“Hey, wanna go to Terrance’s party?” Thomas asked out of the blue.

We had been idly hanging out in the dorm, not really talking, but just vibing, content to exist without much conversation. It was comfortable, just chilling out like that. I’m self aware enough to know that I tend to come off as a prickly misanthrope, which like, fair, but the image of a tragic Shakespearean loner is really just that, an image.

Less than an image really, a delusion that I like to entertain myself with in my weaker moments, when I want to dive headfirst into the limpid waters of self-pity. In fairness, they were nice waters, quite lukewarm. Defeatism and self-indulgence really do tend to be the best emotions to sink into and soak in, after a long, emotionally exhausting day. And if I tend to come back to my dorm emotionally exhausted more often than not, well, I’ve also been slacking on my physical exercises, so I don’t know where you got the idea that I was going to be improving my mental fortitude. Lazy to the core I am, to my frequent detriment.

Back to the tragedy that is my social life. Thomas is a friend. Gabe is a friend. Jessie is, well not a friend, but friendly. In fact, that rather does seem to be the trend doesn’t it. Despite my unenviable social status as a pariah, I continually surprise myself with the number of people I am friendly with.

After breaking the ice, I seemed friendly enough with Anna, at least until she tried to cave my chest in. At this point, I think guilt and embarrassment are the primary emotions she is feeling, which, cool I guess. I’m not really that emotionally invested in it, so we shall see how that goes next week.

Alice, I feel like I was getting somewhere with. Maybe. The sudden and vitriolic push-back against romance kind of took me aback, but whatever. It’s not really personal. If I see her at the gun range, we can see how things shake out.

There are more, maybe a dozen people over the years that I’ve been friendly with, and then let slip to the wayside. Fear of commitment, probably. Easier to be hated than loved really. Far more convenient to push away potential friends and descend into self-satisfied self-loathing, and blame everything wrong in my life on my powers, rather than accept the friends and then grapple with the actual deficiencies in my personality. The crucial difference being that I was born with my powers, but my personality, such as it is, is my fault. Probably. No one to blame but me.

“-Are you even listening?” Thomas said, interrupting my internal dialogue. Hey, therapy is too expensive. May as well lean into introspection and save the money.

“Ah, no. Was it important?” I ask, trying to sound contrite. I wasn’t really, since my eyes glazed over at ‘party’, but it’s important to maintain relationships, and spare people’s feelings. Supposedly.

He leveled a flat glare at me. “Ryan, you need to get out. To get human contact, that isn’t literally just me. I swear, the longer you go without socializing, the worse you get. If I ever left you to live alone, I would return thirty-five years later to find a hermit who is rumored to eat children.”

“Now that is just blatant character assassination.” I said blandly, before taking a sip of root beer.

“I notice you didn’t call it slander,” Thomas shot back, a gleam of triumph in his eyes.

“Well yeah,” I admitted, shrugging my shoulders in defeat. “I am pretty sure slander needs to be false.”

There was a moment of silence, before we both burst out laughing. He might have a bit of a point about my habitual dislike of socialization, but I’ll be damned if I let him know that.

“Ok, seriously though, you should go, you would love it!” He said earnestly, still laughing a bit.

“Thomas, when have I ever given you the impression that I am a masochist?” I asked sardonically.

“Rumor has it you moaned when Anna Jackson slapped you.” He shot back without missing a beat.

“She broke two of my ribs,” I said, deadpan.

“I heard she had you lying on your back on the ground, panting and flushed. Anything you want to tell me?”

“Oh, fuck off,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Fine, fine I will tag along. Maybe I will keep you out of trouble.”

“I doubt that.” Thomas said, winking.

After that fun little exchange, we took the time to take a quick shower, and throw on some slightly fresher clothes. There was a moment of debate about bringing stuff, but we ended up throwing a few packs of energy drinks in the car. Thomas sucked them down like life-saving medicine, and I preferred to have a non-alcoholic option available, since alcohol causes weird interactions with my power.

With the preparation taken care of, we hopped into Thomas’s car, an old hatchback painted a silvery gray, but with the paint peeling to reveal the plastic and aluminum. I would have taken my bike, but I didn’t actually know where the party was being held.

Thomas pulled away from the dorm, his car sputtering like an eighty-year old trying their damned best to smoke a cigarette and promptly die for life insurance fraud. It was loud, noisy, and for the life of me I was surprised that the car didn’t have a respiratory system, for all that it was trying to hack up a lung. After some driving which Thomas would laugh off as dubious and I would classify as lunatic and illegal in several states, we made it to the party.

I stumbled out of the car, bent over with my hands on my knees, grimacing as I looked up at the brightly lit house. I fucking despise cars. I get extremely carsick, partially just the motion and the nausea, and partially my power helpfully informing me of every trajectory of every permutation of a nine car pile up should Thomas or indeed any other car so much as twitch their hands by two inches at highway speeds.

My particular brand of precognition of course works only on what I know or believe. If there are holes in my knowledge, it gets rather fuzzy, and takes its best guess. But I have my drivers license, and know how to drive a car, which means that I am very well aware of the physics of a car. And as a math problem, it has shockingly simple inputs with devastatingly complex outputs. Object A traveling at this trajectory at this speed, changing direction? With ten or twenty others then reacting to that choice? All of which moving at speeds easily capable of maiming and killing people? My power absolutely delights in that, taking simple inputs and extrapolating every godawful output.

“Hey dude, are you okay?” Thomas asked, concerned.

I tightly balled my hands into fists, inserting my thumbs into them and squeezing, an old trick to avoid nausea. I closed my eyes, and started breathing. In, and out. In, and out.

And then I fucking vomited anyways, because there’s no justice in this universe.

“Herk!”I gasped, as my stomach rebelled and decided to stage a bloody coup. A small splash of clear liquid passed my lips and spattered on the asphalt, slowly draining into the storm drain. I looked at it in disgust, a clear, slightly viscous liquid with white foamy bubbles interspersed. Mostly acid then, I thought to myself, as I registered the burning in my throat and mouth, and the godawful taste like battery acid coating my tongue.

I scrunched up my face, collecting saliva, and spat once or twice more, to try and clear the taste. While bent over and holding my stomach, I snapped my fingers at Thomas, who guiltily intuited what I needed and snagged an energy drink from the trunk. Placing it in my impatient hand, I popped it open and took a sip. Anything would be an improvement. Gah, cherry. Not much of an improvement, but improvement none the less.

“Cars. Can’t stand em. I am good now,” I croaked at Thomas. Still wasn’t a hundred percent, but the energy drink was putting in work, despite tasting like poison. Would it have killed him to get something that wasn’t cherry? But I am just being bitter, I appreciated the gesture.

“Right then,” Thomas said, still clearly not convinced. “Shall we go in? I can get the drinks while you, uh, freshen up in the bathroom.”

“Is it that bad?” I asked, ruefully.

“You look like death warmed over.” He said. Well, let it not be said that I don’t have a candid roommate. Honestly, still better than the alternative.

Right then. I started making my way up to the house, which was perched on a bit of a hill. I grimaced as I started hearing loud music playing. Normally I didn’t really have a problem with that sort of thing, but I was already rather out of sorts.

Opening the door, I pushed past a pair of jocks talking about the recent crime wave in the city, and started glancing around for a bathroom. Their eyes followed me, perhaps concerned. After making a right, I managed to find one.

Closing and locking the door, I briefly appreciated the lessened sound of music, and the room itself was pleasant enough, tiled with a calming teal and some pictures of sailboats hung on the walls. I splashed some water on my face, and inspected myself in the mirror. Eh, it wasn’t too bad. My face was starting to regain it’s color, as much as my complexion would allow at any rate, and I looked myself up and down to make sure my clothes didn’t get hit.

Exiting the room, I began walking around the party to see what was going on. Most of the people there looked to be in their senior year or graduated. Making my way towards the beverages, I was pleased to see that some considerate soul had brought non-alcoholic options, like soda and canned water. Mind you, it would have been rude if they didn’t. Sure, my powers were more obnoxious while under the influence, but some people were genuinely dangerous. Empaths and telepaths mostly, but several others had issues, making things rather hit or miss.

Which is rather the gamble with mind altering substances after all. Our powers come from our minds, and are shaped by our personalities. Doing a tab of LSD or line of coke is rather like a rolling the dice. That's not to say that they are universally bad of course. Powers and power interactions are dependent on how drugs interact with a person. Some speedsters, and frankly precog adjacent individuals are calmed down by amphetamines, usually due to ADHD or ADD which often presents with those power sets. The telekine super-group tends to be all over the place, but can have trouble with downers.

One thing which is absolutely mandatory for all US citizens, is the manifestation drug panel. Around puberty, when peoples powers graduate from mild nuisance, or party trick, to legitimately powerful, the government mandates a week be taken for drug testing. It takes a while, because the nurses running the operation and supervising doctors prefer to avoid mixed effects. No double dipping on weed and beer.

Its one of those things which ends up being a lot like sex ed. Exciting and titillating for anyone who hasn’t done it, and excruciatingly boring for anyone who has. The doctors take you to a white room, strap you to a gurney with pretty high quality restraints, insert a saline drip, and then start the panel. If you are lucky, they put on cartoons. I had some jackass doctor put on CSPAN while I was doing my hallucinogen testing, so take that as you will.

Unlike an allergen panel, which it gets compared to a lot, it isn’t a series of micro exposures. Rather, the nurses run the drip, and progressively turn up the concentration until you report feeling something, or they notice a power reaction. If there is no noticeable power reaction, they turn up the concentration until it is at standard recreational use. Which is honestly kind of weak, compared to what people are really doing, but alas, the legal standard does not keep pace with the street standard.

For myself, I don’t tend to react much to stimulants, interestingly, though some of the stronger fare actually makes it a touch easier to manage larger and more complex event chains. Depressants are a mixed bag, but alcohol is a solid no from me, with quite poor reactions. Doesn’t help that I am also a lightweight. Opioids don’t really affect my power, I just avoid them for the addiction issues. If anything psychedelics are the class that I really react to, but that tends to be more positive. LSD in particular absolutely throws my precognition into overdrive, making absolutely wild predictions which tend to have quite low probability, but when triggered are predicted almost flawlessly.

Anyways, the government still takes a dim view on drugs, though it has admittedly loosened up a bit. But the panel is absolutely essential, given how literally everyone in the world could have an adverse reaction to a substance used in medicine. Sure, the recreational issues are important as well, but blowing up a back alley because you had a bad reaction with laced blow is entirely different from destroying a hospital due to a botched medical procedure which led to a bad reaction with an opioid. True story that last one, over two hundred people died, which helped establish the panel over the previous methods.

Grabbing a root beer, I started making my way through the party. I tend to be a bit of a wet blanket, but if I can find some party games at least, I will have a bit of fun. Until I am banned of course.

The upper floor seemed to be where trysts were cordoned off to, a set of rooms where it seemed people were making out, or indeed hooking up. I raised an eyebrow as I heard a moan from one of the rooms which was almost certainly Thomas. Not really that surprising, since he is an incorrigible flirt, and he and his boyfriend aren’t exactly exclusive, but I was somewhat shocked at the speed he got to it.

The main floor was mostly for dancing and drinking, neither of which I really felt like at the moment. I began heading downstairs, and smiled as I heard the clack of pool balls, and a quieter murmur of conversation. Bingo.

It was a nice basement, a couple couches facing a television, a couple tables, and a pool table central to the room, with a dart board hung up beside it. A pair of well dressed dudes, one Asian and one black, and a pale lady in a green dress were chatting at the table as I approached them.

“Right then, mind if I cut in?” I asked, cheerfully.

“Sure”, the black dude said, leaning the pool cue against his body. “My names Dave. My buddy here is Fred, and this beautiful flower is Serena.”

“Go fuck yourself Dave, sucking up to me isn’t getting your lost money back,” Serena barked at him, grinning good-naturedly. “So, you wanna join, how about you give us your name, and give me your money.”

I laughed at the exchange. “My name is Ryan. Sorry about the money, but I’m playing scale rules. Don’t need any of you tracking me down after the party to mug me.”

“Come on Ryan, we were counting on you to win our money back from Serena. You really think your talent is that good? We can waive the scale, make it fun.” Fred said, laughing as he took a swing of beer.

“Alright, why the hell not?” I ask rhetorically, as I pick up a pool cue from the wall mount, hefting it in my hands to gauge the weight. “Mind you, I’m not taking anything for myself. I win one game, and Dave gets back what he lost in his last game. I win the second, and same deal for Fred. After that, scale rules. I figure if you’ve already wiped em out, you can do it again.”

Fred and Dave let out a few celebratory whoops, before crowding around the table. Serena rolled her eyes while smiling. “Alright, I’ll take you up on that. No confidence in these two to hold onto their money though?

“Pfft, nah,” I replied.

“Valid,” Fred said, in a self-deprecating tone, under his breath.

“Right then. Cards on the tables. I am a bit of an odd duck as far as powers go. I can do positioning. If I want my pool cue in the perfect position, or by extension the pool ball, I can place it exactly, near a hundred percent of the time.” Serena said smugly.

“That's neat,” I said, mildly impressed. “How the hell did you not get pushed into scale rules though?”

“Cause you’re a pussy who needs to lighten up, and learn that not all contests are fair, especially for fun,” Dave said lazily.

“That is some solid cope if I ever heard it,” Fred snarked at Dave. “She’s good at trick shots, but actually some trouble positioning multiple balls, especially if they aren’t in the holes.”

“Oof,” I said, grimacing slightly. Yeah, powers enhancing positioning were good, but frankly my power is just better in every way. “Yeah, I am a false precog. Specializing in physics and ballistics.”

Dave raised his eyebrows, a touch warily. “Well you don’t see that every day.”

“Are we sure that we shou-” Fred started venturing before getting cut off by Serena.

“Of course I’m sure. You heard him, two rounds to make your money back and scale rules from there. If you are up in arms about fairness, then we’ll go again and I’ll get the money back.”

Fred shrugged, and didn’t offer any more protest, seemingly happy to go along with it as long as Serena was.

With that out of the way, and Dave heading back upstairs to get some more drinks, Serena and I settled down to play.

It was a good game, and she would have been a fairly tough opponent for anyone else. Unfortunately, I had several advantages. Perfect ability to gauge trajectory, even of multiple balls ricocheting off each other, but more than that, Serena was actually disadvantaged by her power in a sense. Typically when playing pool, my power has to account for a degree of randomness. People’s hands twitch, they don’t hit the ball consistently, trajectories are off by a fraction. Serena didn’t have any of that. As long as I put her in a position of taking the optimal choice each time, which happened maybe eighty percent of the time, I would know what move she would try to make, and be assured that she wouldn’t make a mistake and throw me off my game.

The game was in a sense, won from the start. It was a fun time though, Fred and Dave alternating between cheering and jeering as they threw out advice from the sidelines, while Serena let slip curses and taunts in a relatively even ratio. I won the first game handily, and the second game by a wider margin. The third game was closer. I like playing pool, but absolutely bullying other players tends to get you kicked out of groups, so I had to conspire to let Serena have a closer score, which ended up being a bit of a fun challenge.

“Christ, you make it look easy,” Serena said, a touch of frustration in her voice, as she laughed off her losses. “Still, a treat to watch.”

“There’s a reason I play scaled. If not, at best I’m politely asked to leave, at worst I get jumped after the party,” I said, laughing a bit myself. “I don’t think I am legally allowed within 50 miles of Vegas unless I am a contractor for the casinos. Special consideration from the Nevada lawmakers.”

Dave raised his eyebrows in sympathy, having warmed up to me with both time and alcohol.

“Damn bro, that’s actually pretty fucked. Where do they get off doing shit like that?”

“Ah well, such is life. Rumor has it they pay pretty well, but they treat false precogs like dogshit. Twelve hour shifts, and the benefits suck shit. I tend to avoid casinos on principle to be honest, so even if I weren’t preemptively banned, you wouldn’t catch me in one.” I replied, setting the pool cue on the table, and waving Fred forwards.

Seeing a dartboard, I glanced around, before reaching into the bin helpfully placed beside it, and withdrew a handful of metal tipped playing darts. I twirled one in my hands admiring the balance, before backing up and taking my shot. Bah, no bullseye.

“See, that's where you lose me friend,” Serena piped up, not taking her eyes off Fred who was lining up his next shot. “Me, I would try and get in, and just dick on those sorry fools, make an easy payday. Besides, you’d think that the casinos would have developed some way of preventing cheating with powers by now.”

I threw another dart while thinking over Serena’s words. Another good hit, but still no bullseye. I wasn’t as good with darts as I was with guns. Sure, I know what I have to do to get the perfect hit each time, but knowing objectively how to win and actually doing it are completely different things. I just don’t have the muscle memory, and my muscles twitch like everyone else. Ironically, Serena would likely beat me easily in this.

“It’s a sad sight,” I replied finally, a somber note in my voice. “You know some casinos make their internal cam footage public? It lets them get free feedback on optimal camera positioning from people who care about that sort of thing, and they have bounties posted if you can catch cheating. I used to go through those. Its a bit of pocket money, and it helps train my power a bit.”

“I didn’t know that. I confess, I was kind of curious as to how you know so much about the inside of casinos without having been in one, under the circumstances.” Dave said.

“In fairness, I don’t think a lot of people know, except the people in the adjacent communities,” I said shrugging. I sighed a bit, and thought about how best to phrase this, without turning them off. “The vast majority of repeat clientele for casinos, are gambling addicts. They experience a rush of dopamine on a big win, and then spend the proceeds trying to get it again.

If I push, I am capable of seeing every line of probability in that footage. The paths people walk, the likelihood of tripping, the odds on every machine. At a certain point, after watching enough footage, the people themselves become part of the environment. The addiction makes them predictable, for lack of a better word.

There was this guy, Jim. Used to come in on the Fridays, like clockwork. Big guy, looked like a retired power-lifter. Anyways, I see him walk in, and instantly get a prediction of how much money he is losing today. How many drinks he has, how many hours he stays, how many times he loses. Big guy on camera, and all I see of his life is when he comes in, drinks and gambles.

One day, he doesn’t come in. Makes me curious. I check records, Jim is dead. I don’t know how. Maybe he drank himself to death, maybe he had a heart attack after letting himself go, maybe he committed suicide after a loved one left, probably for gambling debts.

It was old footage. He was dead, and had been dead since before I started looking at the tapes in the first place. Spooky huh, footage of a dead man. All I know about Jim is his name, the fact that he lost $43,679 dollars in the time I watched him, and that the most surprising thing he ever did, the action that had the absolute least probability, was the day he failed to walk into the casino. I stopped watching casino footage shortly after that.”

I smiled grimly at their awkward expressions. Classic Ryan, bringing down the mood. For all of us. I felt a bit empty now, the warm atmosphere of the party having drained away, leaving me hollow. And cynical, but that was par for the course.

“Sorry, got a little serious at the end there. I’m going to go track down my friend. Enjoy the party.”

I made my way upstairs, ignoring the halfhearted protests of the three I had met. Instead of tracking down Thomas, I sent a quick text to him letting him know I was finding my own way home. And with that, I walked into the chilly night, and called a cab.