My Portfolio

The Psion Traveler

The story as I know it:
My name is Max. At least, that’s what my parents call me. Why do I say it that way? Well, I’ll go into that later. I was born into my family. This isn’t some alien story, like I got left on a doorstep, or fell from the sky. My parents went to the hospital, and I was born there, just like any normal child, with one exception; I was born mute. I could hear just fine, but for some reason there was something about my throat that prevented me from being able to make any kind of sound. As I was raised, I grew like any normal child, save for the fact that I couldn’t speak. If anything, there was absolutely nothing, apart from my lack of voice, seemingly extraordinary about me, at all. Sure, I loved reading about Superman, growing up. Imagining I was from some alien planet and I had special powers. I lived out in the middle of nowhere, like he did. Some small, podunk farming town. Though, my parents weren’t farmers. My father owned an antique store, and my mother was a librarian. We had a modest place, and there was barely a single stop light in the center of town. There were farms all around the town.

Then, one day, everything in my life changed… We were kids, I must have been about 10, playing out at one of the farms. We were in one of the big fields, playing in whatever it was they were growing out there (I still don’t really know, I just know it was like tall grass). Anyway, we were playing out there, and I found myself out in a wide open field. I could see my friend still deep in the grass. I found it hilarious, because I could see her, but she couldn’t see me from the angle she was at. But, what I was also able to see was the massive harvester that was coming right at her. She was too far to reach, and the sound of the machine was far too loud for me to get the attention of the farmer driving it, even if I could speak. I ran to her, knowing there was no way I would reach her in time. She didn’t seem to notice it coming up on her. At the time, I couldn’t figure out how or why, but as I ran, desperate to get to her, I just kept thinking of how I needed to be right there, right then. And, before I could realize it, I was there. Like I had traveled over 50 feet nearly instantly. Rather than worrying about it, I pulled her out of the area, and got her away from the harvester and into safety. It wasn’t until later that night I started going over it in my mind, curious as to why I was able to get to her so fast. I couldn’t complain, but… Was it an angel? Did I just move faster than I realized? Was I super fast? Maybe I was like the Flash? I had thoughts to work through. And, again, I was ten, so… What 10 year old didn’t dream about having super powers?

So, of course, the next day I began to work at it. Obviously, the first thing was to try duplicating the situation as much as possible. Which, being ten, simply meant that I needed to try running really fast. I must have spent a week of my free time trying to run really fast. Of course, anyone that I suggested such a thing to (for, despite my speech, I was still able to communicate through writing, sign language, and the like) chalked it up to a wild imagination. At the time, I ignored the skepticism, determined to prove them all wrong. But, no matter how fast I ran, it never seemed to be like it was that one day. Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. As time passed on, I began to believe that maybe it was all in my head, afterall. I tried everything. I returned to the field. I even tried to put a little pressure by trying to outrun one of the tractors. Of course, I never put myself in any real danger, and I began to think maybe that was part of the problem. We all had heard stories about some mother lifting a car to save a baby, so maybe I just needed actual danger. But, I couldn’t put myself, or anyone else, in that actual situation on the off chance that maybe I was wrong. After over a year of trying different things, trying to trick my mind and body into different scenarios and situations, I finally decided to try running to a specific destination, to see if it would get me there faster. Up to that point, I just tried running, and go as fast as I could. This was after a lot of frustration and getting used to failure, so I didn’t expect much from it. But, I ran… I decided to run from one tree to the other. I looked at that tree, and I began to run. In a brief moment, I found myself at that tree! It happened again! It had been so long, I didn’t even believe it, myself. So excited, I forgot the details on how I did it, and again just tried running really fast. But, this time, it didn’t take me long to duplicate the exact conditions, looking at the tree again, and concentrating on running to the destination. And, as this tale would predict, it did succeed. I then started looking to other locations, focusing, concentrating on getting to that next spot, then started running. And, again, I found myself there faster than I could humanly explain. And I kept expanding out the destination, seeing just how far I could run at such a great speed. And it seemed the further away the distance, the faster I was able to run. No matter how far it was, I seemed to get to it almost instantly.

I rushed home to my parents, eager to explain what I now knew I could do. Expectedly, they were a bit skeptical, at first. But, after I was able to display this impressive feat, they were quite excited. No, not excited, frightened. They looked at each other with worry and dread. A dread that I could not understand, at first. They sat me down and explained that if I really had this power that I was displaying (which, clearly I had), then I should probably keep it quiet. I shouldn’t let others know, because if anyone found out about what I could do… They feared that I could be taken away from them. A fear I always felt existed, primarily because of my condition and the fact that others wanted to test me to find out why I was the way I was. At first, I didn’t understand so many things. I thought this was a wonderful, powerful gift that I had acquired. How could such a wonderful thing turn out to be this much of a curse in my life? But, they offered a deal with me; if I kept the power to myself, just between the three of us, then they would help me to explore and nurture my power further. And, I have to say, they were true to their word. We first started exploring this ‘super speed’, but from their perspective, I wasn’t running fast. Rather, I was actually teleporting from one location to another. As soon as I began to run, I would disappear from that spot, and reappear at my destination. As they explained this to me, it was even more grand than I had ever expected. All kinds of super heroes in my books could run fast, but there were hardly any that could do what I could! So, as if to further prove the point, they had me try to ‘run’ to places that I’d have no physical way of really running to, at least not in a straight line. Like to the top of a roof. Then, they questioned if I could ‘run’ to places I couldn’t see, like to the other side of a wall. And, it didn’t matter where they tested me, I could get there almost instantly. Over a period of time, they found that I could teleport to just about anywhere. Then, they began to test if I had to be running at a full sprint to do so. It started at just slowing my run, then a jog speed, then walking… Eventually, we realized I didn’t have to be moving at all to reach my destination. All these tests, all this effort, it took a long period of time. For, though I could do all these things, I certainly found each jump to be pretty draining. I could do it multiple times without stopping, but I got extremely fatigued when I did. We went on like this for years. For the longest time, we thought it was just teleportation. After all, why would I even need anything more? This was amazing, in itself. The hardest part was always keeping the secret to myself. But, as the years went on, I understood the need for such secrecy. Once such a thing was the idea that once it got out, there was no putting it back. You can’t return a secret to being a secret once it’s revealed. But, then, of course, as always happens to most people, I found my first love. I was in high school, and I had become pretty good at teleporting, when necessary, but also pretty good at being very subtle about it, taking caution to never use it where anyone might see. Despite the greater risk it could put me in, I decided to start dating this girl. I was so excited that she agreed to go out with me, I could barely keep myself from teleporting home to tell my parents. I at least waited until I was out of sight from anyone, and I quickly made it home. They knew sign language, but my gestures were too quick to be able to be comprehended. All they knew was, by the smile on my face, that it was good news. And they loudly heard me say “She said yes!” Both were shocked when they heard my voice, they stood dumbfounded. In that moment, I didn’t realize what had happened, but I saw the change of the expressions on their faces. I was more than confused. But, then they said that I had spoken… Except, I hadn’t. There was no voice from my lips. There was nothing said. But, they had heard my voice, all the same. I wasn’t sure how this could be. I was confused. We all were. After they explained it, I tried actually speaking. But, there was nothing. After all I had dealt with in regards to figuring out how to teleport, I realized I would have to run through a number of things to figure it out. But, this wasn’t the first unusual thing that had happened. So, we were more hesitant to just dismiss it, this time. It took a little bit, but after some trial and error, we realized that I could speak directly to them from my mind.

This, of course, became another power I would play with and work on. I would attempt to communicate with both of them at the same time, try to “speak” directly to only one of them at a time, and so on. I wanted to test the ability out on a greater spectrum of people, but this was found to be a challenge to do that and keep such a thing a secret. So, I made little subtle tests. I would reach out and attempt to touch multiple minds and just offer a little odd sound, like a chirp of a bird or whatever my mind could come up with. I found a certain success when people started looking around to determine where the sound came from. I have to confess a bit of trickery when it came to such things. I even once met a complete stranger that happened to be driving through, and I attempted to move my mouth in the same pace that I was able to communicate my thoughts to him, giving an illusion of speech. With my parents, I found I could transmit more than just words, but images, thoughts, even feelings. They could literally feel my joy when I was happy, feel my sadness when I was depressed. I even began to notice such emotions affecting others around me, so I had to learn to keep these thoughts under greater control, so they wouldn’t be so easily felt. I even started being able to hear slight whispers from others, picking up brief mumbles of their thoughts. Never enough that I could make out clearly, but enough to know it was a skill I could harness, if I put forth the effort. But, I wasn’t sure that was a skill I wanted to nurture. The more people around me, the more noise I would hear from their minds, that it got to a point that I didn’t like being around people so much. I know this concerned my parents, but they were supportive.

The increased isolation didn’t go unnoticed, though, especially from the girlfriend that I had previously been so excited about. All this developed over the course of a year or two. We were in our junior year of high school, when she finally decided to break up with me. She claimed that she wasn’t sure what was going on with me, that it felt like I was keeping things from her. She wasn’t wrong, and I discussed it with my parents, just to tell her. They were sympathetic, but pointed out, what if she couldn’t handle it? What if she got scared and started telling others? In time, I would realize she was right to break up with me, but that I was also right to keep such things to myself. But, at that moment? In that moment, I just wanted to go back a minute or two, to just live in that moment before everything ended. And, as I thought about it, as I had wished for it and needed it so much, in that moment… I was. Nearly as quickly as I had desired to be back there, I was there. Except, I wasn’t exactly where I had been. Rather, I was now in some bushes, a distance away, but I could see it, watching myself as I went through it, again. I watched as she broke my heart, and then left me, sitting there, by myself… And then, suddenly, I disappeared. And I sat for a long period of time, thinking about what had just happened. I had been able to teleport through space, traveling any distance I’ve ever dared to test out. But, was I also able to move through time itself? Just by wanting it? Just by focusing on it? It was too much to take in. The possibilities, the concepts, the ideas of what it could be… I had to step back. No, I had to talk to my parents.

After everything else that we had been through, the idea that I could travel through time didn’t seem as unusual as it might in nearly any other situation. But, they had warned me, if this was the case, to be cautious about how I would handle such a power. To try to never alter the past, to never be in a place and time that I already was, especially myself from before I knew. At that point, I started watching a lot of the time travel movies, like Back to the Future and Terminator. They were fun, but I wasn’t sure how they actually applied to my specific situation. If I managed to do something that accidentally made it so my parents never got together, would that mean that I would cease to exist? The thought terrified me, in a number of ways. But, it was definitely something I wanted to try. We started by moving forward, staying in the same place I already was. Only a few seconds, but it wasn’t completely different from jumping from location to location. The biggest difference was, you can’t really ‘see’ time, you can only think about when you may have wanted, or how much time you wanted to see pass before you existed, again. It was strange, surreal. Of course, there were places I could teleport to that I couldn’t see, so it wasn’t completely different. I even found myself able to teleport to places I had never actually seen. In both the time and space, I found if ever I was to teleport to a place where an object already existed (for example, like myself teleporting back minutes to where I already was) that I would instead be teleported to someplace relatively safe for my body, like back in the bushes a distance. So, I had never been able to teleport underground. I did once try teleporting several feet in the air, and I realized that could’ve ended off very dangerously, had I not then looked and teleported myself safely back to the ground. I had continued pushing my time travel a little more and more. A day into the future. A week. I had to let my parents know if I was going to travel for any significant time. That is, until I realized I could jump to any point of time, and then jump myself right back to the very moment I had left. I was able to get it so close that it was barely even noticed. I found if I jumped faster than with ten seconds of concentration on it, that my jumps tended to be a bit less reliable. But, as long as I took those ten seconds to really focus, I almost never had problems with my jumps.

As time went on, I continued working on my abilities. I always remained curious as to what else I might have been able to do. But, when you can leap through time and space, when you can speak directly to the minds of others, what more could a person really want to do? I always thought flight would be interesting, but seeing how I could teleport anywhere, what good would that really do? Super strength? Maybe. Despite all that I could do, I was never really an exceptionally intelligent person. Nor was I ever exceptionally strong or anything. Overall, other than the powers I possessed, I was pretty much an average kind of guy. After high school, I went straight to work. There was a big town not too far away that had a museum I was able to work in. I got my start by finding ‘old relics’ and bringing them in. Really, I just went to the time that those things were brand new, be it just an arrow head, or maybe a clay jar, or a coin, and I’d either bury it away to someplace I would be able to later find it, or if it was distinct enough, I would just bring it with me in my jump. An item that I jump with would never withstand a test of carbon dating, and might be assumed to be just a replica of what existed. But, even a replica of some of these items was worth something, especially as authentic of a ‘replica’ as I was able to find. I also seemed to have a unique interest in history, according to the museum curator. Considering how easily it was for me to view it, I would have to certainly agree with him! I had to know some history, so I knew best what I could alter or touch or visit and minimally affect what happened throughout history. I had a hard time telling if the things I did caused the changes or not. I realized I needed to start figuring out how to tell, but it wasn’t something I worried too much about. Rather, my job was there to provide me with some money so I could use my talents to help stop crime. Knowing that a crime was going to happen before it actually did was a really useful talent. But, because of this, I also tended to spend a lot of time in my apartment, away from everything, so that if ever I had to revisit this moment in time, I could do so without the fear of running into myself.

One would think it would be pretty careless to jump from location to location, from time to time. But, I had a lot of fear within me. My parents made sure that no one would see me. They drilled into my head the importance of keeping such things discrete. But, even they were aware that mistakes could happen, and that when I land somewhere, I could never really tell if it was going to be a free and clear area. So, this kept me from just jumping anywhere at random. The museum was nice, and they certainly paid me decently enough, all things considered. But, the longer I was there, the more I sat and thought about how much my power felt to be dormant, useless. How there was so much more potential to what I could do compared to what I was doing with it. Picking up little never missed trinkets through history? What a pointless endeavor. It did occur to me that, yes, I could just jump right into the vault of a bank and become instantly rich. In fact, I started to think up a large number of potential methods of getting wealthy.

The tale I do not know:
Over the span of hundreds of thousands of years, maybe even millions, there was a race of humanoid creatures that had grown and evolved, just as most sentient beings tend to do. This race had, early on, discovered the merits of a peaceful and unified society. They advanced much faster than an average civilization. They had expanded in fields of art and science. Their culture was not always one of perfection, but they at least continually sought to advance, as a society as a whole. There were always outliers, those that defected from the overall culture, but for the most part, it was who they were. As the civilization continued to grow, they expanded their wealth of knowledge and could nearly control their own direction of evolution. They lost the needs for verbal communication, learning to speak to one another with their minds. Gravity would eventually hold no weight over the powers their mental capabilities were able to produce. Eventually, they got to a point where they would be able to bend reality itself. Their bodies held little meaning for them, just as any manifestation of physical reality meant so little. At some point, distance meant nothing to them. Traveling light years away was just as easy as traveling an inch. And soon after they had mastered space, they developed their mastery over time. They were the race of the Psions. All physical laws were theirs to command, by the sheer power of their minds.

Even long before they had become masters of time and space, they had been visiting planets throughout the universe. To more primitive civilizations, they were revered as gods. They were not, of course, the only alien race out there that was visiting these different planets, and at times there were conflicts between these different races. Of the alien races, the Psions tended to be a more peaceful, and more advanced, race. Their conflicts rarely ended in any manner of violence, or took long to resolve. In their advancements and scientific curiosities, as many races tended to do, they would experiment with the other civilizations that they visited, dabbling with genetic interference. Their experiments were wide ranging, from seeing how well those infused with their genetic structure would perform within that society, to seeing how those that thrived might continue to interbreed within that culture. They not only dealt within their universe, but in time were able to explore beyond their dimensional reality and into the multiverse, merging and melding together to work as a cohesive unit. In this way, they were, on occasion, able to create truly unique beings, beings that didn’t exist in any other multi-dimensional universe.

Earth was no exception. Earth was a location where early in their non-nomadic civilizations, they were found and worshiped. But, as the planet’s science grew more understood and significant, their role as Gods began to fade, and they started taking a less ‘hands on’ approach to civilization. But, their experiments still continued. Those of Earth that were seen as different were often confronted as supernatural, and seen as something to be feared. At times, some were worshiped. For the most part, however, most were ignored.

As the planet’s governments grew stronger, they would begin to exercise greater control over such ‘supernatural’ entities. For, on the planet, it wasn’t only the interference of the Psions that created such creatures. There were other alien races, deities that defied even the Psion’s science, and outright magic within the multiverse. The Psions were merely one factor within a myriad of different possibilities creating those that made others uncomfortable. Whatever the case, major governments began to watch over these supernaturals. There was no significant form of detection, just stories that they kept eyes out on, and often worked to debunk so that such stories were rarely given any credit outside of tabloids. But, they watched these stories, always with great interest. Supernatural powers, alone, were rarely a reason for a government to interfere. But, if one was showing exceptional power, they might be grabbed to study, or to be utilized for that government’s advancement, both politically and in regards to military might. For this reason, many of the supernaturals were found behind government offices and in positions of high power and authority, but rarely, if ever, acknowledged for what they were. Then, there were those that didn’t want to play along, or those that were found to be insatiable and violent in nature, that would be imprisoned and attempted to be reformed. And if reformation fails, may ultimately be sentenced to death, for the safety and security of the world. But, for those metahumans that remained under the radar, or whose powers were so insignificant that it didn’t really matter, they were left alone. But, all governments were beginning to realize one thing; the frequency of these metahumans, regardless of whether from the Psions, from magical means, from divine intervention, or whatever other reason, was beginning to grow, and would be something they would not be able to keep under wraps for long.

Max was one such metahuman, to whom the Psions had taken his mother and infused her eggs with their genetic material, so when the child was born, he would be that of a human, but with the psionic potential of one of their race. In this particular effort, they were wanting to see if it was possible for one to garner as much power as they had acquired over the period of lifetimes, within the span of this one life. This creature would have great potential, but with that power would come many difficult lessons. How to have such power, and not be ostracized by others within his society. How to control and what to do with such power. Would this creature be able to survive? And, if so, would they use this power for the benefit of all reality, or would the power corrupt the humanity of the being and leave them as a ruthless world dictator?
The Psions watch to find out…