Winning Edge

“I’m going down as a legend, whether or not you like me or not. I am the new Jim Morrison. I am the new Kurt Cobain. I am Warhol. I am Shakespeare in the flesh.”

So says my favorite performer and songwriter. When I’m successful, I’ll have to make sure to call him. I’ll let him know how much he inspired me in the lonesome, gloomy days renting a cold basement and filling my notebook with dreams. I used to put his songs on a loop and repeat their affirmations to myself as I worked. No self-pity for me. Thanks, Kanye!

Of course, all the stuff I’ve done and the things I’ve built are one-hundred percent result of my own successes.

I’m the new hotness you’ve been hearing about. The tech-wizard, the silicon sorcerer, and all those other nicknames the media gives me. I’m “the guy who learned” how to fly. (Mastered flight is more like it; I didn’t have to learn anything I didn’t already know.)

I envy you. You get to see me in action. It’s not the same for me, watching the news reports and online videos later at the safehouse. I’ve devised some cameras that do a good job following my quick and complex maneuvers, ones that can withstand the intense heat and block interference from my other devices. The cameras get some great close-ups, but it’s not the same as being down there and looking up at me.

No one else was advancing the human race. So I did it. I kept hearing the same things at conferences and universities: “It would only take a few hundred million, but no one wants to pay for it,” and “It’s theoretically sound and doable, but right now companies can’t make a profit off it.” Physics is happening around us every day and walking business suits are just counting imaginary money made out of ones and zeroes. The great forces that dominate the universe are tangible and malleable and waiting to be summoned. We can use atoms to create powers to rival Merlin. We can harness the forces strong and weak, and be gods.

Instead, all I heard in my formative years was, “It’s too expensive. We had to scrap the study.” Or, “It’ll interfere with so-and-so company’s profits.” But I listened to a different voice, a smarter one—mine.

I’ve always been pushing boundaries. When I was ten I built my own chemistry lab in the garage. My parents yelled at me when I almost blew the roof off, and they forced me to scrap all of my materials and equipment. A year later, they weren’t impressed when I’d created my first neutron source. The radiation levels were hundreds of times higher than normal background levels, but I intervened in time. It’s not like anybody got hurt. The police came by but no one went to jail.

In high school, I’d started designing my superconductor. By the time I was in college, I had a basement apartment, all mine, to experiment and begin making the drawings in my notebooks a reality.

The scientists and professors are right—this stuff costs money. But I wrote a program to skim bank accounts and stole other materials I needed when necessary. It’s also really easy to convince the rubes in Silicon Valley that you can make them rich. They pour money into grifts and failed business models every day. It’s easy to get their funds; just type up a few papers they’ll never read, make outrageous promises, and accompany those with some fantasy tech designs explaining how you’ll construct a purification system that turns water into Super-Water™ or something like that. That’ll get you enough money to finance your real projects, while the professionals wait for the Super-Water™ revenue to pour in.

At some point, though, the money ran out, and they were catching on. I had to actually get creative. So I built my suit, which that lets me levitate. Simple enough: it’s just magnetic chips wired into a durable jumpsuit, or Mag-Suit as I call it (patent pending). Those work with the exterior magnets, those with their polarity reversed to create repulsion. To top it all off, I just repurposed an electric welding helmet and gave it a HUD, camera and audio receptors, and programs that allow me manual and remote control over my devices. Anyway, long story short, that’s how I was able to rob my first bank in-person. People don’t call the police right away when they see a flying guy take out his electrodes, pop a vault open, then fly out with his drones carrying the money. They do take pictures and videos, though. Or dive under desks. By the time the police do arrive, you’re already becoming an online sensation.

With my new revenue streams, I’ve been able to construct even more powerful devices. Thanks to my Ray-Gloves (pat. pend.), I can create a contained jet of energy, as powerful as a burst from the sun. Aren’t hydrogen atoms nifty?

Of course, the hand-wringers and authorities don’t know what to do with me. They never know what to do with geniuses. I’m the new Isaac Newton. I’m the greatest physicist who ever lived, and thanks to me humanity is better off.

I was walking to the edge of possible and impossible, and crossing it. Poised to be a godlike being, a savior of a stunted society—of the whole planet, even. I was going to create so many new machines.

Then he showed up.

Of course I wanted to share my devices with others. Eventually. But this guy went and made his own. He said I “don’t have the right to do whatever” I want. He said he was there to stop me since the police couldn’t.

Super-annoying. He even had his own little gadgets and a suit that’s different enough that I can’t sue him over it. He was using some sort of hydrogen propulsion, I think? And then he hit me with some kind of weapon—the blast was invisible, whatever he hit me with, and my magnet-suit was neutralized and my helmet’s electronics scrambled. The network that kept me up in the air was too damaged. I was falling.

My arm snapped beneath me as I landed. My ribs were cracked and bruised. The helmet probably saved my life, but it was dented in and the damage totally knocked out my HUD and audio receptors. I was blind, unable to move, and could only hear the commotion gathering around me with occasional bursts of clarity; mostly it was dull, distant sounds. I was lucky that the shock of the fall saved me from the worst of the pain—the physical pain, at least.

He could have killed me! He shot me down and made a joke of me! People cheered and clapped in the hazy background when I fell.

The flying stranger left, but there were other witnesses to report my latest heist. I was handcuffed to the gurney brought by the paramedics—my unbroken arm, anyway. They couldn’t take me directly to jail but they put up guards around my hospital room and shut me off from everyone else. Not even the media is being let in so people can hear my side of the story. That’s why I’m dictating this.

They say the case against me is airtight. With so much video evidence and witness testimony available, the bank’s lawyers don’t even have to break a sweat. I’m told I have no chance of escaping conviction and should take a plea deal, to get a slightly reduced sentence. Since nobody’s been hurt it could be a lot worse, they tell me, but either way, it looks like I’m going to prison. Right when I was about to really take off.

It’s just a setback. How can they contain me? You can’t imprison a mind like mine. This is just the start of another amazing rise in my career. Once they lock me up, I’ll just get to work on my next big invention. I’ve shown them a man can fly. Next, I’ll show them a man who can walk through walls.

Redact that last part, please.

Fin.