A Special World

You see the world V lived in was a world unlike ours. In her world everyone had power. Nobody was ordinary.

Yet some habits die hard. People started classifying themselves into powers. Clans were formed. Marriages arranged. A new form of segregation appeared. Aside from superpowers nothing new had happened. Selfishness was just as rampant as ever. The worst of the lot were the ones without superpowers. They were born as a minority. Yes, the minority.

She took out a card with her picture on it. A picture of a girl with short red hair frowning. She stared at it. On it was printed “Privilege Card” and on the reverse side it was written: “The owner of the card is hereby protected by law as the owner is declared handicapped in terms of having no known visible ability to defend herself by”.

She especially hated that invisible label that seemed to be attached to the card. It seemed to say out loud in a loud voice, ‘Not Special’. On top of that, she was always mistaken for a boy. She was one of the rare few that did not have any special ability of her own. Some had their abilities developed later on in life. But the label ‘slow learner’ stuck with them for life. They were even fewer who did not develop any ability at all throughout their life. They were called handicapped for life.

She concentrated hard. In a day or so she was going to turn sixteen. Maybe today she wondered, it be the day she would receive her own special ability.

She concentrated harder. Maybe she could control water.

“Hmmmmm. Nope nothing,”

“What about heat?”

She allowed her hand to go under the icy flow of the water.

After a while she quickly pulled it back. The water did not even heat up. All she got was an icy cold hand.

She began trying almost every kind of ability she knew from trying to stretch herself from one end of the room to the other, to disappearing in front of the mirror.

Telekinesis..., maybe!

Finally a loud banging on the door supposedly broke her concentration as she was trying in the hope of levitating a tube of toothpaste with her mind.

“V, get out of there now! I have been waiting for almost an hour to use the toilet,”

V scowled. The problem with being the only girl was that everyone else used the bathroom at a lighting fast rate. So taking too long would not be acceptable.

V pushed open the door to face a very angry looking elf. Yes, ever since the great Surge, co-existents with magical beings seemed to be normal.

Although V wished that this was not true. Pinkyton, the elf was one of her dorm mates. The reason they gave him that name was because of his constant whining habit which made the others to call him girly names.

“You whine like a girl, Pinkyton,” V stuck out her tongue.

“Well who wouldn’t with you hogging up the toilet,” Pinkyton snorted.

“Oh come on I wasn’t that long. Look you’re the one to talk, singing in the bathroom all the time like you are on a stage,” V stopped as Pinkyton gave her a careless look and walked into the bathroom like a diva on a stage.

The boys only keep Pinkyton around because of his not so fantastic magical ability. He actually was really bad at it but being a magical or in proper term class F reality manipulator. The truth was the only trick he knew which came in handy was when people wanted food to appear out of nowhere. So he could be counted on to create those late-night snacks for any of the guys who were hungry.

V wanted to hurl an insult back but stop when she suddenly heard Pinkyton screamed. He had slipped on the tube of toothpaste that V was trying to levitate from the floor.

Pinkyton let out a string of curses at a giggling V but it was immediately drowned by some high shrill beeping like sounds.

V covered her ears to block out the irritating beeping sounds. They stopped as soon as Pinkyton stopped cussing.

“Censor bugs.”

They were everywhere these days. Special insects made though science and magic which actually made high pitch beeping sound when a foul word was about to be uttered.

It was part of the Interstellar United Worlds (I.U.W) campaign against obscenities as this had supposedly encroached into the universe.

This bugs had somewhat a six sense to detect when a foul word was about to be uttered by someone and in a split second sent out a beeping sound to block out the word exactly when uttered.

Ever since the government had made a stand against foul language, the magical folks and bio-geniuses had create a variety of insects which could anticipate or foresee when a person would let out a swear word, even before they uttered it. The bugs would then let out high pitch sounds that sounded like beeps on the television.

The bugs which came in a huge variety had since been spreading just as the government wanted and now infested every part of the globe.

Better is that now they are creating censor birds. These birds do the same thing except they sound more pleasant. An interesting fact is that they also censored visual obscenities by flocking around it.

Already there had been numerous complaints and also praises when flocks of birds would cover up some billboard with suggestive images.

Some said it was a complete waste of money, others applauded the effort. V could not be bothered with politics. She was after all only twelve.

“Watch out for the stairs,” warned Zeebo. His robotic orb like head bobbed up and down. V had forgiven him already. After all, it was hard to stay mad at him. He used his pincher like hands to adjust the light emitting from his googly eyes to a higher setting.

“Ok, Zeebo lead on.”

Slowly but steadily, they made their way to a door which looked like the side of a travelling caravan.

She gently pushed the door open and took a step down onto the hallway.