The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

“You know I don’t think this is a good idea,” Fahima says. “I’m not sure your being there is going to make any difference.”

“I’m sure that it won’t,” he says. “Not to them. But it will make all the difference in the world to me. Going out on my feet. You get near the end, and everything takes on impossible weight. Mistakes. Miscalculations. As it approaches, the manner of death becomes important. I’ve known this moment was coming. Not my moment. Ours. I imagined it would be at the academy. I saw them coming to our doorstep. I saw myself standing arms akimbo, all of you behind me. Bold and strong. I saw the people of New York rising up against the forces of oppression, crying out in support of us. Until those forces grew so small, they were pressed down like coal into diamond. They would collapse, burst, and shine. The birth of a new world and me there to midwife it.

“And now we’re off to Revere, Massachusetts, the new world already stirring in its crib. The moment is a tricky fucker.”

The town of Revere changed as much as it was willing to before the residents—which is to say white people who grumbled as the blocks between Furness and Dedham became Koreatown and the neighborhood along Mountain Avenue became Little Tripoli—had enough. When Ji Yeon Kim, whose parents had bought the ranch-style on Dedham last summer, decided to flaunt her special powers, producing bright glowing needles as long as baseball bats from her hands and dancing them across the Revere High cafeteria, the town board met with the sheriff. The Kims weren’t invited to the meeting. All present agreed it would be best for the Kims to move on, and the sheriff was sent to relay the message.

Only they didn’t move on. Ji Yeon Kim kept coming to school as if nothing had happened, intent on finishing her senior year. Tae Sung and Min Jin Kim both showed up at their jobs and smiled like they weren’t the parents of a freak. After a week of this, the sheriff got a couple guys together in their off hours and headed over to Dedham Avenue to restate the town’s position.

They didn’t make it to the ranch-style on Dedham. Little Korea had barricaded itself off. Two blocks from the Kims’ house, Furness Street was obstructed with couches and picnic benches and dinghies that hadn’t been seaworthy for summers. The residents of Little Korea, along with those of Little Aleppo and Little Tripoli and others of Revere’s ethnic microenclaves, stood by the ramshackle barricade and said no. They are with us, and you will not take them.

Soon they were joined by strangers. Strangers who glowed and flew. Out-of-towners with feathers and scales. The future landed in the middle of Revere, Massachusetts.

The resolution was easy to see. When the past and future run up against each other, the past is supposed to back down. If it doesn’t, things get bloody. But the past is stubborn and stupid. The town board called the governor for assistance. While a flurry of ACLU lawyers, with Kay Washington in the lead, rushed to the courthouse in Boston, the governor called in the Guard. To de-escalate the situation, he said.

Because nothing de-escalates a situation like sending in tanks.

Alyssa drives around the perimeter of the National Guard cordon, and they get to see what the town’s become. No one on the sidewalks. Shops shuttered. Most of the vehicles on the streets are army jeeps or news vans. Trying to run the Kims out of town, the citizens of Revere evicted themselves from their own homes, displaced by national attention and the forces they summoned for protection.

They pull into the parking lot of a motel in Saugus, twenty miles north of Revere. Fahima gently shakes Bishop awake. “We’re here.”

His rheumy eyes take in the pastel-painted stucco of the buildings, the cracked gray asphalt of the parking lot.

“Looks as good as anywhere else,” he says.

Fahima gives him another shot, then she and Alyssa help him out of the car. Sexy genius machines take a while to kick in. Thankfully, they’re only headed to the first floor. Their connection, a teleporter who doesn’t look old enough to shave, is playing video games among fast-food wrappers and discarded balls of Kleenex Fahima wills herself not to think about. The shades are drawn, and the room has a thick fug that reminds her of where they found Owen Curry holed up. The boy, in a Sox tee shirt and oversized shorts, gives a nod, then stands bolt upright when he recognizes Bishop. Fahima half expects him to bow.

“No one told me you were coming,” the boy says.

“We didn’t want to make a fuss,” Bishop says. The boy is already making frenzied attempts to tidy the room. Fahima feels Bishop reach out to the boy’s mind to calm it, and she’s angry with him for expending any of his ability. He has nothing to spare.

“How does this work?” Alyssa asks.

“Take my hand,” says the boy. “Clench your stomach like you’re about to take a punch. There’s a good chance you’ll puke.”

“Super,” Alyssa says.

“You go first,” Fahima tells her. It’s so she’ll be there to catch Bishop when he comes through. Alyssa holds the boy’s hand, then blips out, gone. “Okay, old man,” says Fahima. “You’re next.”

Bishop passes Fahima his cane and takes the boy’s hand in both of his.

“Were you one of my students?” he asks.

“No, sir,” says the boy. “My parents said no. I wanted to.”

“There’s still time,” Bishop says. He smiles at the boy and disappears.

Fahima tucks the cane under her arm, and the boy extends his hand. “You want to tell me what that hand’s been up to?” she says. The boy blushes and looks at his bare feet. “Hey,” Fahima says, knocking him on the shoulder. “You need anything here?”

“They keep me fed and