Serpentine Squiggles

Chapter 1 

Counterfactual.

There’s an open problem in philosophy – it involves understanding and dealing with these things called ‘counterfactuals’ or ‘what if scenarios’. “What if the Titanic didn’t sink?”, “What if Lincoln hadn’t been shot”.

The problem, in essence, is that these statements seem sensible, some would even say they have meaningful answers. The problem is that predicate logic literally cannot handle counterfactuals, a limitation built into the nature of material implication.

Say ‘if this, then that’. you mean ‘either not this, that, or both’. And if this happened, then asking ‘what if not this’ has two answers, ‘that or not that’.

Because, y’know, if ‘this’ didn’t happen when it did, logic blows up. Principle of explosion and all that.

Did that make sense to you? Because it makes perfect sense to me.

Then again, counterfactuals are keyed into the way I see the world, courtesy of my power. If I hit on that girl over there, things will go south because she already has a girlfriend. If I strike up a conversation with that tough guy in the cool hat over there, I’ll get a cool reception because he’s a nazi heading towards Brockton.

I don’t know these things, of course. I’m just making assumptions. They get a bad rep, really. If you make the true assuptions, you get called wise. If you make the right assumptions, you’ll be called perceptive.

Most people can’t do either, and take out their frustrations on assumptions themselves.

Me? I make a game of it. If I would walk into the bus station lobby with too much swagger in my step, looking around like i own the place, I see the people who start paying attention. If I reach for the gun in my jacket. I see the cool‍-​hat guy tense up and start watching me.

Cause and effect. It’s my power. A little precog, a little postcog, something of a danger sense. it’s no mean ability, as far as the usual Thinker powers go.

Cause and effect. I’ve seen it called Linear Thinking, sometimes Masculine Thinking, but that’s gone out of style.

Linear. Change variable X to affect variable Y. Model your farms with spherical cows.

It’s certainly appealing, though that’s likely my gender speaking.

I would squeeze the Styrofoam cup in my hand to a rippled and folded ball. Some of the last drops of drink would drip out, draining on to my hand. Unpleasant. I will instead tilt the cup and crumple it from the side, the liquid drip onto the floor. Better.

This is all happening about about twenty, thirty seconds from now – I’m still in the parking lot, but my awareness is in the future, after I’ve made to the glass doors leading into the bus lobby, with vending machines, counters selling bus passes, and no mean variety of people, mostly sitting, some milling about.

That little distance lets me scope out actions, making those small optimizations. It’s convenient, if wasteful. But I haven’t needed a serious power usage for several days, and the headaches were a long way off from here.

I will glance at my watch (13:12:43) and open the door with my right hand, the folded and ripped ball of Styrofoam still in my left, I will turn left a bit, drawing the door open and holding it there with half my back. There is a person not far behind me – they will hurry a slight bit and say ‘thanks’ when it becomes apparent I’m holding it for them.

The ball in my hand, I turn my gaze a bit farther in the future, speculative. Navigating the dozens – hundred now – paths open to follow should have been impossible, a normal person shouldn’t be able comprehend the minute difference between each of those branches, evaluate them, and maintain that course perfectly. My arm will swing up, the release of what once was a cup timed with numerous tiny optimizations to counter the fuzz of my nervous system, the slightest breezes, and it will sail in a perfect arc, landing in a dingy brown trashcan with weighted flapped on each side that required pressure to open. But another person will have come up to it while I was walking to the door, tossing their lunch in. The ball hits their arm and is knocked cleanly into the can.

Linear.

A slight smile will touch my lips, and I consider looking up and aiming it at the person – the man. I would, but they aren’t looking at me, instead glance at the shot I just made. I would look at lady who I bounced the shot off of – annoyed. The man will return his gaze to me, giving me a amused grunt and a “nice one.” My smile will widen a bit and it won’t be faked.

I will glance at my watch (13:12:56) again. I’m presently just opening the door, my awareness then just over thirteen seconds in the future.

The space of possibilities widens over further, thousands of paths snaking forth. I focus on a disruptive one, testing what happens when I draw attention to myself.

I would dig a phone from my pants and appear to focus intently on it while walking briskly forth, looking for all the world to be imminently crashing headfirst into a woman holding three bags filled with groceries on her arms and digging something out of a forth while walking direct at me. As I would walk, my awareness jumps down branches miliseconds in the future, turn my head in different directions each time, building up a panoramic mental picture of the entire lobby. I would sidestep her at the last possible moment and even catching a bag that slips from her arm as she jumps out of my way, exclaiming and probably cursing at me. I put forth effort to make it look suspiciously effortless.

Three people catch my eye, and I keep my eye on them as I double back through the timeline, turning around every few fractions of a second to further dissect their reactions.

A late‍-​twenties women would wouldn’t even be looking in my direction until the sidestep, before turning up her head and looking right at me (a sensory power? another precog?); the tough‍-​looking probably‍-​cape nazi guy with the cool hat from earlier; and a girl in her late teens in the corner of the room, beside a door.

I my awareness gets all the way back to me just stepping into the lobby, I will glance at my watch (13:13:09) then glance at each of the suspects. The guy doesn’t notice me, just idly watching buses come and go. The woman is sitting a distance away on the right side of the room, looking down, perhaps on a phone or reading. The girl is watching, even now. I step back to the present, where I’m stepping into the lounge, barely seconds behind my focus. I will have not have looked up in the future, meaning I can’t look up now without losing the my place later in time (I have only one awareness, after all). This is already after my cool trick, so I have nothing to lose. I glance up – still watching me. Very suspicious.

I step forward ten seconds, having already navigated to a seat and just about to sit down.

I make a quick decision – I don’t expect complications today. I’ll still regret this.

It takes a moment of focus but I mentally flip my gaze, wrenching it from being a vague awareness of the future to a vague awareness of the past. Where my forward gaze was looking at the nebulous cloud of future paths I could take, my backward gaze was a solid wall of experience. I still laugh, just a bit, at that. My power gives me perfect recollection, just as a side‍-​effect.

I trace my way back along that wall, each moment frozen in time. I go back a minute, to before I crushed the cup, and do mentally pull myself out of the undertow, it works on the third try, and I feel the dull warning of a Thinker headache building. but I look up, and I up and through the glass into the lobby, to where the girl is. She’s still watching me. Confirmation.

Notes 

Mike Salas, a.k.a “Counterfactual” 

Malone Becker, a.k.a. “Freezerburn” 

Diana Arellano 

Assorted Thinkers 

Afterthoughts 

There was a another chapter or two of this scrawled in my middle school composition books, undoubtedly lost to time.

This story was going to take place in “Clockwork City”, a made up techno‍-​city conceived by an urban design tinker.

A major plotpoint was a thinker‍-​heavy conspiracy organization operating in Clockwork, but I’ve forgotten so many titles, ten years on. “Whisperer” was a trump that viewed shards as animals, and had the ability to twist/augment cape’s powers. I believe Whisperer would have been key for powering up Counterfactual for the endgame.

(In this timeline, Taylor died in Leviathan, and the long‍-​term goal would have been to create an artificial entity to combat Zion, which Mike would have been able to direct with his power. Something like that.)