Apocalypse Parenting

No, it was completely scrambled from our viewpoint as well. Still, the fact that the new arrivals decided to obscure their identity so completely rules out a huge number of possibilities.

--Radio transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens

Micah’s criticism of my Telekinesis practice had been brutal, but he hadn’t been wrong.

The past two days since my injury had been frustrating, but I had to admit that my deftness with my supernatural ability had grown by leaps and bounds.

With over 550% synergy, I could keep five objects in the air at once, each just a hair over fifty pounds. I could either manipulate the whole object at once, or just apply my forces to a portion: for example, I could grab one end of the rope and let gravity or other people affect the rest.

“Grabbing” wasn’t exactly the right metaphor, though, because that implied that each instance of my Telekinesis had the control and dexterity of a hand and it did not. Not at all.

Some things were easy, like setting a sawblade spinning as I moved it through the air. Even though there were two kinds of motion taking place, it was all affecting the object as a whole, so it only counted as manipulating one object.

Telekinesis was near-useless with things like hair or sand or liquid unless they were already inside a container. Other things, like trying to stretch and twist a rubber band around Cassie’s ponytail, were hellaciously hard, requiring me use all five of my mental “grips” to stretch and twist the rubber band… and I still had to use my actual hands to hold her hair! It was difficult enough that I probably would have just learned to do the rubber band left-handed if it hadn’t been for my oldest son’s judgemental gaze.

Micah remained surly and bad-tempered, and he’d been avoiding me as much as possible. He hadn’t actually said much, so I was pretty sure he wasn’t actually as angry at me as it appeared. I was just a convenient target as he wrestled with the same question that had plagued my mind: did everyone need to take Regeneration?

I’d faced a lot of frustrations today as I wrestled with my ability and somehow constantly forgot about my missing fingers. I’d accidentally dumped a cup of water in my own lap at lunch, absentmindedly trying to pick it up with the support of nonexistent digits.

Even so, I wasn’t sure.

It was tempting to say yes, but I couldn’t shake the suspicion that this was just another trap.

Consider Carlos: the guy had taken Regeneration as an ability the moment he’d lost his leg, but it had no synergy with the abilities he’d taken previously. He’d been working to correct that since then, but now half of his abilities had no synergy with the other half, and he would still be missing his leg for several more months.

If he hadn’t pivoted his build to focus on Regeneration? The base rate would leave him limbless for more than a year. Pointy had suggested that this whole contest would likely be over in about three years.

Unless someone was expressly focused on Biological Augments and healing, like Gavin, any crippling would last for a huge portion of the competition. If you could survive while maimed for six months, could you not do the same for a year? For three? Yeah, you’d reach the finish line crippled, but it seemed to me you might have a better chance at reaching the finish line.

Rapid Regeneration wasn’t like something like Mental Speech or Analyze, where you could get a ton of utility out of it even at its base power. If you wanted to get utility out of Rapid Regeneration, you needed to support it with an appropriate suite of abilities.

The obvious follow-on to that thought was that maybe everyone should go all-in on Biological Augments. Strong synergy, injury recovery, and a varied suite of empowerments and additional senses? What wasn’t to like?

Trap! My mind yelled. Trap!

I strongly suspected that the Biological Augments were doing just what they said: augmenting or changing our biology, shifting our DNA away from baseline human. I didn’t want humanity to end up like Fluffy’s species, with few children and a greatly-reduced population.

Even if I was wrong, we certainly couldn’t all take Biological Augments. The number of things you could do with that category of abilities was large, but not infinite. There were only a couple of abilities that worked in anything but melee, and those were fairly weak and limited, things like shooting spines or acid… both of which the Slime monsters had been near-immune to.

That left aside the vast number of utility abilities that didn’t have synergy with Biological Augments. We’d gotten amazing use out of things like the Information Assistants, Analyze, Mental Speech, Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, and Announcement. A Fort Autumn that didn’t have those… Well, it brought to mind a pack of stereotypical cavemen. “Me fight good! Yaaaa! Big muscles!” It would work well against many threats, but when it didn’t work we wouldn’t have much to fall back on.

Then again, maybe I’m just grasping at straws, trying to believe I haven’t screwed myself over. I’m stuck as I am, after all. I sighed. Cassie, too. I’ll have to do my best to keep her in one piece. One advantage to the Arsenal not granting the boys Points Siphons: Micah has a few more weeks before he needs to decide one way or another. And Gavin already has Regeneration.

“Got something for you, Meghan!”

I looked up to see Clarice, one of the founders of the Living Legion who’d been with me in the previous Challenge. Like many of the Legion, she’d relocated to Fort Autumn, although she often went out on missions to deliver aid or lure D-Rex away from more vulnerable areas. She had a handful of wide strips of rubber.

“Oh?” I asked.

Clarice grinned. “Some of my old physical therapy bands. I don’t need them anymore, and I thought they might be handy for you. You know, for things you want to support as you grab them? Kinda wrap it around?”

I mentally plucked one of the stretchy objects from her hands and played with it, wrapping it around my arm. It took two uses of Telekinesis - one for each end - to manipulate that way, but it bridged the gap between those points with continuous pressure. “Interesting… I’m not sure what I’d use this for, but… hm… I’m sure I’ll think of something! Thanks.”

“Don’t fuss if you snap them. There are a lot more over at the hospital, and I knew you were looking for more things to add to your toolbox. Bunch of copycats been taking apart box fans this morning after your demonstration last night.

“More a test than a demonstration… but it did work well.” I couldn’t help but smile at her complement, even as I tried to demur. I’d been proud of that one.

Telekinesis was really frustrating to a lot of the engineers and other STEM folk in the area, because a lot of the feedback we’d got from studying it seemed inconsistent. Some things were clear and reliable. For example, the maximum speed someone could impart to an object scaled fairly evenly, starting at around 30mph and going up about 10mph per 100% synergy. A good Telekinetic could move something through the air about as fast as a great baseball pitcher, but not nearly as fast as a gun. Acceleration and force were messier, and really drove the physics nerds nuts, with tested results not always lining up to observations. Like, if someone threw a one pound baseball into a wall at 30 miles per hour, and someone used Telekinesis to do the same thing, the ball “thrown” with Telekinesis would usually hit with more force… but not always. The preconceptions and biases of the person with the ability, and a tendency of some people to pull their mental punches muddied the waters considerably. One thing that did seem clear was that if you were using Telekinesis to “carry” something well under your current “weight limit,” you could put a little extra oomph into your strikes. Maybe you treated the object as heavier, even though it wasn’t? As I said, I’d heard a lot of arguments about exactly what was happening.

Rotational speed had been even more of a mess to measure. Those of us with Analyze could make estimates, and we could get more precise data from Informational Assistants, but it wasn’t something accessible to everyone. Most people couldn’t tell a difference between 200 RPM and 500 RPM by looking, and even those of us with Analyze had trouble. We could have probably worked something out, but there hadn’t been a lot of effort there lately.

The sawblades that Alexandra had pioneered were cool, but as we’d moved past the very squishiest monsters it became clear that spinning them fast enough to damage anything was really difficult. The circular saw I’d harvested my blade from had boasted “5,500 RPM.” That was almost a hundred full rotations per second! The best rotational speed any Telekinetic had been recorded at was about half that, and Analyze had suggested my own personal best was just over 1,000 RPM.

The sawblades had fallen out of favor as monsters had gotten tougher, and I’d seen fewer and fewer around in recent weeks. I’d been thinking about my arsenal, wondering if there was a way I could make the blades work better even at low speeds when I’d thought about box fans. Fans were effective at way lower speeds than sawblades, so I’d tracked one down to give it a try. I knew I wouldn’t have the precision an air control specialist did, but I’d hoped I could be a bargain-basement alternative that would give our group some extra protection in the event of close combat with a gasbag.

It had worked beautifully, better than I’d expected, and had been surprisingly easy… easy enough that I’d been running the fan blade near-continually since then, creating a slight breeze around myself in the lingering Alabama heat.

I accepted the bands from Clarice and tried to find a way to tuck them into my bulging backpack… and failed. Hm. I guess I’ll have to re-pack again. Maybe sew some more loops and pockets on my pants? Nah. I should hire someone to do that. Someone with Improvised Equipment.

An ornate grandfather clock now sat against the wall of the quarry, its gears and pendulum working together to keep time as it always had, not needing electricity. Hm. 9:45. Too close to Deadline to do that now. I don’t know if there will be a new monster with the new week, and none of us should be eligible for the Challenge… But I think I’ll round up the kids anyway.

I don’t know what’s coming, and I’d rather have them close.