VELVETEEN vs. A Potential Happy Ending
In the infinite black-and-white nothing of the universe outside the universe, the place where time had no meaning and causality was a negotiation in endless process, two people sat at a table made of glass that had been twisted and stretched into an explosion of spires and ribbons, like the center of some sort of impossible tropical plant.
A flat, clear disk sat upon the central burst of shapes and angles, providing them with a surface on which to set their drinks.
The woman, tall, dark-haired, and olive-skinned, dressed in a long flowing garment that resembled a chiton almost exactly as much as it resembled a sari, or a shroud, had a fluted ivory glass of golden liquid that smelled of honey and warm spices.
The man, equally tall if broader of shoulder, with hair the color of pomegranate seeds, had a sturdy glass tumbler filled with ice and a yellowish liquid, crowned with a slice of sugared lemon.
Both of them were staring at the center of the table like it might reveal all the mysteries of the cosmos.
“I didn’t think she was going to make it this far,” said the man, bewildered.
“Why?” asked his companion. “Because she’s a woman? Because she’s an animus?”
“Because she’s incapable of seeing something broken without deciding she should run toward it as fast as she possibly can, waving her arms in the air and shouting about how delicious she would be if she were to be devoured.”
“That’s most of the heroes, Chronos,” scolded the woman lightly.
“You know that. Something about giving them powers creates heroes and villains, and they all seem to want to follow their natures more than almost anything else in the world. More than sex and drugs and—I don’t know, whatever it is humans are into these decades.
Cheeseburgers? The heroes want to do heroism more than they want cheeseburgers. ”
“Some of them are vegetarians, or lactose-intolerant, or Jewish, so I certainly hope they want heroism more than they want cheeseburgers,” said Chronos.
“A life defined by wanting what you’re not allowed to have is no fun at all, and gets us into creation myth territory, which even I would rather avoid when possible. ”
“Be that as it may, why did you think this specific one wasn’t going to make it this far?”
“Because she asked for superpowers.”
The woman paused, blinking, as her brows drew together and formed a wrinkle at the center of her forehead.
Chronos looked at it and wished, as he always did, that he could kiss it away; but sadly, he knew better.
They were the two most powerful superbeings in existence, humans who had ascended barely shy of godhood.
Where they lived was as far outside the normal flow of time as the Seasonal Lands, while being far less anchored to anything resembling causality.
Casual affection was no longer in the cards for them, hadn’t been since before the fall of Rome, and likely never would be again.
When the slightest touch could erase dynasties, self-control became key to survival.
“I don’t follow,” said the woman, finally.
“Ananke, how long have we been doing this?” asked Chronos.
“Long enough,” she said, and smiled. “The exact year has faded, but I remember the look in Gilgamesh’s eye as he asked us to take this burden away from his people for another generation.”
“Gilgamesh was millennia ago,” said Chronos.
“Thousands of years since we realized what we were becoming, what we would inevitably become. Thousands of years here beyond the world, alone except for every fifty years, when a hero—or villain—from the world of men would find their way here to us, and ask us to set their burden aside. Hundreds of superhumans asking us to change the world for them. I don’t know about you, but I thought that was how things were going to be forever.
Every fifty years or so, humanity would re-earn superpowers, and a few decades after that, one of them would come to us and ask that it should not be so. ”
“Until Velveteen.”
“Until Velveteen,” he agreed. “She’s broken—they all are—but for her, the cracks somehow formed a shape she could live with, and now the world gets to keep what it earned. Will they even need to come to us any longer?”
“No,” said Ananke without hesitation. Then she scowled. “Chronos, you know better than to ask me questions. Once I’ve spoken the answers into the world, they’re fixed. Our purpose is ended.”
“Maybe that’s what I was hoping for,” he said. “We could have been sitting here for centuries, waiting for a hero to come and ask us to take it all away, and now we don’t have to do that if we don’t want to. Now we have choices again.”
Ananke scoffed. “What are we supposed to do with choices?” she asked. “It’s been so long since I had to choose anything beyond breakfast that I don’t think I even know how to do that anymore. At least waiting would have been something to do.”
“We’ll think of something,” said Chronos. “But the heroes have made their choice, and now they get to live with it, whatever that’s going to mean. What happens next?”
Ananke slowly, deliberately picked up her glass, taking a sip of the liquid inside. Her eyes dipped half-closed as she swallowed, spices that had been lost or so transformed by cultivation as to be forgotten coating her tongue in the familiar taste of home. “For who, old friend?”
“For everyone,” he said.
“Ah. Asking the complicated questions today, aren’t we?
Free will is still at play. Things could go any number of ways from here, but one thing is fixed and true: in all of them, humanity will retain the powers they have finally decided to claim.
The age of men is ended. The age of heroes is begun. ”
“So even you can’t speak a happy ending into being?”
“Not without taking away their choices on the road from here to there. I can speak the outlines of the universe without pinning their lives down like butterflies under glass. And yes, the outlines of the universe will define the happy endings they can pursue, but saying that imposes on their free will is like saying that gravity and the progression of linear time are unfair restrictions. I’m quite willing to build walls for them to hurl themselves against. I’m not willing to define their days on the level a happy ending would require.
I haven’t spent so much of my life serving humankind and helping them make their own choices just to turn around now and say they don’t get any more choices after this. ”
Chronos smiled. “I’m glad to see you remember why we’re here,” he said.
“So what now?”
“Time is my toy, even as the future is yours,” he said. “Now we see where those choices might yet lead them.”
The surface of the table between them brightened with the golden-purple light of a solar flare breaking through the heliosphere, and the air around them darkened, then lit up with silvered stars as the glass began to play out one possible future.
Maybe…
* * *
No one truly knows where superpowers come from, or why they first began to appear.
Some theologians believe the appearance of superpowers in the human population marked the end of the age of gods, a time when beings more powerful than even the most powerful of heroes created life out of nothingness, exhausting themselves in the process.
When they died, their power passed into the worlds they had created, and began, gradually, to express itself in their successors.
Superpowers, they would argue, are like heavy metals, inevitably accumulating at the top of the food chain.
There is no conclusive way to identify the first superhumans to arise, but with the perspective of our current understanding, we may step back and indicate the first two to make a lasting impact on the world: Chronos, a chronopath arising from the distant Hebrides, and Ananke, a Cycladic precognitive so powerful that once she spoke a future aloud, it became fixed and immutable.
Their power distorted the world around them, causing them to realize independently that they needed to retreat from their peoples if they wanted to protect them.
How their powers combined to create their own pocket reality is unclear, and may be traced back to rumors that they began their quest for solitude in the company of a full team of heroes, losing them along the way to claiming their prize: a realm outside of reality, where they could observe the world without intruding on it… save when the world intruded on them.
For thousands of years, superpowers continued to manifest themselves in the world, only to vanish with no apparent cause after a generation, two at the most. This has been traced back to superpowered individuals making their way to Chronos and Ananke and being asked whether they thought humanity was ready.
Again and again, the ones asked in this manner have answered no.
No, humanity wasn’t ready for that kind of power; no, humanity wasn’t responsible enough.
So for thousands of years, the question was a cycle, unable to close, unable to move forward. Until, finally, Velma “Velveteen” Martinez answered in the affirmative, and things began to unwind. The powers, which had always been something that ebbed and surged, were here to stay.
The world, at last, was changing.
* * *
Three years…
Polychrome, who was not on the board of The Super Patriots, Inc.
, but had nonetheless somehow become their acting CEO, leaned back in what had become her chair, arcs of multi-colored light dancing across her fingers.
Firecracker ignored her, continuing to drone on about merchandise and market shares, two things Polychrome could only vaguely remember caring about, in another lifetime, before she’d figured out that this was all bullshit.