part 4: the lone wolves

Recap from the last part: over four hundred thousand people had superpowers that were not levitation, telekinesis, pyrokinesis or (not super-)human. 

According to the SKK, some other superpowers included invisibility, hypnosis, cloning and more. For brevity, these would not be elaborated at length; more information can be found on SKK. However I will provide you with one-line descriptions of these powers, because I do not know if SKK still exists when you are reading these pages. Or if it ever existed. 

But true lone wolves? If we were correct, there were less than a hundred of us in total, in fact, a few of us estimate that there could not be more than forty of us because, quoting #5LL^♠︎1,  “no one has got the time to invent so many superpowers.” Oh, and I am now talking about my Gang —— the Real Loners Gang.

Most of us did not have an account on SKK at first; we waited for “other people” to take the initiative, and no one else ever did —— which sounds like the plot of a lot of people’s failed love stories. Some Loners did register their superhuman capabilities on SKK and became viral because people were trying to assist them in looking for their “supernatural relatives” —— they appeared on the evening news, went on interviews…some even started using social media platforms to publicise their efforts and the hashtag #DoWeShareASuperpower was trending. No one likes to be alone, especially not during unprecedented times when people were constantly carrying out capital offences accidentally and reaching new physical heights without the help of mechanical parts and artificial intelligence.  

Perhaps not surprisingly, some of these Loners were fake Loners —— they had family but chose to act like they did not; they even called themselves Orphans, which honestly sounded more sad than it should be. I guess it does not matter whether we live in a natural/supernatural/virtual world, people would give up their blood/supernatural/virtual relatives for temporary fame and a little fortune. Really, who can you trust? You might say that you can trust yourself, but your perceptions on things could all easily be manipulated…so can you really trust yourself?

That is the sort of thing that went on my mind often during those times, because seeing the future means knowing what will happen, and most of the times, no one could see it coming. You would think that you understood the ins and outs of something well, and next thing you know, your world view gets shattered.

Oops, sorry for babbling, my time to ramble shall still come. Back to the Loners arc.

The good thing about Germany is that they really care about data privacy, so much that even serial killers do not get named publicly; but not to protect these shitfaces’ rights, it is more so that people do not idolise these douchehats and attempt to be copycats (people are so depraved of creativity nowadays they even resort to copying murders; how pathetic) and of course to relieve the victims’ families of the horror of seeing the name of the perpetrator again and again. So it was completely normal to be anonymous on SKK, which most people opted for. 

With the emergence of Fake Loners, it made more sense to not believe everything we see on the Internet, especially since SKK did not have a very complicated verification process. 

On the last day of the Rainfall, I received an email that was titled “Couldn’t find your supernatural relatives? Find out if you are a Loner,” which sounded like a spam mail that contains computer viruses. I was but just a humble worker at a Kolinski’s, but I have basic cybersecurity knowledge. 

Under normal circumstances, I would never have clicked into the link attached to the email, except I could view the future. The vision of the apocalypse came like flashbacks at random times, but I could almost always apply my superpower before making a decision to see how it would pan out in the (near) future. The catch was that I would never be sure how much time would have to elapse before the ultimate outcome. 

I saw that I will be in touch with people like me. I was elated. I clicked on the gibberish-looking link and then found myself on a private web community that did not consist of just me. I had a Gang.

1. from now on, the ♠︎ symbol denotes the base-40 system ↩︎

to be continued…