One of the Greats

Dear Diary,

Tonight might be the last night for a while. 

I go to that special program tomorrow. I made it in, barely. Big news, I know. A guy like me, qualifying for an intensive opportunity like that? Pretty crazy. I guess I should be glad to be representing the unlucky ten in this kind of industry. Still, it feels kinda… empty.

What’s that thing called, again? Imposter syndrome? Where you feel like you don’t belong someplace, like everything you’ve built and striven for is just a farce, like the support you’re getting doesn’t matter, because you aren’t what people think you are?

My dad retired five years ago and by then he was losing his edge, but in his prime, he was pretty much unstoppable.

My mom was born deaf, but that never slowed her down.

Our family’s always had slightly less reliable genetics than others, but my sister got a pretty clean combination of both worlds, and look where she ended up. She’s been working her way up the ladder.

My brother is something of an aberration compared to her, but still, he can run with the big boys. He took some time to get it figured out but he was on the cover of Ascendant last month, so I’d say he’s officially made the best of what he got.

But me? I got nothing. I guess I’m just… lucky to get where I’ve gotten.

Despite being otherwise pretty S.O.L.

My family has done what they’ve done for as long as it’s been a career, but not once have they had a kid like me. And maybe out of context, that sounds like a good thing. But I don’t know what it is.

Honestly, I don’t know why I even signed up for the program in the first place. Maybe I wanted to impress my dad, or at least offset the massive disappointment I’ve made him feel for most of my existence. Maybe I wanted to make some kind of statement, that even I could make it, prove all the put-downs wrong. Either way, it’s what I’m supposed to do. It’s what all of us are supposed to do. It’s in the family.

Maybe this is actually the career path I want to take, just for myself.

Like I said, I don’t even know anymore.

At the exam, I really saw what I was up against. I’d go into detail, but they’ll probably censor it, so I’ll just be frustratingly vague and say that the amount of sheer, raw talent on display there was more than a little intimidating, and I’m a guy who’s pushed himself to the logical limit of what the human body should be capable of, not to toot my own horn. Let me have this.

It’s pretty much all I have anyway.

When I was born, everybody said that I was meant for big things. One of the greats. Hell, we even got someone who could literally see the future in to confirm it. I mean, with a pedigree like that, how couldn’t I be? Both of my siblings have already gone pro, and Mason’s barely three years older than I am. Once they figured out what they could do, I was really excited.

But then, nothing happened.

And nothing kept happening.

And now I’m twenty-one. I’m not just a ‘late bloomer’ anymore. This is it. This is as good as I get.

I think Helena was probably the last person to stop believing in what that old geezer said. For better or worse, she was always there, rooting for me, from day one. I feel bad for letting her down so hard, honestly. I’ll bet she’s glad nobody knows who she is behind that mask, so they can’t connect her to me. At least the fact that we live like hermits protects her from that level of shame. The media might not let her breathe without gushing about how she’s rising faster than anyone before her, but at least they don’t know about her baby brother.

Dad doesn’t even look at me like I’m his son anymore. Even when I told him that I got in, he just kind of stared at me blankly. He’s always been distant, even to my siblings, but if that shoulder had been any colder I might have gotten frostbite.

Hell, it wasn’t so bad right after we found out I wasn’t going to really become anything. At least then, I could have still kept the bloodline going, right? Carry the family name on now that Mason can’t?

Well, the test results came in today, too.

Turns out that’s also a lost cause. Just my luck.

It’s weird, it’s like I’m simultaneously lucky and incredibly cursed, you know? Like, aside from two very specific things, I kinda won the genetic lottery. I’m built like a mix between a linebacker and a distance swimmer, with a hefty portion of ‘pickup truck’ thrown in there. I have a freakishly potent immune system, I can drink an elephant under the table and I’ve literally pinched flies out of the air before. Last I checked I could hold my breath for four minutes and twenty six seconds. Granted, some of that’s nature and some of that’s nurture, but, still.

I’ve been kicked out of poker groups for cheating before, just because I kept getting implausibly good hands. On the other side of the ‘event’ coin, I managed to get hit by two school buses in the space of ten hours on the day I turned sixteen. Some guy’s finger slipped during a bank robbery (which I somehow ended up being present for) and put a point-blank shell of 12-gauge buckshot in my gut. Once, a bully slammed my head in a locker door so hard that a my-head-shaped dent appeared in the metal.

But I survived all of that shit. With little to no lasting injury. Like, seriously. I didn’t even get a concussion, and the pellets missed like, every vital organ that couldn’t be easily repaired.

I don’t know, I’m rambling. I’ve said all of this stuff before. A dozen times. More than that, probably.

Well, I placed 74th percentile on the written exam, and that’s calculated among the people who passed, so at least they know I’m not braindead. That’s always something that they try to consider.

On the practical, though, I wound up in the 19th percentile. I’m significantly below average. I mean, it’s honestly to be expected. I’m just glad I passed. It’s higher than I thought I could have hoped for. And fuck, man, I made it in. 

God knows what it’s going to be like to be the first “baseline” kid to make it into this course. One has to wonder which clique you fall into when you’re at an objective disadvantage compared to all of your peers, but I’d like to think I’m decent at making friends, so fingers crossed that won’t be too much of a problem. I walked back to the bus stop with a girl who had four arms. They had everybody wear these ultra-thin neoprene balaclavas, for the purpose of maintaining anonymity, but I could have sworn she had more just the one pair of eyes, too. During the practical she tore a crash test dummy in half, but turns out, she’s an Art History major. I didn’t catch her name, obviously, again, we didn’t even USE those, but I hope she makes it. She seemed cool. 

Either way, I won’t be able to write here, at least digitally, for a while. They’re very hush-hush about civilian life in there (hence all the goddamn ambiguity, the security techs will probably censor this down to the point where there’s no hope of tying it into either of my identities) so if anything I’ll have to journal, like, with a physical book and update this if and when I graduate. Luckily we still get plenty of time away from the program itself, so I’ll still be able to see my friends and pick up the odd shift at Yuri’s. I’d say they  were silver linings, but honestly, this is a dream coming true for me and most of the people in my life. I just wish it felt less hollow.

Anyway, this is Richter. Signing off, I guess. Goodnight.