Murray Hill || A Superhuman Tale - 1

Chapter Eleven

After a while, Tommy got out of the car and stretched, after which he moved around and took a seat on a park-style bench just opposite the driver's door. The sound of the rain lightly drumming on the carport was oddly soothing.

"Wanna hear a story?" he asked her.

"What kind of story?"

"A story about people like me."

"Yeah, very much." He had her full attention.

"Like you said, you hear a lot of things. I'm here to officially set the record straight," he said quietly, in a tone of mock grandeur.

She smiled.

"There've always been people like me, you know. I don't know why we can do the things we do." He shrugged his shoulders. "But we're all born of normal parents, most all of us live the normal span of years, and when we have children, those kids are as normal as their grandparents were. Each and every one of us is unique, a one-off."

"Okay, but how come no one ever heard about people like you until the 1930s or 40s?"

"Advertising."

"Oh, seriously."

"No. I am being serious. At least advertising is part of it. There are three things you have to remember. First, there've never been that many of us. Also, before—I dunno, 1800 or so—humans were shitty at keeping records, afterwards much better. Finally, and this is maybe the most important part, societies are intensely suspicious of those they see as different. That was especially true in the olden days."

While Tommy was talking, the detective opened her door and spun to face him, her feet now on the running board and her arms around her knees.

"What does that all mean?" she asked, giving him a long and uncertain look.

"It means no one wants to be burned at the stake. Camille, not all people like me are bulletproof. And there aren't that many of us. I don't know exact numbers, but I doubt in the old days there were ever more than a few hundred of us around at any given time. The vast majority of those've simply wanted to live quiet lives, free from the suspicions of the witch-hunters and inquisitors of their age."

"But not all of you?"

"Exactly. But that's where bad record keeping comes in. Most of us keep our heads down by instinct, but some are different. In the old days, those few who had the inclination to make themselves widely known, or the hubris to try and set themselves up as gods on ... I dunno, Mount Olympus, or wherever, simply became part of the warp and woof of history, badly written and poorly sorted out as it was in those days. But history does remember them in some way or another."

Camille thought about his words for a moment. Mount Olympus? There was much of what he'd just said that she didn't fully grasp, but she wanted to hear the whole story.

"So, what happened in 1800?" she asked.

"The world began to change. Though that wasn't so apparent at the time. First, the population exploded. As near as I can tell, we've always been a steady portion of the populace. More people means more of us."

"At that same time, the World just became, I dunno ... smaller. There were faster boats and steam engines, of course. That isn't what I mean. What changed was the way people communicated. The printing press had been around for centuries by then, but it wasn't until after 1800 that a mass literacy emerged. Newspapers became widespread, followed by the telegraph, radio, film, television, satellites. Now, well ... the Internet. The World became a tiny, tiny little place almost overnight."