What I Couldn't Foresee

-

          Wind rips at my face and pummels my jacket with icy knives. Bullets of rain attack relentlessly from every direction. I fight through the storm, but I can’t see anything at all – just gray tearing at gray everywhere I look. Amidst the howling and pounding and roaring comes a deafening crash of thunder, and I wait. Sound travels faster than light in Mesatonia. Sure enough, a crack of lightning soon splits the sky – infinite electrons racing towards the earth, illuminating the world for a fraction of a second. The moment is gone almost instantly, and I look wildly around me. All I had seen was a vast expanse of flat land stretching miles away to the horizon. Where was the city?

The thunder rolls again, determined to drown out the wind and my racing heartbeat. The lightning flashes: the land is still flat. An ear-splitting scream slices through the whirling air from my right, and there is a woman shrieking in terror as a rogue pod comes barrelling towards her. I run as fast as I can, yelling out to her – but it is too late. The pod has slammed into the ground and she is pinned underneath it. I let out a scream, running blindly though the raging gray, and feel my body slam into something. I stumble and pull up short, trying to make out what I have hit. Another flash illuminates the terrified face of a woman – the woman I have just seen killed! She is looking at me in shock when suddenly both of us are thrust backwards by a blinding explosion – the rogue pod has crashed into the ground and burst into flames, quickly quelled by the downpour.

           That was the first time it happened – on a stormy Monday as I walked home from work. The pod had been severed free from its landing station by a bolt of lightning, and if I hadn’t pushed the woman out of the way, she would have been killed. Every time, it’s the same: I see something awful that’s about to happen, and I have to stop it before it does. Pod crashes, train wrecks, fires; I’m always around. I am officially employed as a sweeper for Mesatonia, cleaning pod stations and hover tracks, but now I guess have another job as well. I seem to be capable of anything when it comes to preventing these dangers: super-human strength, invisibility, flying… you name it, I’ve done it. For a few seconds.

No one ever notices me, but you don’t need invisibility powers for that. Just a sweeper uniform.

           The next monumental change to my life starts on a Tuesday. I am on my way to the city park for my lunch break when I see him again – that kid. Eyes practically popping out of his oversized head, small and fragile looking, wearing the same green sweatshirt as all those other times when I caught him staring at me. I’m sure that this kid has been following me.

           I walk casually in his direction, lining up to buy lunch at a sandwich cart, pretending not to see him. He shrinks back at first, but I can feel the steady weight of his gaze locked onto me.

I buy my sandwich, then make my move. He’s fast, but I’m faster. I lunge out and catch him by the hood of his sweatshirt just as he starts to sprint away. His legs keep going in mid-air for a second before he realise what’s happened. He slowly turns to face me, a look of sheer terror painting his face dead white, and I suddenly feel a pang of pity.

           “Alright, what’s the story, kid?”

           “Sorry, sir, I – I don’t know what –“

           “Why have you been following me? And don’t say you haven’t; I can't stand liars.”

           I frown impressively at him as I say this, and almost laugh as I see the blood drain from his face, although I still feel sorry for him.

           “I- I just wanted to know… how you do it,” he said helplessly.

           I frown in suspicion. “Do what?”

           “You know, all that crazy stuff! Like, last week, you went up the side of a building, with no rope or anything, and fixed the ray-catcher. And later they said if it hadn’t been fixed there would have been, like, a huge fire! And before that, you jumped in front of a train and lived. And before that I saw you fly, and before that –“

           “Okay, okay,” I say, looking around and making sure no one else is in earshot. “Not so loud.”

           I never really thought about it before, but I don’t want anyone knowing about this. I didn’t think anyone could see me doing that stuff – I thought it was part of the deal. Whatever the ‘deal’ was.

           We sit down and I share my sandwich with him, more to keep him quiet than anything. Between eager bites he tells me how he’s been following me around for weeks now, and still can’t figure out how I do it. He’s bursting with questions, and even manages to draw out the storm story from me. He’s so awe-struck; I can’t help laughing at his reaction.

           “You’re like, a real-life superhero!”

           “More like a glorified mop - I just clean bigger messes now.”

We both laugh, and I find myself growing to like him. My lunch hour goes by quicker than it has in a long time, and I tell the kid that if he keeps my secret, there’s another half sandwich in it for him tomorrow.

           He and I spend the next year getting to know each other. I didn’t have much choice at the start, given as he wouldn’t quit following me around, but now he’s grown on me. His name is Tobias and he’s eleven years old. He tells me about his house in South Side where he lives with his mom and his dog, Baloney (the namesake of Tobias’ favourite sandwich, which I purchase every day for him at our cart). His eyes are a deep green that remind me of the ocean. He spends his days selling spare parts for cash and dropping into school for an hour or two when he gets the chance. He says there are so many students the teachers don’t even notice when he’s not there.

But mostly we talk about my latest adventures. It’s nice not having to keep everything to myself anymore. I stop an avalanche, hide aboard a space pod to fix a broken engine, and prevent the water supply from being poisoned by diving to the bottom of the lake to clog a pipe, all while keeping Mesatonia spotless. No one ever sees me, except Tobias. I tell him about the stars and planets and our five moons; about lake dragons and scaling cliffs. He’s always curious for more.

Then, one day, he doesn’t want his baloney sandwich.

“You missed one,” he says quietly.

“What?” I ask, taken aback. His eyes are downcast and he seems pale.

“You missed a danger, a big one. But it’s okay, you can still fix it. Why did you wait for me to say it?”

I don’t know how to respond. What is he talking about?

“What did I miss, Tobias?”

He looks at me, eyes wide, incredulous. “My mom, obviously! She’s sick. I don’t know why you’re here, eating a sandwich like nothing’s wrong! You have to go help her.”

I am dumbfounded. He looks at me like I’m about to make everything okay, waiting for an explanation that I don’t have ready to offer.

“Tobias, I – I’m so sorry. I had no idea your mother was sick.”

He looks at me in disbelief, horror slowly dawning on his face, then turns and runs away from me. I chase after him – he’s faster now – following the familiar streak of green through streets and alleys, weaving through endless people and buildings, until we reach a rundown house in South Side. The dilapidated metal structure glints strangely in the light of the setting sun, shining like a lamp devoured by moths.

           A swarm of neighbours and health care workers are buzzing about the place, pouring in and out, and I see an ambulance pod hovering near the roof. My stomach jolts, and above the whine of sirens and the drowning drone of worried voices I hear Tobias calling out for his mother, his feeble cries parting seas.

I fight through the crowd and see him standing in front of a doctor, who is shaking his head apologetically and saying something in a low voice.

“NO! You’re lying. I don’t believe you!”

He tries to fight his way inside, but they won’t let him, and he turns around and sees me standing there helplessly.

“You!”

        “Tobias, I – “

        “Don’t say it! It’s all your fault! Why didn’t you save her? Why? Why?”

His voice is choked and strangled, and the green jumper swims and glistens before my eyes. I can’t bring myself to look at the ocean.

“I didn’t know, Tobias,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry, I just – I didn’t know”

“Fix it. Fix it now! Maybe this is one of your visions - only I’m seeing it too – and if you could just – just go in there – and –“

           He sees me shaking my head, feels the tug of the doctor’s hand on his shoulder, and the last I see of him is a small shape being dragged into a car by strangers, and driven away to the nearest Force Station.

           I’m heartbroken. And angry. So, so angry.

Maybe the kid is right. Did I somehow miss this one? Ignore it by mistake? Why can I only prevent some things from happening?

           As I walk home I see a sun ray strike a building and watch it crumble. As the dust settles, I know I have to adjust the ray-catcher. I start walking over mechanically.

           I fix the machine and head home. But all I can think about is Tobias and the sound of his little voice crying out through the chaos. I’m not sure I want to keep saving a world that doesn’t deserve to be rescued – a world that averted me to every danger except the one I most needed to fix.

           I head straight over to the Force Station the next day. They tell me that Tobias has been placed in a children’s home and is attending school full time now. I go to the home, go to his school, watch him from a distance. Our roles have been reversed now, I guess. I wait by the sandwich cart every day, just in case.

           A few months pass and it’s Wednesday. I follow him home from school for the thousandth time, walking him track the familiar path, school tablet in hand. I never see other kids with him. He’s walking by our sandwich cart, and for a moment I think he lingers, but then he keeps going and maybe I imagined it. The endless streets and buildings and people seem to be grayer than they were before, like someone rubbed all the color out of them with an eraser, deciding to start over, and then forgot.

I watch him until he’s just a green speck in the sea of the city. I watch the cart guy close up for the day, watch the landing pods shoot across the sky, bound for their newly cleaned landing stations. The first three moons have risen, and the sun looks tired.

           I am about to head off the wall when the vision sears across my mind, painfully vivid. A green jumper, dejectedly making its way into the middle of the road, a landing pod gone haywire….

           “NO!”

           And then I’m running, faster than I’ve ever run before. People and pods and buildings are a blur of insignificance as I streak towards Tobias and screech to a halt, yelling, “Out of the way! Everyone move!”

           The pod arrives just 2.75 seconds later, swooping in a blaze of destruction along the street. There are screams, sirens, crashes, but all I hear is the small voice in my arms demanding to be put down.

           “You saved me? You couldn’t save her, but you could save me? Why! Why, why, why? I wish you hadn’t. I take it back. Go save her instead! Go, go…”

           He is beating his little fists into my chest, sobbing, and I put both my hands over his and feel them loosen. And then he hugs me, and I hug him, and we both cry while the emergency sirens and flashing lights blaze around us.

           I carry him back to my apartment and lay him on the couch. He quiets down after a while, and I give him something to drink.

He looks at me with those green oceans, and I have to say it.

           “Tobias, you have to believe me that I didn’t know about your mother. I’m so, so sorry – but there’s nothing I could have done to save her. I just don’t have that kind of power.”

           He says quietly, “I know.”

           “You do?”

           “I know it now. Not then. But now.”

           I nod, not quite knowing what to say, and we sit in silence for a minute. It feels so strange to be beside him, while the world moves on outside the window: people talking, birds chirping, traffic churning.

           “Why can you only save certain people? Like, who gets to decide who lives, if it’s not you?”

           I look up at him, and see the same frustration and anger and sadness that has been surging within my own mind the past few months.

           “I don’t know, kid. I wish I did. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother trying at all.”

           I say this dejectedly, full of self-pity, but when I look up I see that Tobias is on his feet. The ocean is on fire, and I’ve never seen him look more serious.

           “Don’t joke around about that kind of stuff.”

           “Okay, okay, sorry!”

           “Everyone has someone. And when you lose them it feels like the whole world is gone. You don’t just save people, Carlo, you save worlds. And you don’t get to just quit on them like an idiot.”

           “You’re right”.

And he is.

           Then he grins, and I smile too, and we both look out the window.

Clear skies.

“So, does this mean we’re back to our sandwich thing again?”

           I laugh. “Yeah, kid, I guess it does.”

The End.