What does it mean to be human?

I opened my eyes, listening to my alarm ring. Last year, put me in this situation, and I would want to kill myself. But now? Now, my alarm is like a breath of fresh air. I gave myself exactly seven hours of sleep, minus one minute. That minute gives me enough time to get out of bed, so I truly only wasted seven hours, instead of seven hours and one minute. It adds up over time.

You might be wondering how sleep is a waste of time for me, don’t worry, I’m getting there. Three days ago, imperium started popping up. Superheroes. Supervillains. Everything in between. Imperium means absolute power, but it’s also Latin for just “power”. All the news stations somehow agreed that it would be the coolest way to refer to them. Doesn’t make much sense to me why we don’t refer to the powers themselves as imperium but whatever. Around seventy million total, if the estimates are correct. One percent of the population.

And I just so happen to be one.

So, I got my power when all the others did, three days ago. It was around 3:30 pm for me, I suddenly felt like I had another limb. Metaphorically. It was Saturday, so luckily, I was in my apartment not doing much. I experimented a little while trying to keep up with the news and I’ve arrived here. The ability to store any action that happens around me to use whenever I want. I think. I haven’t exactly had a lot of time to test the specifics, and I don’t feel like basically trying to explain sight to someone who was born blind, so I’ll just give you the rundown of what it does. My power was… awakened, and now I can feel every movement that happens within a few feet of me, even if I close my eyes. I can store these movements and use them whenever I want. Infinitely.

Upon figuring out what my power did, I thought that I must have one of the most overpowered abilities ever. And then I started hearing things on the news. A telekinetic boy who can crush and condense entire skyscrapers in seconds. Someone who’s been dropping massive boulders of concrete, or metal, or dirt, onto cities and towns. A woman who’s been flying around at supersonic speeds. Now, that’s not to say that my superpower is bad or anything. I didn’t even finish explaining it.

So, I have an extremely wide variety of actions that I can choose from to use within a few feet around me, and what actions I can choose from are constantly expanding as I do new things. One important thing to note is that the object that exerted the force or movement doesn’t have to be there at all when I use it. If I kick in front of myself one time, I can then walk up to a wall and kick it as many times as I want without even moving at all. If I grab a knife and stab in front of me, I can walk up to a wall and stab it as many times as I want. Poor wall.

I did say I could use it infinitely, but that doesn’t explain it enough. There seems to be an infinitesimally small internal cooldown so that I can’t punch multiple trillion times in one instant, likely releasing an amount of force bigger than a nuclear bomb. That was a complete guess by the way, you can correct me if I’m way off. Anyway, any previous actions that I, “replay”, for lack of a better term, is not cancelled by new replays. So, I can replay a punch in every direction around me in basically one instant since the cooldown is super short. While the force is most definitely applied to whatever I replay a punch onto, as I said, my fist itself is not there. So, if I replay a punch towards the air in front of me, there might be a slight disturbance in the air, but there is no sound. Throwing objects has an interesting effect on my replay. If I replay a ball that I threw forward, the replay ball will actually continue on outside of my range, knocking over things in the way. The thrown replays seem to disappear around one second after making contact with anything, but I think I can increase that time, just don’t hold me to it.

I guess I should stop stalling now. Tonight, I’m going out in “costume” finally. I just need to get some kind of mask from a place near my apartment. Oh, I guess I should mention I live alone. Wait, I haven’t told you anything about myself, have I? I’m a 21-year-old guy that’s supposed to be studying business in college. I say “supposed to be” because that isn’t exactly the plan anymore. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna be a goody two shoes, running around taking down purse snatchers or anything. Up until three days ago, I wasn’t even sure why I was alive. Not that I am now, except that I now have some kind of direction. I want to go out and fight. I wanna feel alive, ya know? I want to find these other Imperium and learn everything about them.

I’m not scared of dying, I’m just scared of missing out on all the fun.