Omega Superhero 1: Caped Page 4

  Mr. Priebus hesitated. “Actually, what I said about Metahumans not being allowed to use their powers unless they are licensed is not quite true. There are a few exceptions. For example, a Metahuman can use his powers under the supervision of a licensed Hero, usually for training purposes. But, those few exceptions aside, generally speaking, Metahuman power usage without a license is a felony.”

  “What happens to all of the information you get about me when I complete the registration process?” I asked. Mr. Priebus had said they would take my fingerprints. The idea made me uneasy. You know who had their fingerprints taken? Criminals. I was starting to feel like one, even though I had not done anything wrong. Why did this all have to be happening to me?

  “Your registration information will be sent to the records division of the USDMA, as well as to the Heroes’ Guild,” Mr. Priebus said. “The Heroes’ Guild is the association of licensed Heroes that all Heroes belong to. The Guild grants licenses to new Heroes and monitors and regulates the conduct of existing Heroes. The USDMA and the Guild keep information on Metahumans for a couple of reasons. One, if you decide to use your powers illegally, we will know where to look for you. Secondly, if something happens that involves a Metahuman’s powers—a robbery or a murder or a terrorist attack, let’s say—but we don’t know who the Metahuman perpetrator was, having Metahumans’ various powers on file will help us to figure out who is to blame. Unless there is reason to believe you have been involved in some sort of criminal activity, your registration information will be kept completely confidential and private.”

  “So what does Theo need to do if he should decide he wants to become a licensed Hero?” Dad asked.

  “Not interested,” I interjected before Mr. Priebus could answer. Dad waved at me to be quiet.

  “First he would need to graduate from the Hero Academy. Some people call it Hero boot camp as it is run much like a military boot camp,” Mr. Priebus said. “The Academy is designed to weed out the Metas who should not be Heroes and begins to train them in the use of their powers. Academy graduates go on to complete their training in one of two ways. The most prestigious way is to become an Apprentice to an already licensed Hero. Those Academy graduates who cannot get an Apprenticeship can instead complete their training in specialized Hero schools. After finishing an Apprenticeship or his time in Hero school, the potential Hero then has to stand for the Hero Trials. The Trials are a series of tests, both mental and physical, administered by the Heroes’ Guild. The Trials are designed to ensure that a Hero candidate has the knowledge and skills to use his powers responsibly and to promote the welfare of the public. The majority of people who take the Trials fail them. That is the way the Trials are designed. We want to make sure that only the best of the best become Heroes.”

  “I’m not going to go through the Trials. I’m not going to the Academy or become an Apprentice or go to Hero school or any of the other crazy stuff you’re talking about,” I said firmly. “I have no interest in being a Hero or in using my powers ever again. They’ve gotten me into enough trouble as it is.” I thought of my suspension from college and the fact that Donovan might wind up suing me. I also thought about the fact that Avatar had been murdered. If it could happen to a man like him, it certainly could happen to puny me. Use my powers some more and continue to get lied about, sued, or worse, killed? No thanks.

  After Dad and I finished our talk with Mr. Priebus, he took us to another room in the center where we met with Floyd. Under Mr. Priebus’ watchful eye, Floyd recorded my social security number and the contact information for me, Dad, and my closest relatives. He measured and recorded my height and weight. I was glad Jackie was not around for that part; how small I was made me feel like the world’s biggest wimp. Floyd also took my fingerprints, palm prints, and footprints.

  “Why do you need my footprints?” I asked Floyd as I took off my shoes and socks. “Aren’t my handprints enough?”

  “What if your hands get cut off? In a fight with a Rogue, for example,” Floyd responded. He said it matter-of-factly, as if such a thing happened all the time. “The USDMA would still need a way to identify your corpse.” What if my hands get cut off? Corpse? my mind repeated. Yikes! It hardened my resolve to never use my powers and to avoid any and everything Metahuman related. I did not want to ever find myself in a situation where my hands might get cut off. I was way too attached to them to want to see that happen.

  Floyd had me dictate to him a detailed account of how my telekinesis manifested itself in the bathroom with the Three Horsemen. He made me give him such precise details I felt like I was reliving it. Floyd also took a handwriting sample, a retinal scan of me, recorded a voice sample, and made an impression of my teeth. With being fingerprinted and having my teeth examined, I felt like a combination of a criminal and a horse, as if my name was Secretariat and I had been caught robbing banks. Actually, it was worse than being Secretariat. If I had been Secretariat, at least they would have lined up some mares for me to be the stud to.

  Thankfully they did not take another DNA sample; they already had two thanks to the blood Jackie had drawn from me. I did not think I would have been able to stand being impaled by yet another needle on top of everything else I had to deal with. My mind was already awhirl. Just a few days before I was merely a farmer’s son and college student. Now, not only was I a Metahuman, but I was an Omega-level one at that. If only my powers included the ability to travel back in time. I would have gone back to before I walked into that USCA bathroom and not gone in. Hindsight really was twenty-twenty.

  In addition to everything else, I had to sign a bunch of paperwork acknowledging that the Hero Act of 1945 had been explained to me, promising to keep the government advised as to my whereabouts, and swearing I would not use my powers without first being duly licensed as a Hero. I was even given a Metahuman Registration Number: 34589. I felt like I was being branded. At least they did not tattoo it on my forehead.

  Jackie, Mr. Priebus, and Floyd all gathered in the center’s waiting room to see me and Dad off once I had finished the registration process. Mr. Priebus seemed sorry to see me go. I felt like the prize exhibit in a zoo being released back into the wild.

  As distracted as I was by everything that was happening, I was still sorely tempted to ask Jackie for her number before we left the registration center. I told myself I did not do it because there was not a chance to do so without Dad, Mr. Priebus and Floyd witnessing it. The truth of the matter was I could not work up the nerve. Instead of Jackie’s telephone number, I instead walked out of the center with a handful of paperwork—copies of the documents I had signed plus brochures and pamphlets about the Hero Act, my obligations as a registered Meta, and the steps I needed to take if I wanted to obtain my Hero’s license.

  I looked the paperwork over as Dad drove us back towards Aiken County. The title of the pamphlet describing the process of becoming a licensed Hero was So You Want To Be A Superhero?

  No, I did not.

  CHAPTER 4

  Three days after registering as a Metahuman, I was on my hands and knees in a field on the farm, digging up sweet potatoes. I was hot, sweaty, dirty, thirsty, hungry, and tired. Life as an officially registered Metahuman was not proving to be glamorous.

  The mid-morning sun bore down on me. Normally I would be in class this time of the day, but I was still on suspension, so so much for that. It had rained the day before. The combination of the moisture and the implacable August sun made working in the field feel like working in a steam room. My long-sleeve cotton shirt stuck to my skin, wet with sweat. The inside of my wide-brimmed straw hat was soaked. I had on long-sleeves and the huge hat because if I did not, I would look like a boiled lobster by the end of the day. Dirt had gotten into my work boots. I felt the gritty soil between my toes every time I moved, digging into my tender flesh. My clothes looked like I had spent the morning making mud pies. I had been out here for over three hours so far. Breakfast seemed like an eternity ago. Each row of sweet potatoes
was about four hundred and fifty feet long. I had finished not even half of the row I had started on earlier this morning. Including the row I now worked on, there were six rows of potatoes. It would take me two or three days to dig them all up.

  The rows of sweet potatoes were at the bottom of a hill. On top of the hill was the single-wide, two-bedroom mobile home Dad and I lived in. When it rained, soil from higher on the hill ran off to where I was now, making this field some of the most fertile Dad owned. The problem was if it rained too hard, this part of the field got flooded and became completely unusable. I had seen times in prior years when where I now knelt was under a couple of feet of water, and stayed that way for months. That was one of the reasons I had no interest in following in Dad’s and a long line of Conley men’s footsteps and becoming a farmer. You could slave away on a crop for months, only to have all your hard work wiped out because it suddenly got too wet. Or too dry. Or too hot. Or too cold. Or some once harmless plant disease mutated into something far more harmful and killed your crops. Or locusts decided to swarm. Or deer got too plentiful and they ate most of your crops. Or any one of a thousand other things went wrong. Being a farmer, there were just too many things that were outside of your control regardless of how much you busted your butt working. You were like Goldilocks, praying that things would turn out just right so you could earn a living. That was why Dad was still in debt and was not financially successful despite the fact he worked like a dog seven days a week: things had gone wrong for him at the worst possible times. Four years ago it rained so much I had joked we should imitate Noah and build an Ark. Dad had told me to not be blasphemous. The fact that Dad’s crops for the entire year had been ruined was not a joke, though. Though Dad did not wind up having to sell the farm to make ends meet, it was a close thing. That year I had eaten so many cheap canned beans for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I had thought about opening a gas station. No thanks. I did not know what I wanted to do once I graduated college, but being a farmer was not it.

  I stood up. My legs ached from kneeling in the dirt for so long. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes with my sleeve. My stomach rumbled. I glanced up to the top of the hill where our mobile home sat. The lunch I had made for myself the night before was waiting for me inside. I glanced up at the sun hopefully. I looked back down in disappointment. The position of it told me it was nowhere near noon despite the protests of my stomach. I wistfully looked at the house again. Lunch was so close by, and yet seemed so far away. When Mom was alive we lived in a brick rancher several miles down the road. After she died, in order to cut costs and to help pay down some of Mom’s many medical bills, Dad had sold that house and the property it sat on and put a mobile home in one of his fields instead. Kids had called me white trash more times than I could count because I lived in a mobile home in the middle of a field. Dad always said that “anyone who calls you trash is trash himself and not someone worth listening to.” Another Jamesism. I supposed he was right, but it still did not make me feel better about being called names.

  I picked up my hoe and turned my attention back to the row of sweet potatoes I was working on. This variety of sweet potato plant had huge green leaves with purplish veins. The plants threw out tendrils of vines that got all tangled up, so the rows of plants were a huge interlocking jumble of leaves and vines, like a green blanket knit by a drunk Mother Nature. The tangle of greenery was so thick that you could not see the ground underneath it. I used the hoe to lift up a tangled mass of leaves and vines. I inspected the ground underneath the leaves carefully. Snakes liked to lie in wait for rodents under here and to take refuge from the heat of the sun under the leaves’ shade. I was always careful to not pull up the plants without first checking to make sure I was not about to put my hand on a coiled up rattlesnake or copperhead. First I had gotten peed on, then I had gotten suspended, then I had found out I was an Omega-level Metahuman. Getting bitten by a poisonous snake would put the cherry on top of what was shaping up to be a terrible month. What would happen next? Would a nuclear bomb be dropped on my big, fat, sweaty head?

  The coast appeared to be clear under the leaves and vines. I put the hoe down. I leaned down to grasp the next plant at its base, right where it entered the ground. The ground was slightly convex, a sign of the potatoes that were growing underground off the roots of the plant. I pulled the plant out of the ground, leaving behind a crater several inches deep. Several large reddish-orange potatoes were attached to the roots of the plant. I put the large unblemished potatoes into a bucket after brushing most of the dirt off of them. Those were the ones that Dad would sell to the customers he had accumulated over the years, including some small local grocery stores. The tiny potatoes went into a separate bucket for the rejects, as did the ones that were flawed in some fashion—bruised, partially eaten by gophers, split open, that sort of thing. Some of the potatoes grew with huge splits in them and looked like some kind of Frankenstein vegetable. I was unclear on why some potatoes grew like that; I only knew that lots of them did. The tiny potatoes and the ugly ones were perfectly edible, of course. But because of their size and how they looked, they were hard to sell. That was why I kept them separate from the large, attractive potatoes.

  Some of these rejects would be given to my Uncle Charles, who lived about ten minutes up the road on his own small farm. Unlike Dad, who only grew fruits and vegetables, Uncle Charles had animals. The potatoes Dad gave him would be used to help feed his pigs. The potatoes not given to Uncle Charles Dad would give away to elderly people on fixed incomes who would be glad to have healthy, organic food. “Always help people when you can, Theo. Making others’ lives better makes your life better,” Dad always said. Another Jamesism. I should have written them all down and made them into a book. The problem was I did not know who would buy it. The Pope, maybe.

  After pulling all of the potatoes off of the plant’s roots and sorting them into the buckets, I dropped to my knees. I dug my gloved hands into the small crater left behind by the plant I had pulled up. There were almost certainly still potatoes in the ground that had gotten detached from the plant’s roots. I rooted around in the wet ground like a pig searching for truffles, pulling out the potatoes I found there.

  Was this how my life would unfold? Would I spend the rest of my days on my hands and knees toiled away in the hot sun? Dad did not seem to mind this kind of work, despite the fact farming constantly left him flirting with poverty. He had grown up on a farm in South Carolina—just a little bit up the road where Uncle Charles lived, as a matter of fact—and he would no doubt die on farm in South Carolina. I did not want that to be my life. That was why I was in college and why I read so much. I suspected there was so much more to life than digging potatoes and fretting about rainfall. I wanted to go places, see things, do things, the things I had read and dreamed about. What exactly I wanted to see and do, I did not exactly know. It was a like a worrisome itch I could not quite figure out how to scratch. Yet, at the same time, the wider world intimidated and scared me. I had spent my entire life in this small town on a farm. I knew little and had done less. Maybe I was not sophisticated or smart or strong enough to deal with the wider world. Maybe those kids who called me names were right—maybe I was just poor white trash and poor white trash I would remain until the day I died.

  I was there on my hands and knees toiling away in the only world I knew while dreaming of worlds unexplored when a huge man wearing a costume, mask, and cape dropped out of the sky and landed in front of me.

  CHAPTER 5

  Startled out of several years’ growth, I fell back on my butt with a panicked cry. I held a plant with potatoes dangling from the roots. I twisted, groping for the hoe. I twisted back around, clutching the hoe. I held it in front of me like a priest with a crucifix trying to ward off a vampire.

  “What in the world are you doing?” the costumed man asked. His deep voice was accentless, like a television announcer’s. The eyes behind his mask moved from the hoe pointed at him to the sweet potato plant in m
y other hand. If the hoe scared him even the slightest bit, he hid it well.

  “Um, pointing a hoe at you? And, digging up sweet potatoes?” Thanks to my nervousness, my responses came out as questions. My fear at the man’s sudden appearance was already starting to subside, but not my surprise. I now recognized the man. It was Amazing Man. I had seen him on television lots of times. He was a licensed Hero, and a famous one at that. One of the good guys. Whew! But why in the world was he here?

  “I can see that. What were you planning to do with the hoe? Till me to death? Then again, I’d rather find you clutching a hoe with an ‘e’ than the other kind. You’re a little young to be clutching a ho.” Amazing Man’s steel-grey eyes looked amused. He waited expectantly. “That was a joke,” he said when it was clear no laugh was forthcoming.

  “Uh, I know. It was funny,” I said, lying.

  “Don’t humor me, son. I’m a Hero, not a stand-up comedian. I know my strengths. I’ll stick to my day job. But enough about filthy hoes of either variety. When I asked what you were doing, what I was really asking is why are you digging these potatoes up with your hands?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, my Dad and I don’t have enough sweet potatoes planted to justify buying a machine to dig them up.” I left out the fact we did not have the kind of money to buy a potato digger. Though such a machine could do in minutes what it took me days to do by hand, it cost thousands of dollars.

  Amazing Man shook his head as if he was shooing away an annoying fly.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “What I’m trying to ask you is why aren’t you using your powers to dig up the potatoes?”