Location: Ashford Institute Library
Api leaned back in one of the Library's big cushy drawing room style chairs studying a White board on which he'd finished writing a hypothetical expansion of Cavendish. He had discovered the bit of physics covered in the dust of waiting for the right moment to be tested and its reasons that engineering couldn't measure to the fine degree necessary to prove the theory. His work was filled with suppositions about gravity 20 - 30 years ahead of the tech presently available and showed how he'd steered the numbers obviously.
Heidi entered the library shortly after, carrying a stack of book so high she was straining to see over the top of it. As she carefully placed them on the 'returning' desk in four equal, stable piles, she smiled sheepishly at the librarian as if to apologize for checking in so many books at once after only checking them out yesterday. With that business concluded, she started heading into the library proper. She used to like reading before her mutation developed, but she had always been a slow reader, going over each page multiple times, carefully. A single book could take her months. Now, she was rattling off all these novels she'd always put off before due to the commitment. She'd also been reading a few books on mutations, but first, she had to read up on genetics and biology, and even some chemistry. She wanted to know more about how this ability worked from a scientific point of view.
Before her mind could turn away from the field of science, Heidi spotted the whiteboard from across the room. She didn't know what that equation was, only that it was likely in the field of physics, and that...she couldn't make sense of it. Well, that wasn't unusual. She'd never have been able to make sense of it. But this time, it's as if a part of her subconscious was trying to figure it out but couldn't add it up. It was like....it was wrong. But Heidi didn't know anything about physics more complex than Newton's laws. Who was she to think that wrong?
Api would notice a small mid-teenage girl approach him timidly, and give a little wave without raising her arm above waist level. She spoke in a clear Edinburgh accent, yet not too strong that he wouldn't understand her.
"Hi. Sorry to intrude. I'm Heidi. Excuse me, but can I ask what this equation is?"Api smiles and looks directly at the new girl
"Its an expansion of the Cavendish model using information only I can supply" then he takes a deep breath
"No way to replicate right now because I've got the only tool that can weigh the mass of gravitons, its part of my mutation" He stands and he barely taller than Heidi his blond hair a little long and the color of golden wheat.
Heidi's face lit up as the pieces started to fit.
"Ah! That's what was nagging me about it! Sorry. My mutation basically makes my brain a supercomputer. It is not as fun as it sounds. Besides, if you can understant this, you must be very smart, but for real. Oh! My name's Heidi. Heidi Williams. I haven't even been here a week. I'm new."Api blushed being called smart, he thought of himself as average just better focused on things and when those things made up the understanding of his limits and capabilities he was all eyes and ears.
"I am Gunnar, Gunnar Grimsson" says the blond boy from Iceland as he looks at Heidi his expression shifting to puzzled.
"Ah Super Computer? How does that make you a mutant and not simply a Savant?"Api was sure there was some other reason Heidi was labeled as a Mutant and that her ability was likely so subtle they'd gone with the first evidence presented; her genetics held the marker and they razored it in. She might prove interesting to watch. Eidetic memory connected to Flash memory that might allow her to read every book she could focus on as the pages flipped by. She'd have trouble with the more nuanced portions of science and mathematics
"Well," Heidi started to explain,
"I've been pretty average my whole life. In fact, I was terrible at maths at school. But a few weeks ago, this all suddenly started. I knew it was a mutation before I even got tested for the X-gene. I didn't change anything about myself, and it's not as if I'm just a little bit sharper. This ability is overwhelming. I can't slow it down yet. I have to pretty much stop thinking just to talk to people.""Please don't misunderstand, I am merely curious about the obvious.he says with a gentle laugh
"I have a friend that thinks most people have at least a mild form of telepathic talent such as empathy or actual telepathy and supports the idea with how many people have said they knew their friends or family members were in danger or how twins share thoughts and do so without the X-gene.Heidi stared blankly at him for less than 0.1 of a second, which was a very long time for her to freeze up nowadays. What was she supposed to say to that? Was he asking for her thoughts on the theory, or just telling her about it for conversation's sake? Did he think it was relevant to their past discussion? Heidi didn't even have any informed opinion on this subject. All she knew was her own mind, but she knew it very well. That was a good starting point. As she started speaking, the rest of her sentence quickly built itself.
"Maybe. All I know is that if our brains had this latent ability, mine should be able to use it at will. I think that if people do have these minor forms of telepathy and empathy, it might not have anything to do with the brain. Who knows? Maybe we have souls, and that's what we use when these things happen. Maybe I myself can use these latent abilities but just don't know how."Api's smile broadens as things click in his head
"I wonder if your boosted brain can learn new languages in minutes, hours, or days? Do you have an Eidetic memory? Can you operate on a subconscious level compiling and combining what you know to reach epiphany, that Eureka moment? Sorry I let my imagination run away at times and thinking how other abilities can be used helps me understand my own; I am a Gravitic Elemental" he says adding the last as if it were trivia
Heidi couldn't help but chuckle at Api's enthusiasm, as well as his actual interest in how her mutation worked, more than just jealousy, or trying to test her with math problems, like her classmates had done.
"In order, minutes, yes, and yes. And if I can help you somehow, I'd be more than happy to! I haven't really felt like I've...helped anyone yet, and that's partly why I came here. I mean, what mutant doesn't want to be an X-man?"Api's quick mind tumbles the information he has been considering and decides to bounce a bit off of Heidi
"I believe people like ourselves try to hard to make it work, to get our abilities to do what we want when what we are doing is akin to learning to walk as a baby. Babies can walk and we can walk without detailed analysis and direction of the act, the more we do it the better we get at it" He chuckles
"Practice making perfect and all that rot""I know, it's just..." sighed Heidi,
"This feels more like learning to walk, spending fifteen years getting used to walking, and then losing your legs and getting them replaced with a rocket. It doesn't work anything like legs used to, you have to learn to move entirely from scratch but only after you first try to forget how to walk with legs, and everyone thinks you must be having an easier time just because you move much faster now. I'll get used to it eventually, I know, but being able to think so many thoughts in a single second hasn't exactly...improved my patience.""Heidi you need to relax, this isn't the old school rat race so many make it. Who understands how your brain functions except you and lets face it you don't have an owner's manual. Most computers have to wait to be put to work and they aren't gifted by inspiration. You are a living person and your brain built on the brain that has brought the world under its control. I just want to see what you make of it, how you use that power.
You need to focus on a subject that interests you and don't let anyone but yourself pick where it all starts, Science and physics are the things you can learn if you're willing to listen to your heart, to follow the connections."He wants to tell her more but once more his uncertainty stops him short.
He had a point, but what did interest her? The prespect of knowing lots about science was certainly appealing. Heidi was about to comment on this, but she noticed his pauses.
"Hm, are you alright? You keep stopping. What's on your mind?" She asked innocently.
Api thought about it then relented his held back theory
"If your mutation is in the Brain it has to be farther reaching than speedy thought. There's Accelerated Perception which could allow you to see things either in abundance or speed. Then there is Causality Perception allowing you to see the way things are connected where to toss in the monkey wrench or how to stop that same wrench causing trouble.
Intuitive Aptitude allowing you to bypass the steady plodding pace of education with a few minutes or hours of observation. I could go on but I believe I spoken as much as my own limited studies can allow me to without speculation.""I can do all of those things," she replied,
"but they're all basically side effects of speedy thought, with a little imagination thrown in. I can't see things faster than anybody else, I can just process them faster. And I can't see the future. I can calculate some things so fast that I'll know what's going to happen before it does, but that's just more speedy thought. And I don't have intuitive aptitude. In fact I might be unable to 'learn' things in a conventional way. I just have perfect hyperthymesia, and the speedy brain to recall and process a memory. Like, If I read a foreign language dictionary, then had a conversation with somebody who spoke that language, I don't actually know that language, but I can still converse by, after each word they speak, remembering the page of the dictionary that word was on.
But you're right. I'm not sure I want to spend all morning talking about me either. What about you? Your mutation was gravity manuplation, right?"Api smiled at her courtesy and said
"Yes I do manipulate gravity, I have managed to learn to fly rather than just hover as I did when I first came here. I am working on using my ability to sense mass to enable me to sense all things within range and in a surrounding globe. Of course while I focus on my power I am also improving my body physically and on my reactive times. This immediately hooked Heidi's attention and she sat up straight, with sparkling eyes.
"You can do all that? Even theoretically, your quirk really does have a lot of uses! You're probably going to be an X-man, huh?""We are all Xmen by genetics. My talent makes me a more hands on type but your's is also a wonderful talent." Api said as he looked into her eyes.
"Xmen are not warriors alone but mutants and not all things can be solved by force in fact as Sun Tzu said "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle". To achieve that goal requires Intelligence" he said with a chuckle
"Well, of course. The X-men aren't an never were warriors, and a mutant who thought so would be a bad X-man. But not every mutant will be, or can be an X-man. I imagine it would take a lot of training before the staff here would trust us with that kind of dangerous Superhero lifestyle." Heidi didn't glance at her watch, but her eyes defocused for a split second as she calculated how many seconds it had been since she last looked at her watch.
"I'm behind my schedule so I should probably go and find the books I came here for, but we should talk about this again."
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