Portal
The conclusion(?) to the Supers and the Portal Prompts...
Here’s the weekly refresher on our daring group of supers, last seen in Masquerade
(Check out all the Stories here)
Conduit - established hero, energy absorption and reflection
Blink - trainee, teleporter
Awareness - trainee, telepath - able to sense and send images and feelings
Reset - trainee, able to send himself back in time and change his actions, healing ability
…
Well…
My gaze shifts back to the e-mail I’ve been crafting for the last two hours…
Then back to the glowing portal where my office door used to be…
Back to my computer screen…
… I’m not going to edit it again, I tell myself…
I look at the portal again for a long minute.
Back to my computer screen…
… Maybe the first line?
To: info@thesuperagency.sup
CC: conduit@thesuperagency.sup
Subject: The Portals
To Whom it May Concern,
I think I might be responsible for the portals that have been appearing all over Calgary and Alberta.
I hit “Send”.
I mean… the glowing portal manifesting at my office door, as I write an e-mail about how my writing seems to be manifesting portals, isn’t definitive proof…
What’s a step down from definitive?
Anyway, it was a good e-mail. If I touched the first line, I’d probably go down the rabbit hole of trying to re-polish the whole thing again. And I imagine the Agency will be showing up shortly, so might as well have my e-mail on record.
I think it did a great job of laying out my reasoning.
Ever since that super battle took place in the office building where I work, I’ve been feeling a little off. It’s not unheard of for people on the periphery of something traumatic to suddenly develop Super abilities. In fact, the guy who worked in the office next to me was found passed out by the building’s south exit after the evacuation. They say he slipped into a coma. Hasn’t been back to work since. Officially they are saying he’s on long-term disability, but the timing adds up. Additionally, the one intern and that cute brunette from the 31st floor also stopped coming to work…
I didn’t slip in to a coma, or start sticking to walls, or get blue skin - I just finally decided to start writing. Just thinking about what could have happened if the super battle had gone differently got me to stop procrastinating and join Substack. I wrote a couple of quick stories about a pirate crew and how each of the main characters decided to take up the life, and it was like a dam broke. I started writing other stories, and even humorous memoirs about my career. It seemed everything sparked a story!
What really got me going was when the Indie Ink Fund started their Portal stories as a weekly feature. I felt compelled to dig up my pirate crew and write about how they’d react to the various portals. How could I resist? The first portal story I wrote had pirates and dinosaurs!
Between work and writing, I have to admit, I wasn’t really paying attention to current events. Maybe I should have made the connection earlier? But I was transitioning roles at work, training my replacement, learning new concepts… reading a lot of Substack… I was busy. And, let’s face it, once the Agency started licensing and insuring the Supers… they got kind of boring for the most part. Sure, you crane your neck every time a firetruck goes by, but once they round that next corner, you forget about them.
This last week my team has moved to the 6th floor and I finally got removed from all the support and infrastructure e-mail queues. I could feel myself finally relaxing. And two nights ago, when a friend texted to say she and her boyfriend were headed down to my neighborhood for pizza and ice cream, I met them outside. Which is totally not the headspace I’ve been in for the last… err… years…
It was when her boyfriend started talking about the latest portal opening to a mirror Calgary - where everyone was wearing masks - that it clicked. That had been the last Portal prompt! My pirates had ended up in a very weird version of Calgary. It was actually a lot of fun to write a story about out-of-time pirates trying to interact with supervillains. But I had initially struggled. I had wanted to write about the pirate portal opening to a parallel pirate dimension and a grand masquerade, but I just couldn’t get it to work. I could only write the story once I changed the setting to that alternate Calgary…
And now?
Now I’m staring at a portal in my office. After writing a long e-mail to the Agency. Not quite believing what I was writing, but honestly spending as much time trying to get the facts right as I do in getting the setting right in my stories.
From my desk, it’s hard to see what’s on the other side of the portal, but I swear it looks like my office, not the hallway beyond. I take a deep breath, stand up and walk over.
And…
There I am.
How to explain it… It’s not a mirror image… it’s a mirror mirror image? I am standing looking at myself standing and looking at myself in my office. But when I raise my right hand… I… uhh… raise my right hand. Trippy.
Super trippy.
My first thought is to walk through, but how would that work? Would I bump in to myself? I know I should wait for the Agency, in fact, I should probably call them myself. But I have to know.
I try to orient myself. The wall to my left on my side of the portal is on my right side… er… well… ‘his’ left, my right? No… that’s me… so my right… my left…
I may need to sit down again.
I slowly reach out my right hand at shoulder height and move it forwards. I don’t feel anything as it passes through the 2-dimensional portal… but I see it poking out to my left.
I steel myself… and… pat myself on my left shoulder.
That’s… that’s a unique sensation.
I briefly toy with the idea of trying to shake my own hand, but my mind rebels at the thought of my body parts potentially occupying the same space on the way through the portal. I turn sideways, making sure there is no chance of touching… myself… take a deep breath and sidle through the portal.
Into my office.
I try it again. Same result. I have opened a portal from my office… to my office. Ok… that’s kind of funny. But, I guess I better call the Agency now.
Because I suddenly have to pee…
I was right about the intern.
The Agency arrived shortly after I called, had to respect the response time. I could see and hear them through the frosted glass at the side of the door, but when I looked at the portal, I could still only see myself. They told me it was the same for them, except they saw the hallway in front of my office. And when Conduit and his team arrived, they quickly discovered the same results - stepping through the portal landed them back in the hallway.
You know… the side of the portal with the handy bathroom…
Fortunately the intern is a teleporter. They called him “Blink”, and even though I recognized him from around the office, I respected their need for anonymity. Hmm… I guess that might be “our” need for anonymity if I have a power now…
Anyway, his power was very much appreciated. He teleported through the window, and now there was one Blink in my office, and none in the hallway. Apparently when he tried to teleport through the portal, he ended up back in the hallway.
After a quick ‘port and run to the facilities, Conduit introduced me to the rest of the team. It was a little odd to call them Awareness and Reset, especially since I’d worked with Reset for so long.
Conduit and the incident commander were relieved that this portal seemed to be benign. The linguist, botanist, and Blink seemed to be bummed they wouldn’t be needed. Well, I did need Blink to go get my car keys… but that didn’t really appease him. I imagine I’ve got some interesting weeks ahead as we try to figure out what I can do.
“Hey, Conduit?” I blurted out, “Is the name ‘Portal’ taken?”
This is a short but sweet response to the Indie Ink Fund’s Final Portal Prompt - The Portals Reopen
I’ve been wanting to expand the roster of Supers, so this was a great opportunity.
And kind of like the character in the story, I had a couple of very different ideas on what to write, but this one felt right. I also kicked around the idea of the Portals reversing direction and the Supers having to deal with that. Or some sort of graduation ceremony for the trainees… I also wanted to go back through a bunch of the Portals to see what had happened after the Supers intervened.
So… I cheated. :) I made a Portal creator one of my characters.
I don’t know where the Supers will go, but their stories will continue. Possibly a mix of stories after the Portal stories and some stories to fill in the spaces in between. We’ll see!
This has been a ton of fun, and I’ve really appreciated all of your support and comments! And special thanks to the team at the Indie Ink Fund for the amazing prompts.
Hope you enjoyed!
Dave
I love this!