The story this week was originally written for a Fiction River anthology. The spec for the anthology involved teens discovering their superpowers.
I wrote one story (The Glass Girl) but I was afraid it was just too weird. So I wrote a second story, this one, Mover’s Inc.
However, I decided to go with the story I really loved, and submitted the first story to Fiction River, not this one.
The Glass Girl did turn out to be too weird for the editor of the superpowers anthology. However, other editors loved it well enough that it sold to a different Fiction River anthology. (The premise: A Japanese teen-aged girl turns into a glass box and carries hope into the slums of Tokyo.) (Okay, so it was a little weird. Written very much like a manga.) (It will be coming out December 2016.)
I have garnered a couple of really nice rejection letter with this story. And it’s much lighter, sillier, than most of the science fiction I write.
So I figured I’d bring it to you, as the last brand new stories that I’d publish with the Baker’s Dozen Redux. (Next week I’m doing another Shadow War’s short story.)
Enjoy!
Jeremy wants to be like his big brother, and do well at Movers, Inc., where they teach people how to use their telekenetic powers.
But Jeremy’s power is…fading.
Jeremy is willing to do anything to strengthen his powers. Even if it means going to a shrink and talking about his, ugh, feelings.
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“Ready, set, PUSH!”
Jeremy focused his telekinetic ability on the weighted box in front of him. It was about a foot square, made from gray plastic, the red tape on the sides indicating its weight: fifteen pounds. It rested on a green track with white lines designating each student’s individual channel.
He was going to send it flying across the room this time, damn it!
Jeremy concentrated. He strained.
The box trembled, then started inching away.
Jeremy redoubled his efforts. Pulled from his very toes. Clenched his fists, his jaw, his arms in front of his chest, his T–shirt pulling tightly across his back.
The box slid a very short ways. Then it stopped.
Jeremy strained to move it further. He ignored the other boys in the room and their cheers of victory. He bent over, contracting all the muscles in his stomach, across his chest, becoming a solid ball before he flung all that energy out in one big blast.
The box grudgingly moved maybe another three inches. Then it stopped again.
“Time!” Coach called.
Jeremy sighed and looked up. As he suspected, everyone else in class had had more success. Frank’s box looked like it had flown across the track so hard that it had crunched into the wall at the far end.
Even Avery the freak had managed to move his box further than Jeremy, his box sitting three–quarters of the way down the track.
“Eyes closed!” Coach called out.
Jeremy blinked his eyes as the bright ceiling lights flashed and Coach took a picture, recording the placement of everyone’s box along the track. The flash also recorded the psychic remnants in the room. Jeremy had seen pictures of his own abilities—like purple smoke wafting around the X–ray of the box he’d moved.
“Good work, boys,” Coach said, encouragingly. He slipped the camera remote in his faded gray slacks and crossed his arms over his broad chest, stretching the black and white logoed company shirt across his back. “But it looks like some of you are going to have to focus more on finesse, Rogers.”
Jeremy bit back a smirk. Figured. Rogers was always bragging about how much he could move, and how far he could send stuff. Which he could—his box was all the way across the room, touching the far wall.
But it wasn’t in the right track. It was three over.
It didn’t matter how far you could move stuff with your mind if you couldn’t actually send it where you wanted it to go. Coach had been drilling them on that all semester.
“Frank, you too.”
Jeremy wasn’t sure why Coach called Frank out. He’d sent his box flying, right?
But maybe it was just supposed to touch the wall, rest perfectly like Erik’s.
Jeremy wanted to hate his roommate Erik. He really did. Erik had perfect hair and no zits and was at the top of the class at Mover’s Inc. for almost every subject: telemetry, underwater mechanics, remote assembly, and of course, general moving with Coach.
But Erik was just too nice a guy. Even if he did fart a lot.
“Class dismissed,” Coach said. “Jeremy, can you stay?”
Jeremy nodded and sighed again. He knew that sooner or later he’d be getting The Talk.
He had the genes, damn it! And his brother Tom’s abilities were off the charts. He’d won almost every award Mover’s Inc. gave out. Mom and Dad had been so proud of him. When Tom had graduated from Mover’s Inc., he moved straight into a top position for a moving factory. Hell, he’d bought a new car even, and he’d just turned twenty–one!
So why couldn’t Jeremy move even a single weighted box?
Give him balls and he could roll them around all day long. Never even tax his energies.
But anything heavy and he failed.
“Yeah, Coach,” Jeremy said, walking up to the older man, his heart heavy.
“Now, I can see you’re trying,” Coach said. “And the recordings show you are putting out psychic energies.”
Jeremy nodded. He wasn’t the slacker his brother accused him of being. But he didn’t know why he couldn’t move anything heavy.
Coach rubbed his meaty hands together. “Is there something wrong? Like, at home? With your brother?”
“No,” Jeremy said quickly. Nothing was wrong with Mom or Dad or Tom. Or even Erik, his roommate.
The only thing that was wrong was him.
“I know you said nothing’s wrong. But you might have some kind of block, that’s preventing you from reaching your full potential,” Coach said.
Jeremy looked up, heartened. Maybe it was a block, and not his puny abilities, that seemed to be shrinking, not growing.
But what did that mean?
“I’d like you to go talk to a friend of mine,” Coach said. He wrote down a number on a piece of paper. “Karl Jones. He’s easy to talk with. He might be able to help.”
Jeremy took the paper and tried not to be disappointed. It was the number of a shrink.
He didn’t need a shrink. He could do this all on his own. He just had to work harder. Get a better grip on his abilities. Or something.
Coach sighed. “Karl isn’t your typical psychologist,” he assured Jeremy. He paused and scratched the back of his neck, pushing his hand against his quarter–inch–shorn silver hair. “I know it sounds all woo–woo and like that. But he can really help a guy out.”
Had Coach needed help at some point? He didn’t seem like the kind of guy to go and talk about his feelings or some such crap.
“Thanks Coach,” Jeremy said. He shoved the piece of paper into the front pocket of his jeans. “I gotta get to class,” he lied.
“Jeremy,” Coach said just before he left.
Jeremy paused in the doorway.
“You’re going to have to start showing some improvement, son. And soon. Anyone other than Tom McCormick’s brother would have been shown the door by now.”
“I know, Coach,” Jeremy said. He slipped out into the hallway.
Great. Just what he needed. Dweebs. Group of four of them huddled together as they walked down the hallway.
While Jeremy and his class were the “jocks” because they used their telekinetic powers moving big things, the “dweebs” moved items at a chemical level, using microscopes instead of weighted boxes.
But they didn’t seem to notice him. They were the last thing Jeremy needed. Dweebs thinking they could mess with him, like untie his shoelaces or something.
Jeremy left the building quickly, heading across the quad toward his dorm. He didn’t bother crossing to the far side, though he did sometimes—that moved him further away from the girl’s classrooms.
It wasn’t 100%, but for the most part, boys had telekinetic powers while girls had telepathic powers. It made school dances interesting, as the boys weren’t interested in getting close enough to the girls for them to read their minds, while the girls were afraid the boys would unhook their bras.
The day was actually kind of nice for Michigan, with blue sky and a nice breeze. Grass was already growing, and the ivy climbing the red brick buildings was starting to come back. It would be summer soon.
Would Jeremy be invited back to the school come fall?
What was he going to do? He wanted to be a Mover, like his big brother. He wanted a guaranteed job and to be making lots of money. Hell, he might even get a girlfriend someday. Find one who wasn’t so scary.
He didn’t want to go see a shrink. He could fix this on his own.
He just didn’t know how.
Ξ
Erik was waiting in the dorm room when Jeremy got there.
“Hey,” he said, looking up briefly from his video game.
“Hey,” Jeremy said.
The room wasn’t huge. They both had a bed and a desk on opposite sides. It was easy to tell Erik’s half from Jeremy’s: The bed was usually made, books piled neatly on the desk, and dirty clothes in the hamper instead of scattered everywhere.
They kept the middle of the room clean of mess by mutual agreement. Plus, Erik had threatened to fart on Jeremy’s pillow if he didn’t live up to his end of the bargain.
And Erik’s farts could stun a rhino.
The mutual parts of the room had also been carefully measured and agreed on. Jeremy kept the fridge on his side, while Erik kept the video game system on his side.
Jeremy threw his books on his desk, fished out the piece of paper Coach had given him and threw that on top, then collapsed on his bed.
Ow.
He moved the—ugh—sweaty gym socks from the middle of his bed and rolled back.
“Tough day, huh?” Erik asked, not getting up or even pausing his video game.
“You have no idea,” Jeremy said. And he didn’t. Erik was perfect in every way. Plus, he didn’t have this great brother, or the McCormick name to live up to.
High school was hard enough without the extra Mover classes.
All the expectations just made it suck more.
“What did Coach want?” Erik asked.
Jeremy lifted his head, surprised. Why would Erik ask about that?
Then again, Erik was the nicest guy in the world. He’d already tried helping Jeremy with his ability, going through drills and stuff.
But Erik hadn’t turned around, still had all his attention on his video game.
“Eh,” Jeremy said, flopping his head back down on the bed. “He wants me to go see a shrink or something lame. Figures maybe I’m blocked.”
Jeremy wasn’t going to bring up the possibility that he had no abilities, or that they’d burned out or something stupid like that.
“Huh,” Erik replied. Then he added, “I figured he wanted to make sure you hadn’t shit yourself. Uhn. Ugh,” he said, imitating Jeremy. “You were all bunched over. You got to relax, dude.”
“Asshole,” Jeremy said.
But Erik was right. Jeremy was too tense every time he went into the general movers class. Maybe that was what was blocking him.
“I won’t think any less of you for going to see a shrink,” Erik promised solemnly.
Jeremy rolled his eyes, knowing what was coming.
“Because I don’t think it’s possible to think less than zero about someone,” Erik added.
Jeremy shook his head and didn’t reply. He didn’t want to go get help. That wasn’t what McCormick men did.
But he wanted to stay at Movers Inc. He wanted to graduate top of his class, like Tom had.
A noxious smell crept into his awareness.
“Dude, what crawled inside you and died?” he choked out.
Erik finally paused his game and looked up, grinning at Jeremy. “Onion, cheese, and bean burritos for lunch,” he said proudly. “Want to lose at Death–Match 3?”
Jeremy made more gagging noise as he crawled out of his bed and staggered over to where Erik was sitting. “Really. You should bottle that shit and sell it to the government. They’d classify it as hazardous. Use it to kill entire armies.”
Erik didn’t reply, just passed a game consul to Jeremy. “Ready to get your ass handed to you?”
“You’re on,” Jeremy replied. “Only I think it’s you who’s gonna be crying by the end.”
“I’ve always got my secret weapon,” Erik said. “Let’s play.”
Jeremy happily threw himself into the game, but at the back of his head he wondered how long it would be before the administrators would have to call his mom and dad, before they’d send him home from boarding school and he’d have to do something in the regular sector for a job.
Ξ
Jeremy dreamed of a dandelion world. The seeds floated all around him, blowing in a soft summer breeze. The day seemed golden and hazy.
Then Jeremy shrank. He wasn’t just watching the dandelion seeds float in the wind, he became the same size as them, floating between them.
A big wind came up. Jeremy tried to grasp the seeds around him, but they slipped out of his fingers. He tumbled on the wind, heading for a dark hole in the sky.
Just before he hit the hole, Jeremy woke up. His mouth was dry, his T–shirt was soaked, and his covers were all twisted up between his legs.
As quietly as he could, Jeremy pushed himself up. It was, damn it, 3:17 a.m. He tried to rearrange the sheets without making too much noise. Erik bitched about losing his beauty sleep way too much already.
“Am awake,” came a quiet voice in the darkness.
“Sorry,” Jeremy said. Well, at least he didn’t have to worry about waking Erik up.
“You know, you keep having these nightmares,” Erik pointed out.
“Just part of my block,” Jeremy assumed. He couldn’t move things with his mind. So his mind was going to move him. That made sense, right?
“You ever call that shrink?” Erik asked.
“I got busy,” Jeremy said. He knew it was an excuse. He should have called the man. Set up an appointment. Gotten his head straightened out.
He’d been drilling every night. Trying to get his puny abilities to grow. But nothing seemed to work. If anything, he could move weighted boxes shorter distances than before.
“Tell you what,” Erik said. “You go get your head shrunk, and I’ll lay off the burritos for a week.”
“Promise?” Jeremy said. Erik had been getting even more noxious than usual, recently.
“Promise. I’d like a good night’s sleep for a change,” he said wryly.
“I’ll call him in the morning,” Jeremy promised.
However, Jeremy kept it very clear in his head that he was only going the one time.
He could still figure out everything on his own.
Ξ
Karl Jones’ office turned out to be in the administration building for Movers Inc. To get to his office, Jeremy had to pass by the testing hall.
He remembered his first visit there, scared and anxious and proud. Tom had tested off the charts, so his parents had brought him in early.
A low table sat against the far wall. A three inch tall, clear Plexiglas top covered it. The table itself was smooth and white, with lots of colored balls scattered across it.
Jeremy remembered being left in the room by his parents. He’d gone over to the table first because that was where Tom always went. He couldn’t reach the balls with his fingers, but he really wanted to play with them.
Suddenly, they were moving and rolling, just how he’d wanted them to.
Could he still do it? Jeremy glanced at his phone. He had some time before his appointment.
No one was in the testing hall, so Jeremy walked over to the table. It had seemed so big when he’d been a kid. It was really only three feet long and a couple across.
Simple enough to roll the red ball into the blue, the green into the yellow.
But those balls weren’t much bigger than pingpong balls, made of light plastic, and sitting on a special, frictionless surface. There were for kids. He should be able to move more.
A flickering monitor drew Jeremy’s attention. He didn’t remember seeing it before. Then again, he’d been focused on the balls, like Tom.
Below the monitor were a series of numbered switches. Jeremy flipped the first switch.
A moving pattern showed up on the monitor, kind of like a computer screensaver. There were three blocks and a rod, slowly bouncing into each other and off the sides of the screen.
Weird.
Jeremy flipped the next switch. Triangles.
Then another. He gasped.
What looked like dandelion seeds appeared on the screen. Like what he’d been dreaming about. He found himself making a grasping motion with his right hand.
A group of the dandelion seeds clustered together on the right side of the monitor.
Huh. That was strange.
Jeremy made a grasping motion with his left hand.
The dandelion seeds on that side came together in a group.
Maybe it was like those new video games where you made motions with your hands, instead of using a consul.
What else could he do with them?
Jeremy experimented, grouping then letting the dandelion seeds go. But that didn’t feel right. After a while, he started ordering them, shifting the first group over and replacing it with the third, and so on. Then he got them all to float in a straight line, with the points facing down.
That was the right order. He didn’t know how he knew, but it felt good.
What was the next switch?
Again, boxes and rods, though with a ball this time, too. Bright blue and red and green. Jeremy used his right hand to rotate one of the squares. Ah, there was a hole there. For the rod?
The long cylinder turned out to be trickier to grasp, but Jeremy got hold of it, attached it to the box, then hung the other box and the ball off the first rod. It took some time to figure out how to attach the other rod and box, but he did it.
The final form wasn’t symmetrical. But like the dandelion seeds, it was right in a way Jeremy couldn’t explain.
And he felt really satisfied.
Someone cleared their throat next to him.
Jeremy jumped.
The guy looked an awful lot like Coach, with big meaty hands and features, silver hair shaved to a quarter inch, typical black and white Movers Inc. shirt and dress slacks.
“I take it you’re Jeremy,” the man said. “I’m Karl.”
“Hi, sorry, I’m late,” Jeremy said.
Karl shrugged. “I’m not sure we need an appointment. You’ve worked through your block all on your own.”
“I have?” Jeremy asked.
Karl nodded toward the screens. “This is why my office is next to the testing hall. So kids can find their own way.”
Jeremy looked at Karl, then at the table with balls across the way, then back at the screen.
“I’m a dweeb?” he asked, horrified. “Not a jock?” He’d been moving microscopic things with his mind. That was what the screen had been reflecting. Not some weird video game.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a dweeb,” Karl said, smiling. “It frequently happens with brothers.” He waved his hand, and suddenly all of Jeremy’s connected boxes and rods came apart.
Jeremy shook his head. Tom was going to give him nothing but shit about this. Along with all his friends.
But at least that meant he wouldn’t have to transfer out of Movers Inc.
Ξ
Jeremy learned to his great relief that most of his credits transferred when he changed tracks. He was only going to have to attend one summer session, and then he’d be able to graduate with the rest of his class.
The classroom for General Moving, 101, dweeb style, looked nothing like Coach’s room. It had half–a–dozen tall tables, white and pristine, with four monitors standing on each. Underneath were—ugh—microscopes.
But Jeremy was determined to work hard. To make his parents proud. Even Tom hadn’t given him too much grief.
He didn’t recognize any of the guys in the class. They were all dressed like he was, though, in T–shirts and jeans. There was even a girl, standing up near the front.
Each monitor showed a familiar pattern of bouncing boxes, rods, and balls. Mr. Aaronson, the teacher, started the off the class with a quick test of their abilities, to give him a baseline.
Silence spread across the classroom while everyone concentrated.
Then came a loud, extended fart noise.
“David Munster, could you please try to control yourself?” Mr. Aaronson asked in a long suffering tone.
The guy standing next to Jeremy looked up and gave him a huge grin.
Jeremy gave him a quick fist bump before looking back at his monitor.
He was going to be all right here.