Microstory 172: Cosmo Drexler

This is an experimental Bellevue Profile microstory. The introduction can be found in Microstory 101. More to follow.

Billions of years ago, a certain group of people living in the second galaxy became immortal. They were either made this way by taking a trip through a particularly special cube, or by a man whose form of immortality allowed him to make others immortal. There were different flavors of immortality, and not all of these involved literally living forever. Some were reincarnated with no memories of their past lives. Others had unstoppable bloodlines, each member of which was perfectly capable of death. One just keeps giving birth to herself, even to this day. But there was one woman whose flavor of immortality was referred to as Legacy. She died, at quite a young age actually, but her impact on the universe persisted. She had invented two games in her lifetime; the cerebral tabletop game Polygon, and the field sport, Vector. These games continued to be “invented” in every civilization thereafter, with no exception (except for one planet which fragmented the basic concepts into multiple games). Cosmo Drexler was an excellent Vector player, but this was due to his secret. He had a form of telekinesis that allowed him to manipulate the acceleration of already moving objects. He could stop a bullet, throw an object to an indefinite distance, or slow his own descent. He was both the best Wielder and best Shielder his school teams ever had, but this was not enough for his parents. The majority of people who did not belong to the evil religion Amadesis had extremely positive and supportive perspectives on human sexuality. But there were those who were so opposed to Amadesin concepts of complete heterosexuality, that they ended up on the other extreme. Cosmo was born asexual, and had no physical attraction to other individuals, and this was not acceptable to his parents. They abused him psychologically for years, and even began to harm him physically when he was older. Using money he earned from underground Polygon tournaments, he left home when he was 14 years old, and never returned. He had to give up his Vector career, which probably would have been spectacular, and instead worked his way through higher education. He had a passion for geography, but ended up earning physics degrees in order to better understand his own ability. He was in the same group as Freeman, Gus, Diane, Peyton, and Kiel, and became a very early member of Bellevue. His asexuality continued to cause minor tension between him and his friends, but he eventually found his family, and a position in Human Resources, onboarding new recruits.