All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault

by James Alan Gardner

  This discovery made me wonder about other aspects of my powers. Like how small could I go?

  ALOUD I SAID, “MY SHRINKING HAS NO LIMIT.”

  Then I proved it.

  THE EXPERIMENT WENT SHAKY AS BROWNIAN MOTION KICKED IN

  Brownian motion happens because of imbalances in the random movements of molecules, like if a trillion molecules in the air hit you from the right side, but a trillion and ten hit you from the left. Slight differences like that happen every millisecond, but they have no effect when you’re a gazillion times the mass of those extra ten molecules. On the other hand, if you’re small, those differences in impacts can make you jiggle. (Have a look at dust motes in water; you’ll see them dancing.)

  I did indeed get small enough to jitter like a flea on a vibrator. Getting battered by all those molecules didn’t hurt a bit. I was still as hard as stone and couldn’t feel the tiny smacks. Their effects on Spark-o-Vision were more of a problem; if I kept my viewpoint centered in my eyes, my perception shook as badly as I did. I had to shift my viewpoint out of my body and position it on some external point. That stabilized what I saw. My body continued to bounce, but since I couldn’t feel it and it didn’t affect my senses, it made no difference.

  I SHRANK

  And shrank.

  And shrank.

  I could have tried to shrink instantly to the size of a quark, but I was being hypercautious. I’m in geology, not physics, and my knowledge of quantum mechanics is limited to a couple of lectures in first-year chemistry. Beyond that, my notions of quantum weirdness are hazy. I knew the world worked differently down at nano-scale, and I had no idea if I might suddenly get sucked into another universe, ripped apart by quantum forces, or turned into a Kim-shaped black hole.

  I came close to chickening out and growing back to normal. The reason I didn’t was that I was sure it would establish my lower bound forever: “This far but no farther.” So I pressed on slowly, through ever-diminishing scales, until I was too small for visible light. (Once you’re tiny enough, you can’t reflect light because its wavelength is so big in comparison. Essentially, you fall between the electromagnetic cracks; the waves slop around you rather than bouncing off. It’s the same reason long waves like radio go through solid objects as if the objects weren’t there.)

  My Spark-o-Vision adapted, moving into smaller wavelengths, but always letting me see my surroundings … which were increasingly more unrecognizable. I was still in the basement bathroom, nominally on floor tiles, but really inside a dust speck that had become electrostatically attracted to me when I was bigger and had swallowed me when I got small enough. The speck was biological, but don’t ask me what it was. Some ridiculous percentage of dust is either flakes from human skin or feces from tiny critters. All I saw were long-chain molecules and fast-moving geometric blobs. I was just starting to make out individual atoms when suddenly the light changed.

  THE WORLD WENT ZEBRA

  Interference patterns sprang up on everything I saw: shimmering lines of black and white wherever I looked. I thought I’d passed some size threshold that conflicted with my Spark-o-Vision, but to make sure, I tried growing back bigger. The zebra pattern persisted: moiré on every molecule. Even on my own stony skin.

  I grew more, but the effect refused to go away. All right, I thought, I could still keep shrinking; I haven’t hit a limit. But I’d better check the normal-sized world to see if anything needs my attention.

  Slam! I shot up, to almost full height. But I held back a titch so I’d stay rock instead of flesh. If something weird was afoot, I wanted to be impervious.

  I saw no threat in the bathroom, but the lighting seemed odd—infected by some color that shouldn’t be there. Cautiously, I sent my viewpoint through the closed door, up the basement stairs, and into the kitchen.

  Ah. Oh.

  I COULD SEE THE OUTSIDE WORLD THROUGH THE KITCHEN WINDOWS

  The stars were still in place, but the stellar background had changed. Previously, it had been an unexceptionable black; now the empty sky displayed the zebra pattern I’d seen at molecular scale. The pattern was dim, like when I turned down the brightness of my computer screen so faint I could barely see it, but the pattern persisted across the entire sky.

  I moved my viewpoint outside the house and high enough to clear the rooftops. I could see the stars, and the full moon climbing, but everything was set against that faint black-and-white background.

  AS I WATCHED, SNOW BEGAN TO FALL

  There were no clouds for the snow to come from. Nothing blocked my view of the stars. But the snow fell anyway: big flakes drifting down sedately.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. Every write-up about the eclipse had said perfect viewing conditions, no clouds. The weather forecasts might have been wrong, but this had violation of natural law written all over it.

  I RAN UP TO MY ROOM

  At the last second before going through the door, I realized I was still in slightly shrunken rock-form. I stopped and grew one more millimeter, changing back to flesh; then I threw the door open and said, “Jools, what do you see outside?”

  She glanced out the window. “It’s snowing.”

  “What color is the sky?”

  She gave me a look. I said impatiently, “I don’t see normally anymore. What color?”

  “Uhh…” She went to the window. “The sky is black. Well, grayish—the city lights reflect off the clouds.”

  “You see clouds?”

  “Yes. Don’t you?”

  “No.” I scowled. “I wish I knew which one of us was seeing the truth.”

  Jools laughed. “See, this is the fun of being a Spark: when things go shit-ass crazy and you can’t tell if it’s you.”

  “Yeah, I’m loving it.” I glared out the window. “This snow is a very bad sign.”

  “Of course it is,” Jools said, way too cheerfully. “Epic shit is hitting the fan! Four n00b Sparks are all that stand between the world and destruction!”

  “Why does it have to be world destruction?” I asked. “Why can’t we start small? Like rescuing kittens from trees. I could totally rescue a kitten from a tree.”

  “How? Your powers are shrinking and not seeing normally. You suck for rescuing kittens.”

  “I’d say, ‘Miranda, please rescue that kitten.’ Miranda likes me; she’d do it. And that, my dear Ninety-Nine, is what we call teamwork.”

  “Speaking of teamwork,” Jools said, “I’m trying to make your damned costume. Go away and let me work.”

  I LEFT

  And for the better part of an hour, I parked myself on the couch and did what I do best: I studied.

  Specifically, I started filling the gaps in my knowledge of Sparks. I knew the basics like anyone else, but had never dug down into details.

  Not that there were a lot of details. Oh, it was easy to find flashy stuff: photos of fights and stuff like that. But only a handful of Sparks were out in a public way. Few ever talked to the press, and they almost never breathed a hint about their private lives.

  Instead, what we got were fantasies. Fiction was full of Sparks, just as it was full of spies and private investigators. Everyone knows the life of a spy is nothing like James Bond, and private eyes don’t solve locked-room murders—they take grotty pictures of cheating wives and husbands. I suspected the stories about Sparks were equally inflated and inaccurate. There might be hundreds of books about what super-people did in their civilian lives, but they all sounded like, well, wish fulfillment.

  I pressed on, reading at random: about heroes and villains, cosmic and street level, quasi-gods and Mad Geniuses.

  I read about Grandfather.

  I read about the Inventor.

  I read about Stonewall, the only hit on Google when I searched for “genderqueer Sparks.” (No good photos, but I liked the “stone” part.) Then I started reading Wikipedia articles on mineral-based Sparks (including that douchebag Diamond who’d preempted my name) until Jools’s voice spoke inside my head
: «Yo, Zirksie, time to come back to Zircon Central. Let’s see if this costume fits.»

  WHEN I GOT BACK TO MY ROOM, JOOLS GESTURED TOWARD THE BED

  She’d laid out an outfit on it. The shirt I recognized: a plain white one I’d pulled from the men’s rack at Value Village. Everything else was unfamiliar … except something about the pants … their fabric …

  I suddenly laughed. The pants had been made from the white lab coat I’d been forced to buy for first-year chemistry. I’d forgotten I owned it; Jools must have found it stuffed in a dresser drawer. I was surprised the coat had had enough fabric for a pair of trousers; then again, Jools might have cut up her own coat too. Both were the same tough cloth, and I could imagine how much satisfaction Jools would get from destroying her coat. She’d hated that class.

  One thing for sure: Jools was a kickass seamstress. The pants looked elegant, not hacked together from pieces of something else. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have guessed they were new from some upscale store. Then again, maybe this was some of that “plausible deniability” Grandfather had talked about. If you could argue that a good seamstress might have made a nice pair of pants from those lab coats, maybe the Light would bend reality to produce something slick.

  Next to the pants lay a white silk vest. It was Miranda’s; I’d seen her wear it. But beside the vest was a white frock coat, and I hadn’t a clue where it came from. It was a sweet morning jacket with tails that would hang low on me, maybe all the way down to my ankles.

  Put the whole ensemble together and it was fit for a cross-dressing bride at a wedding: shirt, tie, vest, tails, all in brilliant white. There were even white gloves, a white leather belt, a white bow tie, and a white silk top hat.

  I said, “Where did you get all this stuff?”

  “Vest, tie, and belt are Miranda’s,” Jools said. “The coat is Shar’s—at some point in her travels, she was apparently a cricket umpire. Who knew? But I can totally picture her ordering cricket players around. Anyway, cricket umpires wear white jackets. Considering the difference in your sizes, I had enough extra cloth to make tails. The gloves are Shar’s too; she has, like, a dozen pairs, going back to when she was a kid, so that pair should fit you. I got the top hat myself at Oktoberfest. I don’t remember buying it, but I woke up the next morning and the hat was all I had on.” She grinned. “Ask if I was in my own bed.”

  “No.” I picked up the frock coat. “Linen. This feels expensive.”

  “You’re lucky,” Jools replied. “Most umpire jackets are frumpy, but that particular coat came from some special charity match. Old money Darkling kids from private schools, playing against each other—even the umpires were dressed to kill. Shar told me all about it.” Jools fanned her mouth while faking a yawn. “But wait! I haven’t shown you the pièce de résistance.”

  JOOLS KNELT AND REACHED UNDER THE BED

  Clearly, she’d kept this final element hidden so she could make a showy reveal. “Ta-da!”

  She pulled out a white silk cape. She drew it across her arm to show how smoothly the silk slid. “It used to be a slip—Miranda’s, of course. But I’ve opened it up and given it a collar. It’s wide enough to billow, and on you, it’ll reach the floor. It’ll be fabulous.”

  “Uhh…”

  Jools said, “Yes, I know you’re not into fabulous. But that’s Kim. Why shouldn’t Zircon be a bit flashy? Didn’t Grandfather talk about establishing a separate identity?”

  To tell the truth, I liked the look that Jools had put together. After years of dressing down, I could handle some up. I also had the feeling that Zircon would love showboating. But as Kim, I felt obliged to say, “A cape? People will laugh at me.”

  “You’re forgetting your Halo,” Jools said. “Everybody will ogle you the way you drooled over Ninety-Nine.” She gave me a don’t-try-to-deny-it smile.

  I felt myself blushing. “My Halo will likely make people curl their lips and whisper behind my back.”

  Jools gave me a look. “Get dressed and see how fucking wrong you are.”

  I SHOOED JOOLS OUT OF THE ROOM WHILE I GOT CHANGED

  Before she left, she took my mirror: It hung on the inside of my closet door, and Jools yanked it off its fasteners. “No peeking!” she said. “I want to see your reaction the first time you look at yourself.”

  I said, “I hate to tell you, but I can look at myself without a mirror.”

  “Don’t,” Jools said. “Let it be a surprise.” Tucking the mirror under her arm, she left.

  I CHANGED FROM KIM’S COSTUME INTO ZIRCON’S

  It wasn’t a fast process. I wondered how other Sparks managed.

  Let’s say I saw a school bus heading for a cliff. I could never change my clothes in time to do anything. Not that I could do anything anyway—as Jools had said, my powers sucked for rescuing. But what about those heroes who did save people in the nick of time? Did they go around all day in costume?

  Maybe. Now that I thought about it, Jools was in the same boat as me. Strapping on fiberglass armor took ages. Even worse, how would Jools carry her stuff around? Me, I had it easy: I could put on my costume, shrink down, undress, then grow back to full size. Voilà! My costume would stay small and I could carry it in my pocket. I could do the same with street clothes. Carry my whole wardrobe if I wanted.

  And I could change while I was shrunken to the size of an amoeba—I didn’t have to worry about prying eyes. Jools, on the other hand, would have to carry her stuff in a duffel bag. When she needed to change, she’d have to scoot into an alley and hope no one wandered by while she was making herself Ninety-Nine.

  Admittedly, Jools would be an Olympic-level quick-change artist. But still.

  I FINISHED CHANGING

  The costume fit surprisingly well. I couldn’t imagine how Jools had made it in an hour; it would have taken me days. But that just shows that you should never judge super-stuff by ordinary standards. Once the Light gets involved, you have to scrap normal expectations.

  The shirt was mine to begin with, but everything else had been tailored by Jools without even taking my measurements. The frock coat, for example: Anything Shar-sized was way too big for me. But Jools had reduced the coat’s height and width to hit my size bang on. The cape draped beautifully, flowing around me. And the hat was a perfect fit; it had originally been bigger, but Jools had padded the inner band exactly enough for my smaller head. I put the hat on, then made fast jerky movements to see if it fell off. The hat clung like magic, not slipping a millimeter. Either Jools had worked miracles, or my omnimorphic field automatically adjusted the clothes to make them just the perfect size.

  Final touch: my own running shoes, originally black but spray-painted white. (Jools was, of course, an Olympic-level spray-painter. The paint was still damp.)

  I WENT TO THE DOOR AND OPENED IT

  Jools sat in lotus position on the floor outside. Her eyes were closed and her head glowed green. I wondered if she was accessing information or simply meditating. (Hard to imagine Jools meditating, but now she had to be as skilled at it as the Dalai Lama.)

  I said, “So what do you think?”

  She was on her feet in an instant. She looked at me critically. “Nice. Except…” She whipped off the bow tie and started retying it. “You need practice your knots.”

  “You try tying a bow tie without a mirror.” I was proud I could tie one at all. But Kimmi occasionally wore big black neck bows, and she’d spent an embarrassing amount of time getting them right.

  “Better,” Jools said, finishing the tie. “Now we’re ready for the most important part.” She reached around her back and pulled out something she must have had tucked into her waistband. “The mask.”

  SHE HELD UP A WHITE PASHMINA SCARF

  I caught my breath. It had been a gift from Nicholas: the first thing he ever gave me.

  On the day of Banff’s first snowfall, in the year we were together, Nicholas had asked me to kneel by his chair. Snowflakes on our eyelashes. He said, “This is f
or you,” and he’d tied the scarf around my neck. The snow was quiet as it fell around us, shutting out the world.

  I hadn’t worn that scarf since Nicholas left me. I hadn’t wanted to wear it ever again. Yet I’d brought it with me on the plane from Banff to Waterloo, despite the limited space in my luggage. I’d kept it folded in the back of my underwear drawer, where I saw it every day.

  Jools moved the scarf toward me, obviously planning to tie it around my eyes. I shrank back—literally. Down to paramecium size.

  Jools stared at me in surprise … or rather she stared in my general direction, since I was too small to see. “What?” she said. “What?”

  I forced myself back to normal, making sure I didn’t head-butt her when I grew. “Sorry,” I said. “Bad memory.”

  She gave me a questioning look. I didn’t explain. I just took the scarf from her. “You want me to wear this for a mask?”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  Pause. “Nothing.” I held it in front of my eyes.

  “And the best part is,” Jools said, “you won’t need eyeholes. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “It’ll look so amazing: like a blindfold, except not. Tie it on.”

  She was itching to tie it for me, but that wasn’t going to happen. I could barely imagine doing it myself. I lifted it to my face, thinking, If I start crying, at least Jools won’t see the tears.

  But actually, Jools had closed her own eyes. After a moment, I understood. I was about to become Zircon for the very first time. Jools didn’t want to look at me until she could get the full impact.

  WITH BUTTERFLIES IN MY STOMACH, I TIED THE SCARF AROUND MY EYES

  My vision didn’t change. Everything else did.

  Butterflies gone in an instant.

  A moment earlier, I’d felt kind of fake. Kim wasn’t used to the top hat and tails, or most other parts of the costume. Zircon, on the other hand … these clothes were home. From the hat to the cape to the gloves to the mask, each piece was so natural I could barely feel it.