Aberrant: 2011 - Josh Brickman: Eruption and Clinic

[Josh Brickman]

Date: 09/23/2008

At the nursing home: {12 Hours after the event}

Voice #1: We can’t get in?

Voice #2: No. The door won’t open and it can’t be broken. It doesn’t move even from multiple super strong kicks, at my full strength even. We also can’t write on it with a Sharpie.

Voice #1: How about drilling a hole in the wall?

Voice #2: Tried that. The drill halts less than one inch into the wall. Drilling in from the above room does the same thing. Nothing gets in. The sinks, toilets, and showers in the rooms above don’t work. The water pipes go through that room.

Voice #1: Have we tried looking in the window?

Voice #2: Yes. We can’t see into the room, there’s a blue something blocking our view. Her ladyship reports that Xray vision won’t get through either. We also can’t break the window.

Voice #1: Do we know who is in that room?

Voice #2: Josh Brickman, age 93. Looks like he is in there alone. Local personnel have done a head count and say he’s the only one missing.

Voice #1: What do we know about this Josh Brickman?

Voice #2: He’s suffering from a bunch of age related disorders. End stage Alzheimer’s mostly, but there is something in here about some small strokes at some point in his past. Locals don’t know much about his history, but it looks like he’s been here a long time.

Voice #1: He’s a bit old for this kind of thing, but if he’s in there alone then it must be him.

Voice #2: This doesn’t look like a Forcefield, or Matter Creation. What does science say about this?

Voice #1: The closest thing on file is a Time Stop created by temporal novas. We think Brickman has erupted, but he’s still in the middle of it.

Voice #2: I thought eruption was instantaneous?

Voice #1: It is.

Voice #2: Uh?

Voice #1: Inside the bubble no time is passing at all. From his perspective he is having an instantaneous eruption.

Voice #2: I think I’m getting a head ache.

Voice #1: Me too. Still, this is already one of the longest time stops on record. Keep everyone away from the surrounding rooms, keep watch and have the team move in when it ends.

{30 hours after the event}

The lights in Josh’s room went out at the same time he fell heavily to the floor. He felt good. He felt terrible. He felt different. He was confused. None of his clothes fit. Joss struggled in his shirt and noticed the arm coming out of the shirt had red hair growing from it. He didn’t recognize his hand. He was tired and his head hurt. Awareness faded.

[Josh Brickman]

One Week later, at the Utopian Clinic:

Voice #1: You think there is still a temporal component to his powers? How so? He lost 70 years in eruption, but it happens. Right now he turns into light, or close to it. Since he still has mass left over from before the change, that mass increases and he gets taller. Basic “mass moving at near light speed” high school stuff. I don’t see where the energy is coming from to fuel this, but that’s not unusual for a nova.

Voice #3: His mass increases a *lot*. In order for something to experience that much of an increase in mass, yes, it’d have to be moving at near light speed, and that’s the problem. With this much of an increase in mass, time should be slowing down massively for him. It isn’t. The implication is he’s also speeding up time in his transformation, speeding it up to normal.

Voice #1:…OK. But if he’s moving at near light speed, why isn’t he faster? Shouldn’t he need to be tearing out into space in order to experience this kind of change? And why is he faster on the ground?

Voice #3: Yes, he should. This is why we get headaches dealing with nova powers. And I think the ground is purely a psychological limitation. In theory he should be moving the same speed on the ground or in the air. But when I asked him about it he said he was too heavy too fly very well.

Voice #1: Ah. Your early reports said something about indications of precognition?

Voice #3: Yes they did, but I don’t believe that any more. I think during eruption he tried to repair his brain, but didn’t have much to work with so he ended up with a bunch of physical skills. Jock type skills mostly, although records don’t go back that far I get the impression he skipped high school the first time around too. The results are a bit jarring, physically he knows what to do but mentally he’s pretty blank.

Voice #1: What do you think of his Team Tomorrow potential? He'd look great in front of the cameras.

Voice #3: He’s a thrill seeking, womanizing, weak willed ignoramus. He’s missing about six decades of memories and back in the 1940’s the world was a very different place. He actually said, “The poor are poor because they deserve to be.” Think of him as Corbin’s more impulsive older brother. On T2M he’d be a PR nightmare just waiting to happen. Even off T2M he’s a PR nightmare just waiting to happen.

Voice #1: OK. So no precognition, no direct temporal manipulation; Basically he's a flying freight train. Concentrate recruitment efforts on the other two novas.