Chapter One

Our narrator introduces himself. We are introduced to our protagonist. Shenanigans.

Chapter One

[One tends to get caught up in the strangest things when in my line of work. I’m sure that won’t make any sense to you at all, but don’t worry; you’ll figure it out in due time. In the interim, just remember that, as a story designed to entertain, foreshadowing is going to be a common sight here; I made sure of it.

My goodness, I haven’t even introduced myself! Unfortunately, for the safety of all, I can’t tell you my name. What I can tell you is that I already know who you are, thanks entirely to the Virtue of Omniscience. Omniscience is much like Enlightenment, but much more powerful. The Bureaucracy keeps me under complete secrecy, so the fact that you’re reading this is quite a surprise to me. You may ask, Why is it a surprise? Aren’t you omniscient, which means all-knowing?

Wouldn’t that be nice? I could do so much more if that were true, but unfortunately, it isn’t. I do not control the Virtue of Prescience, which is the rarest of any Virtue, so I cannot see the future. Technically, the title “Virtue of Omniscience” is a misnomer; it does not make me all knowing. What Omniscience gives me is knowledge of everything about whatever I observe at any given moment. I can make an educated guess as to whether this tale will ever fall into anyone’s hands, but I can never know for sure of what is not yet set in data (We, of course, stopped using stone as a writing material a long time ago.) The past is a different story. I know everything about our world’s history, simply from my Virtue. Want to know the middle name of the pharaoh Akhenaton’s granddaughter? I can tell you (but I won’t because I know you’ll stress about it until I tell you that Akhenaton didn’t have a granddaughter).

In any case, with a Virtue like mine, I have to be careful. Even in the Bureaucracy, where I work and where my secret is kept, strange things happen, like the story I’m about to relate. Actually, I’ve already started telling it; who do you think wrote the prologue about Adrian? Oh yes, that was me. Adrian is now a very accomplished Virtue Worker who plays a part in the rest of this story. What, you think I told that prologue just for exposition? What kind of story do you think this is, The Wheel of Time?

Gosh, I really need to stay on track. I apologize; having all this information in my mind can be distracting. Where was I? Oh yes, Adrian and his sister, more than exposition, etc.

Still, they’re not the main characters in this, though they do appear again. No, my main focus is a not-so ordinary boy named Mark.

Mark is perfectly innocuous at first glance. He’s sixteen years old, in the age range where all eagerly hope for a Virtue to trigger. Some hope for Alacrity, others for Ubiquity, and the really dreamy ones hope for Omniscience or Prescience. Some get the Virtue they’ve been wishing for, some get one that they weren’t expecting, and the unlucky few get none at all; they are Common. Mark falls into the second category.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Ten years after Adrian Tullenson set off for the Bureaucracy, in the year 2234, Mark Carson woke up for school.]

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Why did the alarm have to be so annoying? As he shook the last vestiges of sleep from his consciousness, Mark asked that question for what he felt was the millionth time when, in actuality, it was only the twenty-seventh. He grumbled about other things as well, the kind of things that adults simply take in stride but teenagers have to question. Why does school have to be so early, why do I have to go, why can’t it be like when I was a kid, with no responsibilities? He got out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom. He immediately looked in the mirror, hoping to see the temporarily gold irises of someone whose Virtue had been triggered. Nothing. Sighing, Mark undressed and got in the shower, beginning his routine to get ready for school. It only took a couple of minutes to actually wash; he spent the rest of the time just standing there, enjoying the warm water trickling down his back.

After a while Mark realized he’d be late for school if he didn’t get out of the shower, so he got out [shocking!] and returned to his room to get dressed. He grabbed his school clothes and pulled them on. There really wasn’t much to see in the uniform; it was just the normal gray shirt, black pants, and a white scarf, since it was the middle of winter. He didn’t care much for the color, but he did like the softness of the scarf.

“Mark?” called his father from downstairs, “Are you ready yet?”

“No,” called his mother, who could tell what he was doing thanks to the Virtue of Insight, which allows one to view someone else’s thoughts, “He’s dawdling with his uniform again.”

“Well, hurry up! We’re going to be late!”

Mark’s father was a teacher at the school, but he didn’t teach any classes Mark attended, thank the Chief. The only thing it impacted was his morning schedule; teachers had to be at the school a half-hour before the students, and since Mark’s mother worked at the other end of the city at the local Bureaucracy building, they decided the most convenient approach was to have Mark accompany his father. Mark wasn’t too unhappy about it; true, he lost a half-hour of sleep, but it gave him some time to do the homework he never remembered to do the night before. Honestly, Mark hated homework. It was annoying, superfluous, and downright dreadful. In his math class, he had to learn how to integrate natural logs, which he didn’t understand in the first place, and then learn how to re-differentiate them. All the kids who had triggered the Virtue of Comprehension blew through their homework, but did Mark? Nooooo, he had no Virtue at this point, so he had to struggle through each problem. His father was no help at all; Mark found that any time Dad tried to help, it ended up with him getting frustrated at Mark’s dimwittedness. So Mark was left to his own devices, and that meant asking his friend Christine for help as he did it himself. She was a much better helper anyway.

Math was only part of his homework, however. He also had History, English, Science, and Bureaucratic studies. His work in English normally involved learning how to write in a way that the Bureaucracy found acceptable and not being too imaginative, as that could disrupt the learning process. According to them, the school systems had been perfected from the way they were decades ago, before Virtues, when each class conflicted with each other and the work was so convoluted that a strange disease, called “senioritis”, had cropped up in the graduating classes. The way the Bureaucracy put it, senioritis was an absolute plague on schools until the government stepped in to sort it all out. Each class was given a limit to how much work they could give outside of class and when students should learn about which topics. Apparently this created smoothly run government institution that cranked out efficient workers for both the Bureaucracy and other employers.

Mark wasn’t sure about that. Sure, the ones with Enlightenment and even Comprehension worked well, but the rest of the students took almost twice as long trying to figure out what the teachers were talking about. In English they were currently learning different rhetorical devices that had the most bizarre names ever, like synecdoche and metonymy. Those didn’t even sound like real words. His English teacher wasn’t a very nice person either. Her name was Mrs. Merol, and she was a crabby old woman with the Virtue of Enlightenment, which allowed to her to tell exactly when a student wasn’t paying attention, even when they tried their hardest to act like they were. She’d call up the offenders to her desk and scold them. Normally, a scolding would be something the students could withstand, but thanks to her Enlightenment, Mrs. Merol could figure out exactly what unnerved each individual. Christine hated being told that her parents didn’t love her, so Merol would find subtle ways to hint that to her. Mark, thankfully, knew how to pay attention, as his father was a teacher (albeit not a very good one), so he had never been called up to Merol’s desk.

History wasn’t much better. Every day, they listened to seemingly unending lectures on how horrible the country used to be, when the Bureaucracy didn’t exist and people were left to decide how to govern themselves, and then made horrible decisions. The people in charge manipulated everybody else, and fought people in rival groups, and it was an absolute mess. Blah blah blah, is what Mark heard. Regardless of what time period they were supposedly studying, the lecture always boiled down to that. He didn’t even take notes anymore. The tests in that class were always group discussion, and as long as Mark stressed the fact that the civilizations of the past were all vile, disorderly, chaotic, anarchical, and every other synonym for bad he could think of, he passed the class. He didn’t enjoy talking about the past in that manner, because he was actually intrigued by those countries. This place called Egypt had believed in really cool gods who did interesting things, as opposed to the Bureaucracy’s teachings, which said that they were called by this one god to rule the earth, and so the people should listen to them. Really, how obvious can you get? The problem was, no one could disprove that, so they all just went along with it, especially since the Bureaucracy had a corps of people with the Virtue of Capacity or Alacrity to enforce their rules.

Mark would probably enjoy Science a lot more if he wasn’t so darn clumsy. For the past month or so, they’d been doing a chemistry unit, and Mark constantly dropped flasks and bottles of chemicals, a few of which burned holes in the floor and one had even dissolved all his clothes. Due to chemical dangers, he wasn’t allowed to move until they were cleaned up either, so he had to stand naked in front of his friends. They pretended to have forgotten about that, but he still heard them laugh about it behind his back every once in a while. They asked him why he kept dropping them, but he couldn’t explain it; his hands randomly stopped working like they should. His parents had taken him to a Medical Facility even, thinking it might have been carpal tunnel syndrome, but they hadn’t found anything wrong with him. His science teacher punished him time and time again, but Mark kept doing it. Finally, the teacher had forbidden him from handling any of the delicate materials in the labs where they worked, so Mark had to ask his friends for help every time he needed something.

Bureaucratic studies was the worst by far. Every day, Mark sat down in the class and was expected to memorize every single little thing about the Bureaucracy that he possibly could. He had to read about the Virtue Workers, most of whom had either the Virtue of Alacrity or Enlightenment. Enlightenment was for figuring out the exact Virtue that people had (and Mark couldn’t figure out why Alacrity was needed.) It just made him more conscious of the fact that he still hadn’t triggered a Virtue. It was depressing, really. Day after day after day, Mark listened to the instructor drone on about different obscure facts that Mark would never need to know, because he obviously wasn’t going to ever work in the Bureaucracy at this rate. Still, it was required for him to have any sort of employment at all, so he endured it. He listened to what the difference between the Virtue of Alacrity and Virtue of Capacity was, as well as the repeated admonition that both people with Virtues and without could be effective in society. Mark wasn’t sure he believed that. His mother had a Virtue and was able to work in the Bureaucracy itself for a decent living, while his father’s best option was to work at this school for a very low salary. Yes, people could be effective, but just because they were effective didn’t mean they earned enough funds to live off of.

The only really interesting thing in Bureaucratic Studies was learning about the Virtues themselves. The first thing the teacher had said when they started the unit on Virtues was, “Virtues are the greatest thing we as a species ever discovered. In the year 2057, right after the world had united under the Bureaucracy, the Chief of the Bureaucracy assigned his scientists the task of finding an answer to the age-old question ‘are superpowers possible?’ Sixty years later, they had their answer. No, superpowers in the way they used to think about them, the ability to fly or shoot lasers from your eyes, were impossible, but they were able to inlay certain genetic abilities into the populous. Do not think of Virtues as magic or super; they are all a matter of genetics. For example, many of you have a desire to Trigger the Virtue of Alacrity. The genetic ability that creates Alacrity is found in the mitochondria of the cell. Those who have taken biology know about the Kreb cycle, which uses oxygen to create energy. When the cell does not have enough oxygen to use this cycle, it can go without, but for a much smaller amount of energy output. What Alacrity does is simultaneously increase the energy output of the Kreb cycle and make it possible to still take place even if oxygen is not present.”

Having only barely scraped a passing grade in Biology the previous year, Mark found it slightly hard to follow the technicalities of every Virtue, but he did remember a few facts. His mother’s Virtue, Insight, allowed increased intake in the part of her brain that thinks, allowing it to not only pick up the chemical signals of her own thoughts, but other people’s most recent thoughts as well.

As with all other things, there were many, many little technicalities to memorize. He didn’t remember most of them, but he did remember the concept of Compounded Virtues. The more rare Virtues were actually combinations of two or even three. [My own Virtue, Omniscience, is a combination of the Virtues of Enlightenment, Comprehension, and Insight, which give me the traits of increased brain functions, telepathy, and deductive reasoning. That means I can look at an object, observe and learn everything I can about it, and then make accurate deductions to everything else that Comprehension cannot readily learn. If I looked at this book, for example, Comprehension would allow me to observe every little detail, but would not allow me to understand what those details mean. Enlightenment allows me to deduce the meaning and context of each detail, giving me knowledge about everything the book has done or been through since the moment it was created. If I looked at a person, I would receive all that information, as well as be able to read their thoughts. Get the picture?]

Mark had heard about Compounds, but had never seen someone who had one. The number of Compounds that could appear was slim; you had the Trio, the rarest of the Virtues, which were listed as Prescience, Omniscience, and Fortitude. [Fortitude is the Compound of both Capacity and Alacrity. No one (except me, and I won’t tell you) knows the combination of Virtues that create Prescience.]

Beyond the Trio were only a few more Compounds, but there was another group of non-Compound Virtues that no one could figure out how they worked. There was the Virtue of Ubiquity, which somehow gave someone the ability to instantly teleport to any place they’d previously been to. There was also the Virtue of Trajectory, which allowed the individual who had it to change the way gravity affected them whenever they wished it.

There was one more, and Mark struggled to remember what it was. He dimly remembered that it was called… something like the “Virtue of Fluidity”, but he couldn’t remember what it did. He knew that hardly anyone ever had it, and that he had never seen anyone who did. For some reason, all the teachers seemed to be almost… afraid of it, and they wouldn’t say what it was.

“Come on, Mark, we’re going to be late!” His dad called. Mark shook himself out of his reverie and finished getting dressed. He then hurried downstairs where his mother had the orderer all ready for him. Mark stepped into the chamber and waited while it scanned what food he’d need. It gave him an extra serving of fruit with his normal breakfast, but other than that, nothing changed. Why fruit? He couldn’t figure it out, but he didn’t have any more time to wonder; he had to get to school with his father. Mark wolfed down his food quickly, then grabbed his bag and tablet and ran out to the transport.

[In my opinion, transports are so much better than the automobiles of the B.B (Before Bureaucracy) era. The widespread pollution and destruction of the environment was extraordinarily terrible until around 2147, a few years after the Virtue program was completed, when the Bureaucracy decided to end pollution once and for all. Its scientists worked on ways to eliminate the existing pollution, and its inventors were tasked with creating replacements for anything that caused the pollution. Automobiles who used gasoline were destroyed, and the inventors managed to invent a car that used hydrogen as fuel. The result was the transports, machines that used hydrogen as fuel and, while not being able to go quite as fast as the old cars, still had decent velocity capabilities, and the people all accepted them (of course, with the Bureaucracy telling them they had to, how else could they have reacted?)]

His father told the autopilot to take them to the school, then settled in next to Mark in the backseat. They rode in silence for a moment, and then, apparently as a way to break the silence, his father asked him, “So how’s school going?”

Mark was still too tired to really want to talk, but he said, “Fine.”

“Are you doing well in your classes?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you having fun with your friends?”

Mark actually had to think to answer this one. “Actually, not really,” he said after a moment.

“Really? How so?”

“Adam Miller just triggered a Virtue, and now I’m the only one in my group of friends who doesn’t have one. He triggered Constitution,” [which makes the body heal much more quickly,] “And since Christine has Trajectory and Tyler has Insight, I’m the only one left who’s Common. Maybe I’ll stay that way.”

“No, I’m sure you won’t. Your mother has a Virtue, so there’s every chance that you’ll get one too.” His father thought for a moment, going through what Mark just said. “Christine has Trajectory? Really?”

“Yup. It happened in the middle of school one day. Christine was late to class, but there was a ton of people in the hall and she wasn’t making any progress. Then, out of nowhere, she suddenly fell onto the ceiling. She was as surprised as we were, but then she ran onto the wall and started to laugh. She has the rarest Virtue at our school right now. Apparently someone else a while back had Ubiquity, but other than that, no one’s had that rare of a Virtue. But honestly, any Virtue is better than none.”

“Well, we’ll just have to wait. You’re still in that age range.”

Mark nodded, but he didn’t want to continue the conversation. Talking about Virtues and other people who had them always made him mad. Why did it have to be this way? Why couldn’t everyone have a Virtue at the same time? It would certainly make things easier.

The transport pulled up to the school, and Mark climbed out. When he tried to walk forward, however, he stumbled and fell. His feet felt… different. He couldn’t describe it, but he couldn’t walk.

“Mark! Are you alright?” his father said as he got out the other door.

“Yeah,” Mark said, somewhat dazed, “Yeah, I’m fine.” There was nothing wrong with him; he felt completely normal again.

His father helped him up and dusted off his clothes. He then checked Mark’s tablet to make sure it hadn’t broken. The tablet was where Mark kept all his schoolwork, and if it broke, it would cost a lot of funds to get it fixed. More than they could afford at the present moment. Thankfully, it was alright.

“Well,” his father said, “See you at lunch.” He then trotted off to the teacher’s building, where they’d all be getting ready for the lessons they were going to teach. Mark barely paid attention to his father’s farewell; he had spotted Christine among the crowd. Then again, it wasn’t that hard to see her; she had stopped gravity for her again and was floating towards the school doors, having just kicked off from one of the announcement boards. Trajectory was interesting, but Mark actually wasn’t really thinking it would be a good Virtue for him. It took too much finesse to control gravity that effectively, and seeing how clumsy he was in science class, finesse was not his forte. He wanted to Trigger Ubiquity, but that was one of the rarest ones, and it wasn’t likely. What other Virtues would he be fine with? There was always Alacrity or Capacity, but those were some of the more commonplace, and he wanted to be unique. Omniscience? He scoffed at that; only a handful of people had ever triggered Omniscience since the start of the Virtues [One of them, of course, being yours truly.] Enlightenment would be fun to have; he could deduce so many things and be like that one fictional character they had learned about in English. What was his name? Sherlock Holmes, that was it.

Insight would be interesting, especially since his mother had that Virtue as well. Constitution would be alright; he wouldn’t really have to worry about injuries anymore.

There was another Virtue in the category of Virtues that couldn’t be figured out how they worked, the Virtue of Empathy. Somehow, it gave the individual the power to change other people’s emotions to a certain degree, and the affected wouldn’t even know that their emotions had been manipulated. He could see some uses for that, but not many.

What about the Compounds? There was always a chance he could trigger one of those. Fortitude would certainly be fun to have, but for some reason, the combination of Capacity and Alacrity was so much more rare than any other combination. There was the Virtue of Administration, which combined Insight and Empathy and gave increased telepathic control over a person. That would certainly be useful, but he would probably feel guilty using it; it was extremely manipulative. He couldn’t remember most of the other Compounds; he’d have to pay more attention in class.

Christine saw him and waved. She dropped back to the ground and ran to him. “Hey Mark!” she said happily, “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” he said, “Still sad that I haven’t Triggered anything yet.”

Christine squeezed his arm encouragingly. “Don’t worry! There’s still time.”

“Easy for you to say,” he grumbled, “You already have one!”

“Well, sure, but I still went through the same frustration you’re feeling now.”

Mark stopped and stared at her. “Actually,” he said slowly, “I don’t think you did. When you Triggered, did any of us have a Virtue?”

She thought for a moment. “No… I was the first.”

“Exactly! Now think about my position. For five years, ever since I turned thirteen, I’ve been waiting for a Virtue to Trigger. One by one, each of my friends Triggers a Virtue, one of them getting a super rare one, and here I am, still with nothing, and feeling more like I’ll end up as a Common forever. There’s a huge difference.”

“I guess you’re right,” Christine acquiesced, “But that doesn’t mean you should give up hope! If my Virtue has taught me anything, it’s that,” she floated up in the air, “one should always look up!” Mark rolled his eyes at her pun.

The bell rang, making Mark and Christine jump; they were going to be late to class.

“Uh oh,” Christine said, “We’d better hurry. Grab on to me!”

Mark took hold of her backpack, then braced himself as Christine shifted her gravity to the wall, making him the only thing holding her from shooting down the hallway. He started to run, and with the increased pull forward, his strides were enormous. They bounded down the hallway at twice the speed of everyone else, and they managed to get to their classroom just as the late bell rang.

The classroom, and indeed the school, weren’t much to look at. Back before the Bureaucracy, Mark had heard that classrooms were more colorful and each teacher decorated theirs differently, but now all the rooms were the same. Glossy white walls, black carpet, and soft lights all purportedly helped students learn, so said the Bureaucracy. Each desk was equidistant from the others around it, and almost every one was filled with a student. The students in the class had arranged themselves so all the different cliques and groups sat together. There was a small group of popular girls near the back who all had their tablets out, checking their appearance in the reflective surface. The ones with the Virtues of Comprehension or Enlightenment were all discussing last night’s homework. Cameron Stocks was sitting in the back corner. Cameron had the second-rarest Virtue in the school, with Christine’s being the only one more rare.He had the Virtue of Luminosity, which allowed him to manipulate the light around him, creating illusions and images out of thin air. He was by himself, absently creating illusionary birds and butterflies that flew in a halo around his head.

Mark wasn’t sure what to think about Cameron. The guy was definitely weird; what kind of person intentionally surrounded himself with girly things like that? If Mark had Luminosity, he’d most likely trick people with illusions, not entertain himself with birdsong. He also came from a poor family; neither of his parents had Virtues, so his hope was to graduate and join the Bureaucracy to help his family.

Mark thought about that for a second, and it made him even more frustrated at the Bureaucracy. Why did Virtues have to be chance? Why not give everyone a Virtue, and why make anyone who didn’t have to work more to earn a decent living. Something about that policy seemed blatantly wrong to Mark as he sat down.

Mrs. Merol was taking roll. She called out names one by one, and Mark said, “Here!” when his was called. He sighed in relief; he and Christine hadn’t technically been late.

"Alright everyone," Mrs. Merol said once she finished role, "Please open the writing program on your tablets; we are going to be writing essays today."

[A word about tablets real quick.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, a company called Apple invented the first version of tablets as we know them today. It was called the iPad and was incredibly crude. I mean really, I understand that they hadn't discovered holoprojectors yet, but trying to cramp a keyboard and all the other things into a screen about eight inches wide? That just doesn't work.

Still, it was an innovation at the time. Pretty soon, these tablets began to see use in classrooms as ways to research and learn more easily. Unfortunately, with how easy it was to conceal the screens from the teacher, they were used more often for entertainment than education. This went on until the Bureaucracy came in with its troops of inventors and scientists. Education was one of its top priorities, along with the Virtues and environmentalism. The inventors created the holoprojectors by studying those with Illumination, and found that the illusions they created were created by projecting photons onto the air molecules around them. The inventors discovered a way to do this mechanically. They took a tablet, made the screen just big enough for a keyboard, and plugged a holoprojector on the end. Now, the teacher could see exactly what all his or her students were doing, because a projection can be viewed from both sides.

You're probably wondering why I'm telling you all this. If tablets are now everyday objects, why do I need to explain them? It's simple; I have absolutely no idea when this is going to be read. If life becomes dystopian like so many 21st century novels predicted, then this sort of technology would no longer exist, therefore, I'd have to describe it in order to explain it.]

Most of the day was its usual monotonous self. After an hour writing an essay about a twenty-first century classic called The Hunger Games, he had to listen to another lecture in History. Mark actually fell asleep during it, or at least, he thought he did; when he asked Christine about it later, she said he had been awake and listening to Mr. Ralfey the entire time. Bureaucratic Studies was a little more interesting. Today they had learned about Matthias Roberts, the first Chief of the Bureaucracy to have Triggered a Virtue. He had had the Virtue of Omniscience, and the country had flourished under his rule. Mark always liked learning about people with rare Virtues.

It was in Science that things happened. Adam and Mark had been working on a chemistry experiment involving sugar and acid. Mark had dutifully refused to handle any of the delicate glassware or chemicals, but Adam had seemed distracted by watching his crush, and had accidentally spilled a small amount of acid on Mark's arm. His skin immediately started to burn, and Mark yelled. Adam grabbed a towel and wiped up the acid completely off Mark's arm. The acid started to burn through the towel, but Adam didn't have to worry; his Virtue would let him heal much quicker than Mark would. He tossed the towel in the sink and rinsed it thoroughly, then turned back to face Mark. He gasped. "Mark!" He exclaimed, "Your eyes are green!"

Mark grabbed his tablet and looked at his reflection. Adam was right; his eyes, which were always blue, had taken on a strange, greenish tinge. "Weird," he said, "Maybe the chemicals affected them." The pain had mostly stopped, but Mr. Klein was coming over to check what the commotion was, so they stopped talking. They both looked at their feet as they received a lecture on safety. The problem came when Mr. Klein said to Mark, “I think you should be sent to a different class if you can’t refrain from breaking anything.”

Adam quickly said, “But Mr. Klein, it wasn’t even Mark’s fault this time!”

“He’s right!” Christine called from the next table over, “I saw it!”

“Oh really?” Mr. Klein said suspiciously, “Then are you saying that you are responsible, Adam?”

Adam gulped. He had never gotten in trouble with a teacher before. “Y-yes,” he managed to stammer out, “I accidentally spilled it.”

“Then where are your acid burns?”

“I have Constitution, sir. I heal quickly.”

“I see.” He glanced at Mark. “And what about you?”

“I got burned right here, Mr. Klein,” Mark replied, and held out his forearm. To Mr. Klein’s confusion and his astonishment, the burn was gone.

“What?” Mark said, “It was right here…”

“I’m sure it was,” Mr. Klein said sarcastically, “And do you know where you’re going to vanish to? The remedial…” he trailed off as he looked at Mark’s face. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“Oh, we think it’s from the chemicals,” Adam said quickly.

“Hm,” Mr. Klein said, thinking. “I’ve changed my mind,” he declared after a moment, “But this is your last warning. Another one of these incidents, and it’s to the remedial class with you!”

Mark and Adam looked at each other in confusion. What had happened? Mr. Klein had gone from almost kicking Mark out of his class to giving him a warning. Mr. Klein never just gave a warning once he had made up his mind.

Mark was still perplexed once the bell rang and he walked to the changing rooms for gym. The pain from the acid burn was gone, yes, but the burn mark shouldn’t have been! As he changed into his gym clothes, he absentmindedly scratched the spot where the acid had burned him, and he froze.

He looked at his arm, trying to confirm what his sense of touch was telling him. There, on the spot where the acid had touched him, his skin was rippling. It was making waves and ridges, like a pot of boiling water in slow motion.

What in the Chief’s name…?

He wanted it to stop, and no sooner did this thought cross his mind than it did; it stopped moving, and his skin returned to its original smooth texture. Mark pressed lightly on the spot, trying to see if something under his skin had caused it, but nothing happened. He was completely baffled as to what had happened. He changed into his exercise clothes and strode into the gym, wondering what they were going to do today. Exercise was one of the few classes he enjoyed at the school, mostly because of Mr. Bennon. Mr. Bennon was a teacher that Mark actually liked; he was jovial, friendly, and most of the time had his students exercise by playing different physical games. They’d played all the normal games, as well as some ones Mark had never heard of, like “soccer” or “volleyball”. That last one was bizarre; there was a random net in between the two sides of the court, and they couldn’t let the ball touch the ground.

Today, however, was not a day for new games. Mr. Bennon had everyone line up, took attendance, then sped across the court faster than seemed possible, placing six brightly colored balls in the middle of the court in a line. Mr. Bennon had the Virtue of Alacrity, and Mark had often wondered why the man hadn’t wanted to work in the Bureaucracy; Alacrity was one of the most common seen in Bureaucratic workers. Still, it made Exercise class more fun.

“Today we’re going to play dodgeball,” he called, running back to the crowd of students, “I want everyone with Capacity or Alacrity to line up.” After they did (and Mark stared at them in envy), he divided them up quickly between the two teams. “Everyone else, pick a team.”

Christine, thankfully, picked Mark and Adam’s team. She wasn’t the best thrower, but with Trajectory, she was extremely hard to hit. Mark was also happy to get Brian Stantson, a burly player who had, surprisingly enough for an athletic-leaning person, Triggered Enlightenment a year ago. He used the extra deductive reasoning to figure out exactly what trajectory a ball would fly and catch it perfectly. Mark, despite not having a Virtue, was a fairly good dodgeball player. Adam’s Virtue wouldn’t help him play, but it would help if he got hit by an overzealous throw by a person with Capacity.

This broad set of skills outweighed the fact that the rest of their team was a group of small first-year students who had Comprehension. They lined up at the back of the gym, the other team on the opposite side. When Mr. Bennon blew the whistle, most of the team waited while the players with Alacrity dashed forward to grab at least one ball. Today, it was equal; their team got three and the opposing team got three. They tossed the balls to the best throwers: Brian Stantson, Mark, and a third student with Capacity. Mark waited for an opening and tossed it at an opponent who wasn’t looking; he scored a hit and the student walked off the court in frustration. He then had to quickly dodge a ball that had been thrown at him in response. It barely missed him; he felt the breeze of its passage on his neck. He quickly backed up and watched his teammates to see how they were doing.

Brian was a menace. Every so often, Mr. Bennon would toss in another ball to make things more interesting. The opposing team somehow got the majority of them, and began pelting them at Brian. He stood calmly, gazing at the balls coming toward him, then simultaneously dodged two and caught a third in his huge hands, making the person who threw it out of the game.

Christine had snagged a ball and was hanging out on the far wall, sneaking her way up to the ceiling. Mr. Bennon had made some special rules for her since no one else had Trajectory; she couldn’t stay on the ceiling for more than eight seconds and wasn’t allowed to stay on the far wall if she was the only player left on her team. She waited patiently for someone to be foolish enough to get close from the line, then used her Trajectory. Another thing her Virtue could do was affect the gravity of small, inorganic objects close to her. She directed its gravity diagonally towards the floor of the other side of the court, and it sailed perfectly into the stomach of one of the Capacity team members. She jumped with glee; to Mark, it looked like she was momentarily falling towards the ground. She stopped soon and looked at the other team, then at Mark with horror. “LOOK OUT!” she screamed.

Mark turned around and saw one of the players with Capacity winding up for a throw. Mark could tell that he was pouring every last bit of extra strength he had into the throw. Almost in slow motion, Mark saw the ball fly towards his face. He lifted a hand to protect himself, and…

He caught the ball!

He felt all the force from the throw plow into him, but he somehow managed to keep his hand from slamming backward into his face. He looked with astonishment at the ball he had just caught, and noticed out of the corner of his eye the player who threw it, standing, mouth open, in utter bewilderment.

There was something else that Mark only noticed after looking at his hand for a while. It was bigger. At that moment, Mark could have sworn that his hand was larger than it should have been. Even as he comprehended this, his hand shrank, and he nearly dropped the ball.

What is going on here? he thought.

There were only two members on the other team left, and Brian and Christine quickly took care of them. Mr. Bennon, who had been watching from the sidelines, blew his whistle again and yelled, “Blue team wins!”

Mark was in a total daze, even as his teammates ran to hug him and congratulate him on his amazing catch. Some even asked to check his eyes to see if he had suddenly Triggered Capacity himself. Before they were finished, Mark knew that he hadn’t. Capacity, so he had heard, gave a very clear feeling of increased strength, and he felt none of that. And he was pretty sure that people with Capacity didn’t have randomly growing hands in the middle of gym.

None of his other team members seemed to have noticed. They were too busy congratulating him, slapping his back, hugging him. Christine had dropped down from the ceiling (with reduced gravity so she didn’t hurt herself) and threw herself at Mark, embracing him tightly. “That was incredible!” she squealed, “Almost like you had a Virtue!”

Mark didn’t say anything. She could be right, but what Virtue did that? He thought back to the other incident in Science. He had healed surprisingly quickly after Adam spilled the acid, but if he had Triggered Constitution, wouldn’t his eyes have turned gold for a few hours? Besides, Constitution didn’t make someone’s hand magically grow just big enough to catch a ball thrown with Capacity. If it was a Virtue (and Mark still wasn’t sure), it was a Virtue that he had never even heard of before.

[I know what you’re thinking, and I’m here to tell you that it’s obvious he’s gotten a Virtue. Didn’t I say earlier about how it was guaranteed that he would Trigger one? I didn't? Are you sure?]

Mark was still lost in thought as he changed back into his normal school clothes. He grabbed his bag with his tablet in it, only to turn around and see three of the largest guys in the class standing between him and the door, and they looked mad. Mark realized that all three of them had the Virtue of Capacity and had been on the other team, the one Mark had made lose through his amazing catch.

“Hey guys,” Mark said, trying to sound nonchalant, keeping his fear out of his voice, “What’s up?”

“We know what you did, Carson,” the biggest guy said. What was his name? Tyler? Travis? Mark couldn’t remember exactly.

“And what exactly did I do?” Mark replied, “Besides win, I mean.” He mentally berated himself as soon as he said that. What was he accomplishing by provoking them?

One of Tyler/Travis’ buddies laughed angrily and said, “You didn’t win, Carson, you cheated. We all saw you?”

“Cheat!?” Mark sputtered, getting angry at their accusation, “I didn’t cheat! What do you mean, you saw me? All I did was catch the ball!”

“No one catches a ball with Capacity unless they have it themselves! You probably took a physical-stimulant in the locker room when we changed.”

This was going too far. Accusing someone of using an illegal physical-stimulant was serious, and there was no way that Mark would ever do that. How dare they be such poor sports that they resorted to such tactics!

[Whoops, sorry about the weird sentence structure there. Sometimes I accidentally use my own way of speaking to give voice to Mark’s thoughts. Believe me, he doesn’t use a middle-aged man’s word choice.]

Anyway, Mark drew himself up to his full height and said coldly, “You can’t prove anything.”

“Oh really?” Tyler/Travis scoffed, “Then what about your eyes? You don’t have green eyes normally, Carson, and the whole school knows that. What are they going to think when I tell them how there are some physical-stimulants that temporarily change your eye color?”

[It’s true that there are, but what Tyler/Travis isn’t telling Mark is that every last one of them turns your irises either brown or black, not bright acid green. Typical bully tactic.]

Mark, however, didn't know that, so he was at a loss for words. To think that they might actually be able to get away with this was infuriating. He didn't even know why that catch had happened, but he knew that there was no way they'd get away with it.

"What do you want from me?" He said quietly.

"What?"

"You wouldn't have told me about this if you didn't want something from me. What is it?"

Tyler/Travis smiled eerily. "I don't want anything from you. I just wanted to tell you why we're about to beat you up."

[I know, I know, typical bullying tactic, I believe I already said that. They're brawny teenagers engulfed in their own self-superiority and hormones. Just stay with me.]

Mark laughed derisively, even though he knew there was nothing funny about this situation. "And here I thought you were a good sport. What would everyone think if they heard you beat up poor Mark Carson with not only yourself, but two other people, all of whom have the Virtue of Capacity?"

Tyler/Travis looked uncomfortable. He looked at his friends, asking with his eyes how to answer. They shrugged. He turned back to Mark, smiled, and said, “And who’s going to find out about the other two?”

That wasn’t the answer Mark was expecting. He had just enough time to think uh oh before Tyler/Travis punched him in the stomach. He slammed into his locker, dazed. As always, a punch from someone with Capacity hurt. He coughed weakly, struggling to make his diaphragm work again. He was sure that the superhuman punch had ruptured something.

Surprisingly, the pain faded. Mark got to his feet, the pain gone, adrenaline beginning to rush into his system.

Tyler/Travis was astonished.

[Please stop that. Yes, you, the one screaming about how annoying it is to give him two names. I have absolutely no intention of telling you what Tyler/Travis’ actual name is because it’s too much fun using a dichotomy. If you want to go throw a tantrum somewhere, that’s fine with me. This will still be here when you’re done.]

Tyler/Travis was astonished. “How…” he said, “How are you still standing? That should have knocked you out!”

Mark didn’t respond; he’d much rather have them wary of something he knew that they didn’t than reveal that he had no idea either. “Guess you’ll have to find out,” he responded, though he had no idea why he did. The guy had punched him, and what did Mark do? Taunt him!? He must have had a subconscious death wish.

The problem was, all three of them decided that they wanted to. Tyler/Travis and one of his friends, whose name Mark just remembered was Bryce, jumped forward, trying to tackle and pin him against the locker. Thankfully, neither of them had Alacrity, so Mark was fast enough to dodge them.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t payed attention to what the last one had been doing. He dodged Tyler/Travis and Bryce alright, but he landed right in the last one’s arms. He struggled, but the Capacity-strengthened limbs he was held in would not budge. Mark and Bryce grinned in victory, and Tyler/Travis lunged to punch Mark for the final time.

Time seemed to slow down.

[Yes, I realize that this cliche has been overdone. Who made you the literary critic? Everything I’m about to describe happened in a split-second, and if I’d narrated it in real time, you’d be just as confused as Tyler/Travis as to what happened.]

Time seemed to slow down. Mark saw the Capacity-fueled fist driving its inevitable path toward him. His anger grew exponentially; his fury became like a fire, exploding from his entire body in one pyroclastic flash. The next thing he knew, he was standing, naked and panting, above the unconscious bodies of Tyler/Travis and his cronies. He had absolutely no memory of what had occured. His clothes and shoes were lying, rumpled, on the ground. He pulled them back on, stunned.

Something tells me, he thought, This is most definitely not the end of this.

[If I could have said something to him at that moment, I most likely would have yelled, “Well, OBVIOUSLY!”]

He ran out of the locker room and didn’t look back.