Colors, Sounds and the Future

Chapter 1

The Iconic Public Sighting of the Masked Vigilante of Ray City

Ray City, 10 years ago:

A woman is mugged by two young men. One rips the bag from her arm, the other pushes her down. They both run in opposite directions. The man with the bag ran up the block, the other with a handful of pearls zig zagged through on coming traffic. Bystanders came to her aid, tried to intervene, but it was too late. The young men were too fast. All seemed lost, the risk of looking so posh in that part of the city. 

Then, a streak of blue light pierces an already colorfully lit city street. It zips it’s way to the man with the bag then back to the other in a matter of seconds. The ground shook like an eruption. Standing in the middle of traffic was a figure, smoke rising from his feet, the two muggers apprehended in each hand. 

It was like a scene from the golden age of comics. The hero, standing tall in his mask, saving the day, stopping the petty theft. Close to a hundred people got a good look at him. He threw the bag back toward the woman, nodded, then leaped into the night sky. Disappearing instantly, like he was never there.

 Everyone was in shock. Some were terrified, some were ecstatic at the feat of power. Not knowing how to react the crowd applauds the scene. They talked about it nonstop. A pixelated video of the incident taken by a street light camera was plastered on every news channel. Everyone fell in love with the mystery. Previous, more fringe sightings of the masked man finally felt vindicated. The hunt for the man in the mask began.

                                                                                            ***

Origin Stories

The origin of Adrian Anderson is a simple one that has been misconstrued, mystified. Multiple stories throughout the years, each of them a completely different perception of the man behind the mask. Perceptions of love and adoration, wonder and mythos, vilifying anger and hatred, a crippling fear of the unknown. Adrian had always kept his true story a secret, so much so that after a while the sensational superhero life became a major part of his reality.

The main story that was peddled, like most of these speculations, was a lie manufactured by a team of marketing execs and TV producers, who themselves also didn’t have much to go on. The story of them writing this narrative itself became legend. Nineteen studio heads and writers, three days locked in a writing room the size of a modest basement, sporadic breaks to use the bathroom and stretch their legs, the room reeked of cheap takeout and gallons of booze, and one of the execs had a bad trip after microdosing too often without a come down. Three days of very avoidable trauma, all of it self inflicted. 

After thirty seven hours of “deliberation”, the nineteen studio heads went the classic comic book route:

 A young man, specifically an average dorky teen, loses his single mother to a common thug. He vows never to let this happen to anyone ever again. He becomes an investigative reporter, exposing gangs and large crime organizations like the Rough Riders. On one of these stake outs at an abandoned chemical plant, he is caught in a set up and the rigged building explodes. This explosion of course doesn’t kill him. The combination of the explosion, the old vats of mysterious chemicals and a whole slew of other pseudoscience gave him superhuman abilities. Abilities which include super strength, heightened awareness, impenetrable skin and, the most famous of all, super speed. 

A collection of tropes and clichés concocted by too many cooks in the kitchen. But like most things that are both enjoyable and profitable, no one seemed to be concerned with how the sausage was made. A man appearing out of thin air was plausible. 

The show was a hit. Garnering tens of thousands of views an episode. A semi scripted series which followed Adrian fight crime and solve cold cases, reminiscent of his early days as a vigilante. But for the show, instead of the premature hooded sweatshirt, aged leather jacket, and the ski mask cut out of a blue knit beanie, he sported his now iconic blue helmet, nylon tights, chest plate armor and beautiful flowing royal blue cape. The show was such a hit that after season one, the show runners had to add a disclaimer in the opening credits so they weren’t liable for any copycat vigilantes or young kids trying to acquire their own superpowers. 

It lasted several seasons, much longer than his actual tenure as a vigilante. The costumes, the fake fights, the blend of fake cases and real ones, the cheesy narrative, the fake romance between him and his partner/best friend Liz, the constant exposure, the camera crew following his every move, the disconnection from reality. These things would’ve gotten to him sooner if he weren’t successful in keeping his home planet a secret from the inhabitants behind the Rift. For he always believed that if they were to somehow find out about Earth, that if they were to find out that he was some form of alien to their dimension, more than just hell would break loose.

Before the TV show and the universal origin everyone eventually accepted, Adrian was very much the enigma he wanted to be. Emerging out of the dark, seedy scenes of the city’s underbelly, people weren’t even sure he was real, nonetheless human. People would speak of a blur that would make entire blocks quiver. Some accounts were that of a convergence of nightly shapes, moving from shadow to shadow in the figure of a man. Like a living sleep paralysis demon. 

Four members of the Valyek crime family, who were apprehended by Adrian, described him as an eight foot tall monster, frothing at the mouth, appendages everywhere, strong enough to pick up each of their vehicles at once. A city guard once described his encounter with Adrian as, seeing a thin very distressed man phase between visible and invisible. 

A professional scientist raised the possibility that the sightings were that of a brand new species. A creature with a shape and list of characteristics unfathomable to the naked eye. A conspiracy theory emerged that the Adrian sightings was a glitch in the simulation due to there being an increase in the population. A simulation that was being upheld by the government in order to keep the public ignorant to a catastrophic event in recent history. 

Parents used the sightings as a deterrent, a kin to the big bad wolf. That the monster everyone was talking about was the cause for the missing children and not the horrific, more real possibility of the city’s s*x trafficking scene. A group of boys however had a more wholesome story. While riding their bikes they saw a man teleport from building to building, bringing a trail of blue light behind him. Like a soaring thunderbolt. Like a superhero.

Then of course was the public sighting. The saving of Mrs. Wallace from a pair of purse snatchers. The sighting that made Adrian mainstream. 

The Blue Streak was born.

A Stalking Scene from his Past I 

Earth, 10 years earlier:

A bright blue hue painting the furniture a navy. A hazy but still evening. The humming from white noise. An old alarm clock, a night light over an abandoned stove, an empty fridge, a small rickety fan heater, a muted television. Adrian’s presence amongst these moving parts is just shifting weight. The syrupy stench of grenadine and flavored vodka loom over the living room more than Adrian is. His father, knocked out drunk, laying in it all, his body draped on the thin couch like a throw cover. The same generations-old thin couch, not the first nor the last of his mother’s memorabilia. 

A floating ghost in his own home. Gliding from kitchen, to living room, to front door. The sound of keys jingling in locks. The hit of cold wet air, a thick fog from an earlier drizzle. The slapping of worn running shoes on damp asphalt. Surrounded by space that is only getting darker by the minute. Suffocating like a vacuum. Running blind with no direction in mind. Just anywhere but home. 

The real Adrian Anderson is a kid from Long Island. A gangly, five foot nine high schooler. He had one true friend, Liz, who he cared for deeply but always wondered if she was only friends with him because no one would be friends with her. He mostly kept to himself, got grades average enough to stay off his teachers’ radar, worked at a gas station after school so he wouldn’t get suggestions to join school clubs or teams, stayed at work late so he wouldn’t run into his father. Adrian felt the less he interacted the better.

He lived with his father, a carpenter who bounced around from odd job to odd job, was known more for being a big drinker. Not only a guy who can liven up a party and handle a drink, but a guy who loved the variety. Who loved knowing all the different names for cocktails, loved recommending drinks to people based on their personality, loved being known as an expert in something. Somewhere in a universe where reincarnation exists, his father was a very successful Somalia in his past life.

Adrian’s father may have never hit him or berated him, but that doesn’t mean he was there. Adrian worked, paid for his phone. bought clothes when needed, fed himself, helped pay bills when he could. He enjoyed being alone, but sometimes he kept himself busy so he didn’t have to think. Think about how hard it was to stay afloat, how not normal his life was, how things could be easier if mom was still around. Occasionally he did think, and when he did he would stay in thought for days at a time. 

When the world was too much to handle, Adrian would go for a run. He loved running, his mother used to love watching him run. He would run with nowhere in mind, as long as he knew how to get back home. He was a good runner. He tried out for the cross country team in the eighth grade. He had a strenuous ankle sprain toward the end of the two week long tryouts and was unfortunately cut. His mother went missing days later, he hadn’t tried out again. He didn’t get his ankle checked out either. He lost interest in most things. But running was sometimes an itch that couldn’t be ignored. He was running the night he ripped through the Rift.

That night he was close to a running high, blood filling his face. Running as far away from the stench of his father’s liquor as he could. He had no idea he was running through the Rift until it swallowed him whole. A vortex of cascading colors and sounds, pulling him down into what felt like an abyss. The sensation of falling groped his insides and rattled them around in his rib cage. He could feel the way certain bones were formed, the ridges on each vertebrae of his spine, the cartilage in between each joint, the meat of his face masking his skull. He could feel the way different muscles stretch and tear, cognizant of their exact sizes and functions. And then time stopped.

He imagined this is what it felt like to die. That this is what people meant by, “life flashing before their eyes.” He figured he had been hit by a car he couldn’t see coming, that he was too in shock to feel the impact of the ton of metal. He imagined his body laying in the street under the fog, barely responsive, blending with the asphalt and the night. He imagined his body being checked on by the driver, or found by concerned neighbors calling in a hit and run. He sat in these thoughts and waited for death to feel like death.

He would eventually find out that what was happening to him was much weirder, more alien than death.