Dan stared at the stranger in the mirror, blinking a few times, but the reflection didn't change. The man's hair was matted with sweat and blood, his face unrecognizable from the swollen eye and cut lip, and an arm that was missing from the elbow down. Blood seeped through heavily bandaged wounds on this abdomen, and his chest rose and fell in ragged breaths. Dan could almost feel the pain and exhaustion emanating from him. It was as if he had fought a thousand battles, and was barely hanging on to life.
"What is happening? Am I really losing my mind?"
He reached out and touched the glass, half expecting to feel some kind of resistance or otherworldly material, but it felt cold and smooth, just like a normal mirror.
His hand trembled as he lifted it to touch his own face, but it wasn't his. It was the stranger's with scars and cuts all over it. His heart started racing, and he stumbled back a few steps but he couldn't tear his eyes away from the reflection. He felt a strange sense of empathy and compassion for the man, as if he shared in his suffering.
Suddenly, he noticed something strange happening to the figure. His wounds began to close up, and fresh skin formed over them until they were gone completely. The missing arm regenerated slowly until it became whole again, followed by the swollen eye. But something else was happening too he realized, and he stared in disbelief as the man transformed into Dan himself. He gasped for air, trying to comprehend what had happened as time seemed to flow again. He washed his face and slowly walked over to the bed. After taking some time to gather himself, he tried to come up with explanations for his predicament.
The most obvious one involved his accident. Maybe he had really tried to commit suicide and his injury mixed with his mental state was causing these hallucinations.
If that wasn't true then it meant what he saw had some meaning. Same should be true for the image.
"The image?"
He immediately closed his eyes and was surprised to see that he could understand the writing now. It also had new additions, the "stats" now had values filling the gap at the top. But they had a locked symbol next to them. He could also see a list whose entries were all blacked out - except two - he concentrated on them and they came into focus.
Time dilation and Foresight.
The most logical description of the first one would mean shortening time intervals.
"Slowing down time?!"
It was absurd and meant that he could manipulate one of the fundamental properties of world itself. If used correctly, he could achieve almost anything and fulfil all his desires. He thought of Melisa and Brad laughing and enjoying themselves. His old feelings started to come up to the surface, something he had buried deep within himself. Before they could take on a dark form, he shook his head and cleared his mind. He needed to take this one step at a time.
He focused on the second one from the list, Foresight. He was stumped as he thought about it. The conventional definition of the word implied predicting things in advance. This was even harder to believe as having knowledge of the future would mean his possibilities were practically endless.
He decided to test these and stood up. He placed himself in the middle of the room and stretched his arm forward. He felt that the powers might need to be channeled somehow through his hand. He took a deep breath and shouted.
"TIME DILATION!!"
When it had no effect, he shouted again, this time pushing both his arms forward and putting more strength into his voice.
"TIME DILATION!!!!". He waited for a while but nothing happened. Disheartened, he shouted again at the top of his lungs.
"TIME DILATION!!!!!!!!!!!"
He was startled when he heard knocking coming from the door.
"Dan? You okay in there? I heard you shouting something." It was his mother asking with worry in her voice.
He finally realized what he was doing and felt like an idiot. Before she could open the door and see him in a stupid pose, he quickly put his arms down and reassured her.
"Sorry mom, I was just watching a video and had the volume up too high. I will turn it down now."
She seemed to be convinced and left. After composing himself, he decided to try a new strategy as this one didn't seem to work. He closed his eyes and the image came up. He focused on part where the word Time Dilation was written. He imagined some kind of magical power flowing from the image to his body. After a few moments, he opened his eyes and found that nothing had changed. He felt dejected but tried again, only to be met once more with failure. Discouraged and exhausted, he flopped back onto the bed. The possibility of the first explanation being right was creeping into his mind. He stared at the page where he had written down the word.
'Time' Dilation.
Maybe he was thinking too abstractly—he needed to understand what this power actually did.
What exactly is time?
An expression of progress from one state to another?
"Do I have to visualize the passage of time slowing down?"
After a few seconds of thinking, he realized the answer might be simpler than anticipated. He took out his phone and switched the digital watch display to analog. He studied the second hand as it moved methodically around the clock face. He focused on it, imagining the distance it travelled each second being cut it half. He did it again and again until it happened, a strange sensation began to ripple across his skin; it was like getting goosebumps. He also noticed the phone acting weird, it looked like it was skipping frames. He stood up and dropped his pen onto the floor—it moved slowly as if gravity was suddenly weaker than before, landing with a drawn-out thud.
Excited by this newfound discovery he ran over to the window and looked out in amazement – cars and people moved ever so slowly in the street below. He had done it! Time itself was under his control.
But something else had changed too – the ambient sound that filled the air was now uncomfortable, but it wasn't loud enough to cause any effects. It was like a constant buzzing of a bee far away blended together with unrecognizable noises. With newfound confidence, he grabbed his phone again and tried to will time back to normal… yet nothing happened. He started to panic with his heart beating faster. Only after multiple attempts, he finally realized that he had to take exact number of steps in reverse before normality returned. He was relieved but knew that mastering this newfound power would take lots of practice and patience.
He moved away from the window and prepared to test the second power, Foresight. He took out a coin from his pocket and focused on one side willing it with all the force he could muster. Then he flipped it and checked the result; he was right.
"But this could be a coincidence, the odds are fifty-fifty after all"
He repeated the experiment several times, following the same process.
"Hmm, this is not great"
He got it right three times in a row until the opposite happened on the last flip.
"Did I not use the power correctly on the last one or did I get lucky the first three times?"
Coin flip wasn't a great way to test the power. He searched his room and found an old six-sided dice among some forgotten board games. He took it out and performed the same experiment. But after he was done, excitement had given way to disappointment; he'd only got it right once. The results were mostly inconclusive. Either the power didn't work or he wasn't activating it correctly. Frustrated, he decided to return to practicing using the first power in order to master it fully.
After doing some simple tests like dropping the pen at multiple speeds, he felt tired. He was sweating as well like he had just finished doing light exercise.
"I must be using something to active these"
He closed his eyes to study the image again and noticed a new entry for "energy" next to the other stats.
"So it will only show up after I use that particular thing?"
He scratched his head, this was extremely inconvenient. There could be dozens of stats but he wouldn't know until he did something that used that exact aspect of his body.
"No point in thinking about them now."
He took the notebook again and noted down what he saw in the image.
Strength: 23
Reflexes: 14
Defense: 20
Energy: 45
> Time Dilation
> Foresight
There was quite a bit of blank space and the locked symbol still appeared beside each stat value. He focused on the energy stat as it had the highest number. It could either mean physical stamina or the "magical energy" that powered his abilities. He thought of something but rested for few minutes to calm his body down.
When he was ready, he took the same position in the middle of the room. He had been doing things on a small scale so he wanted to push it to see the limits of his power. He remembered seeing a movie in which a superhero had a similar ability. He ran along the walls horizontally or picked up objects that moved so slow that they were essentially floating; he wanted to replicate it. So he gathered a bunch of objects including some books, pens, a baseball and some Lego bricks. He prepared himself and focused on his phone. This time he used the power dozens of times until he was satisfied. Then he threw all the objects randomly into the air.
It worked, they seemed to stay afloat in the air like they were attached to invisible strings. He quickly moved and gathered the objects one by one, placing them where they belonged. With newfound confidence, he tried to wall run but immediately fell down. Cursing himself, he stood up and tried again, this time getting a running start. But he just bumped into the wall and fell flat on his face. Groaning, he rubbed his sore nose before getting up and making his way over to the bed. It was a stupid thing to do but he assured himself that at least now he knew the limits of his power. He checked out the image to see if there were any changes in the values but he was surprised that Energy stat showed the same number.
"Does it not use energy then?"
He was considering other possibilities when he felt a chill in the air, like an air conditioner had been switched on despite it being winter. He looked around to see everything was bathed in a strange blue hue, as if the world was lit up with neon lights. He stood up and moved around to check his surroundings. The coldness didn't seem to affect other objects, only him. He was pondering over it when it became harder for him to breathe. He decided to cancel the power and picked up the phone. The screen had turned off so he swiped at the screen in an attempt to wake it up, but nothing worked. His fingers fumbled over the power button and still, nothing happened. He started to panic as it became even harder to breathe until he finally realized what was happening. The phone wasn't registering his touches or clicks as he was doing it too fast. He needed to find a solution before he suffered irreparable damage. He searched the table drawer, the closet and other places for anything that would help him. He finally found it - an old style analog watch, but he noticed that the hands didn't move at all. He wasn't sure if it meant it wasn't working or if it was just the affect of time dilation but he had no other choice. He stared at it and repeated the process. He immediately felt like he had stepped inside a furnace and blasted with red neon lights. He closed his eyes and slowly calmed his breath down. When he opened them again, everything had gone back to normal.
After washing his face and thinking for a while, he finally figured out what had happened.
When he slowed down time around him, he still moved at normal speed. But that meant air particles took longer to reach his body and temperature was just the energy of collisions of air particles. They wouldn't touch him as fast which meant he would be way colder than his environment. Light would also be affected in same way; it would travel a shorter distance as speed is constant so it would be blue shifted.
He exhaled heavily at the realization, but also realized he needed to use this power with caution.
After testing it few more times, he discovered that by limiting the amount of time spent using the ability, he could largely avoid its affects. He also noticed that the he could use lesser version of it for far longer than if he used it to the extreme. He studied the stats carefully and finally understood their meaning. They represented his maximum limits and did not update in real time. So for all intents and purposes, they were useless to him at the moment. He didn't even know if they were supposed to be high or just average or maybe even low. It had been almost an hour since it all began and he was extremely tired so he decided to take a nap. He changed and lay down on the bed.
He was drifting off to sleep when he had a strange vision. He was holding a knife in his left hand before plunging it into his body. He looked down to see that he was missing his right arm. The pain was excruciating as he started bleeding and slowly fell down to the floor. He could hear distant sound of footsteps and saw his mother enter his room. She saw his condition and screamed before running up to him as his vision darkened.