The System

      “And they’re not even good ones!” Tracy shouts, slamming her hand down on the table for emphasis.

She’s airing out her opinions on the system that instills superheroes with what are deemed to be the mandatory qualities for superheroes – or, rather, she’s airing out her opinions about how the system fails to do that.

“What’s wrong with your superpowers, love?” asks Tracy’s husband, Cain, taking off his glasses and looking slightly amused. He’s heard this speech before, many times, but he doesn’t mind hearing it again. He’s a patient man.

Tracy pointedly flutters her large, feathered, greenish wings. The ensuing gust of wind blows Cain’s book off the table .

“These, for a start,” she snaps. “Big and clumsy and impractical and – ”

“Yes, I see your point,” says Cain mildly, leaning down to rescue the novel, “but they’re also quite lovely, you know.”

Tracy, flustered, sputters for a moment about how aesthetics hardly make up for impracticality before finding her proverbial footing again. Cain hides a smirk.

“Okay, well, practicality of the powers aside,” says Tracy, abandoning that point and moving on to the next (really, she needs to stop getting thrown off by things like that), “if the only changes being made are physical ones then there really should be someone making sure that the bodies getting changed are homes to brains that aren’t bent on destroying the world.”

Sounds reasonable, reflects Cain. A screening process prior to acceptance at the Academy is hardly a new idea. It’s been suggested (and called for, and demanded) many times, but for some reason the organization has never seen fit to establish one.

“The system is flawed,” Tracy says, with all the gusto and conviction of the sort of evangelist that is genuinely more concerned with saving souls than making money, “and changes have to be made.”

She’s not wrong, but it’s easier said than done.

Here’s how the system works:

When you’re thirteen, you decide whether or not you want to be a superhero. (This is the first problem – there have been many arguments made as to why thirteen is too young to make such a life-changing decision.)

If you decide that you want to, which Tracy did and Cain did not, you apply to the Academy and, more often than not, get accepted. (More often than not means always. The Academy has a one hundred percent acceptance rate.) And then, while most of your peers are going into ninth grade, you move to a city that is home to an Academy branch.

The Academy is a global organization that was founded for the sole purpose of monitoring the pods. There has never been any indication that the Academy’s decisions are made with anyone’s wellbeing in mind. (There has never been any indication that there is anything in mind except money, for that matter.) Theoretically, since the Academy is monitoring the pods and therefore has kind of, sort of, assumed responsibility for them, the Academy should also be concerned with helping young superheroes figure out how to handle the gifts the pods give them. And hypothetically, that’s what they do. Their name is, after all, the Academy. On paper, they guide young superheroes on the difficult journey of coming to terms with the fact that they went and lay inside a strange, glowing, as far as anyone knows supernatural plantish thing for a few days and emerged with superhuman powers. In practice they do what they do on paper, except really, really, really badly.

As you’ve probably gathered, the next step in the system is Metamorphosis. The aspiring superheroes step into one of the pods – strange, glowing, as far as anyone knows supernatural organisms – and experience what everyone assumes is similar to what a caterpillar experiences when turning into a butterfly. That is, they experience nothing, because they’re asleep, but when the pod spits them out a few days later they’ve usually gained some sort of power that they didn’t have before. Telepathy, telekinesis, and teleportation seem to be the most popular (and isn’t that comforting, that the system sends small children into a mysterious and largely unstudied being that is apparently messing with their brains?), but the powers that the pods bestow are many and varied and include, but are not limited to, the ability to reliably discern whether someone is telling the truth (Cain’s brother), incredibly good night vision (Brian, Cain’s childhood best friend to huge, full, feathered wings (Tracy).

(Okay, so she has a point that they’re impractical, especially when compared to other people’s powers. But comparison is never a good idea, and Cain has a point, too – they’re a mossy green that match her eyes, and they are, inarguably, very pretty.)

After they’ve received their powers, whatever those are, the brand new superheroes spend the next seven years learning how to use them. The Academy is funded by the government, which means that there is no tuition involved. This is very appealing to a lot of people. (It’s what convinced Tracy. At thirteen, she had already begun fretting over how she would afford college.) In addition to the free living, it’s technically an extension of the military. This means that combat training and lots of guns are involved, which is also very appealing to a lot of people. During their time at the Academy, students learn not only to control their powers, but to fight in more traditional ways, like with knives and their own limbs. The idea of this is that everyone will be on semi-equal ground. (The reality is that they’re not, but this has never been acknowledged.)

After graduation from superhero school, the newly minted ‘heroes’ are sent off into the world to do good. Most of them (76.42%, to quote the latest statistic) do the opposite, leaving the remaining minority to log overtime hours for the rest of their lives in a futile attempt to foil the baddie’s plans.

And that’s the system. All things considered, it is not a great one.

 “Imagine if the pods were just… pods,” says Tracy wistfully. “Imagine if no idiot had ever looked at a strange glowing thing that was probably from outer space and thought, ‘Hey, here’s a good idea, why don’t I crawl into it?’ Imagine if – ”

 “Imagine if the pods were just pods,” suggests Cain.

“Woah,” says Tracy, looking shocked, “that’s a little too far, hon. That’s just… that’s bordering on sacrilege, honestly.”

“I’m just saying! You’re the one that’s always trash talking them!”

“That’s different. I have a connection with them.” She flutters her wings for emphasis, and Cain grabs for his book.

“Look,” he says, “are you going to complain about this for the rest of your life, or are you going to do something about it?’

“I’m going to do something about it,” Tracy says haughtily, “and for your information, there is going to be something very big happening very soon.”

“Tracy,” says Cain, who is familiar with the tone she’s using and has never once seen a situation involving that tone end well, “what are you going to do?”

“I’ve just been talking to the girls at the office – ”

“Which ones?” asks Cain, instantly suspicious.

“Doesn’t matter. We’re going to – ”

“You’ve been hanging ‘round with Stephanie? You know – ”

“Oh, stop! It’s not like she’s ever abused her powers!”

Stephanie possesses the power of mental manipulation. She can convince anyone to do anything. Once, for a party trick, she convinced Cain’s sister to take a dip in the city river – which, while not quite inadvisable, is by the same token not quite safe. Cain was shocked by his sister, a germaphobe with a terrible fear of drowning, being convinced to do this, and has since held a healthy respect for Stephanie. (He’s also kept a much less healthy distrust.)

“You’re saying that Krystal jumping into a river fully clothed is fine?”

“You’re being dramatic! Krystal was fine. She laughed afterwards!”

“My sister has never done anything like that in her life before or since! Guess what you’ve never done? Gotten arrested for anything, ever. And I’m concerned – ”

“Oh, because the second I start talking to Stephanie I’m going to become a different person. Come on.”

They glare at each other across the table.

Tracy knows that Cain’s concern is well-meant, and she also knows that it’s probably not misplaced – she’s very susceptible to persuasion, even of the normal, human variety. That doesn’t stop his skepticism from stinging. She wishes that he trusted her a little more.

She opens her mouth with the intention of lightening the mood, but before she can her pager buzzes. (There’s yet another example of how flawed the system is. You never saw a good, well-functioning system that still uses pagers.)

“Well,” says Cain, wanting to say something but unsure of what.

“Yeah,” says Tracy.

“Guess you’d best be off.”

“Guess so.”

Cain holds his breath, hoping that before she takes off Tracy will come and give him a hug or a kiss or a pat or give some other sign that she’s not really mad at him, but she doesn’t. She just scrapes her chair back with more force than necessary and walks out the door and the force of her wings as she takes off rattles the siding.

Oh well, he thinks, we’ll talk about it when she gets back, just like all the other times this has happened.

But as he takes his book and relocates to the sofa he can’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that this time isn’t like all the other times. He suspects that this time, Tracy’s assertion that something big will be happening soon is right.

And that is all kinds of scary.