Powers

by Brian Boyd

An inconspicuous shop appeared in Greenwich Village, New York, on a grey morning in January. It quite literally appeared - as though a giant had pried the jazz club and the grocery store apart, and slotted the little red building in between. It hadn't existed yesterday, but it looked for all the world as though it had nestled there for years.

The sign over the door read 'Powers' and the owner was a fourteen-year-old god. Actually, that's incorrect. Andy Hanson was a fourteen-year-old boy who had acquired the powers of a god. He didn't know how or why it had happened, but he had awoken to discover he had the power to make his thoughts a reality. Anything he could imagine, he could make happen.

For weeks, Andy had done all the things you might expect an adolescent boy to do in such a situation. Everything from having Miss Cox, the gym teacher, perform a table dance in his kitchen, to searing across the solar system at the speed of light, exploding asteroids as he went, with bolts of energy from his fingertips. He explored the limits of his powers and found they were limitless.

Eventually, a heavy gloom descended over Andy. Being an intelligent boy, he understood why he felt so empty. He felt the same as he had the day he'd spent one hundred dollars on comics - something he'd often dreamed about. But the reality of it held no thrill. What was the point? He realised the fun of collecting comics lay in gradually building a collection: working, saving, buying an issue or two at a time. The same idea held true for his wondrous new powers. He could have anything in the blink of an eye. Where was the excitement in that? He could destroy a country and rebuild it again the next second. He could freeze oceans, reverse time and create planets. Suddenly, there was nothing to challenge him. No more to strive for and nothing left to achieve; just like buying all those comics that day.

Comics.

COMICS!

The bell above the door rang as a man stepped in from the sidewalk. He removed his hat, looking around at the shop's bare interior. Andy sat behind a counter, near the front window, smiling at him. "Do you ...uh ...do you sell fuses?" he asked. "No. I sell powers," said Andy. "You mean batteries?" "No powers ... abilities. I'm going to turn Manhattan into a comic book," said Andy. "Uh ... I think I've got the wrong shop son." Replacing his hat with a low whistle, he reached for the door. "Are you so sure Mr. Hill?" asked Andy. He stopped. "Do you know me?" "We've never met. But I can see your thoughts - just one of the many powers I have for sale." The man lowered his head and scrutinised Andy over his spectacles. "What the hell is this? Some sorta trick for a TV show?" "You've been stealing money from work, you're worried your daughter is smoking cannabis and you killed your friend Mattie's hamster, by accident, when you were ten years old," said Andy calmly.

Several minutes later, Mr. Hill left the shop. He checked up and down the street and found it deserted. He hesitated, looking back at the shop door, then spread his arms wide and launched himself into the air. He came to a halt, about forty feet above the ground, and hung there in the sky looking around in disbelief. He looked at his hands, then down at the ground, so far below. He took a deep breath of the crisp winter air before allowing himself to slowly tilt forward until he was horizontal. Then he flew. He screamed up Broadway like a torpedo, buzzing cars and dodging signs. Thousands of people saw him: policemen, taxi drivers, students - they shouted, pointed and gaped. He carved a broad, flashing arc over the trees in Central Park, causing their branches to blow in his wake. He whooped and yelled. Andy's real life comic book had begun.

The till rang and a young woman stepped out of Powers. Using her new found super-speed, she was back at her home in Brooklyn, testing her x-ray vision before the shop door had clicked shut. More than a month had passed since Andy had opened Powers. Manhattan now had several thousand super-powered residents. Every day, longer queues lined the sidewalk outside his shop.

"I want invulnerability. Oh, and blue skin please." "Can you make me able to crawl up walls?" "I'd like to be able to change myself into any animal on Earth."

Not everyone received the powers they wanted. Andy read his customers' minds and turned away anyone who intended to misuse their powers - the city had no shortage of people like that. The corrupt and the evil came crawling from the woodwork.

Soon super-powered humans were everywhere. New York boasted a plethora of heroes. The evening news brought stories of people made from energy, sub-aqua beings, monsters with unparalleled strength, men and women with abilities they had only dreamed of ... until now. Scenes of people flying, firing lasers from their eyes or lifting trucks soon became commonplace.

Eventually Andy felt that his challenge was ready. The time had come for the grand finale.

One evening, when most of New York had eaten their evening meals and lay slumped in front of a movie, or watching the ball game in bars, every television and computer screen in the city went dead. They crackled and gave off static then blazed to life with an amazing image of Andy, hovering high over the Hudson.

"Yeesh, another freakin' superkook," said Chester Rollings. His apartment faced the Hudson. He set down his beer, walked to the window and looked out at Andy. The figure hanging in the early, twilight sky glowed with a pale, blue energy.

"Citizens of Manhattan. I am the Imagination Man."

Andy's voice thundered across the rooftops and every resident of New York heard him.

"I have come to destroy you. Tonight I will kill you all." "Whatever!" shouted Chester Rollings, waving a fist from his window. "Now put Jerry Springer back on, couldja?"

Andy waved his hand in a dismissive gesture and Rolling's apartment block exploded. The neighbouring blocks began to crumble in the impact of the blast and falling masonry crushed the roofs of cars below. Burst water pipes sent tall columns of water into the air as gas mains began to erupt along the street. Spreading his arms wide, Andy slowly raised his hands upwards. The panicked people on the streets began to rise up from the ground. They struggled and cried for help as invisible forces gripped them tight and lifted them higher. Then Andy dropped his arms and the people plummeted, screaming to the concrete below. Sirens wailed in the distance now. Andy watched the growing pandemonium with calm disinterest. It isn't real, he told himself. It can all be undone once I'm bored with it. He waited for the real fun to begin. He didn't have to wait long.

The heroes of Manhattan arrived - a trickle at first and then a swarm. Thousands of super-powered men and women flocked to the river and launched into battle with the Imagination Man. They hurled fire, electricity, ice and plasma at him. He simply surrounded himself with an energy field that repelled them all. They attacked with magic. They charged and pounded him. They tried to trap him, to shrink him, to turn him to stone. One by one he thwarted them. They shouted instructions to each other and Andy, laughing like a madman, dealt out death and suffering, crushing them like ants. He controlled their minds and made them attack each other. He showed them their deepest fears. He stopped their oxygen supplies. The sky over New York became a macabre firework display of carnage. More heroes came and more heroes fell. The Imagination Man clapped his hands, instantly growing to giant proportions. He towered over the city, swatting the circling heroes, like tiny bugs, as they tried to sting him.

Amidst this horror stood Jamie Harris, otherwise known as 'Nullifier', one of New York's newer heroes. He touched his index fingers to his temples, concentrated for an instant, and the Imagination Man was simply Andy Hanson once more. He stood bewildered, on the roof of a sky scraper, which he had been about to pound to rubble with a mighty fist.

"No," he shouted. "NO!"

The remaining heroes surrounded him. They all knew him - the boy who had granted them their powers. He had planned this all along. They were puppets for this child who wanted to use the city as his own private playground. Nullifier swooped in to land gently in front of Andy. He turned to the grim-faced heroes.

"My power has neutralised the Imagination Man. He can't harm us now - but his abilities will return in three minute's time. He has unlimited powers and his fragile, young mind has shattered. He's insane. If we don't act now, we may never get another chance to put a stop to this." "No. Please, you can't," said Andy. Tears welled in his eyes as he began to see the magnitude of his actions for the first time. He had intended to wink an eye and return everything to how it had been. This was all just meant to be some crazy fun.

The heroes of Manhattan stood around Andy, covered in dust and blood. Broken bodies littered the rooftops and streets, and fires blazed all around. One by one they raised their hands and pointed at him.

"I'm sorry. I can undo this mess if you'll let me," pleaded Andy looking from face to face. "We can't take the chance," said one man. "His mind is twisted. Just look at what he's capable of," added another. "One minute left," said Nullifier. "I can bring those people back to life," begged Andy, falling to his knees, tears streaking his cheeks. "Or you can kill us all and continue with your sick little game," said a woman standing over him. "You're a monster. Don't you see we've no choice but to destroy you?" "Now or never," said Nullifier. "I'm just a kid," whispered Andy.

He closed his eyes and hung his head low, softly sobbing. A pregnant silence hung over them as the sirens, and the wails of the wounded and dying, seemed to fall quiet. The hot evening air felt claustrophobic as New York waited.

They waited too long. Andy felt his powers return with a surge. He concentrated momentarily and the chaos was undone. The heroes were gone. They never existed.

It was a grey morning in January. In the window of a small, inconspicuous shop, in the heart of Greenwich Village, Andy Hanson flipped the sign to 'open'.

"I don't think I'll ever get bored of this game," he told himself