Chapter 1

Chris Heaven's Point of View (POV)

I sat in the waiting room thinking while trying to remain calm. The world had changed so much since my youth. I was nearing seventy now and was probably the oldest client to ever approach 'The Catalyst' as she liked to be called. I almost snorted at the ridiculousness of the world.

I liked comics and superhero tales as much as the next man, but never in my wildest dreams would I have predicted that fantasy becoming real. The story of how it happened is well known now although it took years before the truth was revealed. Alternate dimensions and multiple different Earths was easy enough to believe so, in hindsight, it makes sense that at some point they could interact. In our case, a world that already had superheroes accidentally created a one way portal to our world.

The portal creating wasn't accidental, but as usual with Mad Scientists, things didn't go completely according to plan and in this case, it was the one-way nature that screwed everything up. That and the fact that all devices Mad Scientists created involved a connection to their mysterious ability, which meant the portal stopped working a week after the good Dr James came through.

Even that wasn't enough to kickstart our latent superhero potential. Before the portal closed a group of five superheroes came through after investigating why Dr James was missing. Of course, that meant they were trapped here as well. They say power corrupts and Dr James predicted that the heroes would eventually let the fact that they were the most powerful people on our world, go to their heads. He set a contingency plan in place which would go into effect if he was killed, knowing that he was the only one who could stand in their way and it would be a true test of their corruption. If the superheroes were willing to kill him just to prevent his interference then they needed to be stopped.

Stopping them was not going to be easy and Dr James' answer was to activate everybody's potential. How he did that is still up for debate, but based on the 'Mad Scientists' that have popped up since it was probably in a way that made sense to him but doesn't actually conform to known universal laws. The vast majority of people were and remain unaffected. Of those who gained 'gifts', most were minor like mine, but enough had real power and rocked our world.

It all settled eventually and most cities now boasted a few supers who mainly backed up the police. Supervillains were rare since there was a no-tolerance policy. If your abilities meant a normal jail could not contain you and you were convicted of a major crime, you got the death penalty. That draconian measure came about after several disasters involving escaped supervillains. Anyone convicted could request a registered telepath inquiry to prove their innocence, but they rarely did. On the plus side, twenty percent of normal human prisoners were cleared from jail by requesting telepath led investigations.

A professional looking middle-aged woman opened the door to the consulting room, ushered a young man who was looking dejected on his way, met my eyes and with a neutral expression indicated for me to follow her.

“Chris Heaven?” she asked.

I nodded my head and followed her into the room.

We both settled into our chairs. Hers behind a large solid looking wooden desk and me facing her.

She took a pen and paper and wrote something down and then looked up at me curiously. “Tell me everything,” she said leaning back in her chair and politely waiting for me to talk with every evidence of attention.

“Confidentiality applies?” I asked.

“Absolutely. Unless you tell me something illegal.”

“My gift is to taste DNA. I'm not sure taste is the right word. When I go into a room, or near someone I can sense all the nearby DNA. I can sort of quiz it and it will reveal information,” I explained.

“And you've come to me because?”

“I've always felt that there is more to it. To be honest, I've had a pretty good life and used the information to try and help people. Steer them towards healthy options that fit with the DNA profile I taste. More recently, my granddaughter was involved in an incident. She suffered head trauma and has been in a coma for almost three months now and I can't find anything in her DNA to suggest a way to help her.”

“What is it you think that I do?” she questioned me.

“I understood that you can tell if someone is not using their talent to its full potential and offer advice on how to improve,” I answered.

“Sort of. I am actually clairaudient. I have a spirit guide who seems to be able to examine someone's potential and offer helpful hints on how to improve. I schedule hour-long appointments because I have to use various techniques, mostly types of meditation with burning different herbs as an offering to try and convince Stormdancer to communicate with me. If at the end of that time I don't receive a message, then, in my experience, I never will.”

“I knew that you might not be able to help me. I just wanted to try everything I can,” I responded.

“Admirable. The thing is, I can't answer your questions, all I can do is pass on any messages I receive. Stormdancer is quite interested in your case and required no coaxing to speak to me. Yes, you have untapped potential and I have a message for you, but I don't know if this will help your granddaughter.” She picked up the piece of paper on the desk. “You must understand yourself completely before you can understand others.” She passed it to me. “I would suggest you meditate on that and see where it leads you. There is no point in coming back until you have made progress and reached another bottleneck.”

Chapter 2

I had paid quite a hefty sum for a five-minute consultation but I wasn't unhappy. I didn't honestly believe my talents would be able to help, however, I believed in the no stone left unturned philosophy. And for all its brevity the result had been positive, I could improve my gift, I just had to work out what the message meant.

My life returned to relative normality for the next couple of weeks with the exception of meditating solely on my own DNA and ignoring all the other DNA that surrounded me. That sounds easy, but I was constantly aware of different DNA interacting with me. Inside my body, within my gut, there were a plethora of different organisms that weren't part of my DNA but had their own DNA, on the surface of my skin there was a similar picture and whenever there was a gust of wind, somebody else's DNA was brought to my attention. Including whatever organisms they might have on the surface of their body, viruses and bacteria in the air, pollen and other small particulates that contain life and all the people that they had been in near proximity to smear them with their DNA.

It was information overload which was why concentrating only on my own DNA was something I had never done before and was also hard to do. Sure, I had examined bits of my DNA to improve my health. That was the main thing I did to utilise my gift. Examine people's DNA and give recommendations to improve their health. But there is so much information in a person's DNA that to try and look at it all felt like a monumental task. In theory, all I had to do was concentrate on what I was interested in and listen to what my gift was telling me. So what I was really doing was altering the focus from asking a specific question to imagining my DNA as a book and asking what information was on the first page and going from there. While I was doing that there was a plethora of other DNA trying to impinge on my concentration. It was sort of like reading a book while loud annoying music was playing in the background and several people were shouting for my attention. And a lot of the pages were quite boring which didn't help my concentration. Still, I persisted as I was very motivated.

I didn't devote all my time to it as I was still running a clinical practice and my daughter needed me. So much so that I was contemplating early retirement. My wife had divorced me over ten years ago and had now met another man and my son never contacted me. My daughter, Talia, on the other hand, had always been close. I had never been sure about her husband, Tom. In front of me, he had always been respectful and easygoing, but Talia told me everything so I knew if he drank alcohol he had a tendency to be violent. Since he knew that about himself he only rarely drank and Talia tended to visit me with Kalie as soon as he started.

I respected him for not drinking when he knew it was an issue, except I knew the only reason he did that was to keep Talia happy. Or more accurately, prevent her from giving him the cold shoulder. I was also proud of my daughter for being unwilling to accept violence from her partner. Up until it all went horribly wrong the most she had suffered was a bit of verbal abuse as she quickly left the house with Kalie in tow.

Unfortunately, all it takes is one bad episode of violence to completely change your life. Tom had gotten home early from work so had picked Kalie up from school. Talia had worked late knowing that Tom was home only to find Kalie unconscious on the floor and Tom missing. The empty beer bottles on the side table giving mute evidence to the likely story. Alcohol wasn't kept in the house so Tom had to have bought it on his way home. Kalie had slipped into a coma that she hadn't woken up from and Tom drove his car at speed into a tree. I think it was suicide, but it was ruled accidental. He had life insurance and to my surprise, they paid up with little argument. Not that we cared about the money. Talia moved back in with me, quit her job and spends most of her time depressed or visiting Kalie. I supported her as best I could. My examination of Kalie's DNA revealed nothing that would help and the specialist pointed to brain damage in MRI scans that suggested even if she did wake up, she may never fully recover.

My only hope was that my power would go from a passive to an active power. If I could activate Kalie's DNA, maybe I could cause it to renew her brain. I knew that we constantly renewed our bodies so I thought it was possible. I got my first taste that it might be possible when I got to a page of my DNA that told me its purpose which was relating to brain function, but also told me that I couldn't change this DNA without altering who I was. It was like a read-only file which, conversely, told me I should be able to change any of my DNA that was not read-only. Evidence that I was on the right track. I just didn't know how, yet.

I had tried to change my DNA before, back when I had first manifested and was exploring what I could do. I had heard that viruses could leave DNA behind and when I asked the question, I found an alarming amount still present, so I tried to remove it, replace it, inactivate it, but nothing worked, so I presumed my power was purely passive. Now I wondered if my power didn't allow me to change anything because I didn't know what I was doing. Similar to a teleporter being unable to go if they don't know the space involved is unoccupied.

The knowledge that I should be able to develop my power gave me the impetus to make some changes to my life. I retired, stopped booking appointments and would only see those I had already booked. To completely retire took me a month and during that time I doubled down on my efforts to understand my DNA. By the end of that month, I had got to the end of my DNA book, Kalie was still in a coma, but my persistent efforts were slowly bringing my daughter out of her depression. Not well by any means, but if Kalie passed on, I thought Talia wouldn't commit suicide now.

On reaching the end of my DNA book, I still didn't feel that I properly understood my whole DNA profile so I started from the beginning again and managed to get a deeper look, this time researching the concepts that I found difficult. Possibly because I had more time to spare or because it was my second reading, it only took me two weeks for my second read through. Despite knowing a lot more, I also knew there was more to know, so I went back for another read. In total, I read through my DNA seven times before I felt I couldn't learn any more about it.