Disclaimer: The characters portrayed in the following are not mine and I did not create them.
*
Through a Scanner Uneasy:
When I got there, Lorna was reading. Her knees were raised, blanket on and Hemingway in hand. A lamp at the bedside was illuminating the room, yellow soft light just enough so her eyes weren't straining. She looked sad, her brow furrowed, chewing on the corner of her bottom lip as if she were mulling over the blunt force trauma of Colonel Krebs. I have read those short stories, and I know how affecting they are. The primal mixture of despair and rage, aggression and lust, all the emotions the stunted Hemingway founded his ideas on. They were the basis of his designs, his feelings about human life and human death.
Much like young Nick Adams I was on a journey. Magneto dispatched me because I am the fastest. I have recently developed the ability to traverse distances through power lines and reside within electrical circuits, something I have been on the path toward ever since puberty. I fear that much like Amelia Voight I am destined to become a bioelectrical charge, and that my corporeal body as it exists now will dissipate into so much static and lightning. Even now I find in times of stress I have to focus on holding myself together, the transition from flesh to current the easier of the twin states. It seems my lot in life is to be in a shifting struggle, a permanent flux from one extreme to another. Am I passive or aggressive in my pursuit of genetic harmony? Does my straightforward association with what the world sees as a terrorist organisation negate my attempts at balancing the bloodthirsty tendencies of my peers? Do I follow Magneto because he is god-like or because he's a haunted man, pushed into action through the inaction of others, always afraid his kind shall wake up pooled together in the lime pits? I want to save mutantkind from extinction, but no-one else offers and provides the same unity that Magneto does. He is a great man, but do my feelings change when I see that greatness perform acts which are horrific in their own right? His dissolution of the Magistrates in Hammer Bay was one such example. Hundreds dead, the dissenters all dissolved because he wanted it that way. There must be a fine line between being a forceful isolationist and fascist totalitarian. In this way too am I on my journey. Unlike me though, Nick Adams was not asked to spy on his father's subjects. He travelled the great outdoors, capturing the epic wonder of the American mid-west and after the First World War came back to attempt a healing process. I suppose that is a parallel to me and the rest of the Acolytes too. So much of our adult lives have been consumed with war and treachery and the ideals pressed upon us. Now we have Genosha it is difficult not to think the wars are over. But with every enemy struck down, Magneto seems to have more dragon-heads grow in place.
One of these days I ought to get out of this place.
Lorna moves, settling further into the pillows. Her expression has changed. She looks concerned now, I wonder to myself which story she is reading. Behind her eyes I can see a breaking up of emotion. There is a shattered mirror in her head, shards swallowed down into her windpipe, heart bleeding. Havok disappeared. I know they were an item; perhaps Magneto wants to make sure she hasn't gone mad, killed herself or something. I had heard she was a lot more sensible than that, but maybe this reconnaissance is just a check-up. A loose cannon with the powers to rival Magneto...? I don't know what I'm doing here, she is fine, clearly. I can see it in her eyes. There's pain, yes, emotion threatening to boil above the surface maybe; it hasn't been that long since Havok was lost, but going completely mad? The components are there. Besides, there are plenty of other things I could put my efforts into: monitoring the United Nations Security Council mutant affairs correspondent Alda Huxley who we all think in the event of Magneto's sovereignty collapsing, will make a play for power. And that's only if Genosha falls apart, which it won't as the U.N I'm sure has taken note.
But then I realise this entire time Lorna has been staring at the television in the corner of the room, the vessel within which my bioelectric essence is stored. She is watching me like a fish in a bowl... or is her attention simply focussed on what she is reading?
Her attention isn't diverted, how could she possibly see me, I flow through chips and wires, it would be like a doctor watching the synapses in a person's brain. If she doesn't know I'm here, why would she look for me?
Her eyes are directed back down; whatever thoughts circulated in her mind were probably those of Hemingway and Havok, Nick Adams and Krebs and all the bullfighting. She sighs, resting her head against the wall above the backboard and shutting it all out for a moment. The book closes and is put on the nightstand. Her legs go down, she tries to relax.
In the confines of my plastic prison I push up against the glass. Electrons and transistors are my transport, the mains the means of arrival. I turn to go, my time here is done.
'...Alex...' She whispers, and I look in once more, my form on the threshold of the wall socket. Something about the quiet desperation captivates me. The poor girl. I don't know whether I have ever felt about anyone the way she does about Havok. I'm not sure if there is any time left.
Her fingers rest on the frame of a picture. Her eyebrows press together, a frown. I make the journey to her bedside lamp, the bulb flicking off for less than a split-second. She doesn't notice.
I strain to see the picture. It's not a good angle, the way she's holding it, and now her fingers on the glass. When it recedes I make out what looks like a pylon. The scribble comes into view as she puts the frame back next to the lamp. It reads: Mt. Diablo, with love xxx and in it she looks content. He looks happy too. But he is gone. She sobs a little, throws back the covers and goes to the wardrobe. It is past time I am gone, but again there's a pull inside as I see her tug out a black shirt, I know it's his.
What am I waiting for?
She holds it to her chest fiercely. Nobody has ever done that to me. She inhales its scent, the smell of Alex lost and denied for too many nights. He is dead; I know that, the rest of the world knows that. Time to let go, woman. Her tears are absorbed into the collar, into the sleeves, she buries her face into it. I wish that I could get out and comfort her. But it wouldn't be a good idea. I would be discovered, and the reception I want to provide would be disastrous. The fibre of her being pours into that shirt, her crying freely and loudly, the kind of heaving the bereaved do. I've heard it once before, from Sally when Rusty Collins died. The gravity with which two people orbit each other is surprising. Then, her shoulders went up and down, her face red, she screamed, I left. This sort of emotion... I can't handle it. I didn't know what to do for her, just like with Lorna Dane. She seems so alone, so isolated, padding this empty apartment grieving for someone she doesn't know whether he's alive or dead or what. How do you deal with that? How do you get by, when all the weight in the world that used to be supported by two gets shifted onto just one? I guess that's why I'm here. Magneto is looking out for her. She hasn't gone insane, she hasn't committed suicide; she's just vibrating with all this pent-up sorrow and grief that only has a chance every so often to pour out. I feel privileged. I feel like I wish that just once that is what could happen to me, because then I would have known an emotion so sacred the absence of which would reduce me to this. I want to feel a love that in its wake I devote myself fully to something, even if it's grief. Then, and maybe only then would I be able to say: yes, this is what I believe in. I believe in love and without it I believe in mourning that love. That love that was pure and undiluted from outside influences and interferences.
I would give all of myself to one thing.
She is prone on her bed now, the shirt draped on top. Her eyes have closed. I think she has cried herself to sleep.
I decide that I am an unlikely partner in her unhappiness. She wouldn't have wanted me here, but here I am nonetheless. I disperse my electric form from the wires in the apartment and materialise through the receiver in her telephone. This is not what Magneto sent me here for but I cannot stand idly by while Lorna simply collapses in on herself.
