[Fiction] Knockout - All of Me

[Magnum Opus]

On the television screen, a high-definition rendering of a man in a tuxedo lifted an Aston-Martin by the rear bumper, and hit a man in a top hat over the head with it. "I trust I've 'driven' my point home," he remarked.

Danielle sighed, and paused the movie. "I like it better before they made James Bond erupt," she grumbled. She turned off the television and checked her watch. 2:30 in the morning, and still not sleepy.

It was an odd byproduct of her eruption. Physically, she was immune to fatigue poisons and her body subsisted on ambient quantum energies. Mentally, she still needed to dream once every few nights or she would start to hallucinate. She didn't feel any need for it tonight, and so, she contented herself with late night television, video games, and books. Lots of books, lately.

She was currently halfway through the nova author Tommy Tomorrow's book Who Owns The Night, and had hit a boring bit to the narrative - she'd switched gears to a more political book arguing the pros and cons of technological regulation. Apparently it was like trying to regulate the drug trade, only a dozen times as difficult to succeed and a hundred times more dangerous to fail - if she ever did take the Project's offer up, that would be one division she'd steer clear of. Not because of ideological opposition to techreg, but because it would grind her soul to paste in about two hours flat.

The others would probably have a problem with her in Technological Regulation, too. They'd probably have a problem with her regardless.

The Project's last offer sat on the pile of clutter that typified her desk. She'd reread it earlier. It was appealing. The only thing that gave her pause was their recommendation that if she joined the Project, that she 'come out' first. Apparently, the circumstances of her eruption and her life prior to it would come out eventually, and so she should be proactive about it to control the spin.

They had a point. It just wasn't something she wanted to think about.

She readjusted her black bathrobe - the new one she'd purchased to replace one that was a) falling apart and made for someone with vastly different proportions. She walked to the fridge and propped it open, looking through the contents. She didn't need to eat either, but she still liked to - her sense of taste was sharper and she found herself taking up cooking, to the delight of her mother and the chagrin of her father.

She pulled out a can of pop and shut the fridge. She trodded back downstairs, pulling the tab and taking a sip, preoccupied with thoughts about her futures and consequently not noticing the giant spherical object floating in the air. She sat back down, turning off the movie and turning on Saturday Night Live, with special guest host Kikjak. It was the latter third of the show, where the worst sketches were backloaded. Kikjak was currently stymied by the control mechanisms behind a video game starring him. A pixilated Kikjak popped up on screen occasionally to run around jerkily.

Slowly, Danielle turned around and looked up. She stared for a long moment.

"There's a giant ball in my den," she said lamely.

It was about the size of one of those inflatable balls from junior high that was as tall as a person, possibly left over from a time when giants had attended gym class. It was solid - a cool silver metallic sheen. It had no seams. It floated about two feet off the ground.

She stood up, pop can in hand, and looked at it. She had penetrating vision that could see through solid objects, which was a constant temptation in life, especially when walking by the Women's Health Club. She focused, trying to see through it, and getting nothing. It was as hollow as a supermodel's head.

Suddenly she relaxed, and grinned. "Oh, you got me. You got me, Meghan. Very nice." She tapped the sphere. "My parents will kill me if they found out you snuck in here..."

There was no response.

"The silent treatment, huh?" Danielle grinned, tugging at the neckline of her housecoat and exposing a bit more cleavage. "I know how to fix that..." She leaned forward and licked the sphere, grinning wickedly.

It popped open with a noise like a cork from a champagne bottle. Danielle yelped, stumbling backwards and hitting the floor. Her can of pop went flying, and chose the most embarrassing place possible to land.

The sphere wasn't hollow. Inside was a shimmering field, like a pool with a lightshow underneath. It lit the den softly. The center of it distended slightly, like the skin of a pudding left unstirred too long, and then a man stepped through.

He was seven feet tall and wearing a Team Tomorrow jumpsuit. He was in terrific shape and had a full head of hair. He looked around. "Wow."

Danielle blinked. He whistled. "This brings back memories. Oh, hi - " He stopped, and stared. The skintight uniform left nothing to the imagination. Danielle tried not to stare.

"Uh, hello. You have pop on your head."

She scowled in frustration, getting to her feet. "Who the hell are you?"

"Oh, I'm Megaflex."

She blinked, then laughed. "Horseshit."

"No, I am. Megaflex. It's a long story. When my buddy got lupus I was so distraught that I erupted, with healing powers. He said he wanted me to have the name after I cured his lupus. It - it wasn't even really his, honestly, it belonged to some guy in his Karnage Kombat Klan, before that guy joined the XWF, long story and it doesn't have anything to do with why I'm here. Hi! I'm Daniel Waters."

"Nnmmn?"

"Oh, right - this world hasn't created dimension hoppers out of Timeslip's stray chronometric particles yet. I'm not your world's Daniel Waters or whatever his name's here. I'm Daniel Waters from somewhere else."

"Nnnmmn?"

"It's a lot to take in. I know. Here, let me introduce some of the others." He poked his head through the shimmering field, and made a waving motion with his hand.

He pulled his head back out. "They'll be along in a sec. I'd forgotten how much I liked this house..."

Danielle's mind finished processing the sudden shock. "Back up, wait, whoa. Daniel Waters?"

"Yep. All of us are."

"All of - what?" She stared at the shimmering field, which parted again.

The first one through was wearing a blue Directive beret, and Danielle's keen eyes made out the bulge of a shoulder holster. Then a big head on a thin spindly body floated, rather than walked, through, and Danielle fell her skin crawl. She arched an eyebrow at the cigar-chomping heavily muscled figure that came next, clad in body armor with the DeVries logo on the chestplate. She felt herself panic slightly when an exact copy of herself - no, himself - from before her eruption came through last, with a T-shirt saying NO QUANTUM ACCIDENT.

"Uh...?" She pointed.

"Oh, him. He hasn't erupted yet. We figured we'd take him on any ways."

"Hi," he said. He waved, and then readjusted his pants.

Danielle kept level eye contact with the one in the Team Tomorrow outfit. "I'm a little lost."

"Well, you know me. I'm Megaflex. The guy in the Directive beret is Special Agent Waters. He's really fast. He specializes in hunting other novas, but he's cool, don't worry about him."

"Yeah. I only kill novas who break the law."

Danielle mentally recounted the size of the pirated music on her computer, and nodded.

"The guy with the big head is Clear Waters of Sunset. He's a Terat, but he's cool about it. Every time he tells us about his own innate evolution and superiority and how he is fighting against oppression by baselines we just tease him about his dick falling off."

"I have evolved beyond the need for a dick."

Oh, thank God, thought Danielle. At least he's not going to hit on me -

"You have very attractive alpha wave patterns, miss."

Oh, crap. Can he read my mind?

"No."

That's a relief. "And him?" She waved to the armored man.

"That's Murder Meat. He's one of the top 100 Elites. He helped finance this expedition. He's strong and tough and fires Murder Beams from his eyes."

"Made possible by Pepsi, the choice of the Nova Generation!"

There was silence for a moment. Then Special Agent Waters leaned over and whispered in his ear. "We're in an alternate dimension. You don't get paid to say that."

Murder Meat looked hurt. Megaflex coughed. "So anyways. We call ourselves the League of Daniels. Until we get a better name."

"Such as the Pepsi Patrol - "

"Stop that. The League of Daniels. It was my idea. I always felt kind of alone and out of sorts and disconnected and when alternate timeline technology came along I jumped at the chance. It's really changed everything."

"And you're here to..."

"There's over a 98% chance that Daniel Waters in this dimension has erupted already. We're here to give him a helping hand and to welcome him to the League of Daniels."

"Oh?" She smiled a bit.

"Yeah. Have you see him around anywhere?"

Danielle clucked her tounge. "Have I seen him," she said levelly.

"Yeah," said the Daniel in the T-shirt. "Are you his girlfriend? If so - damn. I'm one lucky guy."

"Just, uh, curious..." She scratched behind her head. "How many Daniels are in this League?"

"Four thousand and four," intoned Clear Waters. "From four thousand and three realities. And no, I don't know how one of them wound up with two of us."

"Anything... unusual about them?"

Agent Waters arched an eyebrow. "Ma'am, we're novas. If men like us weren't unusual, people would think we were up to something."

"Wonder what he's like here," said Murder Meat. "Probably super-strong and tough and firing beams out of his eyes."

"And fast," added Agent Waters.

"Intelligent and perceptive," chimed in Clear Waters.

"Able to fly. Definitely." Megaflex nodded.

"And probably, like, pure sex in blue jeans." Plain old Daniel Waters shrugged. "Not like I'm not that way already, but you know."

Okay, thought Danielle. Clearly I'm having a psychotic episode. They said I might have these at the clinic and to take an adrenocilin tablet when I'm seeing things, or when I have a headache, or whenever I feel like it, really. So I am going to go take my pill, and I will play along with the nice hallucinations.

"I will go get him," she said, bowing slightly and smiling. She then went off to her bedroom, the remains of her pop in hand.

Once the door was closed she threw off her bathrobe and grabbed a small greyish ball off her dresser. It was an automatic thing nowadays - she just thought "Knockout" and it would resolve itself into the white-and-blue-and-black costume of her public nova persona. As it became charged with energy and flowed over her form, she picked up a small bottle of pills and shook out a tablet. She swallowed it, washing it down with the pop, and then sucked in a breath as the eufiber molded itself, the white parts glowing slightly with bled-off energy.

She opened the door and turned on her best smile, marching back out into the den. "Hello!"

Megaflex blinked. "Uh. Hi. Nice outfit. Did we, uh, interrupt you two...?"

"Nope. It's me. I'm Daniel Waters." Danielle felt the buzzing sensation in her mind that let her know the tablet was working.

"But you're... you're..."

"Blonde. I know. It's natural."

The T-shirted Daniel's eyes left her face and traveled down her body. "All blonde? Can we check to make sure?"

"No, you may not." She folded her arms, looking slightly confrontational.

"Are we a shapeshifter here? Shapeshifters are cool, man." Murder Meat puffed on his cigar.

"No," said Danielle. "I look like this all the time."

"Bout you're a woman," said Agent Waters.

Danielle blinked, then looked down, then cupped her breasts. "Oh my GOD, that explains everything! I always wondered why I had these! Hey, that explains where my thingme went too. That was sarcasm by the way."

"I knew she was us," stated Clear Waters calmly.

"You did?" said Megaflex.

"I though you said you couldn't read my - " Danielle stopped, replaying the one-sided conversation in her head, and feeling slightly stupid.

"You remember it accurately. I felt as if it were not my place to say."

"You mean you wanted to see the look on everyone's face when I told them."

"My sense of humor did not fall off as well." He smiled.

"Wait a second, wait a second - " The one in the T-shirt waved his hands. "You didn't tell me this kind of thing was possible!"

"Uh, we didn't know." Megaflex turned back to Danielle. "You're the first... female-us... that we've met throughout the multiverse."

"I don't wanna be a chick! I wanna be super-strong and stuff. I don't wanna have to cry a lot and wear pink things and - "

"I can see why Carol dumped me," muttered Danielle. "Look. I'm Daniel. Danielle, really. My nickname's Knockout. I'm strong and fast and tough, I can fly, I can shoot stun rays from my eyes - "

"Stun rays?" Murder Meat giggled. "What kind of a fag would use - "

There was a brief flash of light, and Murder Meat blinked, then slowly fell over. The glow in Danielle's eyes faded. "This kind of fag."

Agent Waters coughed. "Never liked him anyway."

"Smokes too much," added Clear Waters.

"Wait, you still like chicks?" said the T-shirted Daniel.

"Yeah."

"That's hot."

Danielle's eyes began to pulse again, but Megaflex put a hand on her shoulder. "Look, this is a shock to us all. Four thousand and four - "

"Three - "

"Thanks, Clear Waters, four thousand and three realities and you're the first... female-us, that we've encountered. I think it's come as a shock to us."

"Came as a big shock to me too."

"How did it happen?" said Agent Waters.

"How did what happen?"

"Your eruption. What circumstances could possibly necessitate you turning out like this?"

Danielle frowned.

* * *

To his left was a picture of him and Carol. To his right was a thick programming textbook. In front of him was a monitor which displayed an expensive-looking virtual apartment, with various banners and trophies on the walls. There were various displays on a HUD, along with two virtual women - one with her back to the screen, clad in a tight blue, black and white outfit with a half-cape, the other in an outfit that could only be described as revealing.

There was a small window with text in it.

DestructoDamsel: feels good to have that raid done

Daniel nodded, then remembered himself, and typed.

Knockout: Yeah.

Knockout: Sorry. Half here.

He leaned back and rubbed his eyes, wishing the headache would go away. "God in heaven. Week from hell."

It had started with Carol dumping him. She'd told him it wasn't him, it was her - specifically, that she was pretty sure that she played for 'the other team.' It was his first breakup and he didn't know how to handle it, so he'd thrown himself at his sophomore finals. It was programming, which he was only 'sort of' good at, and he had to push himself to get through. He'd gotten good but not stellar grades, and the ache was still there, so he'd thrown himself at an 200 player 18 hour 'raid' on the MMORPG Nova Fantasy Saga. Now they were done, and it was just him and the guild lead, redecorating the 'home base.'

DestructoDamsel: you ok?

Knockout: Finals just finished.

Knockout: And my SO broke up with me.

He'd almost typed 'girlfriend,' but it was an RP guild. No sense in shattering the illusion.

He looked at the textbook, and a thick acidic bubble rose in his stomach. He realized that he was only in programming because he had to pick something, and he'd only picked something because he had to go to university and he didn't want to upset his parents. He was getting himself ready for a career he wasn't going to be very good at, nor enjoy very much, and the thought of it hurt.

DestructoDamsel: oh i'm sorry

Knockout: Thanks. It's okay.

DestructoDamel hugs knockout

Knockout hugs back.

It was easier talking to people online. He could put on whatever suit he wanted to and just forget about the one he had to wear away from the computer. People were more accepting. No one called Knockout a 'fag' when she was upset.

DestrucoDamsel gropes knockout's bum

Daniel blinked. He felt a tingle run across his skin. A wave of heat felt like it was rolling across his brain.

DestructoDamsel: (ooc you ok with this?)

Daniel breathed out softly. The graphics were very realistic. DestructoDamsel had a very sexy avatar. And when you got down to it, so did Daniel...

Knockout: (OOC: Yes)

He slid a hand inside his pants and watched as their avatars showed more and more skin. The two of them typed back and forth, and it was all happening on a screen but it was also happening to him, in this weird borderland between interaction and observation...

The headache throbbed a bit. He felt a tear roll down his cheek as the feeling rose in his stomach again, that it had all gone wrong somehow, that he'd gone left in life when he should have gone right and now here he was, depressed, heartbroken, stuck in a career track he hated, the only action he was getting coming from a glorified chatroom, and there was no one he could talk to out here but that was okay because people online understood, and people loved Knockout, they cared about her in all the ways they ignored Daniel, and he wanted - he wanted -

he wanted what he had only in a made-up place

he wanted to respec his existence

he wanted a reset button on life

he wanted this to be real

There was a moment of disorientation, and then everything became sharper, more vivid - as if the details had been tuned up. Suddenly all the confusion from all that programming syntax was gone. Suddenly the fatigue was gone, and... his shirt felt funny...

Daniel looked down.

And stared.

* * *

"Wait, you erupted while cybering with your guild leader?" The now-conscious-again Murder Meat stared.

Danielle nodded. "Not my proudest moment." She exhaled. "It's weird. I never really told anyone about how I was really feeling that day. It... feels good, to let it all out. I figure if anyone'll understand it'll be your guys, right?"

She was earning a bunch of blank stares. The adrenocilin tablet had kicked into gear and she realized with a slightly terrified feeling that this wasn't a hallucination. Alternate universes were a fact, not fiction, but any contact had been limited. If this really was a coalition from across parallel time tracks, with the power to hop between them without nova powers...

It would change everything. Absolutely everything. And she would be a part of that. Imagine what you could learn about history and about human behavior by seeing how things played out elsewhere.

All she had to do was not blow it.

"If I had to guess why it happened the way it happened, I guess... I guess I wasn't too attached to my old life. My old body, too - it was like a meat vehicle that I drove my brain around inside. I'd built up this online existence where people really liked me, and no one liked me like that in real life. I wanted it to be like that all the time, and I guess somewhere up there the connection was made that I wanted to 'be' my avatar. And I guess, deep down, that I must have wanted... you know..." She gestured, indicating her feminine form.

"Guys?" said the T-shirted Daniel quietly. "Huddle?"

The five of them went into a huddle. Danielle dialed down her hearing for the sake of privacy - one of the interesting quirks of her new body was that any extra-normal ability was almost totally at her control. She never crushed something by accident and could fall asleep more or less at will, and she never got sensory overload the way some novas did.

She realized, with a sinking feeling, that she didn't need super-hearing - she knew exactly what they were talking about.

The huddle broke. Megaflex coughed. "Well, there is an extensive review process. We don't take just anybody."

"Uh huh."

"Plus, this world has little contact with alternate timelines. Prime Directive and all that."

"Uh huh."

"And, well, there's a rule that you have to have unique powers to... join..."

Danielle fixed them all with the Look, and they fell silent. It was something Mithril had taught her - the fabled Look women used to melt the spines of unworthy men.

"You know, there are days I feel like a freak. Not quite a woman, certainly not a man. I wonder if I was always this way, which is reassuring, or if this is a result of thinking the wrong thing on eruption, which is not reassuring at all. I wonder if like everything else in my pathetic little life, I screwed this up too. And along comes you five. The five of you - the four thousand and four of you - all put aside your differences 'cause you're all just the same guy reflected through different circumstances. A Utopian and a Terat and a Directive agent? That's the setup for a joke. But you all stay in the same room 'cause you believe you have enough in common to get along. And that's what I want more than anything. But oh no, can't have a woman in the He-Man Woman Hater's Club. It would be a reminder that your own eruption could have gone this way too, and that some part of you wanted this. Fine by me. Fuck on off if you want, 'cause you know what? That's exactly what I feel when I look at you. Every time I feel like a freak from now on, every time I feel like a screwup, every time I feel like I can't control anything, I'm going to remember this moment, where I stood face to face with the five of you."

She looked at the one in the T-shirt. "There's you, and you're wearing a T-shirt that says NO QUANTUM ACCIDENT - as if being rich enough to afford a latency test and lucky enough to have it come back positive is something to be proud of instead of it making you the biggest mingebag ever." She turned to Murder Meat. "We have you, who I'm thinking has some kind of contract with a soft drink company, and the fact that even if they made prostitution mandatory for every woman on Earth I would still not be half the whore you are. 'Hi there, when I'm done wiping out small pockets of resistance manned by people whose only crime was not being able to cover my fee, my throat gets parched and that's why I drink Pepsi!'"

She continued left to right. "And as for you, Mister Clear Waters, figure this one out: maybe the reason baselines hate you so much is because you keep reading their minds without asking. Christ, you must be from a world where I was an American because only an American could feel superior to everyone else yet keep waving the victim flag. And let's see, there's special agent Waters there, who fights evil novas dressed as the world's most heavily armed Smurf, who would doubtlessly love it if all novas stayed in one place with their hands where he could see them, and we have Megaflex, who between analyzing polling data and approving his action figure, forgot to wear a cup when he put on his magic ball of quantum snot. I don't need to see what you have going on down there. No one does. You don't want me to join? That's fine. I don't want to join. No way I'd join a club that would have me for a member."

She pointed past them at the flickering portal. Murder Meat scowled. "Make me."

"You don't talk to us like that, girl. The five of us could kill you in our sleep." Agent Waters reached for his sidearm.

"You could." She folded her arms. "And then you'd have to take care of my mom and dad. Or should I say... your mom and dad."

The five of them took half a step back, and Danielle smiled the smile of a victor. Slowly, they turned around and shuffled back through the portal.

The sphere made a noise like the word pop spelt backwards, and then it was gone. Danielle sagged. She took a swig of the last of her pop and went into the bathroom.

She took out her toothbrush and made a face at the woman in the mirror. She frowned, sticking out her tounge.

There was silver dust on the tip of her tounge. She blinked, and then realization settled in.

"Blech," she muttered. "I licked a space bubble."

* * *

"Well, that went up like a lead balloon."

The five of them walked out the opened sphere, which had landed back at Homeline - specifically inside the large facility they'd set aside for the meetings of the League of Daniels. Banks of computers lined the walls, checking and displaying the statistics of the spherical craft.

Agent Waters had spoken. Clear Waters nodded in agreement. "I have long held that hormones are a poison of the mind."

"Nice tits on her, though," said the Daniel in the T-shirt.

"Nice tits on you, you mean," smirked Murder Meat.

Megaflex sighed. "Look - I should head back there and apologize. That was out of line, guys."

"Fuck you it was out of line. I didn't see you protesting."

"No, and maybe I should have, MM."

"You know the rule, Megaflex," intoned Clear Waters. "Uniques only."

"Four thousand and three realities and we encounter one female-us? I say that qualifies as unique."

"Ah, you're just trying to boost your q-rating with women or something. Not gonna rest 'til everyone in every world kisses your T2M ass." Agent Waters shook a cigarette out of a packet.

"And you're not going to rest until every nova is locked up in a cell with a barcode on their foreheads," replied Clear Waters.

"And you all can suck mine, 'cause you're just chasin' - "

"Uh, guys?" The T-shirt wearing Daniel pointed at a display. "It says 'chronometric leak' on this one."

Everyone looked to the display. Megaflex frowned. "But that's not possible. Those are held on the surface of the sphere by nanites small enough to hold the chronometric particles in cages..."

"The nanite spread appears to be compromised." Clear Waters looked to the sphere. "By what, I imagine..."

"Pepsi."

"Shut the fuck up, MM - "

"No. Pepsi is what compromised it." Murder Meat pointed to a small discolored spot on the sphere. "Broke down the nanites."

"But how - "

"She licked it. She was drinking Pepsi and she licked it. I don't know why but she licked it." Agent Water's expression darkened. "Without those particles - "

"It won't operate."

"And they're irreplaceable." Clear Waters shook his head.

"So - wait. Dudes..." The T-shirted Daniel shook his head. "We're all stuck here because she licked our ship?"

"Yep."

Megaflex looked at the ship levelly. Then he cast his gaze across the four of them, and saw less of himself than ever before.

"Well. Fuck me, then."