“He’s back!” Chris heard from the couch, as he finished wrestling with his duffel bags and turned around to survey the living room. It was good to be back. True, the house didn’t smell great, and it was cramped as ever, but it was home. The living room was as it always was, a semicircle of packed couches huddled around a TV, like animals huddled around a fire for warmth. His roommate, Benjamin, with his short blond hair, and angular, almost feline face sat on his loveseat, idly watching TV. His longtime partner, Max, lay entwined around him like a sweater, eyes locked to his phone. Outside the window, the bottom of the sun was just touching the horizon, filling the room with orange light.

Chris flopped down on his spot, the side of a well-loved, but ripped, brown leather couch after dropping his duffel at his room’s door. Slipping into the scene was familiar, and comfortable, like putting on an old coat, but there were two main differences. The first was what they were actually watching.

“Are you watching the news?”

“Yeah man, it’s crazy.” Benji replied, then turned and looked Chris in the eyes, appraisingly. “Wait, haven’t you heard? Did you not have internet in whatever backwoods you were in?”

“I did, but I was kinda busy. What’s going on?” Chris replied, hoping his apprehension wasn’t showing on his face.

“Oh, you’re going to love this. Watch”. Chris turned his attention to the screen.

“So, Destiny, you’re telling me that she’s more intelligent than before?” The camera was on two women standing by the lip of a shallow pool. One was a bottle blonde in her thirties with a dazzling smile and professional clothing. The other was college aged and decked out in a wetsuit, with light brown skin, a shaved head and an exited frenzy.

“I can’t think of any other way to explain it! I came in yesterday morning, and I was tired. I had been up late last night studying, and I remember that when I came in I was stumbling a little. I looked up at her tank, and she was swimming upright, doing a little stumbling shuffle across the bottom of the tank! When I noticed her matching my movements, she stopped, looked me in the eyes and laughed! She was mocking me!”

“And that’s special?”

“It’s insane! That’s the most humanlike thing I’ve ever seen a dolphin, or any animal do!” The footage switched from the two women to a news anchor in a studio, looking straight at the camera.

“For those who are just tuning in, that was a segment from an interview taken earlier today by our talented Amanda Ross. As you know, over the past two days, animals have been spontaneously mutating in ways that seem fantastic and impossible. That interview was about Betsy, a dolphin in the Nerrin Zoo who was one of those spontaneous mutations.”

A picture popped up in the corner of the screen of a dolphin. It looked sleek, more so than normal with metallic stripes running up its body. The biggest change, however, were its eyes. They were slate grey, and they had an intelligence in them that was off-putting. It wasn’t a cold intelligence, if anything, it looked mirthful. It was still odd.

“Now, we go to Dr. Sarandon, a guest we’ve brought on the show to discuss the possible causes and implications of the Shift, as we’re calling it.”

Benji muted the TV to the faint protests of Max in his lap. Oddly, Max still hadn’t looked up from his phone. Benji turned back to Chris.

“They don’t know anything, all they have is speculation. But it’s incredible! It’s like we’re living in a Silver Age comic book, one of those that were so optimistic about radiation! And it’s happening so fast, too! I think Betsy shifted in only a few hours!”

“Two and a half” came a low rumble from Max.

“Yeah, two and a half. They caught the whole process on a security camera.”

“Wow. What are they… doing?” Chris replied. He was more confused than anything else.

“The people or the animals?”

“The animals.”

“Nothing! That’s another thing!”

“Nothing?”

Max’s low rumble again broke through the conversation. “No major behavioral changes, other than a slight increase in intelligence.”

“No increase in aggression?”

“No! The scientists were worried about that too!” Benji replied to Chris’s confused look. He was like an exited puppy. “A ton of prey animals got predator features, but none of the behaviors! They’re the same as ever!”

What the hell? That deer had attacked him with no provocation! What could have caused it to…

“I have fundamentally misunderstood something.” Chris muttered.

“The world? Clearly, everyone has. Isn’t it great?” Benji chattered as he absentmindedly rubbed his partners arm.

But Chris’s mind was elsewhere. For the TV channel wasn’t the only thing that had changed in their familiar old house. Ben had just reminded him of the other. Him.

Chris broke out of his reverie.

“If you guys could have any superpower, what would you want?” Chris asked.

“Still thinking about Silver age comics, huh? Steel skin. I’d want to be Colossus.” Benji said. “How bout you, Max?”

Max replied immediately, but softly. “Telepathy”.

“That’s an interesting choice. Why mind reading?” Chris was genuinely curious. Max had never seemed the type to want to know what other people were thinking.

“He doesn’t mean it in a creepy way. He just has a hard time figuring out people’s intentions, sometimes. Social situations are hard”. Benji replied for his partner as he read the captions on the TV and ran his hand slowly up and down Max’s upper arm. Max gave him a lazy smile and patted his chest twice as he extricated himself and slowly plodded to the kitchen. To the coffeemaker, no doubt.

“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Chris said as he looked back to the TV. Benji had been right, the Scientist didn’t actually know anything. The news program looked like a scene out of a sitcom, with the pretty brunette newscaster sitting with perfect posture, a permanent smile plastered on her face as a man in a sports jacket and jeans sitting next to her gesticulated wildly and talked constantly. The closed captions appeared to be struggling to keep up as the “scientist” hypothesized, backtracked, then postulated anew.

“What do you think I would have?” Chris asked, hoping that his friends knew him better than himself.

Benji thought for a moment, then responded. “Well, you’re you, so… some kind of super-focus? Super brain maybe?”

Max’s rumble came from the kitchen. He was, in fact, making coffee. “Multiple Man”, he said, matter-of-factly.

“Say again?”

Max came walking out with two mugs of coffee. One black, one with cream. He handed the black one to Chris as he sat down next to his partner, shoulder to shoulder this time, rather than a tangled mass. “You want to do everything, right? Never have enough time? Multiple Man. He was an X-man who could absorb kinetic energy and use it to create mostly independent clones, then reabsorb their memories.”

“Good call, that does fit him”. Benji wrapped his arm around Max’s shoulders and settled back.

“Multiple man, huh?” Chris whispered as he took a sip of the coffee. Great, as usual. He looked back at the inseparable pair. “I’m telling you, if you weren’t dating him, I would be.”

Benji laughed, high and clear. “I know. Fortunately for me, you’re not his type.”

The three settled into companionable silence and each continued their respective activities. Benji watched the TV on mute, flipping through the channels in search of something worth watching. Max read through articles on his phone, looking for any concrete information that had been figured out about the Shift. Chris pondered, trying to figure out his next move.

Eventually, Chris went to his duffel, pulled out his laptop, and started researching boxing gyms in the area.

“Feeling productive today, huh?” Ben asked, absently.

“Yeah, I am, actually. Looking up boxing gyms. Want to go throw punches for an hour or so?”

“There’s one in the campus rec center. I think it’s free. I’d go, but I have to go into work and cycle some cultures. Max might, though.”

“Yeah, I’m game. Never been to a boxing gym before”.

And so they went. Max wasn’t too interested in learning boxing, he was more of a swimmer, but he made an excellent punching bag. After an hour and a half, Max was starting to noticeably droop. Chris sent him outside the gym to sit on a bench as he went to the front desk and negotiated two sessions a week, one group and one private. He strolled out into the newly dark evening, feeling tired but clean. The ache in his arm from this morning was starting to die, overshadowed by slow soreness.

Max sat on the bench, polishing off his water bottle.

“That took more out of you than I was expecting. I’ve been to one of your games.”

“It’s the full gravity. I’m too big for land.” Max said as Chris sat down next to him, the differences between them evident in tableau. Max was larger, several inches taller than Chris’s 6 feet, and broader across the shoulders. His water polo background was evident in his back, whereas Chris was leaner, and more developed in the chest.

“You can’t convince me that exercising in the water is easier.”

“Not easier, just different. Constant, less bursts. I may have to join you again, this was good exercise.” Max tossed his water bottle into the trash can beside the bench and deliberately looked forward, into the distance, away from his friend on the bench. “You’re different.”

“Different?” Chris knew what he was talking about, he had seen it in the mirror after all. Could he hide his new body and mind from his closest friends? Did he want to?

“More focused. Less… frustrated.” Max was speaking slower that even his usual bass rumble, as he tried to form the sentences in a way that was nonconfrontational. “You used to always be a little upset with the world. And yourself.”

“And that’s gone now?”

“I don’t know. Is it?”

It was. Apparently the discontent, the constant grating anxiousness that he had carried with him all his life had been a symptom of his brain chemistry. It also appeared that his friends had noticed. That bothered him more than anything, but it was gone now, so what would change? Would his dynamic with his friends shift? Even with these questions rattling around, he couldn’t bring himself to be worried about them. The anxiousness was gone. He was a happier person now, so how couldn’t things change for the better?

“Huh. I guess it is.”

The two got up from the bench and drove back home in old blue. They listened to the radio in silence over the short drive back from campus, and separated in the living room of their house.

As Max made to walk up the stairs to Ben’s bedroom, he turned and made eye contact with Chris. His slate gaze was piercing and ponderous. The weight of his attention pinned Chris to the floor, in a way that was uncomfortably intimate. Chris bore the weight, knowing that eye contact was difficult for his big friend.

“I look forward to seeing what you’re capable of, now.”

And he walked up the stairs.