry about her grandparents.

  “It started when humans began to live in space,” he told her once he finally gave in. “They couldn’t survive its radiation without gene therapy to let their DNA repair itself. They couldn’t heal or grow well in low gravity without enhancements to their stem cells. But Earth was running out of things they needed for technology, like helium and rare metals. So they had to live in space to get them.”

  “So?” Emry shrugged. “They could just mod themselves.”

  “Earth had laws against that. People were worried about how genetic engineering could be abused. A lot of the time, people think it’s better not to try something at all if there’s a chance it can be dangerous.”

  “That’s dumb,” Emry said from where she sat on the living room rug. “Just be careful when you use it!”

  “That’s right—if you’re careful, you can do a lot of good with power. And that’s what people like the Vanguardians figured out. At first, once people accepted that they had to live in space, they just made the minimum mods they needed to survive. But once a generation of people had grown up in space with those basic mods, some of them began to wonder how much further they could enhance themselves. They figured out that the same stem cell boosts that helped them heal in low gravity could be adjusted to make their bones and muscles stronger in normal gravity, like on Earth or in the bigger habitats they were building by then. Their gene repair could make them live longer and get sick less. Their eye implants to filter sunlight could be tweaked to give them better vision. And so on. Vanguard was one of the first habitats that started trying it. And they snatched up the best geneticists and nanotechnologists to help them.”

  “And they made you?”

  “You could say that, since those scientists included my mom. She and my dad had themselves changed, and after a few years, when they were confident it was okay, they had me, and I inherited their mods. And when I was old enough, I agreed to let them make some further mods in me.”

  “And then I got them from you!”

  “That’s right, though they look a lot prettier on you.”

  She giggled. “Oh, shut up. So when did they start being superheroes?”

  “Well, it was around then that the effects of Earth’s climate change were being felt the most. A lot of places that are water now used to have people living in them. Hundreds of millions of people were displaced from their homes. And many more were suffering from huge storms and famines.”

  “Didn’t they just move to space?”

  “A lot of them did, eventually. But the institutions that could’ve arranged it weren’t working too well for a while. See, the Molecular Revolution was in full swing by then, and it changed how people lived their lives. Before, they couldn’t recycle everything or harvest any resources they needed from the soil or oceans, and they didn’t have three
-D printers and bioprinters to make anything they wanted. So their old economic systems were based on scarcity, and on people having to work to find resources and make things. So after the Revolution, a lot of jobs were lost, and people didn’t know what to do with their lives or how to make their economies and societies work again. A lot of governments and institutions fell apart, and people got angry and desperate, and, well…”

  “Yeah,” Emry said quietly. “I know what happens when people get too angry.”

  “If they don’t know how to manage it,” Lyra amended.

  “But the Vanguardians—mostly a man named Eliot Thorne, who was the most successful mod of your grandparents’ generation—made a decision. They had all these gifts that made them stronger and faster and quicker to heal, so they should use them to help people down on Earth. They knew it was a risk to flout the laws against mods, but they believed it would be selfish not to do what they could.”

  “Did they wear costumes to protect their secret identities?” Emry asked him, excited.

  “Umm, afraid not, jewel. In real life there are too many ways to see through a mask, or to track people’s movements and find where they came from. And grown-ups on Earth didn’t usually take flashy costumes too seriously. The Vanguardians had a hard enough time winning people over as it was. A lot of folks thought they were just another bunch of troublemakers.”

  “Humph. Like J. Jonah.” She stuck out her tongue.

  “Kinda, yeah. Or Senator Kelly.”

  “Did anyone send Sentinels to get them?”

  “Not as such. But there were people who tried to arrest them or make them look bad.”

  Lyra interrupted. “But there were just as many people who thought they were heroes, who admired their courage.” She paused. “And their sacrifice.”

  Emry’s huge green eyes grew wider with alarm. “Sacrifice?”

  Richard hesitated to tell her, but they’d never been dishonest with their little girl. “Yes, jewel. That’s … why you don’t have a grandpa on my side. He … he gave his life to save a whole lot of people from a bomb.”

  Emry was quiet for a while and shed some tears. But Richard sensed it was a fairly abstract emotion, since she’d never met either of her Vanguardian grandparents. “And Grandma Rachel?”

  “She’s still around.” He sensed she’d need an explanation for her absence from their life. “But, well … after a while, things stabilized with help from the cislunar nations, and Earth started shipping the worst troublemakers out to the Belt. If they couldn’t get along with others, then they could go off to their own little worlds and live however they wanted, so long as they left other people alone.”

  Emry mulled it over. “That sounds fair.”

  “Well, the Striders didn’t think so. But that’s another story. Anyway, once things were more or less peaceful again, the Vanguardians started trying to get into politics and business, trying to help rebuild society. But now that people weren’t so scared anymore, they … didn’t think they needed the Vanguard as much.”

  Emry saw through the euphemism. “They only liked them when they needed them. Then they hated them ’cause they were different. Just like Greenwooders.”

  “No, honey,” said Lyra, “it’s more than that. The Vanguard lived up in space. If they wanted to, they could attack Earth just by dropping rocks on it. A lot of people on Earth had reason to be afraid of being dominated by people who lived in orbit. And when those people were getting stronger and smarter and tougher than they were, they couldn’t help but be afraid.”

  “And to be honest,” Richard said, “Thorne and some of the others didn’t try that hard to be good neighbors, like we do. They started talking like they should be the ones in charge, because they were better qualified.”

  “Well, weren’t they?”

  “Maybe, but it wasn’t for them to decide. It was up to the people.”

  “Remember, honey,” Lyra added, “a big part of responsibility is knowing when not to use your power.” Emry nodded, having learned that lesson very well.

  “And it wasn’t all the Vanguardians’ fault,” Lyra went on. “There were other mod habitats that were pushier or had more dangerous ideas about how to treat Earth people. And there were Earth nations who overreacted to the danger from space, who tried too hard to control things in orbit and in the Belt colonies through money or threats.”

  “That’s why Thorne and the others wanted to be in charge. They thought if they could run things both on Earth and in orbit, they could keep the fighting from getting out of hand.”

  “But they didn’t,” Emry said, her huge eyes solemn. “There was a war.”

  Richard nodded. “By trying to control things, Thorne’s people just turned both sides against them. They made Earth more afraid of domination by the mods overhead, and they made the mods more afraid of losing control of their own homes. So both sides got angrier and started fighting. The Belt got dragged into it too because of their own issues with Earth. Everyone knew it could get horribly out of hand—how easy it would be to drop an asteroid on Earth and devastate the planet. And everyone knew Earth had orbital weapons that could retaliate if that ever happened. But they were caught in a spiral of mistrust and…”

  “Richard.” Lyra’s voice was as gentle as the brush of her cool hand across his, but it got through to him. As precocious as Emry was, there was no sense scaring her with the details of how close humanity had come to cataclysmic war.

  “Well, let’s just say people almost lost control of their power in a very bad way. But there were good people on both sides, including Vanguardians and some of the first Troubleshooters, who stopped them from making a terrible mistake. And once people saw what had almost happened, they knew they had to find a better answer. That was the Great Compromise: Earth got to be in charge of everything inside Luna’s orbit, in exchange for the Belt getting its independence. And all the habitats in Earth orbit that didn’t want to live under Earth’s government would move to the Belt.”

  He sighed. “And that included Vanguard. Even though they’d helped make the peace and saved countless lives, people on both sides still didn’t trust them. They got convinced that the best thing for everyone was if they went away to the Belt.”

  “But they were still superheroes, right?” Emry asked. “Did they team up with the Troubleshooters?” Emry frowned, puzzled, as Richard closed off. He knew he’d failed to hide his anger from her. “Daddy?”

  “Let’s just say … Thorne and the others decided to stay in their room and sulk. They figured people had been ungrateful at Earth, so they wouldn’t be any different in the Belt. So they moved their habitat way out to the Outers, even farther than Greenwood. And when all the new independent nations and immigrant habs in the Belt started fighting … well, they decided not to help.”

  “What?! Don’t they know anything about being superheroes? It’s not about what you get out of it! You do it because people need you!”

  Richard beamed at his daughter and took her in his arms. “Ohh, punkin, I’m so proud of you. And I agree with you. I … I couldn’t fight in the war or the troubles that followed. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. But I had to go and help where I could, to do rescue work and stuff.” He sighed. “The others didn’t want me to go. Thorne wanted us to live on our own, build a separate society where nobody would bother us or hurt us. He could be incredibly persuasive.”

  “Did Grandma Rachel want you to go?”

  He hesitated. What could he tell his daughter? That his mother had cared more about her research than her son? That she’d hardly even seemed to notice when he left? “She … was very dedicated to Thorne’s dream. But she didn’t try to stop me from doing what I thought was right.” It was the closest he’d ever come to lying to his child.

  Emry got that storytelling gleam in her eye. “Once they were heroes,” she intoned. “Now they’ve given up and are hiding from the world. But one man carries on their legacy. It’s Super-Daddy!” They laughed and fell togeth
er in a mock-wrestling match. “And I’m your sidekick, the Emerald Blaze!”

  “Ohh! The Emerald Blaze! Look, there she goes, streaking across the sky!” And he lifted his girl up and flew her around the room.

  August 2098

  It was a bright, warm day, a milder emulation of the summer back on Earth, and Emry had been making the most of it, engaged in her favorite sport: chasing boys. Due to her “unfair advantages,” the Greenwooders rarely let her play any other sport, except under frustrating restrictions. Generally the only person she got to engage with in athletic contests was her father, who still guided her in the martial arts and still played superheroes with her.

  But these days she was getting more interested in the games she could play with teenage boys—particularly since she had a decided advantage here as well. Even though the boys that interested her were older than her thirteen years, their parents had kept them in the dark about sex. Emry’s parents had considered it more responsible to give her a solid grounding in sexuality before it became an issue in her life. And since this game wasn’t being played under adult supervision, she felt free to exercise her advantage.

  Her physical precociousness gave her another edge, for her breasts had reached full size already; indeed, for a while she’d wondered if they would ever stop growing. Emry wondered where these heavy round orbs had come from, since her mother had such dainty, tapered breasts. From the neck up, she was unmistakably her mother’s daughter, except for her heavier chin and Shannon coloring. But her body couldn’t have been more different. Emry had gone through a phase in which she’d felt bulky and awkward, but now that she’d grown into her strong, mesomorphic frame and voluptuous curves, she’d come to delight in her differences from Lyra. She loved to show off with scanty tops, often lifting or shedding them for the boys who gawked at her. Their reactions when she flashed them were hilarious, especially when they pretended to be properly prudish and uninterested while trying desperately to get a good peek through their fingers. It was even more fun when they ran and she could literally chase them. Of course she could overtake them easily, and they were usually glad to be caught, even when they were terrified. Unfortunately, she hadn’t yet snagged anyone willing to go past second base. Despite their fascination, they were intimidated by her strength and her greater understanding of things that were still mysteries to them.