I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself. I must be a masochist I swear, or at least trying to atone for something. Guilt at being born a precog maybe?

I was sitting in the auditorium of the Psychology Building, having decided to show up to the seminar regarding precogs, that was mentioned in my Fundamentals of Manifestation class, headed by Professor Degardia. I glanced around the room, but only managed to spot him after a few seconds, bustling about by the stage. I was idly hoping that maybe he would see me, give me a touch of leeway on my next assignment if I show up to the events he shills for, but no. Sucking up to professors that hate you continues to be an exercise in both futility and degradation. Luckily, subjects I was painfully familiar with.

I was sitting higher up, mostly to try to avoid notice. On a brighter note, it didn’t seem like a lot of my classmates had shown up. Mostly psych students. I was glad, because at least then people wouldn’t bother me. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the gossip around university is a powerful thing. Many people in my year ‘knew’ that a precog of some sort was in the PRA track. But for the most part, only other people in the track were able to put a name and face to the rumors.

A couple minutes after the event was supposed to kick off, a vaguely Asian looking women in her late thirties walked out onto the stage, before taking a spot at the podium.

“Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Psychology of Precognition, our special seminar on precognitive manifestation. I am Professor Tamara, and I am joined by Professor Degardia in this joint effort. Thank you all for coming.” She said, as Degardia ascended the stage and took a seat next to her.

“Now, first of all, we need to start at the beginning. Bear with me, as we will be going over history most people know about. Seven years after the end of the Second World War, the Epiphany happened. Rather a misnomer that. The incident could be better compared to the Tunguska Event, but alas, the media took creative liberties, and so we got stuck with the Epiphany.

Now. What actually happened was a destabilization in our dimension, so to speak. Like a fault line slipping, our dimension fell, for want of a better term, and collided into Mentum, the dimension we are currently entangled with. Now, prior to the Epiphany, science really did not have a grasp on dimensional physics. It’s only been in the years since, that we grasped what happened.” Tamara explained, taking a moment to sip from a bottle of water. She tapped at the podium, pulling up a huge map of the world, which then highlighted a handful of rift zones.

“Now, our best guess as far as the science goes, is that prior to collision, Mentum was a dimension of pure energy, with divergent physics. Matter, mass none of it were existent. When it collided with Mundane, our dimension, those things were introduced, and in turn, their physics were introduced to us. The energy in Mentum is nearly exactly the same as mental energy, and abstract thought. They attract one another like magnets. After the Epiphany of course, all beings capable of higher order thought were imbued with powers, as well as a number of beings without that capability. Animals for the most part.”

Tamara paused again, changing the slide. Now it depicted a handful of the more notorious animals that had gotten powers. Spike, the less than creatively named hedgehog whose quills were capable of piercing solid steel like a hot knife through butter. Pickles, the border collie capable of powerful mental attacks, mostly used to intimidate sheep. And Snowflake, the penguin whose belly was a perfectly friction-less surface. They were cute animals, though to my knowledge only Pickles was still alive. The others had died of old age decades ago, but Pickles was born only a few years back, and was a media sensation.

“Now, there have been numerous studies into the realm of psychology. We all know that personality is a strong indicator for the sorts of powers people tend to get. Controlling, curious etc. So then what about people, who through no fault of their own, were born with neurodivergent traits hmm?” She asked, looking around the quiet audience.

“It’s an interesting if thorny topic, but we will focus on precognitives for now. To the best of our knowledge, true precognitives nearly universally display symptoms correlating with psychopathy. Lack of emotional response, inability to feel empathy, very poor impulse control, higher chance of antisocial behavior.” She said, gesturing at the screen which had changed, now displaying a chart of common behaviors associated with both.

“That’s not to say all psychopaths are precogs,” Tamara said, backtracking a bit. “Or even that most are. True precognitives are some of the rarest sorts of manifestations. IF we can trust the data.”

A ripple of surprise seemed to go through the crowd at that point. I was taken aback too, not really sure what she was going for. The revelations about the link between precognition and psychopathy were pretty common knowledge, and the kids in my grade school spreading rumors that I tortured small animals made me rather acutely aware of that charming little tidbit. Not that I myself am a psychopath. In fact, as far as I am aware, I’m perfectly neurotypical, if a bit cynical for my age. But the insinuation about the data? That was truly interesting.

Tamara changed the slide again. This time it simply read “The Metatron, Seven Hours of Terror.”

“Right then. Here we come to the mystery that we’ve wanted to solve for the past century. The Metatron.” Tamara said, as she smiled sardonically at the audience.

“Right to it then. December 2nd, 1952. The day of the Epiphany. Chaos, confusion. People were waking up, powers were being thrown every which way, and in the chaos, Metatron emerged.” She said, clicking the slide forward to show a depiction of an angel.

“Metatron Alpha, categorized by the PRA, otherwise known as Metatron, is now speculated to have been a powerful precognitive. At the beginning of the seven hours, telephone calls went out from the Kansas City Telephone Interchange, a station which served a large population located in Kansas City. These telephone calls went out to hundreds of seemingly random individuals, doctors, politicians, even pay phones. The content of the calls varied, but one of the commonalities reported after the fact, was a religious theme. One call was directed to a supervisor of the Clydesdale Credit Union, and was automatically recorded as a result. I am going to play the audio now.” Tamara said, before clicking a button on her remote.

The audio started playing, the thin scratchy tone dating it as early in the days of recording. A transcript popped up on screen, a helpful guide for the visually impaired.

“Hello, this is Dale Everly of the Clydesdale Credit Union. To whom am I speaking?” A voice rung out, male, with a strong Boston accent.

“This is the Metatron speaking,” a female voice rung out, smooth and seemingly emotionless. A twinge of fear ran up my spine. “We are the voice of God. You have been called, Dale Everly, to fulfill His will.”

“Listen, I don’t know who you think you are, but-”

“Silence. Your sins are known to us. Extra-marital affair with Doreen Fletcher, four instances, five years ago. Extra-marital affair with Agatha Brightly, twelve instances, two years ago. Extra-marital affair with Ann Jacobs, forty-four instances, ongoing. Seven instances of fraud. Eleven instances of embezzlement-”

“Enough. I, enough. What the fuck do you want? This is blackmail right?” Dale asked, audibly defeated.

“We require you to move the following sums. $42,762 from account B-364724 to B-887645. Three payments of $500 from B-734577 to B-126421, dated to April 2nd, May 23rd, and Jun 11th of last year. One payment of $200 from B-792431 to B-428753. This is what we require for our silence.

“Wait, but-”

“That will be all.” The telephone clicked as the recording stopped.

The was a moment of silence, before Tamara began speaking again.

“Efficiency. That is what governed that interaction. That, along with some witness testimonies, remains the only evidence we have of the Metatron. When police stormed the Interchange, all they found were nine bodies of the employees, each shot once through the head with a handgun. No other evidence.”

The slide changed, to a black and white photo of the crime scene. The chalk outlines were drawn out with the bodies having already been removed, but the blood was still dripping down the walls, a dark stain looking like black ink.

“Later investigation found that Mr. Everly had moved the money as requested, before seemingly committing suicide a week later. The bank accounts were followed up on and tracked down. The first one was found to be a murder suicide, supposedly agitated by the perception that an old gambling debt had been called in and the money removed. The second was found to be a payment to a proxy account, which funneled into a terrorist group. That group was later linked to the Alabama 1964 bombings, which killed over three hundred people.

The third and fourth was seemingly used to construct evidence of an affair, resulting in a murder, and the perpetrator later committing suicide in prison.

The fifth account was seemingly random, a corporate account with no concrete link to consequences resulting from the call. The sixth account, which received the payment, was a teenage girl from Ohio. Upon further questioning, it was revealed that she was pregnant, and had used the money to pay off a disgraced medical professional, who induced an abortion.”

Tamara paused for a moment, changing the slide to show a photo of the young girl. She looked like she couldn’t be any older than sixteen, light blonde hair and a smile on her face.

“Lets tally up shall we. Five deaths, a direct result of that phone call. Another three hundred or so, tangentially linked. One girl who received an abortion. Quite efficient no?” She asked, raising her eyebrows at the audience.

“Records show that prior to entry by the police, that interchange made three hundred and nine calls. All over the country. Many routed to US locations, but with over a hundred to foreign countries, seemingly at random.” Tamara said, letting that sink in.

“The really interesting part about all of this, in my mind, was the last one. The girl. For a long while, the investigation blew it off as unrelated. It was only once we started seriously considering the possibility that Metatron was a precog, did we wonder if that child was a target.

Of course, that process took a long time. We did not understand the magnitude of the Metatron’s actions for decades, not when so much of her activity was masked by the general chaos and confusion of the Epiphany. Her targets were seemingly completely unrelated, and we simply don’t have records of who she targeted and why.”

The slide changed, now showing a graph over time. It was blank, right up until 1954, where a trickle of dots started appearing.

“Birth records. Everyone is born with their mentalist abilities, but they really come into their own around the ages of 12-16, continuing to strengthen before leveling off at age 25. It is believed that the strength of manifestations mirrors the development of the human brain. It was found that children born in 1954 and onwards, primarily in isolated locales in Africa, India and China, were developing abilities that were previously unknown. Precognition. And time travel. Immediately after the Epiphany, governments scrambled to do a census, to determine which powers were beginning to emerge, to see if they needed to control them. No census ever found a time traveler. No census ever found a precognitive.

The theory goes that the seven hours were a preemptive strike by the Metatron. There are three mentalist manifestations which act as a direct counter to precognition, two of which she would have had the ability to know about. Nulls, time-travelers, and other precognitives. Nulls were rare immediately after the Epiphany, but did exist. On the other hand, no adult precognitives or time-travelers were ever found.”

Tamara paused again, to take a sip from her water bottle. I leaned back dazed at all of this. Oh, I knew some of it to be sure. The Seven Hours had entered the popular consciousness as an example of what happens when you let a precog live. The first exposure of true precognition, resulted in uncountable deaths, many of them other precogs. But I did not know about the abortion case. It certainly made sense, but it also put some other things into context for me that I hadn’t put together previously.

“Areas with poor access to the outside world, without electricity or telephone lines were the least affected. Its very likely that the Metatron missed individuals, since she could not influence those parts of the world. It does bring into question however, why it still took time for precogs to be born. My theory? She wasn’t the only one doing it.

If true precogs are incentivized to remove competition which can interfere with the timeline, then taking out future precognitives before they manifest their powers is a quieter and more subtle method than what which the Metatron took part in. That said, if the theory is correct, the Seven Hours were not primarily to snuff out children before they could be born, but rather to kill adult precognitives which in theory should have full access to their powers.”

She changed the slide again, this time showing the birth rates of precogs in the last two decades. The numbers were staggeringly higher.

“This rather neatly explains an interesting phenomenon. The enactment of the Pyrrhus Protocols coincides with an explosion in precogs being born. It had been trending up, presumably with the governments crackdown on precognition, but when the Protocols made meaningful precognition completely impossible, there was no force suppressing the birthrates. It will be interesting to see the demographic data as the current cohort of children come of age and start fully utilizing their powers.

For now, we will go ahead and take a five minute intermission. Get up, stretch your legs, go to the bathroom, maybe grab a snack from the vending machine. We will be resuming with case studies of the psychological profiles of detained precogs.”

I got out of my seat, and shuffled out the door. Rather than heading to the bathroom, I made my way outside. It was really just a bit much for me, if I am being totally honest. It’s one thing to know objectively what true precogs are capable of, but to have it laid out like that, the death toll, the crime scenes, the blood literally dripping down the walls? Yeah, I am just a false precog, but I’ve never been able to get over the fact that I am tarred with the same brush as true precogs.

Kids shouting murderer at me in school, calling me a psycho, refusing to talk to me in case I am interrogating them in some alternate reality. It hurt. It really, genuinely hurt. And yeah, I am bitter about it, and not a little bit cynical. Whatever. Nothing I could do for it really. Sure, I am good at shooting a gun, but what am I gunna do, go on a shooting spree, prove them all right? Hah, fat chance.

No, my best option, my dream really, is to join the PRA. Make a name for myself, maybe rehabilitate the name of false precogs at least. Maybe then it will all have been worth it.

“All right you guys, find a partner. I will be walking around and giving advice when needed, but for now, get someone you can work with to play around with your power. Remember, you can exercise the three pillars later. Innovation is what I want to see.” Coach Manny yelled out instructions to the student lounging on the grass, looking up at him.

Part of the course requirements for the PRA track is Practical Manifestation. A glorified gym class, to be quite honest. But one in which all members were expected to exercise their powers and really try to get a good sense for how their power worked. Somewhat less useful for me, seeing how it is on all the time, given it’s passive nature. Really, practice suppressing it would be more useful to me. But some people end up with powers that can’t be practiced with particularly well.

A lot of the kinetics tend to have trouble controlling themselves, and cause property damage, so they tend not to practice. Of course, the reason they can’t control it, is that they haven’t practiced enough. Bit of a nasty bind there.

Right then, time to find a partner, preferably someone struggling to find someone. I glance around, and spot a blonde twink, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he seemed bursting with nervous energy. Decent chance he was a speedster.

I walked up, and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey dude, do you want to partner up?”

His head blurred as it whipped to the side to look at me, surprise shining from his face. Yeah, he was a speedster, no doubt about ti.

“Um, actually, uh, I already have a partner,” he said, a touch of guilt leaking into his voice. Before I could reply, he sped off, leaving me in a cloud of dust. Figuratively anyways, at most it was a few grass clippings that were torn up. I’m pretty sure he didn’t even have a partner anyways.

Ok, cool, very very cool, I thought to myself as I looked around, annoyed. After a moment of deliberation, I walked over to a tall black-haired chick, with pretty substantial muscles. I was pretty sure she had increased strength of some sort, so at least I knew she would be struggling for a partner.

“Hey, need a partner?” I asked, trying to put on a cool disaffected tone. The cool part I nailed, but the disaffected part was probably more bitter nihilism than anything.

She turned around and looked at me, blinking somewhat owlishly.

“Uh, sure? You got any strength, or any kind of defensive power?” She asked somewhat concerned.

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine,” I said, blowing off her concern.

“Yeah, he’ll be fine, feel free to go all out,” another girl said with an acidic grin on her face, seemingly listening in.

It took a moment, but muscle girl apparently was able to put two and two together. I could clearly see the moment she figured out it, as her expression became guarded and cold. So much for jocks being dumb. Should’ve know it was a stupid stereotype.

“Right then,” I said cautiously, not wanting to scare off my new partner, at least not before everyone else was paired up. “My name is Ryan, I have some minor prediction powers. How about you?”

“Anna. I’m strong.” She replied, somewhat stoically.

“You mind telling me how strong?” I ask, raising my eyebrows a bit.

She let out a huff of air. “Yeah, I can lift about five hundred pounds or so per hand. Though with good form I can bench press two tons. Could probably do more, but the closest gym with the premium facilities is expensive as hell.”

“Alright, now we’re cooking with oil,” I said, as my precognition stirred to life, starting to place information in her profile. “One more thing, I just need you to go through your normal range of motions. Warm ups, jumping jacks, stretches.”

Anna narrowed her eyes at me and pursed her lips. “You aren’t about to be doing anything funny with your power are you?”

“No, of course not, I would never,” I said, putting on a shocked and dismayed look. “I only wanted to ogle your body, I swear!”

Anna raised an eyebrow, and then cracked a smile and snorted a bit, breaking the tension.

“I kid, I kid,” I say, holding up my hands defensively. “Yeah, I am precognitive, but its a false precognition. Now that I know how much weight you can lift, seeing your body move will let me start to simulate the underlying muscle systems and roughly the amount of power I can expect to deal with. It’s a super simplified model of the body, more analogous to the tendons and anchors that robots use. I literally cannot do a complex enough simulation for that to be a problem.”

“All right, fair enough,” Anna said, shaking her head a little. “Ogle away.”

She got down on the ground, and began stretching, showing a decent display of flexibility. Others probably would have stared at her, watching her muscles ripple under her tanned skin, droplets of sweat beading up under the sun. For me? Sure, that was kinda fun, but the data!

There is something absolutely viscerally satisfying about filling in data in my precognitive model. I don’t know if it is something about my ability that just pumps my brain full of dopamine, but watching Anna’s muscles ripple and then become gray visualizations of my best understanding of the human musculoskeletal system was absolutely enchanting. Even as she flexed, my model did as well, and with each new bit of information, became more refined, making micro-adjustments here and there, before the model was capable of walking, running, and dancing elegantly.

“Right then,” I said, mouth having gone dry in the process of staring at her. “Sparring, three rounds?”

She hopped to her feet out of the effortless push up she was executing, and looked at me doubtfully.

“If you’re sure about this,” she said, somewhat doubtfully.

“It’ll be fine,” I say, trying to reassure her. “Come on, shoes off.”

Shaking her head silently in reluctance, she began tugging her shoes and socks off, placing them off to the side where I had set me. I proceeded to toss my phone and wallet into the pile, and she followed my example. I examined her critically for a moment, but it didn’t seem like she was wearing any jewelry.

“Right then, lets go.” I said, getting into a ready stance. I wasn’t formally trained in martial arts or anything, don’t get me wrong. But I can brawl a bit, and with the feedback from my power, can punch a touch above my weight.

We both stood still for a moment. Based on her stance, Anna was likely an amateur, but knew enough that she didn’t seem keen on approaching. Right then. I guess its all up to me. I breathed in. I breathed out. In, and out.

I let the visions of gray flood my vision, as I began to feint to her left side. She moved in time to block me had I committed, but I really just wanted extra information. On how she moved, on how fast she moved. She looked a touch sloppy, her weight distribution off just a tad. I doubt its her fault, probably just taught to fight by someone without her strength, and then using that style with her abilities. Small errors reinforcing into bad habits.

I feint again, but even as she goes to block, I hit her in the elbow, throwing her off a bit.

“What, you just going to tap me like that? How you expecting to win like that,” Anna said confidently.

Oh hell, I groaned to myself. It’s strength and durability. I really should have expected that. If you are lifting two tons without any kind of durability power, you are in for a bad time. Looks like nobody really explained that to her though. I doubt shes been in a situation where she would realize that she can take hits others can’t. No real context for the average baseline.

I breath, in and out. In and out. A sequence of events plays out in front of me, gray phantoms enacting a fight scene in half a dozen possibilities.

I lunge forward, taking her by surprise, punching her quickly in the stomach, mostly to surprise her rather then to do damage, before grabbing her arm, and maneuvering behind her, pushing her to the ground. She flailed for a moment, before stopping, realizing that even though the grab isn’t really hurting her, she is unable to get the leverage needed to get up.

“Round one to me.” I said, still focused.

“How did you do that? I wasn’t really expecting you to get in close enough to grapple.” She asked, confused. Understandable. I imagine most people would prefer to keep their distance against super strong opponents.

“Strength powers have a crucial weakness. That is, they tend to be disproportionate to weight. That’s why heros like Anchor are worth their weight in gold, while strength heros are a dime a dozen. You still only weigh about the same as any of us here, so if I can keep you off balance, I can push you around. It’s like tug of war. Nothing to do with strength, everything to do with holding against the force. Throw in a bit of prediction, and I can edge out an early win.”

I take my position again, and Anna’s eyes narrow, clearly on to my cheap tricks. I feint once or twice, but she isn’t having it. Probably skeptical of my ability to hurt her, even with my full strength. I start to edge my way closer to her, bit by bit, until she realizes I am trying to maneuver her. At the moment, as she steps forward instead of backing up, I dart inside her guard and bash my elbow into her chest, silently swearing as it barely sinks in.

Anna starts falling back, wind knocked out of her, but she manages to grab my arms while I am still in reach, and grapple me to the ground, manhandling me to the ground like I am a puppet, as she coughs and gasps for air. I go limp, my precognition assuring me there is no way I am getting out of that hold, at least without seriously injuring her.

“Right then. Round two to you. Nice job.” I compliment her, as she pauses her gasping to level a murderous glare at me. Making friends I guess. Hope she doesn’t track me down after class.

“I’ll give you a moment to get your breath back before we go again.” I suggest charitably.

After said moment, which was really more like a couple minutes, we were up and at it again. This time I really tried to lean on my power. Footwork to move her position, flicking my fists out to distract her, setting up chains of events, veritable sequences of action.

At long last, I flick out my fist, seemingly over-extending my reach. Anna moves in to try and take advantage, but I dance to the side, ball up my fist, and wallop her arm right in the nerve, right as her muscles are shifting through the punch. At that point, my precognition smugly assures me, she will gasp in pain and reel back, allowing me to move in and deliver two punches to her gut to put her down. Unfortunately, my precognition isn’t perfect, and clearly failed to estimate Anna’s pain resistance.

She bellowed like a wounded bull, and lashed out her arm to backhand me and force me away. Here, my precognition slinks back into the room, seemingly contrite, at least while I am anthropomorphizing it, and nervously informs me about exactly how much pain I am about to be in if I take that hit which could likely crumple steel.

Abandoning my previous movement, I hop backwards to bleed off the force and take a glancing hit, rolling with the punch, or slap rather. Even with all that, I still fly a couple meters backwards and hit the ground with a thud which jolts me to the core, air driven out of me from the hit to my chest. A moment passes, while my muscles spasm, before I tortuously suck into a strangled breath. In and out. In and out. Oh Jesus fuck that hurts. Ah, that's gunna bruise for sure.

A shadow passes over me, as Anna jogs over, eyes wide open in fright. Oh boy, she probably thinks she just killed me. She is joined by the coach, who looks down at me unimpressed, before waving over one of the medics who is on constant standby on the practice fields. The medic looks down at me, and then lays his hand on my arm, a glow of white light flashing as my chest was filled with a brief burning sensation, before a liquid coolness. I know this guy, though I’ve never got his name. Ol’ Icy Hot. Patched me up a couple times actually.

“Two broken ribs, extensive bruising. I’ve taken care of the worst, but you may be tender for a few days,” He said, before walking back to his station.

“Now what the flying fuck were you thinking, getting in a fistfight with a strength mentalist with no strength or durability yourself? What kind of moron do I have for a student?” Coach said, seemingly pissed at me for causing an incident.

“Pride goeth before the fall,” I replied, feeling well enough to snark a bit, as I start sitting up, grimacing as my chest twinges.

“Yeah, we know, it was an impressive fall to boot. Learn anything about your power Mr. Precog?” He asked, still somewhat miffed.

“Yeah, what not to do,” I said, deadpan.

Anna snickered, before catching herself and going back to looking guilty again.

“And what about you?” Coach said, rounding on Anna. “Nobody knows what the fuck a precog might be thinking, but you should damn well know better. With your kind of strength, you could have killed him. You knew he was going to lose, why indulge his fantasies?”

“I mean, he was doing really well,” she replied sheepishly.

“I was doing really well,” I muttered under my breath. Neither of the two glanced at me. Well, whatever.

“I saw you beat the shit out of him, you call that doing well?” Coach asked.

“I mean, he won the first round indisputably,” Anna said defensively. “I grabbed him for the second, but if I wasn’t holding him on so tight, I would have been lying on the ground, stunned. And for the third, yeah I fucked him up, but that's only cause he hit my arm with something, hurt like hell. Probably going to bruise actually.”

Coach looked at both of us, before sighing heavily.

“Alright you two, class is almost over. You two can head out. I will see you next week, and we will be having a serious discussion on which partners are, and are not appropriate to work with. Dismissed.”

I staggered to my feet, and began walking over to the bike rack, waving off Anna’s awkward attempts to help me up. For a moment, it looked like she was going to offer to help me back to the dorm, but I pushed off and started riding quickly enough to dodge that particular issue. Jesus, that still hurt a bit.

I rode over, the journey passing by in a blur, before I hopped off and dragged myself inside. Thomas raised an eyebrow from where he was sitting on the couch, but didn’t make a move to help me. Thanks Thomas, really feeling the comradery of my roommate right now. I grabbed a generic pain reliever, and swallowed it, before cupping some of the water from the faucet in my hands and drinking to wash it down.

With that crucial task out of the way, I staggered over to my room to take a nap, and sleep it off.