What I Did During my Summer Vacation
Three to five percent of my generation is so-called Homo Superior. Magical artifacts, industrial accidents, alien heritage, or mad scientists increases the number of super humans to up to ten percent of the population.
I didn't want to be left behind. Can you blame me?
So yes, what I did was stupid, idiotic, bone headed, careless, and dangerous. But it worked. Kind of.
I found the book in May. It was shoved into the back of a shelf in the library, behind a book on how to brew your own beer in a coffee maker. No, I probably wasn't going to try making my own beer, just curious. Anyway, the book—the important one, not the brewing beer one—The Rites of Anhopten, bound in leather, old, obviously not a library book. When I touched it my skin tingled. Obviously magical.
I stole it. I could try to prevaricate, but there's no point. This was my chance, my one in a lifetime opportunity, and I took it. Shoved it into my backpack and walked out of there.
Eighteen, going into my senior year. I was obviously not a mutant, I couldn't build an antigrav device or power armor if my life depended on it, and the local companies were scrupulous in following hazardous waste protocols. But magic, anyone can do magic. Theoretically. If they can find the right materials and information.
So now I had a guide. Handwritten on parchment with all of the 'f's lengthend so they looked like 'S's. I spent the next month scanning it, running it through OCR, and manually fixing any mistakes. Horrendously stupid, I know that now, but I didn't know that then.
Really, we're just lucky I didn't release any elder abominations. But anyway, I copied and read the entire thing from front to back. You have to understand, this wasn't a beginner's guide, this was just a list of rituals, their effects, and a few warnings.
For my first rite I decided on something simple. I'd empower a necklace to increase the wearer's memory. A couple of Google searches and wiki walks showed that the deities I'd be calling upon were pretty laid back and easy going. They'd want an offering of knowledge and that was easy to provide. I just printed out Nasa's current exoplanet findings.
I waited until my parent's anniversary weekend; they went up to the mountains every year. A few hours with a chalk line and protractor and I finished the diagram. It matched the book perfectly. I checked and double checked each and every rune. I took every precaution that I could think of taking.
That's the same as saying a chimp did everything it could think of before starting a car. I had no idea what I was doing.
So I lit the candles and started with the chanting. The print out in the center, the necklace ito the side. I was feeling good. Confident.
And then the lights go out. Instant darkness. Absolute and complete. I'd been doing this in my room, during the day, with the curtains open.
"Hello there," a male voice—and I swear I'm not making this up—that sounded just like Morgan Freeman. "And who would you be?"
I could have given a false name. That would probably have been the smart thing to do. It would also probably have killed me. "I'm Amy. Amy Schwartz."
"Well, Amy Amy Schwartz, what should I do with you?"
"Take me out to dinner and the movies," I suggested. I could hope.
"No. No, I don't think so. You've called me here. Freed me. That deserves a favor. Tell me, Amy, what do you want." The last four words echoed. Shook the room. Demanded to be answered.
"I want to be powerful." And I did. Do. Seven billion people on the planet. More and more of them with super powers. I'm not particularly smart or talented. I wanted something more than the life of mediocrity I felt doomed to.
"Granted." And the room exploded.
The neighbors described it as a red wave that blew my house apart. I just remember blackness and then a bright light and a bang.
When I came to I was in the hospital. White ceiling, stiff starchy sheets, and the TV in the corner was playing a car ad. There was a man sleeping in the corner. Hunched over in a chair, wrinkled suit, and a red mark on his face from where he must have been laying on it earlier.
I checked all my body parts. All still attached. I then double checked to make sure I had no extra parts. No tail or horn, extra fingers, prehensile tongue, I breathed a sigh of relief.
The only thing left for me to worry about was my wish. My most likely monkey paw of a wish. Power. I wished for it, and apparently I got it. But at what cost?
The man in the suit stirred. I quickly lay back and pretended to be asleep.
"You snore," the man said.
I didn't take the bait. I just lay there, breathing slowly.
"No, really, it's like a chainsaw. After a couple hours it was a little soothing, but I would suggest you see someone about it. I checked the pamphlets they had out in the foyer and snoring can be a sign of all sorts of things. Like sleep apnea, heart disorders, anatomical abnormalities of the—"
"I'm up. You can stop talking now. Do I really snore?"
He pulled out a phone and fiddled with it. A dull rumbling came from its speaker. "That's you."
"And what are you sneaking into my room and recording me while I sleep?"
"Whoa, whoa. Audio only. I just recorded audio. And as for my being here at all, well, when a young lady blows up her house performing unknown magical rituals certain agencies take note. Agent Nichols, I'm with SHIELD, Magical Detection and Protection subdivision." He showed me a badge which for all I knew he bought in a toy store. It did have SHIELD and his name on it though.
"Got any photo ID?" Because who designs a leather badge holster and doesn't include a place to store photo ID on it?
He pulled out an ID with a photo on it. It looked official. An RFID tag in the corner, holograms, and some words and numbers that I didn't know the meaning of. "Thanks. I'd like my parents and a lawyer now."
My parents taught me well. If questioned asked for a lawyer. If they tell you that you don't need one, then ask to leave. If they say you can't leave then they are holding you, and are legally required to allow a lawyer.
"I'm sure we don't need that."
"I'm sure that we do."
"Ms. Schwartz, I'm going to be honest here. I'm currently here under less than official circumstances. If we were to make this official then we'd have to bring in the cops and there would be a lot of questions about why you were building a bomb in your basement. People get very tetchy about that sort of thing. Of course if we kept this unofficial then you could just answer a few of my questions and I'd be willing to sweep all of this under the rug."
"What questions?" Alright, my parents hadn't trained me well enough.
"What did you summon?"
"I don't know." He looked skeptical. "I really don't know. It was supposed to be a simple enchanting ritual. You can check the book… if it's still intact."
"If there was a magical book then it's destroyed or missing."
"Wait, I also made a copy on my computer and I saved a backup in gmail."
He blinked then started to rub his temples. "You did what?"
"Made a backup," I said.
"And you thought that was a good idea why?"
"Why wouldn't it be?"
"Malevolent fae stealing children. Restless ghosts haunting and killing the living. Big, extra-dimensional Shoggoths devouring the brains of the populace. Take your pick." He was typing into his cell phone as he spoke to me. Sending the order to delete the contents of my gmail account and steal my computer I'd find out later. SHIELD is a bunch of jerks.
"And how was I supposed to know?"
"That's the basics. If you didn't know that you shouldn't have touched the stuff." He leaned forward. "Never mind, just… moving on. What do you remember?"
I told him. Described the ritual and then how it went wrong, the voice speaking out of the darkness, and the wish he granted.
"Power. You asked for power." He sat back down in his chair, head clutched in his hands.
"I didn't mean to. He just asked and then I opened my mouth and that's what came out."
"You released an unknown being of unknown capabilities who then granted you an unknown level of power." He stopped talking to me and just started muttering to himself. He looked back up at me. "Do you feel any different? Stronger, faster, more alert?"
No, I couldn't say that I did. I told him as much.
"Right. Well then, under the Comstock Bill I am officially deputizing you into SHIELD. You'll get a badge in a week and a gun never."
"What."
"It's what we do with pretty young ladies that almost blow up the planet. Welcome to SHIELD."
An idea that was going promptly nowhere. And I really suck at titles.