A Normil Day

Armand Cole

Once upon a time, the world didn't have any superheroes. Or supervillains. There was also no centrone radiation, no Gamma Factor, no nth energy or strangetech—all the things that you associate with Extraordinaries simply didn't exist.

But there was magic. Nobody knew about it, because only one person in the world held the power at a time. That person was called the Barrier; their job was to keep Things outside the universe from getting in. The old Barrier would often spend a decade choosing his or her replacement, setting tests and monitoring and making sure that the candidate was a person of good character, because there was no backup. And nobody who had a shot of bringing the Barrier down, if he or she went bad. We're talking about vast cosmic power in a world of normals.

That world ended in nineteen eighty-three. The Cold War, you know. Russia launched, then America. Good-bye, human race.

Well, except for me. Barriers don't go down that easily.

(You ask me why I didn't sweep the launch out of the sky as it happened? Simple: I didn't know it was going to. I found out when the bombs dropped, like everyone else. And, yes, I managed to catch some of the later ones and neutralize them, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't near enough. You have no idea how much sheer destruction we have at our fingertips.)

There was one thing I could do, besides combing the Earth for the odd lucky survivor. It was completely forbidden, but why should I care? Who was it forbidden for, anymore?

So I scanned the timeline leading up to the exchange. It took me fourteen days. The Russian defense grid had malfunctioned, spawning ghost missiles. They believed they were launching in retaliation. I hope they died without realizing what sort of mistake they'd made. I've gone through enough coming to grips with my own huge-magnitude errors, and I can always fall back on, "But I saved the world, that counts for something."

In the timeline, I found what we called a pivot point, a spot where a small change makes a massive difference. In this case, it was a man, an ordinary Russian soldier. If he hadn't been in the hospital, he would have been among the first to spot the ghost missiles. And he would have asked the crucial question, the world-saving question: why on Earth would the Americans launch by twos and threes rather than a massive rain of obliteration?

Simple. Ideal. All I needed was to edit time, to erase the accident and make him fit for duty, and all this destruction would never have actually existed.

I spent about a month arranging everything. I couldn't choose a successor, not directly. What I could do was set up tests that would (I hoped) weed out the unsuitable, and leave thorough notes on how to use the Barrier's power (difficult, since these things take a Barrier's extended lifetime to master) and designate some of my enchanted objects to help answer questions that I hadn't anticipated.

I needed power, of course. But I knew where to find it: in old, brutal magic that gives no quarter. All I needed was a sacrifice. A self-sacrifice.

So, after the spell was prepared, perfect and meticulous and flawless in every detail, I drenched myself with gasoline, lay down in the middle of my diagrams, and struck a light.

But magic comes from the mind, and not the rational, practical part. Magic comes from the places you barely remember and the dreams that fade before you can articulate them. Magic comes from what you knew as a child, and as a child, I was a dreamer and a reader. I would run into the bookshop after school, and the lady at the counter would say, "You're in for the new comic?" I knew, to the day, when all my favorite superhero comics came out . . .

That was the most popular genre in the medium, you see. Superheroes. Exotic and exciting and nothing you'd ever see in real life.

So, to summarize: a burning man. A needle-like twist of fate rocketing back through time, to erase the worst disaster mankind ever wouldn't have suffered. And the fuel of that missile was all the fantasies and all the hopes that I'd ever had. All there, all boiling.

The spell didn't break. It just—cracked, ever so slightly, at some of the worst pressure points. Dreams dissipating into the timestream like superheated steam.

So there you have it. I saved the world. I saved more people than I can imagine. I also broke the world, just a little bit. Every person that Prince Rath killed (or kills; the Narrative won't allow him to stay dead)—that's on me.

I have no idea how to deal with that, so mostly I don't.

But the thing is—the important thing, the bit that keeps me convinced that it might have been worth it, even with my mistakes—people aren't just puppets of the Narrative. Events are imposed upon them, but they have choices.

Like Rick, for instance. The insanity of the life I threw him into, the one-issue superpowers, the strain of not knowing whether he'll wake up in the same shape he went to bed—that could have sent him insane. Instead, he rolls with the punches. He makes Normil puns, he shrugs, he says, oh, another dinosaur, didn't we have those just last Wednesday?

He's all right. And that's what keeps me from going under, what makes me keep checking on your world and watching crises and figuring out how to avert them when I can. The people in the new universe—you're all right. You cope. This isn't hell any more than it's heaven.

I can live with that. In a manner of speaking.

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Author's note: So, that's Armand's story—or rather, that's Armand's backstory.  It's a bit grim, and one reason why I moved this story out of "Humor" and into "Adventure," but there you go.  I've always intended to have a story where Armand comes back to life and gets to live as a more or less normal person (after putting him through the wringer, because that is how the author do).  I have to confess, though, that I haven't written it yet.  When I do, I'll definitely include a link in this space.

And that's all for A Normil Day!  I've got a short story in the same universe, Protector of the Lost, but it doesn't contain any of the same characters, so it's fairly disconnected from this.  Hope you enjoyed reading!  If you enjoy my writing, my work can also be found at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/isabelpelech.