“You make it sound so bleak. Is it really that bad for regs?” She pressed. “I mean, you said you were happy, right?”
“Okay, Aurora. What was life for you like before you got your powers? Was it great?”
Aurora didn’t respond as her eyes went out of focus.
After a minute, Gus pressed onward. “As time has gone on, I’ve remembered more and more about my mother. One thing that I recently thought about was when I asked my mom why she liked the 80’s so much. She said it was the last normal decade.”
“I’ve seen the clothes and heard some of the music, Gus. I don’t know if normal is the right word…” Aurora said with a wry grin.
“What I mean is that when the Nth came in the early 90’s, there was a lot of change. Obviously. But she said that at least people were trending towards a little more tolerance and equality. The introduction of powers negated that to a large degree, and while people weren’t discriminated against because of nationality, wealth, or color of their skin—they were discriminated against by whether they had abilities or not. Governments changed, power shifted, and the whole dynamic of society changed.”
“Not to interrupt, but you seem done.” She pointed to the food that Gus had been mushing and cutting into smaller and smaller pieces. “Should we head in to train?”
“Maybe later. Actually, I have another idea.”
“Such as?”
“Deep sea diving?” Gus asked with a shrug.
Gus explained what Nick had said about his Nth capacity and how he needed to get more raw materials to absorb and left it at that. He outlined the plan Nick had for what his new ability Intermediate Shielding could do. All that he needed to do was to go to the ocean floor and find a crashed escape pod.
“It’s really freaking me out, to be honest.”
“Gus, you’re a super now. This is what we do! I’m actually kind of excited. Nick? What do we need to do to make this happen?” Aurora asked eagerly.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dive Down
“The closest point on the beach to the crash site is on the east side of the island. Why don’t we head there? It’s not very far from here, you could probably walk there in a half an hour,” Nick suggested.
“Nick, is getting the suit even feasible given how much time has passed?” Aurora asked as they grabbed their boots and began walking on the sand.
“I don’t see why not. The weight of the pod should have minimized how far it would drift, given there wasn’t too much shrapnel.” A familiar wave of weird sensations hit Gus and he waited for Nick to translate what the smell of kettle corn and the feeling of a foot massager could possibly signify.
“The hybrid-Nth can sense the Kroutonium nearby. They say they know where all their ‘family’ is. Not just here, either. If I’m interpreting this correctly, they can sense it from everywhere in the world. No, their word for ‘here’ is synonymous with what we would use for eons and galaxies. Everything their consciousness can experience and has experienced is available to be remembered or used. Anyway, to them, some of their family are a short distance from us, but I’m concerned that it may be very far from our perspective.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! You never said anything about Kroutonium!” Aurora said, grabbing the sleeve of Gus’ outfit. “You actually have some of it already?” Aurora moved her grip to the front of Gus’ jumpsuit, her eyes wide and a giddy grin on her face. “And no one calls it Kroutonium anymore, by the way.”
“What? Why?” Gus sputtered, shocked at her sudden change in demeanor.
“It is the most valuable substance on Earth! Just how much are you talking about?” Aurora demanded, staring more intently.
“Well, the plate in the one was about ten pounds and—” Gus hung on the last word as Aurora let go of him and plopped to her butt on the sand, as if struck. She was muttering something unintelligible to herself.
“And why don’t they call it Kroutonium anymore?” Gus inquired, smoothing out his outfit.
“The guy who found it made so much money that he moved to Wisconsin and built this huge underground bunker. Then he got a little weird and started doing genetic experiments on rabbits. There was a furor among the animal lovers and the name was changed to Endurium,” she explained almost in a daze.
“Endurium, huh?” Gus smiled with nostalgia, instantly understanding the arcane reference. “Yeah, but to answer your question, I need some more, thanks to some asshat decisions I made earlier on, before you got to the island.”
Aurora sat heavily on the sand, jaw agape, muttering, “Ten pounds?”
Gus ignored her and turned his attention to Nick and the plan. “Ask them if they can show it on the display, then we would know in our frame of reference.”
“You know they understand you and your thoughts just as I do, right? Probably better, in fact. Just because you don’t understand them, don’t underestimate them. They get it.”
Gus asked his question mentally and received two sensations. One was the smell of a diamond, which was how they referred to themselves, and Gus was past trying to make sense of the stimuli. It was what it was.
Couldn’t they just have a normal name?
In the second sensation, he saw a blue diamond pop up on the edge of his display. Zooming to the appropriate scale, it was way out there, miles away, maybe twenty or so. But how deep? A number popped up above the blue diamond: 14,678. Was that feet? Meters? How deep was the ocean anyway?
“So how am I going to get down there, Nick?”
“I think you could reinforce your new shielding ability to transfer the pressure exerted by the water to the ether. The volume
