Nathan Seymour was probably the only person on record who had ever tried to initiate his own NEXT transformation and successfully managed the act.
He had always been different since he was a small boy. No G.I Joe action figures for him, no playing sports. He was more than content playing with dolls and playing dress up with his younger sister. There was nothing the two liked more than getting into their mother's cosmetics drawer and giving each other makeovers. By the time he turned seven, his father had given up trying to make him more masculine and moved out of their apartment in Detroit, Michigan, never to be seen again.
Nathan didn't identify himself as male even as an adolescent. He wore girl's clothes to school and insisted he be called Natalie. He actually got away with it until he entered junior high and then the bullying got so bad his mother had no choice but to pull him out and choose home schooling. Nathan was quite fine with that arrangement and directed his own lessons with studious care. He became obsessed with knowledge and finished his course load a year earlier than if he'd gone to public school. It immediately qualified him for a scholarship at Wayne State University.
He chose to live off-campus with two other women. He sampled a wide variety of subjects before deciding on Business as his major. He became obsessed about the stock market and studied bell curves and flow graphs until he was almost cross-eyed. He worked evenings at a thrift store and had a little money saved away and decided to try his hand at investing. At the very least, it would make for an interesting term paper for his economics professor to read. As things turned out, the concept of knowing when to bid low and sell high came with almost supernatural ease for him. By the end of his first year at university, he had enough money to buy the thrift store he was working at. He turned it into a coffee shop and added a few computers and Internet access. By accident or design he ended up creating one of the first Cyber Cafés on record and was bought out by a chain for seven figures. This all happened before he turned twenty-one.
He effortlessly went on to bigger and better ventures, all of them successful, but remained at college determined to get his Master's Degree. While he was taking Marketing there was something that the professor said that seemed to strike a chord with him: "The coordinating elements of a successful marketing scheme vary according to its consumer base but for one identifying characteristic: You must have an original product to market."
By that time, everybody knew about Mr. Legend and the other Heroes of Stern Bild city. The word "NEXT" was always guaranteed to generate a reaction, be it positive or negative. It was the buzz word of the decade.
Nathan wondered how he could make it work in his favor.
In what little spare time he actually had, he acquainted himself with the microbiology department and studied some of the more compelling research notes gathered on NEXT genetic studies. He began dating one of the associate professors (he did it more to get information than for pleasure, but Nathan was a gifted multi-tasker and enjoyed doing both). The man, Marcero Tremblay, was beginning to make great strides into the field of phylogenomics. He maintained that the mutant NEXT gene was not a dormant sequence under repression at all. It was coming to life as a repair protein to make up for inadequacies in the active DNA.
They were lying in bed together as Marcero explained this and Nathan turned his head to look at him. "What are you saying? That it represents some new stage of human evolution?"
"No, that's not what I mean," his lover said. "I think something is weakening our active DNA and the NEXT gene is activating to try and fix it and make it stronger. It's all theory, of course. But in all of the documented cases so far, it seems to react to a stress trigger."
"A stress trigger like what, precisely?" Nathan queried.
"That's the thing. It's impossible to quantify because all people have different things that set them off. It could be hormonal, it could be a physical or mental trauma, or the reaction to a phobia. They're all documented triggers but what might affect me, probably wouldn't faze you. It's all subjective. What I do know is that science has determined that anxiety levels for people in industrial nations is going through the roof. When you lay a NEXT graph over that, you start to see a pattern. I think what's happening is that we're not evolved enough to handle all of this extreme sensory input we're now taking in on a daily basis and the NEXT protein is activating in people to try and make up for the lapse. The problem is that it's still a mutated gene and reacts differently in almost anyone, hence the strange powers."
"And the blue glow and eyes? What's the explanation for that?"
Marcero was silent for a long time before finally admitting, "Like I said, it's just a theory."
Still, it all gave Nathan much food for thought and he didn't think his lover was too far off the mark. The words "stress trigger" stuck on his mind. He became obsessed with the notion of becoming a NEXT and of basing a business around it. Perhaps even a corporation. A person couldn't buy publicity like that! It was an original, marketable product just like his old professor had once instructed.
He knew the NEXT odds of lowly physical mutations versus active flamboyant powers. He didn't care. He already had it all thought out: The power to make his nails grow long? Create a business centering around fake nails. Something to do with skin? Cosmetics (he was really pulling for that one). Physical deformity? Specialized clothing chain. For every conceivable power that could possibly activate, Nathan had a business idea that was ideally suited to it. That was the quality of his particular genius.
He set about doing everything he could to try and get the recessive gene to activate. His friends were all convinced that he had lost his damn mind. He placed himself deliberately in danger every chance he got, taking on a rough lover (or three), goading homophobes into fights, he tried rock climbing, scuba diving, and sky diving. Hell, he even bought a race car and competed in rallies. Nothing worked. The problem was his own suave nature. He took all things simply in stride and was unflappable in the face of virtually any crisis. After two years of risking his life, with only the dismaying number of scars to show for his efforts, he decided that he'd best abandon this particular scheme before it killed him and chalk it up as his first loss.
He was still in the doldrums when he showed up at his office unannounced one afternoon. His personal secretary, a woman named Gladys, was stunned at his appearance and clearly uncomfortable. It didn't take long for Nathan to notice why. ". . . Are you wearing my Issey Miyake cashmere blazer?" he asked, staring at her in stunned disbelief.
The woman looked down at herself, as if noticing it for the first time, and managed a small nod. "Yes, Mr. Seymour. I-I didn't think you'd mind?"
"Not mind? That was a fall Paris line original." Nathan's voice lowered in pitch as he suddenly roared, "Bitch! You got an ink stain on the lapel!" His eyes flashed blue and fire burst around his clenched, trembling fists.
Just like that, Nathan managed to accomplish the impossible.
