Flying out from My Fingertips

“Phil, man, are you sure you want to do this?” Mike, my best friend from all the way back in middle school, asked me.

We’ve been standing out here, in the cold air, for a while, while I’ve been trying to hype myself up. I mean, it’s kind of awesome, what I can do, but I still haven’t really done it in front of people before. Not intentionally, anyways. “I mean, I just got nerves. But trust me, it’s gonna be awesome.”

Mike does seem to trust me. A cold air sweeps past us, sending a shiver down our spines. “In that case, can you hurry up? It’s getting colder.”

I take a deep breath, picking up a small stone from the ground. Holding it in my hand and moving my thumb and fingers around it, it feels smooth on my skin. Smooth enough, at least. If I were actually trying to throw it, the rough edge would need to be taken into account. But at this distance, with these speeds, it should be fine. “Keep your eyes on the goalpost,” I tell my friend. Holding the stone between two fingers, slightly behind the center of the rock, I begin to squeeze it. Not just physically, but mentally. I’m not exactly sure how it sciences, or why it works, but as I squeeze it mentally the stone itself heats up. Then, after heating up to an uncomfortable temperature, it forces itself out from my grip, launching across the football field. It takes a moment. A second at most. And then, klaang. The stone strikes the goalpost. It deflects upwards and back, eventually landing near the five yard line. “The shit was that!?” Mike shouts, both at me and equally at the world in general.

I shrug. “Honestly? No clue. It’s just kinda a thing I started to be able to do a couple weeks ago, right after the whole… well, a couple weeks ago.”

He looks at me confused. “But, like, what do you do?”

“I don’t know, throw rocks really far without throwing them? That’s why I wanted to tell you. You’re the smart one.”

“Step by step. From what I could tell, you just kinda held the rock in your hands, then suddenly it was all the way over there.”

I look around. “I mean, that’s pretty much what it is. I hold it and squeeze, then I kind of squeeze it with my mind, too. Then it heats up and pulls itself out of my grip.”

Mike looks at me, looks at my hands. “How exactly do you squeeze it mentally?” he asks. It’s a good question to ask. I wish I had a good answer to give.

It takes me a moment to collect my thoughts. “Alright,” I finally say, “You know that feeling you get when you start out squeezing something hard but thin, like a can of soda? Where like, you can tell it’s collapsible, but it still feels sturdy at the moment.” He looks confused but nods. “Well, when I squeeze rocks, I get a similar feeling, but not from my fingers. Just in my brain. Then, when I push through it in a similar way, collapse the soda can, as it were, the rock starts to heat up, then launches itself.”

“So, it feels like you’re breaking things? Hmm,” Mike muses as we walk across the length of the football field, towards the rock. “I wonder, have you, like, timed it? Does it travel further or faster depending on how long you keep squeezing it? Is it just rocks, or could you squeeze other things, too?”

“Good questions,” I reply, “That’s exactly the sort of thing you’d ask, and why I came to you. Don’t know about the first one, it takes so much focus to launch that I’ve never thought about timing it. And I think yes for that last question. I’ve felt the same squeezy pressure in my brain from other things, but it’s just different enough and just tough enough to do that I’d need to work out those brain muscles to get right. I mean this trick alone took me a while to get right and consistent.”

Mike nods. “Fair point,” he says, “I’m just trying to figure this whole shit out. Do you think you have superpowers?”

“Probably. I mean, can you do that?”

“Nope, but that’s not saying much. There’s a lot I can’t do.”

I chuckle. “Hey, man, don’t be down on yourself like that. I came to you with this for a reason.”

He sighs, and thinks for a moment. “You know, there was this discussion I saw on one of the more questionable multiplayer-game discords that I’m on about how there are people with superpowers. It then went off on some foreign company trying to take over the world with those super-people, so I assumed it was just xenophobia being expressed in a real weird way.”

“Shit, you saying there’s a bunch of other people who can do this, too?”

“Maybe?” he honestly replies, “The vaguely problematic post talked about some gang member who went around terrorizing the other gangs and dissolving things with his touch. Also someone who could hack shit with their brain. And then it went on to blame the lab fire out west on them as some kind of insurance scam, claiming people say a flaming person walking through the fires, unaffected. That’s how they started their whole connecting it to the company and ranting kinda offensively thing. Nothing explicitly like this, though.”

“Shit, should I be worried? LIke, one to ten how serious does this whole suspiciousness of the company feel to you?”

“Three? If you asked me a couple hours ago, it’d be negative, though, so take it as you will.”

Fair enough. “Alright, so if we want to do this shit methodically or whatever, I guess I should do timing or something?”

We finally make it to the endzone. “Fuck, you put a solid dent in the metal, man,” Mike informed me, as he looked at the crossbar, “We’re in so much trouble.”

“Only if one of us rats me out,” I reply, picking up the rock. It seems to be on the ground pretty delicately, unlike the other rocks I’ve retrieved. It must’ve hit the post pretty straight on, most of the impact making whatever dent Mike noticed. I toss it in the air. “See, no more evidence we were ever here.”

Mike chuckles. “Alright, let’s figure this out. Start with something more scientific. Meet me this evening at my garage, after dinner. I’ll have my old dartboard and one of those cameras for measuring the speed of fast things set up. Will you be good until then?”

“Should be, sure,” I reply with a bit of a breath. Telling someone else is good, like a weight lifting off my shoulders. I knew Mike would have an idea of what to do. “See you in a few hours, then.”

“See you then,” he replies. We bring each other in for a simple dap, then pull out. He starts his walk home, and I head to the late bus. Tossing the rock around as I enter the bus, I ignore the look from the driver. It isn’t the first time I’ve done something weird coming onto the bus. And, knowing the other late bus regulars, I don’t think it’ll be anywhere near the weirdest thing she sees a kid doing today. I sit down around the middle, without anyone next to me, or across the way. And I look at the rock.

Mike is smart, and he mentioned how longer squeezing might make it go faster or farther. By the same logic, less time squeezing should make it go slower or less far, right? Holding it gently between my fingers, I try to find that pressure in my brain without the feeling of squeezing. The bus finishes filling up. Noise all around, as people are chatting with one another. THere wasn’t practice today, so the other people here, though they know me, probably will have better things to do than bother me. It takes a bit of focus, pushing past the cacophony around me, but I do find that feeling. And I mentally squeeze it, just for an instant, less than a heartbeat. Trying to get it to toss lightly into the air like a juggling trick.

The stone flies out of my hand, like it had been thrown away. I do my best to catch it quickly with the other hand. It hurts. A lot. Like a couple bones in my hand feel like they might be broken. It’s bruised at least. It was less of a kind toss out and more of an aggressive throw. For less than a second of squeezing. Control is gonna be something I’ll need to go over with Mike, if I have any hope of actually doing anything cool with it. Otherwise I’ll be stuck just hurling rocks over great distances. Over the course of the bus ride, I try my best to get a light toss. And, whether it’s the bus or the lack of skill, I never manage to get it to go lightly. I either squeeze it too lightly and it doesn’t even move, or I squeeze it too tightly or too long and it is thrown at speed. After about a dozen tries, I decide it isn’t coming to me on the bus. And I wait for my stop to come.

Eventually, I do make it home. I do my homework, and eat dinner with my family. It’s a pretty normal evening. After dinner, I ask my mom, “Hey, so, I did all my homework, and Mike was wondering if I could go over to help him with one of his science things. Do you mind?”

She looks at my dad for a moment, then waves me off. “Go ahead,” she says, “Just be home at a somewhat reasonable time tonight, okay?”

“Don’t worry, it’s a science project, not a party. I’ll be home pretty early,” I tell her. My dad chuckles at that one. Then I get on my bike and start the ride through the suburbs to my friend’s house.

Coming up Mike’s driveway, I watch him open it up. “Sorry I’m running a little late,” I tell Mike, “Traffic was rough for Mom today, so we ate a bit late.”

“No problem,” he replies, “Come on in.”

I enter the garage and he closes the door behind me. He did go all out with the setup. One of those science-TV, bajillion-frames-per-second cameras, with a backboard that has measurements on it. “By the way,” I tell him as I approach the line on the ground, “I did some testing on my own based on what you said, and I think you were right.”

“About what?” he asks.

“The whole timing thing. When I don’t squeeze as long in my mind, it doesn’t launch as fast or hard. Still launches fast, but less like a bullet and more like a baseball throw.”

“Ouch. Good to know. Alright, so my thought was this: If we use something aerodynamic like a dart, we can measure the speed you make the thing travel, as well as your accuracy and how much it differs from the expected trajectory.

“What do you mean, differs?”

He shrugs. “I mean, until we figure out any kind of explanation, you’re basically already breaking physics, right?” I nod, though my face shows some uncertainty. “Inertia’s a whole thing. So this will tell us exactly how much you’re breaking physics. Or should, at least.”

I take a deep breath. “Okay. That sounds like a good thing to know,” I reply. Slowly I pick up one of the darts.

“I already took the fins off, so you should be able to find a good comfy grip on it,” Mike says as he moves off behind and to the side of me. Smart. He pulls out a fancy stopwatch. “Tell me when you start brain-squeezing it.”

I take a moment to squeeze the dart normally, feeling it press back against my fingers. I squeeze tightly and I start to feel the mental flimsiness. “Now,” I tell Mike as I start to squeeze the mental flimsiness. It starts to warm up. Grow hot, even. Then I realize the dart is much smoother than my mostly smooth rocks, and keeping a grip on it is kind of hard when it’s so hot and pulling away. THe dart darts out from my fingers and near instantly it imbeds itself in the wooden dartboard, deeply. A bit off center, but I didn’t really do much aiming. I thought I had more time.

I hear a heavy exhale from behind me. “Shit, that was fast.” Then, shaking his head as he approaches, he adds, “Let’s look at the data, then try again. Hopefully the dart’ll come out of the board without too much of a problem.” I look at the dart, embedded fully in the wood. For some reason, I feel like getting it out will be rough.