I didn't go looking for power, but finding it wasn't a fluke, either. It was my own damn incurable curiosity that got me in trouble.
I remember being pleasantly exhausted that day. Eight grueling hours of teaching teenagers how to graph functions, work proofs, and construct shapes with a compass and straightedge. All worth it when I saw comprehension dawning on students' faces. And it always came eventually when I was teaching them. I had a gift. Despite the exhaustion, I was looking forward to football practice. There's a proper balance between body and mind, and assistant coaching helped me find that. Plus, there was a surprising amount of math involved in football.
"Headed to practice?" the school secretary asked me as I stepped into the office.
I made small talk as I checked my mail, shuffling the envelopes and fliers. A folded scrap of paper fell to the floor. I bent to pick it up. It was thin--almost like tracing paper, with the unmistakable lines of a geometric diagram scrawled across the folds. I flipped it open and smoothed it out on the counter in front of the secretary. The diagram was neatly labelled in some foreign language.
"What's that? Homework?" the secretary said with a giggle, batting her eyes. I was used to flirting with some of the women on staff, but right now, all I was interested in was the puzzling piece of paper in front of me.
"No, no I think it's...it almost looks like..." my face scrunched up. "But that can't be right. These curves, these angles are...impossible."
"Like an optical illusion?" the secretary said as she stood up to get a closer look. "Oh! I don't know how you can even look at that, Charley!" She blinked rapidly, eyes tearing up. "I feel nauseous just thinking about it!" She laughed again.
"It does make your head swim a bit, doesn't it?" I kept staring at the drawing. Incomprehensible thoughts were starting to push at the edges of my mind. The lines started to flex and twist.
"Maybe it is an optical illusion," I muttered, squinting at the paper. The twitching diagram was making my eyes sting and a roiling sickness grow in my stomach. The lines were knotting themselves unto unreadable tangles, as a cold pressure gripped the back of my head, squeezing tighter the longer I stared at the paper.
"Charley! Charley!" The secretary was shaking me on the shoulder when I snapped back. "What the hell was that?"
I tried to laugh, but ended up wincing. Staring at the diagram for so long had left me with an unbearable headache.
"Just zoned out for a minute there. Trying to figure out how this crazy picture works." I screwed my eyes shut, trying to ignore the throbbing.
"You look a little sick, Charley. Do you want me to drive you home?"
"Thanks, but I think I'll be all right. The team's probably waiting for me."
On the sidelines, I watched the scrimmage with even more intense focus than usual, mentally tracing the lines of movement. The sharp angles of a darting rush, the smooth parabolic arcs of a sailing pass. They all made sense. They followed the mathematical rules of the world. The strange diagram I had tucked into my pocket didn't.
I tried to picture it again. A smooth ripple passed through my head and the haunting image of the impossible diagram appeared. The pressure grew behind my eyes, the already agonizing throbs of my headache growing stronger and faster. The nauseating angles were too hard to think about, but I kept pushing. I could almost feel the edges of other people's thoughts between the streaks of pain.
A piercing whistle from the main coach shattered my concentration. I let the air out of my lungs as the diagram faded away. I didn't even realize I had been holding my breath.
“Mr. S, you okay?” the quarterback said, startling me with a slap on the shoulder.
“Uh, yeah. Thanks, Jake. Just a little light-headed. Might head home early.”
“Might as well,” the head coach grumbled, “you’ve been totally out of it all day.”
“Sorry,” I said with a weak smile, “I probably just need some painkillers and a good night’s sleep.”
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I was still in pain as I unlocked the door, although it was more bearable than before. The agonizing pain of a migraine had faded to the dull pressure of a sinus headache. All I wanted to do was to fall headlong into my bed and fall asleep, but curiosity about the diagram gnawed at my mind. I had to figure out the bizarre drawing.
I popped an aspirin before locking myself in the office. Hours later, I found myself on a weird little website filled with crude facsimiles of the diagram I had found, along with long-winded, barely coherent explanations. The author was clearly both brilliant and more than a little insane. His notes rambled on and on about discovering “an arcane interstice filled with white flames” that allowed him to "harness the will of others" and “transmute thoughts into potential.” One particular passage described opening other, higher planes of existence through the angles and curves calculated by impossible mathematical formulas. More bizarre, alongside the author’s impossible formulas and equations were pages on folklore and mythology, as well as medieval treatises on science, magic, and astrology. Several pages were devoted to medieval demonology.
It was nearly two in the morning when my feverish brain cracked the code. The author had discovered a diagram that let him navigate cracks in reality. Or at least he sincerely believed he had. And he used these cracks to tinker with people's thoughts and forms. Patently impossible, but his equations were oddly compelling.
I felt a sudden wave of exhaustion when I looked at a clock. Still fascinated with my findings, but barely able to keep my eyes open, I peeled off my jeans and pulled on a pair of pajama pants as I stumbled towards bed. The painkillers were finally working. My headache had faded away to almost nothing, although I still had weird bright spots in my vision. I felt something coil around my tired thoughts as I drifted off, but the twinge of panic was smothered by the rapid approach of sleep.
When I dreamed, I dreamed of the school's hallways. Broad halls that constricted into long, narrow, winding tunnels, the grinding of brick and concrete filling the background. The air smelled of antiseptic and the tang of ozone. The tunnels were lit by strobes of actinic blue light, hideous tessellated faces appearing in the flashes of light. The grinning features whispered and chanted in alien tongues, their unintelligible rhythms driving me forward.
I came to the end of the tunnel, the ceiling slanting down to meet a wall that slanted inwards. The hissing voices behind me pushed harder, threatening, cajoling. The passwords were there. The keys were there. Just step through the portal.
The maddening diagrams sprung into my mind, spilling out into the dreamscape in front of him in glowing lines that pointed to places beyond the walls. Shivering with anticipation, I traced the strange arcs and lines on the whitewashed wall before my eyes, following their directions along a path through the concrete barrier.
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It was unbearably cold and dry, the only heat coming from the occasional blistering gust of wind through the darkness, briefly trading freezing temperatures for burning ones. I was floating above the town. Way above the town, and continuing to rise. I could barely make out the buildings, just a dreamlike haze. My mind and my body felt untethered, like a strong gust of wind could separate them.
A titanic blue figure stood--floated, rather-- above me, its body and features made up of flashing fractals of light both beautiful and terrifying. A scroll unfurled from its hands, covered in bizarre formulas. It almost appeared to be a contract, only instead of a signature, it needed a solution. It was impossible though. Unsolvable. Except…
I felt a twitch inside my mind, something gripping my thoughts tight, constricting, squeezing until everything made sense.
I solved the equation.
I signed my secret name.
the figure intoned in a thousand laughing crystal voices as I plummeted back towards earth. I felt my skin heat up, and then ignite as I fell, and fell, and fell until my flames were smothered out by the fog of dreams above the town.
And I was back in my room, screaming to wakefulness just as the automatic coffeemaker clicked on. The sun was barely up. My heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest, and the sheets were soaked in sweat. I ran my hand through tangled hair, still disoriented.