Ch05En: MegaTech

By William Dickstein

Megan is a well-to-do stay at home parent with a serious chip on her shoulder. After discovering her family is experiencing a financial crisis, she decides it's up to her to fix things. Of course, in the world of Ch05En, supervillains make the most money.

Ch05En: MegaTech is an origin story told in first person over the course of approximately fifty pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Dickstein
• Release date: Apr 26, 2015

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Ch05en: MegaTech

By

William Robert Dickstein

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

William Robert Dickstein on Smashwords

Ch05en: MegaTech

Copyright © 2015 by William Robert Dickstein

Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed for any commercial or non-commercial use without permission from the author. Quotes used in reviews are the exception. No alteration of content is allowed. If you enjoyed this book, then encourage your friends to download their own copy.

Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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Many thanks to Daio Lamers and Charlie Dickstein, who helped me edit and revise this story. Extra thanks to Daio, who provided all of the beautiful artwork. Also, special thanks to my mom. She thinks my writing is cool.

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Be sure to check out Ch05En: Adventures of Brass Man #0, an original tie-in comic available for download.

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In the not too distant future…

Scientists at the Max Plank Institute for Molecular Genetics will map out a gene given the markers of Ch05En.

The Fate Gene

A latent Ch05En gene destines someone for greatness. Maybe you'll be a rock star, or CEO of a Fortune 500. You might save somebody's life, or give birth to the greatest supporting actress of all time.

Maybe you'll be a superhero.

Those with powers often join the Global Society of Superheroes, known more commonly as the GSS. These people become Capes. They are our protectors in a world of infinite possibilities.

A world where the terrorist organization known as The Aggregate lives to instill fear in the masses.

Welcome to the world of Ch05En.

Where we're one suddenly-activated Fate Gene away from total salvation...

Or complete annihilation.

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Ch05en: MegaTech

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Open – Humanity

I have evolved.

This story is being broadcast from the last part of myself I consider human, written wirelessly as my thoughts transmit through the ether, streaming along radio waves to a database a thousand miles from the body I currently inhabit. My consciousness floats as freely as my thoughts, from one robotic vessel to the next, and as it does these words become transcribed.

I have come such a long way, it seems fitting that I reflect on my origin.

My story starts in the weight room. I’ve got a barbell on my shoulders, my eyes are fixated on a point a few feet ahead of me. I can’t look in the mirror, there’s a chance I’ll break my form. Each time my legs dip down with the bar on my back, my knees never reaching over my toes, and I bring the bar back up – is a repetition. One more, and I’ll have set a new personal record at that weight. Victory was so close, I could taste it. It tasted purple, and sweet. Victory was like blackberries.

I dipped down into my squat with a slight inhale. Some people breathe deeper here, but I don’t like my stomach to press too much against the weightlifting belt around my waist. Not when the weight is that heavy. My knees want to quiver as I start to push back up, but I command them mentally to be still. Muscles all throughout my legs tighten as they work in unison. I can feel it the most in my backside, though I know the rest is working just as hard. All of my weight was in my heels. A bit of air in my stomach forces itself out of my mouth, my lips pursed so tightly they’ve become a different color. When I reach the top, adrenaline rushing throughout my body, my lips relax before the rest of me does, and the air flows from them freely so that I don’t become light-headed. Then the bar is back to the top of its journey. My feet step forward gingerly to place it back on the rack. There’s no fanfare. No party. The only streamers falling from the ceiling are those I’m imagining. I couldn’t even tell you if any of the other five people there that early in the morning saw me. But I feel great.

I took to weightlifting a little later in life, just after my son was born. My husband tried to get me into it when we first started dating, but it just didn’t stick. I swam in high school; called myself a swimmer for many years after. A lot of young women don’t pursue the weight room because they’re afraid of getting bulky. As if muscles are going to sprout all over their body, as uncontrollable as a pack of dandelions or nest of crabgrass. A rational mind can conclude that of course it doesn’t work that way. Still, I didn’t embrace my kinship with the iron until after my son had exited my body.

Frankie was a perfect pregnancy. There was a bit of morning sickness, and a few unusual cravings, but overall I had a lot of fun while I was pregnant. Some women complain about their feet getting bigger, or high blood pressure. I was worried I’d suffer from constipation, like my mother did. But none of that happened. It was nine months of fun, with only a few extra pounds of weight gain on top of what the baby weighed. Still, after he was born, my body didn’t look the same. I remember being sad about the prohibition on breast feeding, which had only been outlawed a few years before I was pregnant. It felt unnatural to give Frankie nothing but his formula. But then, after the milk went away, my breasts were the only thing that still looked the way they were supposed to. My breasts were the only things that hadn’t changed. My arms sagged and wiggled when I waved, my butt had managed to droop down. My stomach never sank back down to the flatness it’d had for so many years. My legs no longer looked muscular; they were just big. My parents were still alive then, before all that nonsense happened in the capital. They were ecstatic to watch little Frankie on occasion. I remember my mother saying that the best part of having grandkids was that you could give them back after a day or so. I felt guilty the first few times my parents kept Frankie overnight. You get used to it, though. Before long, I was comfortable with leaving him in daycares, as well. Around the time he’d made it through the first year of life, I decided I couldn’t stand the body I saw in the mirror any more. I started swimming on a Monday, and ran into a woman in the locker room on Tuesday who looked exactly how I used to look. She said, in so many words, that I was