The league.
A short story.
Every body in the league has a role. Not to say that there were no overlaps. Many of our abilities overlapped. There were many who could read minds or at least guess what the other guy was thinking. Guys who could calm down a raving lunatic in to a docile kitten with a caress to the forehead were dime a dozen. The league was flush with people with abilities that were grounded, or dare I say, plebeian.
But I, I am unique. I am a walking, talking AM radio transmitter. I know. It does not get any more plebeian than this. I am not aware of any grandpa who owns a radio receiver around here. Heck, even I haven't opened the FM radio app on my own phone since the day the league gave me one. Nevertheless, I am the only one who can make your speakers buzz and I can broadcast over a small bandwidth over a sizable area.
I still haven't mastered the modulation part yet so I cannot convey any meaning full signal, but I could manage the carrier wave alright. I am sure I can go to binary levels or Morse code if I practice, but practicing the transmission leaves me absolutely starving and thirsty and I like to be comfortable as much as possible. Wider I try to broadcast, faster I drain out. Plus the league commander does not see the value in me or my ability to warrant further training. Not only that, I think he actually detests me training. Once I took it upon myself to train in the league's anechoic chamber. I was being paid handsomely by the league and wanted to show some progress, or at least some activity that my previous bosses took for progress. The chamber was originally built for testing sonic crowd control booms. With no riots predicted by the popular sentiment analysts of the league, nobody bothered to calibrate the power levels of the sonic booms and the facility was in disrepair. As I started humming from the center of the chamber, I could certainly feel that the acoustics were weird in the foam padded hall. It turns out the chamber does not block out my frequency that well and I, after a hearty meal, gave quite a good headache to the lab rats in the nearby league facilities in a couple of seconds.
The league commander was quite annoyed at the news and sent a curt email, addressed only to me, barring my training in any form in future. I was puzzled for a few days how he zeroed in on me as the cause but was also extremely relieved that my stipend was intact. I decided that the powers that be were fine with me being paid handsomely for sitting tight and made myself more comfortable in the league head quarters.
With the abilities being conferred upon us by the almighty "luck", which wielded its influence over us mortals through the mutations in our genes, nobody could know what power or curse was the newborn going to arrive with. All we know was that the mutations became much more wide spread after the bombs went off.Many a times there were cases of "would-have-been" heroes having lived through their entire lives unaware of the powers that they had all along. Many became aware of their abilities only through freak accidents or when being cornered to the wall under a mortal threats. They were the lucky ones, I feel now. One saving grace that Newton still has is that none of the abilities defied known biology or ever-true physics, much to the disappointment of ardent comic fans who expected some one from the league to zip through the skies or at least jump really high.
It is not for want of trying that none of the corporations have yet figured out how to tweak the mutations in a predictable manner. We were all aware that all the big boys and the league itself is spending good money chasing a system that can guarantee both the special ability and the survival of the newborn. Though mothers were willing to be irradiated during pregnancy under quite a many guise, it was difficult to contain the PR disaster when a baby was born disfigured or worse. Soon the corporations found a better way of trial and error that had fewer repercussions during the inevitable error phase. Why irradiate a pregnant woman when a hidden virus could be your DNA vector? Several developing countries did not periodically scan the developing baby with the already stretched health care systems and the companies observed the babies being born from afar after unleashing the viral vectors on to the unsuspecting population.
Now, am not questioning the use of us humans as lab specimens by the league, because I did not know it first hand. Neither did I want to. I needed the uncertainty of it all to let me be with the league. And in the unlikely event that I prove the fact to myself, I did have a good reasonings to convince myself to stay. The league was already having a big group of savants and they were trying to cure some pretty darn in-curable conditions that ail our kind. We need more geniuses and boy wonders on the job. Tests have to be done, methodologies refined and made repeatable.
Anyways, by now you would have guessed where all this is going. As I am recapping all this, the league commander is coming to my dorm. I was quite surprised to see him actually. I expected a more hero looking guy leading league. Instead he was in a sharp all black business suit over a crisp white shirt and I was instantly convinced he had no special abilities whatsoever. He took down his shades and said, "I am good with numbers. I know what you are thinking. But I have no time to humor you right now. Walk with me."
I left my dorm and started walking with him towards the basement parking as he took the longer route rather cut across the garden like everybody else. May be he keeps fit this way. I followed him behind. "Listen to me. I will say this once and this is to be repeated to no one.I know your abilities and the possibility you hold. I am sorry about your curtailed privileges after the anechoic chamber incident. I did not want your abilities becoming more public than they already are. Right now the league thinks you are a novelty and an irritant at best. I would prefer to keep it that way. Your dorm is being vacated now and you will come with me to the airport. You will board a C5 galaxy that awaits you there with your belongings. You will be taken to Nigel where we have a experimental facility".
I was finding it difficult to concentrate on his words with the pace of walking making me breathless and this guy was talking continuously all this while. May be it was me who actually needed the exercise. Anyways, to the point. "Oh my God!! I always feared that it would come to this. You have let lose a virus in your trials haven't you? People are going to die in that country you are talking about? You are doing a cover up now aren't you? Why are you taking me?" I was trying show anger in my accusations, but I was finding it difficult with the labored breathing. "Shut up and listen. I am late for the board of governors meeting. They are going to be quite thrilled with the news I have for them and I don't want their mood fouled with my delay. We were conducting viral trials alright. That's being going on for a decade now. But we're not trying to get whizz kids anymore. We already got that process fine tuned in our irradiation trials. We now have more Nobel grade geneticists than we can employ at our facilities. With their help, we have advanced to the next stage a couple of years back. We were perfecting our gene therapy for ever lasting youth in our trials. Now, the situation is that the last 50 or so kids born in Nigel haven't had a single hospital visit for any vector born diseases and haven't aged a day past puberty. This is in a country where we still lose good men to malaria. Now, we have reached the threshold of repeatability required by our management in our control groups."
"Oh thank God. I was unnecessarily feeling guilty all this time. You are good. I was actually with the good guys all this time. Good God. It feels good to be relieved". I finally caught my breath."
"Shut up. We can't have near immortals in Nigel trudging along with our yet to be patented genes before we monetize. All humanity can have it, in due course, at the right price. Here is where you come in. You need to synchronize your transmission frequency with the resonant frequency of the brain cavities of the people there. Required chamber training will be given onboard the galaxy en-route. There are people of various age groups with different cranial volumes there, so it will take some time as you walk around. There can be no machinery or trace left in that jungle. I expect you to be done before my meeting starts. I would like to declare to the investors that the loose ends are already tied up. It looks professional."
