Crying Electric
I’m writing something about a super hero named Ian who isn’t very traditionally super. He doesn’t do big loud things that can be turned into blockbuster movies. No, he’s pretty quiet and his super power is kinda subtle but extremely powerful.
When he was a child he was abandoned by his mother and left alone at home. It just so happened to be a crucial time in his language learning process. When children are developing they desperately need language input, they need it like they need air and food. So little Ian toddled around listening intently. The only language he could find was a bathroom fan someone had left running. He listened to it for seven days and nights until he understood and was able to speak the language of electricity itself.
Later he was put in an orphanage, but because he was unable to communicate with humans he was then put into a ‘special’ learning facility, which was a nice way of saying he was put into a mental hospital. Luckily for Ian, and humanity at large, he was put into a facility with Frank. Frank was an old hippie who’d been a spiritual teacher and had lost his mind. He’d wander around nude talking to all sorts or spirits and trees and saying cryptic new age shit. No one ever said anything in any official capacity but a few of the doctors at the hospital realized that Frank knew things. He could communicate with everything. The only problem was that his mind was blown so wide open that he received all sorts of transmissions. One had to learn how to kinda tune him in. One of the old nursing assistants, Sister Rose knew how to do it best. Sister Rose would sit Frank in an old adjustable lounger and move him though what looked like various yoga postures until she found the right signal. It wasn’t long before the doctors learned how to use this to what they felt was their advantage. It was always quite a sight to see, three doctors and a room full of powerful politicians speaking to an poor old black woman from Jamaica who would then talk to and move an old naked babbling hippie around in a lawn chair until he was babbling about what the politicians wanted to hear.
Well anyway, they brought Ian to that same facility and Frank and him became fast friends. And that’s how Ian learned to communicate with humans, because Frank was the first human who could understand him. And though Frank learned how to speak electric from Ian he was never interested in anything beyond ordering free delivery food and pirating cable TV. Ian however had deeper interests and he was smart enough to play dumb.
…to be continued
