"Well, I can start at the beginning," she said. "I was just a normal girl growing up in a small town in Arizona. I knew there was a military base nearby, but that was about it until the day they invited me and some of my classmates to one of their facilities for a test. I found out later they were looking for who they thought was the most placid and docile person they could, and they picked me. I was only fifteen at the time, and they were probably right. But my lack of confidence didn't make me stupid, and they eventually regretted that decision.
"So the real reason I was there was that they wanted to test a new drug that they hoped would enhance the human body. And it did. Really it helped me at everything, from physical strength to spatial reasoning to enhancing my senses, but the impact it really had was on my brain. Suddenly things just started to fit in place. I could figure out intellectual problems instantly that would have taken me weeks to get through, if ever, and, well, I could do some things no human could, without even knowing how. After they injected me with the drug, I noticed right away that objects started moving just by my thoughts. I was smart enough not to let the scientists and military guys find out the full extent of my powers, but at that early stage I wasn’t able to hide everything. At first it didn’t make much of a difference: they let me keep up my everyday school life and only stop in for tests in the afternoons, but once I transformed an object in front of them, they decided they needed to keep me for observation. That was a mistake.
"To their credit, they did realize their larger error in giving anyone that much power to begin with, but by that point I was way beyond them. They tried poisoning my food, but I somehow knew not to eat it without even touching it. By the time they decided to come at me with guns, I already knew I was going to force my way out."
She pauses, and looks down at Mike, still hovering a few feet off the ground, almost as if she knows what he’s wondering. He says it anyway. "So, you escaped?"
"No, that wouldn't have done me any good," she says. "They would have come after me. I could have dispatched anyone who did, of course, but they never would have stopped. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life on the run. So I had to stop them all, right then, and get rid of all the evidence."
She pauses again. "And that’s why I blew it up." She looks down at Mike again as his eyes grow wide in shock, and more than a little confusion. "That's right," she continues. "As soon as they pointed those guns at me, I could tell they weren't going to let me live any longer. So, not really thinking, I steeled myself—not literally—to be as strong as I could imagine, and I just blew it all up. The biggest explosion I could create. It wasn't what I would consider a big deal now, not by any stretch." She chuckles a bit at the thought. "But at the time it was pretty big. The military explained it away as a hydrogen bomb test, which frankly was a bit of an insult, as the explosion I created was significantly bigger. You could hear it in three states.
"In any event, they didn't have any better ideas. That famous military secrecy worked to my advantage, as everyone who had any knowledge of the experiment was gone. And I was just fine. So I dusted myself off -- I was a little charred, honestly -- and walked back home. Okay, I flew. But I went back to my normal life. It took me about six months to grow bored with the normal high school life of movies, dates, and pretending I needed to spend time on my studies. I wanted to see the world and see what I could do.
"So I left. It's been one adventure after another ever since. We're well over sixty years since that moment when everything changed, and I still haven't run out of things to do."
She pauses again, and smiles down at Mike. "So," she says, "I'm sure you have all sorts of questions."
He has a million, of course, but in typically smooth fashion, the only question that comes out is a stupid one. "Were you always this pretty?"
Fortunately, she laughs. "You guys are all the same," she says. "And actually, no, that’s a good catch. I wasn't. In retrospect I was perfectly pretty enough, but I felt ugly. And these new powers gave me the chance to change my looks however I wanted. I experimented with different looks for a while, and I even went through a time when everyone who looked at me would only see their own version of the perfect woman. Now I mostly just make my body look whatever I'm in the mood for. I tend not to look older than about 22. Anything else?"
Mike’s had a moment to think about it, now, and he has a smarter question this time: "So where do I come in?"
"Ah, yes, good question. So it didn't take me too long to realize that even if I got rid of the scientists who developed this technology, it was only a matter of time until someone else did too. So, as I developed my powers I eventually reached the point where I could sense things anywhere on earth, just by wanting to. So I made sure I would be able to feel it anytime this level of technology was reached again. As it turns out, it's happened a fair amount of the time, but it's surprisingly easy to skew with the results of a few experiments and steer people into the wrong direction.
"So when your buddy Dr. Marks developed his little prototype -- not a bad version of the technology, by the way -- I made sure to keep an eye on his progress. He got himself squished almost immediately, of course. But you stepped up rather quickly, and you might have actually managed to keep yourself alive despite having this thing. So I figured I'd come and say hello."
Mike shudders. Has she been watching him the whole time? Did she see him shrink down those girls? Was she just standing there watching him crawl around looking for them? More importantly, what's she going to do with him? Wait a second: was Suzi stepping on Dr. Marks a coincidence, or did this newfound goddess set it all up? Better not to ask. Not yet, at least.
"Okay," he says, "but I still have more questions."
She finally relaxes her telekinetic grip on him, and sets him back on the floor again. “Shoot.”