Saturday, April 4, 2009
George
This was NANA’s anniversary, or the weekend closest to it, anyway, and there was a big party. The magical members cast a special spell for the event. Anybody in town who didn’t know about powers would simply not be interested in what was going on in the park, on top of the usual spell that would cause them to not see anybody flying or with green skin or whatever. So it was an event where people could let out their powers in public more than they normally could.
KNRM was playing their usual playlist directly from the event. When there wasn’t something else going on, their on-air program was blasting out across the park. The Listener was staying away because of that, but most of the other people I’d met through NANA were there.
Right after a song they said was a new release, “Tony Stark” by a band called Kirby Krackle (the DJ explained that “crackle” was spelled with an initial K), they interrupted the music in the park to announce the actual event, and several people came up and spoke.
One of those was Greg. He said, “I have some news about one of the longest-running stories in Normal. Steve has been born!”
Clearly a lot of people did not know who Steve was, but still a few dozen people erupted in cheers. Miss Tix came up on stage and started speaking after letting the cheering go on for bit.
“I know many of you probably don’t know Steve’s story, but later this year will be the 25th anniversary since Steve’s most unusual power showed up. The story started when we were contacted by Steve’s girlfriend at the time, Emily. She called to tell us Steve had disappeared. They had been having sex, and he just vanished right in the middle of the act. So that’s why she called us rather than the police.”
There was a round of laughter.
“NANA sent over all the people with different kinds of powers they thought might help figure out what happened to Steve, and I was actually the one who figured it out. We spent some time examining the bedroom where it happened, and found nothing. But because we thought it could have happened because of a power Emily had developed, we checked her out too. What I discovered was she had Steve’s spirit within her, but not in the manner of ghost possession that was my usual area of expertise.”
She paused for effect, and it seemed like it had the desired effect. Everybody got quiet to listen to what she was going to say.
“We set up some other tests to figure out just how he was within her, and we discovered he had somehow transformed into a sperm and had gone up into her along with the normal ones. Unlike the normal ones, he had gone right through a condom!”
Once the various reactions from the audience died down, she continued.
“We had no idea what to do about it, though. We set her up with a device that let her hear Steve’s thoughts, and he confirmed he could hear what she spoke normally. We figured that it was their final days, as sperm typically live for no more than about 5 days, but Steve surprised us all by communicating with her for 20 days, telling her, among other things, that he had missed her egg but he hoped to catch the next one. Emily was a little shocked at that suggestion, but when Steve pointed out that was all he could really do now, she said she was OK with giving birth to Steve if he could manage to impregnate her. But she didn’t turn out to be pregnant after that. She kept the device on for a whole month hoping to hear from him again, but there was nothing.”
There were cries of sympathy from the audience.
“But if that was the end of the story we wouldn’t be up here talking about it! It was several months later when another woman with some psychic detection powers reported that she thought she was possessed because she was detecting something around her all the time. Pretty soon we discovered Steve was now inside her. And he had a story to tell. He’d gotten washed out of Emily with her period, made it through the sewage treatment system even with all the things there that are supposed to kill any bacteria and parasites and such, and through the filters that are supposed to keep anything but pure water from making it back into the water supply. Eventually another woman drank him. He made it into her bloodstream, figured out how to get into her womb... and discovered she was on birth control and could never get pregnant.”
This mostly got laughs.
“He left her through her urine and went through the cycle again. This time he got into a guy, worked his way in with the normal sperm, and into his wife, who was the woman who’d reported his presence. But they were using the rhythm method to avoid pregnancy and she wasn’t willing to get pregnant to help Steve, so, reluctantly, he left her body as well. And he went through this cycle dozens of times, hoping to eventually find his way into a woman who wanted to get pregnant or the partner of one. About once a year somebody would detect him and we’d add another mysterious presence or ‘haunting’ to the Steve file, along with whatever new part of his story he could tell.”
She mimed at first a file folder, then a growing stack of paper.
“I can now report to you all that Steve made it into a woman who wanted to get pregnant, succeeded in impregnating her, and his spirit now controls that woman’s daughter. It was only when the daughter was able to speak well enough to get the story across that her mother contacted us. She found the whole thing a bit weird, but she was aware that a child in Normal could be anything but normal, and she’s happily raising her most unusual child. And we’re keeping their names secret. It will probably eventually come out, but for now Steve’s trying to enjoy a second childhood. Apart from being Steve, the girl has shown no powers, but there’s still lots of time for that.”
Miss Tix turned the mic back over to Greg, who, after other announcements, introduced two other people. “Thanks to the work of our historian, we now have a more complete version of the story of how all of us got started with the fall of the meteor more than a century ago, the remains of which a few of you have actually seen in person. Fred and Frieda are here to tell this story.”
Fred and Frieda took turns speaking:
It was April 3, 1899, a Monday, in this small town which for some time had already been called Normal. It was a lot smaller then, just a few hundred people. In mid-morning the meteor struck. It landed in two farmers’ fields, but it was big enough that it shook the whole town. It caused surprisingly little damage, but the homes, barns, and other structures on those two farms were destroyed.
The residents of those farms were the first four people who gained powers from the meteor: Nicholas, Anne, Norman, and Abigail. Nicholas was the first to free himself from the rubble of his house, discovering he had super-strength in the process. He quickly rescued the others.
His wife Anne was the next to notice her powers. She sensed a lot of people from the town had heard and felt the impact (of what, the four of them still didn’t know) and were coming to investigate. Norman was worried other people were hurt, and without realizing he was doing it, zoomed off at super-speed to check on the nearest other neighbors. Abigail felt some strange sensations, a kind of energy that at this point she couldn’t explain.
Pretty soon Norman came back to where the group was gathered near the remains of his and Abigail’s home. He reported nobody else was hurt, but there was a crater on the line between their properties. So the group went out so they could all see the crater.
Before they even got there, they could see it looked pretty weird. There was light emanating from the crater, pulsing in intensity and changing colors. The light seemed less intense as they arrived at a wall of earth that had been created by the impact, which was blocking their view of most of the light. The wall was about 7 feet tall and extended all the way around the crater, which was about 60 feet in diameter. And, close to the crater, it was hot, but not too hot to walk on in their shoes.
They found a place where there was a more gentle slope going up to the top of the wall, and looked in. They immediately turned their gaze away, as it was almost too bright to look at. But eventually they did look at it. The crater sloped down steeply at first, and later more gently, to the remains of the meteor that had struck the earth that day, and was the source of the weird lights. They couldn’t decide if it was beautiful or creepy, but they were sure it was the cause of the powers they had just gained.
Other people from the town arrived while they were at the crater, and the four informed them of what they had seen, and also of their new-found powers. None of the others reported getting any powers, but some of them felt weird when looking at the meteor. Eventually there were about 50 people there, and nobody had any idea what to do, but they agreed to close off the meteor in case it was dangerous. The innkeeper put them up for free while they and other town residents helped build them new houses elsewhere in town, and a high fence was built all the way around their two former farms.
The four devoted themselves to understanding what had happened. They were aided by other people in the town who discovered they had powers, only a few at first, but more people seemed to develop powers over time. Apart from the original four, proximity to the crater didn’t seem to influence who got powers; they showed up all over town. Abigail turned out to be of the most help, as she discovered she had magical powers. It took her time to figure out how to use them, but ultimately she became a sorceress with powers in real life as strong as the strongest magic-users of legend.
They named their group NANA, after their four initials. It was a few years later, after word had leaked out to people in other towns about what happened in Normal that day, that they began getting a steady stream of visitors wanting to look at the meteor, or wanting to move to Normal in hopes of getting powers of their own. The population of Normal tripled in a year, and NANA realized they needed to do something about it. They spearheaded several efforts.
First off, they had the builders of the town construct a building around the crater, pushing much of the earth that had been piled up around the rim back into the crater, significantly reducing the size of the hole, and as a result reducing the size of the building they had to build around it. The hole was now more straight-down, and they reinforced the walls of the new, narrower hole as well as paving the new surface outside the hole with stones. It would be easier for those actually studying the meteor to do so, and they could also control access to it.
Abigail figured out how to temporarily enhance Anne’s psychic powers in a single subject area, and she used that to locate all the people within hundreds of miles who had heard about what happened. There were tens of thousands of them. Too many to go out and try to locate them all individually and magic them into forgetting about Normal. While those among them who were interested in coming to see the meteor were mostly already in Normal, those people could tell others, and the problem would keep getting worse. With the approval of town leadership, Abigail cast a mass forgetting spell from the center of town, with an exclusion zone large enough to cover all town residents. After that, only the people then in Normal would know anything about the meteor or the powers people got from it.
There were still long-term issues. Normal couldn’t completely isolate itself from outsiders, and visitors would find out from people blabbing or by seeing people using powers, especially as more and more people seemed to get powers of more varied types every year. In 1910, after a lot of research into how to cast stronger and more durable spells, Abigail cast the spell that protects us now, which hides accidental knowledge of our powers from those who don’t already know such powers exist. Also, at this time the name NANA was retroactively declared to mean Normal Always Normal Association, with the dual meanings of providing support to keep the town of Normal alive and maintaining the facade that Normal was in fact a perfectly normal town with nothing weird happening in it.
Of course, there is a lot more than that, but this is the end of the beginning, the time when things started being roughly the way they are today.
They ended their speech, and that was the end of the presentation at that time. They went back to just playing music.
At lunch I saw Fred and Frieda eating and sat down at the table next to them. They had two kids also, and once the kids were done eating they were eager to do play more of the carnival games and such. Frieda took the kids and left Fred with me.
“You said you had an interesting story. I know some of it already, as my story will explain, but go ahead and tell me the whole thing. Frieda will get it from me later; my story will explain that too. I’ll tell you our story afterward.”
So I told Fred my story, and then he told me his. (COMING SOON)
