Overcharge 2
Jack awoke and rolled over, his arm hitting the side of the pod. "Huh?" he asked blurrily before coming fully awake and recalling what had happened with a groan. He hit the release button on the inside of the pod and sat up as the clear hemisphere silently raised up. "Hey Friday, got anything ready for breakfast or do I have to grab some fast food?"
"Good Morning, Jack," Friday replied. "I have food bars and fruit juice available. I'm not sure how you would be able to get fast food as you have no local currency on you and we are currently in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter."
Jack rubbed sleep from his eyes. "Why the asteroid belt? And money is easy to find, I can shrink down and fit into places normal people can't, which means I can scrounge up a few bucks from under vending machines and down sewer grates without a problem; the Morlocks taught me that one."
"Resourceful," Friday complimented him. "As to our current position, once I determined that you were in no immediate danger from power overload I decided to move far enough away from Earth to make it difficult for you to be found. I believe the first logical place for your parents' to seek assistance would either be the Fantastic Four or the X-Men. In the asteroid belt we should be well outside the range of any Earth based scanners Reed Richards might use or telepathic scanning performed by Charles Xavier."
"Yeah, that would do it," Jack agreed, before recalling his costume so he wouldn't be walking around in his underwear. "Let's eat in the cockpit, I want to see the asteroids. Normally when we're off Earth we don't have much time for sightseeing."
The room shifted, a table and chair rising up from the floor as the pod sank down and one wall of the room became transparent, revealing a few rocks barely visible in the darkness of space. There was a flash of light and a glass filled with a neon green fluid appeared with a protein bar on the table.
"I know you can reshape sections of yourself at will, but you never did things like this before," Jack said, sitting down and taking a cautious sip of the liquid.
"Yes, I am very pleased with my latest upgrade," Friday replied. "I have much more mass to work with and it is more flexible in how I distribute it."
Jack nodded and took a bite of the bar, frowning a little but chewing it. After he washed it down with the green fluid he said, "I thought asteroid belts were more crashing rocks and narrow escapes like in Star Wars."
"While there are some collisions, they are few and far between," Friday explained. "The amount of space an asteroid belt occupies, versus the mass it is composed of, makes contact between asteroids a rare occurrence."
Jack slowly nodded as he considered the subject. "Yeah, that makes sense. Most of my knowledge of space stuff is from movies and books. The amount of stuff I've personally seen is kinda small in comparison and we were always too busy to really pay attention, you know?"
"Yes, unlike my creator, you come from a… I hesitate to say a less technologically advanced society, if only because the most noteworthy inventors among your species are in some ways much more advanced than the Kymellians themselves," Friday admitted. "However, on the average it is not a space-going society, so your exposure has been somewhat limited to emergency situations."
The smartship flew close to an asteroid the size of a small mountain, exterior lights allowing Jack to get a clear view of it.
"Cool," Jack said with a grin as he scanned the rocky surface, noting the glint of light here and there, showing either veins of a metallic substance or possibly crystals of some sort. "Can you scan it?"
The window in front of him lit up, green lines of text describing what the asteroid was composed of, lines of light outlining points of interest and mineral deposits.
"I wish I understood half of that, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't even after I graduated from college unless I specialized in mining or material sciences or something," Jack said with a sigh. "And that's another thing I have to deal with; figuring out how I'm going to handle school. I don't suppose you could just download everything into my skull or something?"
"That is an option," Friday acknowledged.
"What? Really?" Jack asked hopefully.
"Oh yes," Friday agreed. "After a certain level of complexity, most societies develop ways to speed up data absorption by their citizens to overcome the natural barrier created by biological beings' limited lifespan and level of intelligence."
Jack frowned in thought and chewed his protein bar. "I suppose if you're advanced enough it could take decades to learn even half of what you guys have figured out, meaning only the really old guys would make any new discoveries, making it take even longer for their kids until everyone that tries dies of old age before coming up with anything new."
"That is correct," Friday agreed. "While evolution would favor those who could more quickly learn and adapt, the rate of natural evolution would lag behind technological progress, meaning artificial adaptations were required to continue progressing."
"So you just stick a helmet on my head and Bam, a decade's worth of science is in there?" Jack asked.
"A little more complicated than that, I'm afraid," Friday said. "The Kymellians developed neural implants that allowed for the downloading and integrating of information, however as they are biological in nature we'll have to cultivate them from your own cells."
"So you gotta grow the brain upgrades," Jack said with a thoughtful nod.
"Yes, and while the technology is well known it has never been done with human cells, so I'll need at least a week to properly test the process and insure there are no problems," Friday explained. "That is, of course, unless you have any objections to the idea. From monitoring human broadcasts I know some humans find the idea of modifying themselves to be distasteful."
"Is it going to make my skull bulge out or make me look inhuman?" Jack asked.
"No, the implants are quite small and are unlikely to be discovered by anything short of dedicated medical scanning devices," Friday assured him.
"Then sign me up," Jack said, "I'll be happy to skip memorizing useless facts that I'll only need to know if I'm on a game show or playing Trivial Pursuit, so I can concentrate on learning something useful."
"I'll start the process now," Friday told him.
Jack nodded and slumped in his chair, watching the asteroid turn for a few minutes before speaking, "Thanks for distracting me and letting me chill for a while, I think I can talk about things now."
"It's no problem," the smartship replied. "Shall I tell you what I have learned from my scans?"
"Sure, I'm kinda curious about that."
"Human biology seems uniquely suited to adapting to a wide variety of energies and I can find no problem with your current situation," Friday reported. "It's likely that once you reach full maturity you could safely contain all of the abilities that Aelfyre granted you and your siblings without requiring any modifications."
"So three is no problem and once I reach my full growth I could hold all four," Jack said with a nod. "That's good to hear. I was kinda worried I would have to sneak in and give one to Katie, because then our parents would rag on her and she'd have to pass it to Alex or get in trouble, if they didn't just wait until she fell asleep and steal it from her again."
"With that out of the way, we should discuss your family situation," Friday said.
Jack sighed. "Yeah, we should."
"Have you considered the possibility that your parents' behavior is due to the previous telepathic interference that made them unable to perceive that you and your siblings had powers? While they may now be able to, their feelings towards their children having powers may be a side effect, with them accepting Alex having them as he is over the age of majority and thus no longer a child in their mind."
Jack silently considered that for a moment. "That… makes a lot of sense, doesn't change what I'm doing, but would make me feel better about things."
"Alex of course would agree to their demands as he is a dutiful child," Friday pointed out.
"Doesn't make any of it right, but I could see it working that way," Jack agreed. "We can drop a bug in Professor X's ear about it and he can check on that."
"Will you return to your family if it is true and they are able to repair the damage?"
Jack considered that for a moment and then slowly shook his head. "No, that whole normal life thing they are pushing… feels like a wasted life to me. I don't want to be normal and I pity the people who do. I want to do things, push the envelope, ya know?"
"I believe I understand," Friday replied, "you wish to accomplish more than merely… an ordinary life."
"Yeah," Jack agreed with a grin. "I like being able to fly and experimenting with my powers, I like hanging out in space with you and poking around the asteroid belt, none of that is ordinary." The teen sighed. "I like saving people, that's also not something they consider ordinary. Ordinary means being a victim when things go wrong or aliens attack."
"So, being an… unenhanced human is to be a victim and crippled?" Friday asked, going over the conversations he'd had with the teen and trying to understand him.
"Crippled?" Jack asked, confused.
"Earlier when you talked about your parents having your powers removed, you described it as them trying to cripple you," Friday explained.
"I can do things that few people can do, making me like everyone else would be crippling me," Jack said, "that doesn't mean people who can't do it are crippled. There is probably a better word for it, but I don't know what it is."
"I believe hobble is a more suitable word," Friday suggested, "it is used when they restrict the range of motion of a horse's legs to slow them down."
"That's closer to what I mean, but I wouldn't be able to fly… so cripple still kinda fits," Jack said with a shrug. "I don't think the human race has a term for what they're trying to do to me."
"And being a victim?"
"You either have the power to help yourself and those around you or when things go wrong you're a victim," Jack replied. "A lot of it is strength of will, because people are stronger than they realize, but the more power you have the harder it is to make you a victim."
"I think your viewpoint may have been distorted by your experiences at the hands of the snarks," Friday said gently.
"Snarks are actually pretty far down on the totem pole," Jack said honestly, "in terms of danger anyway, since we haven't seen them in a while and they have little reason to come after us at the moment. I'm mostly talking about human supervillains and disasters. We've had to deal with different buildings catching fire, wild animals loose from the zoo, attacks by villains, including Katie being taken over by Venom, and that one time when everyone in the city was turned into giant lizards, which is separate from the guy turning people into dinosaurs. I think there may have been something dealing with time travel in there, but if we managed to stop it we wouldn't have gone through it in the first place, so there really isn't anything to remember."
Everything was quiet for a few seconds before Friday said, "I can't tell if you're joking or not."
Jack nodded. "Neither can I, time travel is crazy like that."
"I don't believe it's possible to have a 'normal' life, as your parents imagine it to be, where you currently reside," Friday finally said after checking over the data he had on events in New York over the past several years.
"Yeah, Hudson Valley was a lot quieter… except for the Snarks kidnapping our parents and everything," Jack replied. "Hey, do you think we could mine some gold while we're out here? I've heard there are a lot of precious metals in asteroids and money would certainly make my life easier no matter what happens."
"It should be easy enough to collect a sufficient amount of noble metals to take care of your financial needs," Friday agreed.
"Good, because I need some more experience using Katie and Julie's powers, and I might as well make some money while doing so," Jack said with a grin. "I've always heard being rich won't make you happy and I want to test that for myself."
Beta by: Abyssal Angel & Mist of Shadows