Deus ex machina

By Todd Fan

Disclaimer: "They say necessity is the mother of invention. And when the necessity is survival, she can be one mean mother. Of course, it is her child, invention, who is the really dangerous one"

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Ya know, I'm surprised I didn't think of this one sooner. I started this without any real goal, just let it fall out. It's definitely Evo-Forge, but I used facts about his cannon powers to make it work. After all, it's the same powers, just about.

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Edison once said 'To invent, you need a good imagination, and a lot of junk' guess he was right on that one. 'Course he never factored in someone like me to pop into existence. For someone to show up with an extra gene in his genetic code to mix things up. When you think about it, my mutant ability is really bizarre. A one-of-a-kind deal. You have your teleporters, your telepaths, guys who shoot some sort of blast from some part of their body. Those mutations, people understand the point of. You can see how they'd help the mutant survive a bit better than a normal person. Me. I'm different. I'm not surprised on that one. I've always been a bit….off.

I'm rambling again. I do that. Twenty years of solitude has to leave at least a few odd personality quirks. At least I'm not talking to people that aren't there, or curled into a little ball rocking endlessly. Nah, I'm too stubborn to let insanity sink in. You could call me a little eccentric. But that goes with the job.

I'm an inventor. That's my mutant power. To create whatever I want. No blueprints necessary, straight from my brain to the lab table. When you first think about it, it doesn't seem much of a mutant power. Kinda crappy, when you come to think about it. But, it's only when you really think about it that the implications set in. When full realisation dawns on exactly what my powers mean, people often take a few steps away from me. I don't really blame them. I reiterate. I can create anything. Think of the most horrific machine in your imagination. Got it? I have about five ideas of making it real, without putting any real effort into it. I'd get it to you within a week. What's worse, my powers cause my mind to compel me to build them. It may not seem like a lot of control is needed for my abilities. But whoever thinks that should try having them for an hour.

Of course, that's not the only part of my powers. The other part is, I don't know what to call it, a techno-vision, maybe? I see how every machine I come into contact with works. It's like music to me, as natural as breathing. Charles says I can 'perceive mechanical energy', I say 'I see things in a funky way'. I forgot what the normal world looks like now, I haven't seen it the normal way for a long, long time. I can't even explain how I see the world. It's like trying to describe a colour to a blind person. How do you describe red to someone who's never seen it? It's like that with me. You have to see how I see, to understand it.

It goes without saying, these powers of mine get me into endless trouble. When most mutant's powers manifest for the first time, it takes them by surprise. Something weird happens. They fall through the floor, they blow up a few things. Me? I created a CD player. Doesn't sound like a big deal, right? Well, it's a big deal when you invent something that doesn't get officially invented for another ten years or so. CD's didn't even exist. Man, I wish I'd patented that. Sadly, my parents completely freaked out when they saw it. Though I explained how it would revolutionise the music industry as we know it (probably signalling the sad end of the eight track, a hard loss on my part), they didn't agree. It was tossed in the trash as one of my 'little accidents', and life went on. Until that night, of course. (1)

Every mutation has a drawback. For me, it's sleep, or more specifically, lack of it. As soon as my mutation was switched on, I found I couldn't switch it off. My mind's constantly working on new inventions. My sub-conscious working a mile-a-minute. Ever found it's hard to sleep with stuff on your mind? That's me. Every. Single. Day. Sure, I snatch bits of sleep every few days, but any deep sleep results in my subconscious sliding in an invention into my dreams, and I'm fully awake again, the compulsion to build attacking like a rather nasty addiction someone never really gets over.

For me, my Castle in the Sky , my Moby Dick, my Pipe Dream, is perpetual energy. After the CD incident, before I even created myself a damn decent bionic arm to replace the crappy one with the little hook-pincers they'd given me at the hospital way back when… I wanted to create a perpetual energy machine. I still do. For some reason, however, my power won't do it. Anything else, no matter how amoral the resulting invention would be, it has no problem devising. So why can't I figure this one thing out? It's the thing that keep me awake at night, my mutation forcing my sleep-depraved mind to figure it out. I want to make the thing just to get a good nights sleep, if anything else.

It didn't take long for the people at Bayville High to cotton on that I was 'special'. Of course, they didn't know how special. Mutants weren't generally known then, after all. Anyway, they decided it would look very good on school record to give a one-armed Native American student a lab to further his studies. Hey, that's giving race and handicap rights, genius!. Heh. To be honest, I thought if anyone would have got the unused lab, it would have been Mr. I-Can-Be-Good-At-Sports-And-Classes McCoy. Yeah, I was in school with Beast. Though we very rarely spoke. We were from different worlds, after all. He was a fairly well off Caucasian kid (boy, did that change) who happened to be a smart jock, pretending to be a dumb jock. Me, I was a misfit. I generally didn't fit in anywhere. The geeks were envious of me, and the jocks wanted to kill me. So, yeah, neither a rivalry nor a big friendship with McCoy. That would have made my story a bit interesting, but I'm not gonna sugar-coat it.

So, I got a lab. And I decided to enter the '78 science project. Big mistake, right there, Forgie. You should have just let someone else take the crown. I don't know why I entered something I was a shoe-in to win. If I was being a bit spiteful because my life thus far had been a rather nasty string of disappointments, or if I was just in a generally selfish mood. But I did it. I wish I hadn't. It would be the last thing I'd do in my own world for two decades.

I remember making Trans-Dimensional-Projector, or as Kurt calls it, 'The creepy, flashy Middleverse thingie' just as term had started after the holidays (not that we celebrated anything at that time in my house) in January. I wanted a head start on it, even if I didn't need one. Something by ELO (that's Electric Light Orchestra, kids) was playing on the battered radio in the corner of the room. I was impressed by my work myself. I mean, this could go into another dimension. Like the Twilight Zone. Dededededededede.

So, I tested it out, next thing I knew, I was caught up in a beam of light and got zapped off into Middleverse. Sure, it scared the crap out of me at first, and I spent the first few years trying to get free. Then I kinda just….resigned myself to my fate. I wish I could tell you I came to some sort of spiritual enlightenment while trapped there for twenty years. But I didn't. I'd had enough of that sort of crap in my childhood…..but that full story is something you'd only get out of me through pain of torture. I watched people go by, like fading whispers, never there for longer than a few seconds, and me never able to communicate to them. It's lucky I was already a loner, or I may have gone crazy.

So, I spent years wandering around a high school, never aging, listening to snippets of conversation that ended up doing nothing for my ability to judge the changes in the times. I mean, I knew it had been a long time….I just wasn't quite sure how long. Without any calendar, or day-night cycle, time was something that was very hard to tell. The only time I knew for certain how long I'd been in there was after Kurt managed to get zapped into the world I'd become accustomed to.

Sure, I was freaked when I first saw him, for about five seconds. After all, he was another sentient being who saw me, and could talk to me. He could have had ten heads and a few dozen arms, and I really wouldn't have cared. You don't realise how lonely you are until you talk to someone after being alone for a long amount of time. So, yeah, you know what happened there. We got out. For once, luck was on my side.

There's that term 'Stuck in the 70's'. That's me all over. Literally. Now I know how Rip Van Winkle must have felt. Except at least he got to age. It really sucks to be thirty six, and not allowed to drink legally. Not allowed to do anything legally, come to think of it. Anyway, I'm still trying to catch up to the year I'm in. I could use normal slang if I wanted. The 70's stuff just feels…familiar, and safe.

Back to where I was before I started rambling again. I got out of Middleverse, and was pretty much instantly offered a place with the X-Men. Yeah, 'cause that was what I needed, moving into a school when I'd spent the last twenty years stuck in one. Thanks, but no thanks. Still, that did mean I had to go home and face my parents. The people who thought I'd been dead all this time. To say they were shocked was an understatement.

I saw this movie called Big while I was attempting to catch up with the world. Tom Hanks, 80's movie. Kid wishes to be big, turns into a grown up, freaks his parents out. Still a kid, in his head, but an adult in his body. That's me, in reverse. I'm not sure which is worse, not trying the other one, but I know this is no game. Especially going home that night.

After a lot of screaming, questions of what kind of sicko I was and was I stalking them, they finally calmed down to the fact that maybe, just maybe I was in fact their son that had just been lost for a very long time, and was definitely more confused than they currently were.

I adjusted, eventually. I guess I didn't have much choice in the matter. And I do try to live as normal a life as possible, even if I do remember things that happened decades before people who are the same age I look were even that glint in a parents eye. I have to cover up slips like that, it's easier than just trying to explain the truth. If I did that, people really would think I was crazy, and put me away. No thanks. I just got my freedom back, I'm not giving it up for anything.

So, what was the point in saying all of this? I mean, I can't say it's getting anything off my chest. My darker, nastier deep-seated problems are things I just don't talk about. My dark-and-mysterious past is, and only will be, known by a small few people. I guess that's one good thing about the Middleverse thing, it gave me the chance to start over again.

….Or, I could stop being optimistic, and just accept karma decided to take back what it was owed.

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(1) – After watching Middleverse and pausing it every few hundred time like an obsessive fangirl I am, I noticed Forge had a CD case in his bag. He's from the 70's, they didn't have CD's then. That struck me as odd, until I realised this is Forge we're talking about.

Yeah that was very random. This is what happens when I write after working on a report for way too long. Incidentally, I was quite chuffed to see Forge had rated a 'high' on the mutant threat level in the 198 files. That's 2nd from the top. That'll show people who think his powers' crappy. He's more dangerous than Beast, Piotr and Kurt, to name a few. I'll shut up now. Do review, Until next time…