Twisted: The Science of Peculiar Powers
The world is weirder than you know…
All powers are wonderful – but some powers are weird. In Twisted: The Science of Peculiar Powers, science teacher and all-round supernerd Sylvia Funkstone dives headfirst into the weirdest, wildest and wackiest powers out there, and provides fascinating scientific explanations for where they come from and how they work. Laugh, learn and marvel at incredible true stories, including:
The real-life Bigfoots
A community of ghosts
How two snake bites saved a thousand lives
Mrs Reverse-Lightning Bolts, and
The truth behind the Legion of Heroes arch-nemeses
Whether you’re fascinated by superpowers or looking for cool stories to tell your friends, you’ll want to read all the wonderful tales in Twisted: The Science of Peculiar Powers.
[Selected extracts]
How Two Snake Bites Saved a Thousand Lives
Venomancy is an unusual, but not necessarily uncommon power. Someone who has it, in short, can create poison – all kinds of poison, ranging from a liquid that will make someone very sick, to a paste that will make a person hallucinate, to a slime that will only be harmful to specific plants or animals. For a power that manifests relatively regularly, venomancy is actually a bit unusual – because where most powers work the same between different people who get them, venomancy manifests in each person in slightly different ways. Each venomancer will secrete (which means produce or release) their poison from a different body part – sometimes as spit in their mouth, sometimes as tears from their eyes, or sometimes even as sweat underneath their armpits (ew). Additionally, the poison each venomancer makes will be different, varying in colour, appearance, viscosity (how thick or sticky it is), potency (how strong it is) and effect. It’s a great example of Non-Synchronous Manifestation – that rare subset of superpowers that are broadly similar, but practically differ from person to person.
Now while the ability to spit toxic goo at your friends might sound fun, as far as day-to-day life goes, venomancy isn’t normally the most useful power. How many times a week do you need to poison something? (Not many, hopefully). Sometimes, venomancers use their abilities to help with gardening or pest control, but for the most part most of them stick to jobs that don’t require excreting toxins (you know, like pretty much everything). Such was the case with Todd Feeney, the hero of this story. Todd was an Irish venomancer who could secrete poison from the back of his wrists, and like many young Irish men in 1988 decided to do some backpacking in Australia, working in bars and (presumably) not slipping any poison into anyone’s drinks as he saved up money to do more travelling around.
Now there are lots of interesting facts about Australia, but one of the more unsettling ones is that of the 25 most venomous snakes in the world, 21 call Australia home. For the most part, normal Australians (who dwell mainly near the coastline) don’t have to worry about this too much, as the snakes live mostly in the desert – but the desert, unfortunately, is exactly where Todd Feeney found himself stuck in the middle of, after his car broke down halfway across the Nullarbor Plain. This was the first in a series of three strokes of bad luck which should have left poor Todd Feeney dead, but which instead changed his life forever.
There are many rules and safety precautions that a sensible traveller should take when driving across a desert, but one of the big ones is that in the event of a breakdown, stay with your car! Unfortunately for Todd, he didn’t seem to have heard of this rule, because after being unable to fix his broken down vehicle, he decided to walk off into desert looking for someone who could help him, or in the hope that there was a town near by. Tip: the Australian outback stretches for thousands of kilometres, and there is very, very rarely a town near by. Stay with your car and wait for someone to find you!
It was the middle of the day and the desert was very hot, so it wasn’t long before Todd was too. But in addition to poor decision-making skills, it seemed Todd was also particularly unlucky, because after walking, sweating and getting sunburnt for about an hour he then encountered his second stroke of misfortune – a large, very angry venomous Australian snake which he almost stepped on, and which reared up, hissing, a few inches from his leg. The proper thing to do, in these circumstances, is to slowly take something out of your pocket or take off a hat or piece of clothing, and very slowly put it on the ground for the snake to fixate on – that way, the snake will keep all its attention on it, rather than you, as you slowly back away. Todd, unfortunately again, did not know this, and so in a panic attempted to kick the snake away. The snake, very irate at this pale stranger stomping into its home and kicking at it, did not like this very much and, being much faster than Todd, immediately bit him on the leg.
It is here in the story that a regular person would have died, but where Todd’s tale of outback misadventure turns into something remarkable. Todd did not die; although, panicked and in a lot of pain, he did run back to his car, probably swearing a lot and regretting his holiday choices. When Todd returned to his car, his third stroke of bad luck came calling – because while he had been off stumbling around the desert, another different and smaller snake had slithered over to enjoy the shady space beneath Todd’s car. It, too, was not expecting Todd’s arrival, and so when Todd opened the car door and disturbed its shady nap, it likewise decided to attack. In less than an hour, Todd suffered a second snake bite on the same leg from a different sort of snake.
Delirious with pain and very, very scared, Todd opened up his first aid kit and hurriedly gulped down every pill and painkiller he was carrying. Again, this all by itself is usually a very bad idea, but by this point Todd was obviously not thinking clearly and was clearly desperate for anything that would help him. Note: if you are ever bitten by a snake, normal medicine will normally not help you. You need to go to a hospital.
Fortunately, here is where Todd’s luck turned around. A truck transporting sheep to Adelaide happened to be travelling along the same road Todd had broken down on, and when they saw Todd’s car they stopped to lend a hand. Todd’s snake bite emergency was quickly explained and the truck driver, who was much more knowledgeable about proper desert practice, was able to properly bandage Todd’s leg to stop the venom spreading and drive him urgently to the nearest town. Unfortunately, by the time Todd reached a hospital his condition was so severe that he was barely conscious, and he was unable to provide descriptions of the snakes that bit him. Left with no better options, the doctors treating Todd had no choice but to inject the Irish backpacker with several different antivenoms designed to counteract the bites of the most common types of snakes living nearby.
Antivenom, also known as antivenin or venom antiserum, is a very interesting substance. It is used to treat bites and stings from venomous animals, but there is no such thing as a universal one – each type of antivenom needs to be made specifically to counteract a specific species’ sting or bite. The source of antivenom is, in most cases, actually venom, which is collected by hand from snakes, scorpions and spiders so that antivenom can be made. Antivenom is very expensive, and can often cause severe side effects in people who are given the wrong one (or sometimes even in people given the right one).
So for all accounts and purposes, Todd Feeney the incredibly unlucky (and, if we’re being honest, probably somewhat foolish) Irishman should’ve been dead. He’d had bites from two unknown (but presumably very deadly) Australian snakes; he’d gobbled down a large amount of ineffective medicine; and then he’d been treated with several pot-shot antivenoms. But somehow, miraculously, Todd Feeney did not die. Instead, over the course of three weeks, he was teleported to and recovered in a specialist Melbourne hospital, overseen by top Australian doctors who continued to treat his symptoms while poor Todd clung to life. After three weeks of gruelling sickness, he recovered – and once he had, Todd discovered that something remarkable had occurred.
Todd, ostensibly still a venomancer, could no longer secrete poison. Rather, and to the absolute shock of his doctors, the back of Todd’s wrists now produced antivenom, and not just any antivenom, but a broad spectrum antivenom that effectively counteracted a wide variety of bites. Overnight, Todd’s venomancy became hugely sought after – because although superpowered healers can often help with snake and other bite symptoms in the short term, in the long term a person still normally needs antivenom to help them recover in full. Todd’s “poison” now did just that – stripped of the ability to harm anyone, it had transformed into a supernatural antivenom perfect for curing a wide variety of bites.
The exact reason behind Todd’s amazing change is unknown. Was it his body reacting against the original snake bites, his own abilities attempting to counteract the toxins or fight back? Was it the additional substances he took, causing some kind of additional reaction that made Todd’s powers switch? Or was it the antivenom, injected almost at random, and its subsequent interactions with the snake venom, Todd’s own poison, or the medicine he’d swallowed? To this day, scientists don’t know. But Todd, forever grateful and eager to repay his good fortune, now provides his antivenom to hospitals the world over, with all profits going to medical research and (perhaps a little ironically) several zoos conserving Australian reptiles.
The Secrets of Coloured Flame
Everyone knows pyromancy. Whether it’s a flame flickering out of a fingertip or an inferno streaming from a palm, the ability to create and control fire is as common as it is useful, and as versatile as it is fun. Most people probably know a pyromancer, and so most people probably already know that they can make fires in a range of shapes and sizes, and that they can move fire around in a variety of ways.
Most fire that is made by pyromancers has the yellow-orange-red colour combination we are all familiar with – the “usual” fire colours that you get when you burn paper, wood, gasoline or a lump of coal. But now and again you’ll hear of pyromancers able to make fire in other colours; blues and greens, maybe even purple or white. Gold fire, silver fire, clear fire, even black fire. And then there’s cold fire, or slow fire, fire that makes things rather than destroys. Are these just crazy stories? Are any of them true? Amazingly, most of them are – although maybe not in the way, or for the reason, you might think.
In nature, not every fire is “fire-coloured” (yellow-orange-red); indeed, there are number of scientific experiments which you can do in your classroom to make fire in all colours of the rainbow. Flames are caused by the rapid combustion of a burnable material with oxygen, and different temperatures and different materials create different flames. The hottest fires are blue and violet (think of a welding torch, or your gas stove at home), whereas the coolest, slow‑burning fires are darker red (think of a log that’s been burning for a long time). Most fires we encounter in our day-to-day lives burn carbon, which results in an orange flame, but to get other colours you can burn chemicals like:
Red: Lithium, cadmium, strontium nitrate or strontium chloride.
Orange: Carbon, iron or calcium chloride.
Yellow: Sodium chloride, sodium carbonate, or borax.
Green: Copper, barium or boron.
Blue: Arsenic, lead, tin, copper chloride or carbon, if it’s burned completely.
Indigo: Indium.
White: Magnesium sulfate.
Violet: Potassium nitrate mixed with potassium sulfate.
Silver: Aluminium, nickel cobalt or chromium.
There are even clear or invisible flames which can be created by burning chemicals like methanol or zinc, which can be very dangerous if you’re not careful of them (imagine being unable to tell if something you’re about to pick up is on fire!)
If a pyromancer uses their powers to set fire to one of the above substances, the resulting flame will, naturally, be the colour of the material being burned. The pyromancer can then manipulate these coloured flames as they would any other. But in the absence of any other visible fuel burning, pyromancers’ flames are almost universally yellow-orange-red, the colour of burning carbon. There are lots of theories about why this – maybe that pyromancers are unknowingly secreting a hydrocarbon substance, or that they are somehow projecting carbon from their own bodies out into the air, since carbon is one of the building blocks of the human body. This is unfortunately one of those superpowered unknowns; a question for which science may one day find the answer, but for the time being is just accepted as being the way it is.
But what about stories of people creating coloured flames? This is where things get interesting, because there are some pyromancers who only manifest flames in a different colour. This is what is referred to as an Idiosyncratic Manifestation – a scientific term that describes when a power manifests differently than it usually does in most other people who have the same power. It is different to Non-Synchronous Manifestation – where everyone who has the power manifests it in a slightly different, slightly unique way – and refers instead to a situation where a person’s power would “normally” function in a particular way, but instead works in another. Where, for example, a pyromancer’s fire is supposed to be the usual fire colour, but instead consistently comes out green.
Not every example of coloured or unusual fire is an Idiosyncratic Manifestation. With training, experienced pyromancers can channel the fire they produce to very high temperatures, and this can result in flames which are blue, or even white. But in pyromancers with Idiosyncratic Manifestations, their fire can be always blue, or green, or pink, or gold, or sometimes even black or multi-coloured, regardless of the temperature or how much they’ve practiced or trained.
The flames made by Idiosyncratic pyromancers often behave in ways which are unexpected and can seem surreal. Their fires can burn at low or even room temperatures (meaning that you could have one of their fires burning on your head without ever singeing your hair) or consistently float to the floor as if the fire is heavier than air. They might burn incredibly slowly – like watching a video at one-tenth normal speed – and there have even been cases of flames leaving residue behind, such as calcium build-up, water or salt, where previously there was none. These variations are what make Idiosyncratic Manifestations so special, and why scientists are so fascinated by them.
But while it’s difficult to predict what an Idiosyncratic Manifestation might do, it is usually possible to predict in who they will occur. Idiosyncratic Manifestations most commonly occur in people with significant disabilities – people who are born with Down Syndrome or other genetic or congenital anomalies, or (more rarely) in people who suffer permanent brain damage or develop a degenerative disease.
Because of this association with people with disabilities, Idiosyncratic Manifestations are sometimes looked down on as bad things, or as evidence that the disabled person who has them is somehow damaged or not working “right”. But this is the wrong way to look at it. Idiosyncratic Manifestations let the people who have them do things that other people cannot – and while these things might not be “normal” or as practically useful as the standard power, this does not stop them being miraculous, unique, beautiful or worthwhile, and we should treasure them when they appear.
The Weightless Man
Oliver Trudeau was special for many reasons. To his parents, he was their only son, the youngest of five, and would always be their baby boy. To his sisters, he was their little brother, even when he wasn’t so little anymore (as an adult he was six foot three), who never had an unkind word to say about anyone and who would never hurt a fly. In school, Ollie’s teachers loved him for his calm and sunny nature, and his friends often remarked that how no matter how bad things were, Ollie never got mean or upset.
Oliver was also special because he had Fragile X Syndrome, a genetic disorder caused by an anomaly on the X chromosome. Chromosomes are the building blocks of the cells in our bodies and are made from DNA, and being born with an anomaly in one can mean that you are born with a genetic disorder. The genetic disorder Ollie had, Fragile X Syndrome, caused him to have a lower-than-average IQ – somewhere between 60 and 55, compared to the average person’s IQ of 100. According to his family however, Ollie’s low IQ never really bothered him, especially once he developed the ability to fly.
Ollie first started flying when he was 15. At first, his parents and teachers were worried. Flying can be a dangerous power if you aren’t careful with it, not least of all because you have to be careful not to crash into things. They were also concerned that Ollie might one day get distracted or forgetful and use his powers to unintentionally fly away. However, within a few months it seemed these concerns were misplaced – Ollie only ever flew very slowly and a few inches off the ground, more like a bubble than a jet plane, and with his friends and family keeping an eye on him it seemed that the chances of Ollie’s flying ever being dangerous were slim to none.
As Ollie got older, everyone around him became used to his flying, or floating as it perhaps would be more accurately called. He would meander happily wherever he’d go – feet trailing a few inches off the ground, gliding weightlessly through the air like a giant man-sized dandelion drifting slowly in any direction. “Ollie Balloon”, his sisters started calling him, and the name stuck. It seemed, in keeping with his calm and gentle nature, that this was as far as his power would ever go – the Ollie Balloon, floating peacefully in the breeze from the moment he woke up in the morning to the time he went to bed.
The remarkable aspect of Ollie’s abilities went unnoticed until he was 22, when the Trudeaus were moving homes to a new house in Gloucester. The strongman that worked for the moving company the Trudeaus had hired to help move the furniture had called in sick, and everyone involved was at a loss for how to move the family’s grand piano, which had been wheeled out into the driveway but was too heavy to get up onto the truck. Ollie, who had been diligently helping with the move by floating along and carrying boxes, overheard the commotion, and listened carefully to what was being said – and then without any indication or warning, glided over to the grand piano, touched a finger to it, and floated it weightlessly up into the air.
Naturally, Ollie’s parents (and the movers) were astounded. The piano was not being lifted – Ollie had not suddenly developed super-strength. Nor was it being telekinetically pulled, as the young man was as serene as ever and clearly not straining. Ollie had simply touched the piano, which weighed upwards of 1,000 pounds, and made it as weightless as he was, and with his one finger still on it was able to nudge the enormous instrument harmlessly in any direction, like it was a slow-falling feather or balloon. Ollie was completely unconcerned and able to repeat the feat with no effort, with the young flyer soon effortlessly floating boxes, couches and tables out into the truck with only the lightest guiding touch. He was offered a full-time job with the moving company the very next day.
Ollie’s case is a classic example of an Idiosyncratic Manifestation, and one that raises a whole heap of fascinating questions about the way superpowers work. For a “normal’ flyer, what Ollie did would have been impossible – and it was confirmed, by DNA testing done later (with Ollie and his family’s permission) that Ollie was indeed, genetically at least, a “normal” flyer. For years, people had assumed that his low IQ and congenital disorder were dampening his abilities, and indeed, no matter how old Ollie got he never showed any will nor capacity to fly faster than the pace of a leisurely Sunday stroll. But in transferring his weightlessness to other objects Ollie was clearly demonstrating that his powers were not stunted, but strong – phenomenally strong, actually, strong enough to momentarily strip the weight from a grand piano and make it feather‑light.
This, of course, leads to the next question: what about Ollie was unique? Was this a particular, specific variant of the “regular” flyer power that came from the anomalies in Ollie’s chromosomes – anomalies that traded off the speed at which he could fly for the ability to extend his weightlessness to other objects? Or was this, perhaps more incredibly, actually an ability every flyer unknowingly possessed? For it has always been observed that flyers are not inhibited by wearing clothes, or boots, or pouches, or even backpacks, which logically you would think could weigh them down. What if all of them could actually do what Ollie did? What if true, transferrable weightlessness was lurking in every flyer, held back only by their preconceived notions of what could and couldn’t be? What if Ollie’s mind not working in the same way as everyone else’s meant that when it came time to float with something extraordinarily heavy, he didn’t think “this is too heavy to fly with” but simply thought “I am going to fly”?
Ollie’s tale is just one of a whole host of stories which challenge our understanding of what it means to have an ability, and a great example of why someone born with an Idiosyncratic Manifestation should never be written off. As for the man himself? He’s still working with the same moving company, and even has his own plaque on their wall – “Ollie Balloon, The Great Piano Floater, Employee of the Month, May 1996”.
Simon West – Twisted Body, Twisted Mind
WARNING! This story contains scary and grown-up themes. If you’re under 15 it’s important to let your parents know you’re about to read this, and give them an opportunity to read it first.
If you’re a fan of the Legion of Heroes you probably already know the name Simon West. The story of how the Legion fought him, and came to beat him, has been in plenty of films and comic books, and like many of the Legion’s villains his powers were rare or unique. But the question of what Simon West actually was and what he could do is not always talked about, and trying to understand the truth of his abilities is incredibly important to those who study superpowers.
It is important to note, to begin with, that Simon West’s name was not even actually (originally) Simon West. Simon West was born David Grave, and David was, up until about 1981, a perfectly ordinary and perfectly respectable medical researcher at Johns Hopkins University. He was a telepath, and like all telepaths was able to read and interact with people’s minds, but records of David prior to his transformation and accounts from his friends and family show that this was never something that was particularly important to him. For David, his education and academic success were what made him special, and being psychic was just something he was born with – like having red hair or green eyes.
Then in 1981, David was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive type of cancer, which quickly spread throughout his entire body. David took leave from his job and began chemotherapy. If you haven’t heard of it before, chemotherapy is a treatment for cancer where your body is injected with powerful chemicals which kill cancer cells, but which can also often kill or damage regular cells too, and which can make you very sick. David went through chemotherapy several times, and although at first the cancer was beaten back, it soon returned, and scans showed that David had tumours in most of his organs, his spine and his brain. After this, David underwent experimental surgery to have those tumours removed by a team of surgeon minimisers, who were able to shrink themselves down to miniature size – but even this was not successful, and by 1982 David’s doctors told David that he was going to die.
Here is where David’s story takes a turn. Despairing at his diagnosis, and unwilling to accept that he was doomed, David continued to seek more and more extreme treatments to keep his cancer at bay. He took untested medicine he had special access to; used chemotherapy drugs that were still experimental; and bombarded his brain with targeted magnetic waves and radiation to try and destroy the tumours inside. He did this for weeks, then months – and at some point, unbeknownst to him or anyone, something within David began to change. At first, it was only a change in his personality; before, David had been cool and rational, but now he was increasingly angry and erratic, even deranged. Then – and far more disturbingly – there started to be changes with his powers.
Prior to getting cancer, David Grave had never been a particularly strong, practiced or talented telepath. Now, he began to be able to control people with a single word. If he told someone to give him something, they would give it, and if he yelled at someone to do something, they would do it. It reached the point where if he commanded someone to hurt themselves they would immediately do so, and where the people he was giving instructions to continued carrying out his instructions long after he (David) was no longer around.
This is remarkable – and disturbing – for a number of reasons. Telepaths normally have to be in a room with someone to control their actions, and it is very difficult, almost impossible, for a telepath to make someone hurt themselves. David was able to do this not only quickly and effortlessly, but to multiple people at the same time – first to small gatherings, then to larger groups, and eventually to almost an entire town. By the standards of a normal telepath, what David was doing was unprecedented, and should have been impossible.
But there was something off about David’s powers. His victims, once they got free or completed whatever task he had given them (which was often as simple as “get me a bagel”), reported no feeling of psychic takeover, or of having any chance to resist David’s control. David did not break into their minds; he did not telepathically speak to them; and he seemed completely unaware of where they were, what they were doing, or what they were thinking. Additionally, each person who found themselves free of David’s control recounted being conscious the whole time he was controlling them – of being aware that they were doing something against their will, of not wanting to do the thing, but of being completely unable to stop themselves from doing it. David simply gave them a command, and they had to obey. Many would actually yell out warnings before or while they were doing whatever they were doing, seemingly aware of their actions but completely unable to stop.
This is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, telepathy in its “usual” form is actually made up of a range of mental abilities, collectively referred to as telepathic “Degrees”. These Degrees, arranged from 1 to 6 in order of difficulty, are the supernatural power to use one’s mind to:
Sense other people’s presence
Hear or see other people’s thoughts
Communicate directly with other people’s minds
Control other people’s actions
Control other people’s instincts or subconscious bodily functions
Change other people’s memories, personality or thoughts
It was clear, once first police and then the Legion of Heroes began to investigate, that David Graves was not using telepathy at all at Degrees 1, 2, 3 or 6. His power at Degrees 4 and 5, however, seemed to have ratcheted up to a level previously not thought possible, to the point where he only needed to say a word and someone would immediately do themselves harm. Psy‑Block didn’t work against him; putting on earmuffs was ineffective. By the time the authorities realised the danger David posed, he already had several dozen people under his control, and had fled Baltimore for a town called Broken Hill on the other side of the world.
Clearly, somewhere during his cancer and treatments, something in David’s brain had gone horribly wrong. His behaviour, from those who observed it, was completely erratic and delusional – he ceased to sleep, mumbled constantly to himself, and ordered people around with a casual cruelty that had never existed in the man he’d been before. It was around this time that he began calling himself “Simon West”; though what the name-change meant, or was supposed to achieve or signal, was by this point anyone’s guess. By the time the Legion of Heroes tracked him down and surrounded Broken Hill, there were several thousand people afflicted by “Simon’s” compulsions, each openly and vocally terrified at their actions, but completely unable to resist his commands.
The action-packed movie scenes of Simon West – where Captain Dawn, believing himself safe on Psy-Block, swoops in to nap the rogue telepath, only to be immediately compelled to fight against his own side – belie the predicament Simon West’s distorted abilities put the Legion of Heroes in. Caitlin Reid, the team’s resident psychic, found herself completely unable to remove the compulsion from and having to actively flee from her husband – and it was only when Viktor Mentok was able to locate an antipath that the crisis was brought to a halt. A skidding halt, in fact; the antipath’s presence, the mere fact of her being close by, completely erased the physical compulsions put upon Captain Dawn and Broken Hill’s population, further supporting the idea that whatever Simon West was doing was still some twisted form of telepathy.
When Simon West was brought into custody, his physical and mental condition were stupendously poor. His head was swollen, his skin was scabbed and blotchy, and his arms and legs withered almost to uselessness. He lacked the ability to walk and was blind in one eye. His skull had undergone numerous surgeries, and the repeated healing he had received from a superpowered healer had made his tumours, skin and bone fragments horribly intergrown. There were devices lodged inside his head; chemical and experimental medicinal drips in his arms. Within hours of being removed from the machines he had made for himself, Simon’s condition worsened to the point where he lost the ability to speak, and he died within a matter of days.
The story of David Graves – or Simon West, or whoever he believed himself to be at the end – is horrifying as a reader, but also equally disturbing to scientists. Clearly, something had thrown this telepath’s mental abilities wildly out of whack, though it was impossible to determine exactly what. Gruesomely, Simon West’s body had mostly liquified by the time doctors went to perform an autopsy, most likely due to the many chemicals he had been injecting into himself. This meant that the secret of Simon West’s condition – of what simultaneously boosted and muted parts of his telepathic powers, be it the tumours in his brain or the many, unrecorded treatments he underwent to try and cure them – died with him. Nevertheless, the facts of his case raise serious questions about Idiosyncratic Manifestations arising from mental injuries or physical changes, and poses a disturbing question: how much can our powers change from damage to our bodies and minds?
The Man Who Would be Queen
Sometimes, a person may come along with a power which seems to be one of a kind, but which on closer inspection actually isn’t. Often, it can be difficult to tell a truly unique power or Idiosyncratic Manifestation apart from a “normal” power which someone has worked out how to use in a new or creative way. This is why scientists always approach claims of unique powers cautiously, and make sure to properly investigate before declaring them to be true.
When José Pedro Luiz Aldo of Juara, Brazil first presented himself to authorities, it certainly seemed like his power was unique. It also seemed a bit terrifying, frankly, because the José who “walked” into his local government office did so not in the form of a man, but as a man-sized figure made up of a swarm of thousands of bees. Voiceless, faceless and shambling, the figure was nevertheless distinctly humanoid, and could both pick up objects with his “hands” and redistribute the bees which formed his “body” to spell out basic words.
Naturally, José’s appearance caused something of a sensation. It was common knowledge that some people were faunamorphs (also called animorphs), able to change their bodies into the form of animals, and that some people were faunapaths (also called anipaths), people who could communicate, command and understand animals. Yet José appeared to be something else entirely; a person who could transform themselves not just into one animal, but into an entire buzzing swarm. His appearance caused a minor sensation in the Brazilian media, and it became something of a local trend to pay the one-of-a-kind “bee man” to appear at functions and events.
Once scientists began to investigate, however, they became suspicious that José’s abilities might not be quite what people believed. One researcher, Antônio Paulo Costa, noticed that no one had actually seen José transform into a swarm of bees, but rather that he would appear at events either in human form or completely transformed into a mass of moving insects. Eventually, a private investigator following José uncovered the truth – José did not possess some new and unique power, but was simply a faunamorph who had spent some time transformed into a queen bee, and now once shifted back to that shape could gather and command a pre-existing swarm.
The fact of this discovery should not discount José’s creativity, nor the work he put into practising to use his ability in such a clever way. But it serves as an important reminder of the distinction between a unique power, or an Idiosyncratic Manifestation which seems to change a power in a certain way, and simple skill or personal preference. José Pedro Luiz Aldo liked being a bee; he was good at being a bee; and at the end of the day the command he was able to exercise over other bees using their natural command instincts and pheromones was extraordinary. But his particular peculiarity came from the way he chose to use his power – not, as it turned out, from the power itself.
The Cyborg
Karolina Cermak was a technopath – someone who can mentally communicate with machines. She was also very clever and, as it turned out, a strange kind of person who was never very attached to their limbs.
Karolina’s father was a manager at a car factory, and even before her powers manifested the young Karolina was obsessed with making machines work. At 13 she built her first computer – at 16, her first robot companion, a clunky iron dog she named “Hodný Pes”, which constantly followed her around. When she was 18, Karolina won a full scholarship to Charles University in Prague, where she dived headfirst into studying Mechatronic Engineering, a particular type of engineering studying the interaction between machinery, robotics and electronics. For the next five years, when Karolina wasn’t at her desk, she was in the university workshop, sawing and soldering and wiring away at whatever latest contraption she’d happened to devise.
The true turning point in Karolina’s life, however, came when she lost the ring and pinkie fingers on her right hand in a metalworking accident at her father’s factory. Rather than seek a healer right away, Karolina opted instead to indulge her curiosity, and replaced her fingers temporarily with robotic ones, which she crafted from materials nearby. The resulting prosthetics were initially crude, but Karolina loved them, and decided to keep the mechanical digits in place instead of trying to heal back or reattach the natural fingers she had lost.
The danger of losing a body part, however, is not always the immediate blood loss or tissue damage, but in the risk of the wound becoming infected. In this case, probably not helped by the fact that she’d immediately jammed dirty metal on it, this is exactly what happened to Karolina’s wound, and the hand where she had attached her robotic fingers soon became infected and inflamed. Not to worry – Karolina had a solution. At age 23, in an empty classroom and assisted by some friends from the university’s medical department, Karolina cut off her infected hand and replaced the entire thing with a pre-prepared, custom-made, state-of-the-art prosthetic.
Initially (and pretty understandably), Karolina’s enthusiasm for amputation caused her parents and teachers some concern, but after several sessions with a psychiatrist it was eventually confirmed that Karolina was not unhappy or mentally unwell, but just really liked the idea of being part robot. Her doctors gave her the all-clear, and before long Karolina was back intentionally removing other body parts and replacing them with mechanical substitutes. With the help of a team of surgeons, she removed first her right arm, then both legs, then her pelvis – continuing on and on, piece by piece, until there was almost nothing left.
Today, Karolina Cermak is no longer recognisable as the woman she once was, or even as a woman at all. Her entire body, with the exception of her brain and some of her torso, have all been replaced with machinery, and anyone who sees her and Hodný Pes walking down the street together would likely do a double-take at this pair of lumbering robots. But Karolina is very happy, and her work in creating artificial body parts, made possible by her own experience, has advanced the field of prosthetics by robotic leaps and bounds.
Counting Luck
Luck is subjective, and very difficult to determine. In one study by the University of Hartfordshire, participants were asked to rate how lucky they were on a scale of 1 to 10, and then told to wait and read a newspaper. Those participating in the study thought they were waiting to take part in a further test; but unbeknownst to them, the reading of the newspaper was the test, because down the bottom of page three had been printed an “advertisement” which read “Mention this ad to your examiner to receive £20”. As it turned out, the people who had identified themselves as “lucky” were far more likely to notice this message (and therefore receive £20) than the people who believed they were unlucky, who tended to skip over it.
So is luck just being optimistic, observant, or open to opportunities? Or is there a factor that goes beyond simply different attitudes and into the realm of actually changing probabilities? Will the same set of dice rolled by two people consistently reward the “luckier” person with better rolls?
Superhuman luck abilities are something that have been claimed to exist ever since the Aurora Nirvanas first arrived. For the most part these claims have turned out to be nonsense; simple fibs made up by people to explain coincidence or chance, or to hide the fact that they were cheating in one way or another. In the mid-1970s, a series of gamblers were arrested in Las Vegas for discreetly using telekinesis, aeromancy or even terramancy (causing very minor, very localised tremors in the ground) to control the roll of dice. Many of these con‑artists initially claimed they were supernaturally lucky – but this ruse was soon discovered, and once casinos changed their policies to guard against this kind of dice manipulation, cases of gamblers possessing such “lucky” powers soon dried up.
However, the fact that the dice-moving scam had been thwarted did not necessarily mean that claims to possess “lucky” powers went away. Following the Year of Chaos, several people came forward claiming to possess luck or probability-altering abilities that they believed protected them from injury or misfortune, including being shot. Some of these were eventually revealed to be people blessed with the power of magnetism – including one unfortunate man from South Carolina who lost an eye to a rubber bullet who hadn’t realised he’d been deflecting the metal ones all along – but in several cases, surprisingly, they were not. A certain number of people genuinely seemed not to have developed any powers, except for the fact that you could shoot a whole lot of paintballs at them, and not a single one would hit.
At first, these “lucky” people baffled researchers. They seemed, for the most part, to be honest, and there were no records of any of them demonstrating any other kind of power to rule out them having superhuman “luck”. It was also true that their “luck” appeared uncanny, at least for preventing injury – they would emerge from tests (done with their permission) where they were shot at unscathed, and one was witnessed to have been thrown from a car crash and survived without a scrape. But their “luck” conversely, also seemed inconsistent – a dice they threw or a coin they flipped would always result in a “lucky” outcome, whereas if it was someone else doing the flipping the subjects’ luck was on par with anyone else. Finally, the mystery was solved by a researcher named Salvatore Lilo, who observed one of these “lucky” people working as a waitress in a restaurant. The “lucky” waitress, Lilo observed, was able to balance far more plates and cutlery than any of her colleagues, and no matter how busy the dinner rush got, how boisterous the customers were or what sticky mess was spilled upon the floor, never dropped anything or fell.
Lilo had a theory, and upon returning to his home university made preparations to put it to the test. He had the “lucky” people make their way through a precarious obstacle course full of slippery surfaces and pitfalls, and watched in satisfaction as one by one they cleared the obstacles with ease. Lilo’s hypothesis was correct – the power that the “lucky” people had was not luck, but superhuman agility, unknowingly enhancing their dexterity, reflexes, balance and control. This was confirmed by the final part of the test, where participants were told they would be awarded $10,000 if they could guess a number between 1,000 and 1 – and which they all failed, universally, proving once and for all that their superpower was not luck.
Thus the mystery of the lucky dodgers was solved and, it seemed, the idea of anyone being “super-lucky” permanent debunked. But then there came the case of Lucy Lovelace. At 78 years old and 175 pounds, it was plain to any observer that Lucy was not supernaturally agile. She also seemed very unlikely to be a cheating gambler, having never set foot in a casino in her life and being a simple, softly-spoken, grey-haired grandmother who lived in rural Idaho with several of her children. Yet the fact remained; Lucy won board games. She always won Yahtzee. Whenever her family played any game involving dice rolls, Lucy’s rolls would consistently be winners, even if she left the room or let someone else roll her dice. It seemed bizarre, not to mention impossible, and when researchers finally found out about it (after one of Lucy’s grandchildren made the claim to the local paper), they went to interview Lucy to try and uncover the source of her good luck.
Lucy was happy to welcome the researchers into her home, and to show them what she believed her power was. She would sit down, cup the dice in her hand, and whisper encouragement – and then when the dice were thrown, whether by herself or someone other, they would inevitably come up showing what she wanted. This was still the case even if Lucy left the room, and no matter how far researchers separated Lucy from the dice (even going so far as teleporting her hundreds of miles away) the results were still the same. Lucy would whisper to the dice what she wanted them to do – and then a second, a minute or an hour later, whenever those dice were thrown, Lucy’s number would come up.
Initially, those studying Lucy were baffled. However, like all good scientists they concocted some experiments, and before long identified that there were limits to Lucy’s “luck”. It was only when the original dice that Lucy had whispered to were thrown, for example, that Lucy’s number came up; alternative dice, substituted and thrown on Lucy’s behalf, still rolled numbers at random. Consequently, those studying Lucy began to believe that whatever power she had was not affecting probability, but somehow the specific set of dice themselves.
With the help of DNA testing and a brain scan, Lucy’s power was able to be identified. She was an Idiosyncratic telekinetic – able not to consciously move objects with her mind, but to imbed them with delayed kinetic energy, giving whatever things she touched a sort of pre-programmed “instruction” to move at a particular point. Unlike a “normal” telekinetic, Lucy’s thought of “move thing here” and the actual object moving didn’t occur at the same time – a discovery which fascinated scientists and opened the door for a much wider application of telekinetic abilities than originally thought. What’s most interesting about Lucy’s Idiosyncratic Manifestation is the trigger it seems to imply Lucy was unknowingly putting into the dice she touched – that the energy in the object was somehow being linked to another movement, or location, or touch. The complexity of trying to specify in one’s head, ahead of time, the conditions for when movement was to take place seems phenomenal, but Lucy was going it instinctively, and without knowing it was being done – a further example of someone with an Idiosyncratic Manifestation doing naturally what would normally be impossible for anybody else. The alternative, and more momentous theory, is that Lucy was not imbuing the objects she was touching with a simple physical trigger, but in some way, somehow, making the object itself aware of what it was waiting for – that somehow Lucy was unknowingly giving the dice instructions about when they were to roll, and giving the dice themselves the ability both to perceive the world, and to know how to “act” when the right moment came. Either explanation is remarkable, and could challenge our most basic understanding about superpowers and nature.
Scientifically speaking, the idea of someone having the power of supernatural luck is difficult to imagine. Luck is such a subjective concept, and can be said to take so many forms, that it’s hard to imagine how having a “lucky” power could rationally work – is a person who is superhumanly lucky only lucky in the here and now, or would things always work out for them, somehow implying an ability to predict the future? And how far into the future? Would a supernaturally lucky person suffer misfortune in the present in order for things to be better later on? And how much later on? Furthermore, whose idea of what is important in life would superhuman luck adjust for? Success? Money? Happiness? Survival? Lots of people have different ideas about what a good life looks like, and a person who was supernaturally “lucky” logically could not be everything at once.
There are, hypothetically, two powers which, if they existed, might resemble supernatural luck. The first is if someone was able to see the future, and by doing so could make choices which were always in their favour. But although the existence of clairvoyants (future seers) is a common rumour, nobody with the power to manipulate time or predict the future has ever actually been identified. Alternatively, we can imagine, perhaps, a “lucky” person was in fact changing the very fabric of reality around them – someone immensely powerful who (consciously or unconsciously) could remake the world with their mind. Again though, nobody with a power like this has ever been recorded, and if they did it would push the very limits of what we understand superpowers can accomplish. It would also, arguably, not even make that person “lucky”– as even with, hypothetically, the power to change reality, there would be no guarantee that the person’s changes would cause them long-term benefit. But again, this is all just speculation; there is no evidence, yet, of anyone born with these kind of abilities, or, it seems, with the power of superhuman luck.
The Band of Bearded Brothers
Every 2 years, in the city of Anchorage Alaska, there is a festival which attracts from far and wide a group of particularly hairy people. They come from across the United States of America and from all over the world, and they are all, usually, very distinct looking individuals. Some are young, some are old, some tall, some short – different races, different skin tones and different senses of style. But all of them, for the most part, have very distinctive hair; men with beards which swing free past their knees or braided in elaborate patterns, and women with long hair artfully arranged in precarious styles that would probably cost your mother hundreds, if not a thousand dollars if she asked for it at the salon.
These are the Hair-Benders, and they have come to Anchorage for the bi-annual “Frollicle Fest”; a celebration of people with trichokinesis, the ability to grow their hair and make it move. There are beard-weaving contests; hair-held painting courses, where only the ends of the hair or beard may move the brush; hair-based jump-rope classes; and of course numerous vendors selling luxury shampoo, conditioners, beard oil and a cornucopia of other products designed to keep ones hair flake-free, luxurious and smooth.
Trichokinesis is not a common power, and its classification continues to be a bit baffling. Initially it was thought to be its own power, but then those trying to classify it noticed that many people with trichokinesis could also grow and elongate other parts of their body as well. It was then hypothesised that trichokinesis was an Idiosyncratic Manifestation of elasticisers– those with the power to stretch and shrink their body parts. But this theory too ran into trouble. Unlike other Idiosyncratic Manifestation, trichokinesis does not appear to coincide with any congenital anomalies, and the majority of people who have it are (for want of a better word) genetically regular human beings. There is also far less variety between the trichokinetic abilities of people with trichokinesis than would appear with Idiosyncratic Manifestations normally – people’s hair might be different colours, yes, but generally speaking it all grows and shrinks, and all moves independently around. So in the end, what do we have? A power which sometimes overlaps with elasticising and sometimes doesn’t; that has some Idiosyncratic traits but lacks others; and which appears more regularly in men than in women, though nobody can figure out why.
The prevailing scientific theory, currently, is that trichokinesis is a rare kind of Idiosyncratic Manifestation which is not associated with genetic or congenital anomalies, and is consistent in the way it presents. To the men and women of Frollice Fest, however, the reasons why are unimportant; they love their powers. They’re here, they say, they’ve hair – get used to it.
Healing Horrors
WARNING! This story contains scary and grown-up themes. If you’re under 15, it’s important to let your parents know what you’re about to read, and give them an opportunity to read through it first.
It is always important, in science and in life, to be wary of miracles. In a world where everyone has superpowers, this can be very difficult – after all, so much of what we see and do in this day and age seems to defy the laws of physics, or to be miraculous in and of itself. But just because we do not have a perfect answer for how our powers work, does not mean we should give up trying to find answers all together – and it also does not mean that we should accept every claim about the supernatural without properly investigating it first.
The year was 1987, and a new product from a company named Neutroheal was starting to hit the shelves. It was called Sanicare, and it was a translucent, salmon-coloured paste that came in a small jar about the size of the gap between your thumb and forefinger. Its tub was smaller than similar pastes or ointments, yet it sold for over a hundred dollars more per pot than its nearest competitor. This was because Sanicare could do something unlike any other medicine – cure instantly any wound or ailment when even a small amount was rubbed on.
Historically, nearly every claim of “cure-all medicine” has turned out to be snake oil – namely, a fake and ineffective concoction which does not work at all or, at worst is actually harmful to the person taking it. Often these kinds of “medicine” rely on the placebo effect, which is when a person’s physical or mental health improves because they believe that the treatment they are receiving is effective, rather than any property of the treatment itself. The placebo effect is a very real and very strong phenomenon, and people can experience it from a wide range of things including medications, rituals, and even fake surgeries. If a treatment, therapy or medication claims to cure everything, or a big list of things, it’s safe to say it’s probably a placebo – or, that was, until Sanicare, which to everyone’s shock and amazement, actually did heal people instantly like it claimed.
Obviously, Sanicare became an overnight sensation, and Neutroheal’s stock price soared. It was heralded as a major medical breakthrough, one which would significantly reduce the cost of healthcare, and the first time in history a superpower had been able to be replicated into a product for anyone to use. And there was no question that it worked; applied on most cuts or abrasions, Sanicare sealed over right away, and when rubbed on wounds or inflammations sped up the healing process to what was obviously a supernatural speed. Neutroheal claimed that the secret was Sanicare’s proprietary formula, which had been developed in their labs by a crack team of scientists to make the ultimate healing gel.
The medical community, however, were very sceptical. Neutroheal had seemingly come out of nowhere, and although their product clearly worked, the company had not allowed anyone access to their “trademarked secrets” as to why and how. Further analysis of Sanicare was undertaken, and it was discovered to contain trace amounts of human DNA – not as the active ingredient, but enough to show that it was clearly somehow coming from a person. With the assistance of the Legion of Heroes, authorities traced Neutroheal’s ownership to a warehouse in Bangladesh, where to their horror they discovered two Idiosyncratic sisters who could heal people through their saliva. These poor girls, who both had Down Syndrome, had been chained in a basement and made to spit constantly, 24 hours a day, to produce Sanicare’s key ingredient. They had apparently been kept in conditions like this for years, drained constantly of their saliva until the owners of Neutroheal had enough to take their product public, with the plan being to rapidly raise stock prices and then sell all their stock for a huge profit just before all the product ran out.
The Bangladeshi government, obviously, was horrified, and the culprits behind Neutroheal were arrested and given sentences befitting their heinous crimes. By agreement between the Legion of Heroes and all countries involved the girls were relocated to a private care home in Switzerland, where they received rehabilitation for the horrible deprivation they had gone through, and where they continue to reside to this day.
As a result of the revelations about Sanicare, selling products claiming supernatural effects was banned in most countries, or subjected to significantly stricter scrutiny or rules. Any remaining tubs of Sanicare were stripped from pharmacy shelves and transferred into the care of research teams at leading medical research universities in Europe and around the world.
The story of Sanicare is a horrible one, but nevertheless contains an important lesson. Even though many people across the world want to do good with their powers, there are still those who are willing to exploit their abilities, and even other people, just to make money. It is for this reason why it is important to have laws in place regarding the development of medicine, and in general, to ensure that the things we buy and use are being made ethically, and without causing other people harm. In a world where so many things are possible, it is important to always ask ourselves whether what is happening is right; and, like any good scientist, to keep questioning our assumptions, and to keep seeking the truth about why things are the way they are.
Mysteries and Divines
So far in this book, we have talked about peculiar powers that come from many places; from people who are born able to use a “standard” power in a special way, to people whose powers are shaped by their own special genetics, to people whose powers have changed because of an accident, a chemical reaction, or a change to their body or mind. But there is another type of peculiar powers other than the ones you’ve already read about – a type which is at the same time the rarest, the most famous, and the most difficult to study. These are, of course, powers which from the moment they first materialise are utterly unique.
There are not many people – possibly only enough to count on one hand – in recorded history whose powers have fallen into this category. Amongst scientists who research superpowers, these people are called “Divines”. This is not a very helpful name, as it can wrongly give the impression that the people with these extraordinary powers are some extra level of supernatural, maybe even gods. This is not correct; underneath their gifts they are still ordinary people, with the same feelings and fears and flaws as you or I. But the powers they possess are extraordinary, and more often than not so powerful that they place those who have them in a category of their own.
The first and most obvious person who comes to mind when discussing unique powers is Walter Reid, a.k.a. Captain Dawn. In all the years since the Aurora Nirvanas, no other person has possessed Captain Dawn’s power of unlimited energy, which not only gives him enhanced strength, speed and the ability to fly, but which is constantly being released from his body and shrouding him in an almost impenetrable barrier against harm. This golden energy is so potent that, when released, it can destroy almost anything, and has led to his nickname, “The Power of a Hundred Suns” – which while unlikely to be technically true (nobody is really suggesting that Captain Dawn actually has energy equivalent to a hundred stars stored within his body) certainly gives an idea of the level of energy which is being dealt with.
The second and third unique abilities in this category will also be familiar to fans of superheroes. “The Brothers Darkness” – twin brothers Charles and Edward Lewis – were supervillains fought by the Legion of Heroes in 1981 and are collectively the only other people to definitively be classified as “Divines”. Charles’ power, which is still not understood properly to this day, was to create darkness; Edward’s power was to control it.
The powers of The Brothers Darkness is a mystery that has troubled scientists since the moment it was recorded. This is because, scientifically speaking, there is actually no such thing as darkness – there are only places which are not, at that moment, reflecting light. But to the shock of all observers, what Charles Lewis was able to create was darkness – a pitch black, crushingly heavy darkness which seemed to consume light from everything nearby. This singular phenomenon, although extensively recorded, has never been properly explained, and has perplexed scientists since they first saw it. The ability was so shockingly powerful, and such a fundamental violation of our understanding of the laws of physics, that it left researchers no choice but to make it the second power to ever earn the title “Divine”.
From there, the list of “Divines” which have been identified becomes less clear-cut. There are some who argue that people who possess powers other people also have, but whose strength with those powers is so beyond what anybody else can do, should be worthy of inclusion in the “Divine” category. Elsa Arrendel, famously, when asked about the definition, responded that the Legion of Heroes had three Divines: Captain Dawn, herself, and another person who she failed to mention. It is not clear who she meant by this, or if it was even accurate. But certainly, it is arguable that there are people out there whose powers are unique in how strong they are, and who overshadow others with the same ability in a way beyond any training or skill.
Then, there are people who seem to have unique abilities, but whose powers do not seem to have the same strength or impact. As a foremost example of this, take Liverpool resident Charlotte Bell. Charlotte is, to the best of our current knowledge, the world’s only “Historiographer” – a person with the ability to touch an item, and to know what has occurred nearby and where that item has been.
The implications of Charlotte’s power – which have been thoroughly tested and confirmed to be real by both Scotland Yard and the FBI – are staggering. Prior to discovering Charlotte, there had never been any confirmed record of a person whose powers involved time; neither the ability to time travel itself, nor the ability to see what was going to happen in the future. But Charlotte’s ability, which supernaturally allows her to see the past in a way which defies all logic, opens up the door for the question; are other time powers possible? Are there other Divines out there, waiting to be discovered, or waiting to be born? If it is possible for someone to have power over something as fundamental as energy, or darkness, or time, what else is possible? Reality? Matter itself? Death?
One wonders – or perhaps shudders – at the thought.
