The Law of Averages

Book 2: Chapter 117: Rollerblades and Rubik's Cubes

Not long after Galeforce flew off, the villain siren ended. Dan figured it would be rude to leave, so he stuck around to help clear out the gas station until the police finally showed up. The GPD had resorted to strapping a bulldozer plow to the front of an SUV in order to traverse the wrecked streets. The lead car was followed by a short convoy of lifted trucks that piled in to the dry gas station parking lot.

Each volunteer was interviewed, this being the last place the vigilante had touched down on. When Dan's turn came up, he dutifully recalled the encounter, supplying the details that he'd noticed, including the vigilante's young age and the symbol he wore on his chest. Dan couldn't hide his confusion over the matter, and at the end of the interview he just had to ask, "You ever seen something like this before?"

The officer, who had introduced himself as Harris, shrugged. "Not on this scale, but ever since that mess in Austin, vigilantism has been a growing fad with the younger crowd. Nothing serious, just kids in costume doing community service stuff. Picking up trash, walking old people across the street or carrying groceries, things like that. They video themselves and throw it up on the internet."

Dan stared at the man, who shifted awkwardly.

"My kid watches a lot of MTube," he admitted. "I gotta make sure it's nothing inappropriate. And it's not, really. Frankly, I did a lot worse at that age." He shrugged again. "They aren't even breaking any laws. Not like we've outlawed dressing up like an idiot. Besides, community service should be encouraged." Harris paused, then his expression fell. "This Galeforce fella, though... He's trouble."

"This was a bit more than community service, if he wasn't lying about what he did," Dan pointed out. "Any insight on that? Did he actually chase off whoever was causing the hurricane, or was it the SPEAR Team?"

"I don't know, and if I did, I couldn't comment on it," Harris replied without inflection. "What I can say is this is the first time in years that a Natural has tried playing vigilante. And a powerful one, at that."

"He said he was going to post a video of his fight," Dan said.

"Nothing good can come of that," Harris stated, shaking his head. "Best case scenario, it gets ignored. Worst case, kids try to mimic him and get themselves killed. Things will only get worse if this 'Galeforce' shows up to interfere at some other crime scene or disaster."

"I mean, Galeforce's account is definitely getting banned, right?" Dan asked, waving the business card. "He's got to be. From everything. This shit is super illegal."

The officer glanced at him in confusion. "What's that got to do with anything?"

Dan blinked back. "What?"

Harris scratched at his neck as he mused, "Well, Champion's video of the Austin Massacre is still up and streaming. I've got a browser app that lets me block those kinds of things, but it's not like the video has gone anywhere. What would be the point? Once it's out on the internet, it's out there forever."

"I—" Dan paused, frowned. "Huh."

He hadn't really thought about it. He knew that the People had streamed the massacre, but he hadn't thought to look for it. That was a sight he really didn't need to see, and Dan had assumed he'd need to find some kind of shady streaming website to find it. He was apparently mistaken. A quick online search proved that the video was alive and well, proudly uploaded to the most popular video sharing sight in the world. It wasn't on the front page, nor was it advertised in any way, but it was there. All it took was a few seconds of searching to find it.

It was one of those jarring reminders that things here were different in ways he didn't always expect.

With his interview over, civic duty completed, and night having thoroughly fallen, Dan returned home. Abby jumped him the moment he appeared, and after a very enthusiastic reunion, he shared with her what had occurred within the city. Dan only got about halfway through, before he slapped a hand over his forehead and groaned.

"I forgot about the laptop!" he exclaimed in frustration.

"Laptop?" Abby queried.

Dan flicked his hand and the confiscated laptop dropped out of t-space and onto their bed.

"These two ass-clowns were robbing their work in the middle of the hurricane," Dan explained, waggling the laptop. "Apparently their company somehow pilfers user data from cell towers and sells it. They were making a copy of the data for their own use." Dan paused, frowning. "Come to think of it, I've got the hard drive, too." He glanced at her. "Does any of that sound legal to you?"

Abby pursed her lips. "Depends on the company, and what kind of deal they worked out with the cell companies and whoever owns the cell tower."

Something about that answer sat wrong with Dan, but he supposed it probably wasn't all that different from his own dimension. He was pretty sure he'd signed away his personal information hundreds of times back in that old world. It just took a slightly different form here, is all. Or something.

He shrugged it off. "So what do I do with this stuff?"

"Give it a couple of days, then drop by the Galveston PD and hand it over," Abby suggested. "You confiscated the stuff in the course of your duties as a crisis volunteer, so you should be in the clear. Just... don't forget about it again. If the company finds out you took it and never returned it, you could be in real trouble."

Dan winced, then nodded. "Yeah, got it. It completely slipped my mind given how incredibly bonkers the rest of the evening went." He went on to describe his evacuation of the SPEAR Team, the vigilante Galeforce, and all the events that followed. By the time he finished the story, Abby had already pulled up Galeforce's social media pages on her laptop.

She tapped the screen and knitted her brow. "The video is up." She opened it, and they watched it play out.

It was... Well, if Dan was being frank, it really wasn't very good. There was obviously something happening on the screen, but for the life of him, Dan couldn't really tell what it was. Dark shapes blurred in and out of view, lit by flashes of what could be thunder, or just a flailing spotlight. The sound quality was horrible, and that was before the literal hurricane was taken into account. It was mostly Galeforce shouting muffled, inaudible nonsense in-between booms of thunder and a constant, roaring wind that blotted out all other sound. The whole thing spoke of an amateur in action.

"Is this it?" Abby asked. "Nobody's gonna believe he was actually there."

Then the video stilled. Pulled back. Light streamed in from above and black clouds were hurled away at great force. The sound didn't change; the constant drone of wind grated against the poor microphone, but the image resolved into the eye of a storm. Galeforce slowly spun in place, capturing the perfect circle he'd punched in the hurricane. He glanced down to the city below, and Dan recognized Galveston. He recognized the buildings, the fire and the crashed Peregrine, and he saw the office where he'd taken shelter from the storm.

Galeforce bobbed in the air, turned to face the encroaching clouds. A bolt of lightning speared out from the storm at an angle too strange to be natural, and scattered against a barrier of swirling air. The camera dissolved into pixelated fractals as Galeforce rejoined the battle—one that Dan was suddenly convinced had actually been fought. The video continued, but it was back to being a mess. It didn't matter. Dan had seen enough.

"Oh," Abby said. "That might do it."

"Yeah," Dan agreed. He paused the video, then pulled the laptop closer to himself. Using Galeforce's business card, he checked each website that had been advertised. Each of them had been created within the last few weeks, and though the young vigilante hadn't been open about his intentions, he was at least vaguely affiliated with those trending wannabe-heroes that officer Harris had mentioned. MTube helpfully advertised similar creators, and nearly every icon was a smiling, costumed face.

"I should really pay more attention to the internet," Dan noted sourly. He tabbed to a page that seemed to be soliciting donations. The amount was public: over $15000 and rising.

Abby frowned at the screen. "You've been busy. So have I. Not that we should have ever expected this to be a thing."

"There's no way this stays up, right?" Dan asked her. Unlike Officer Harris, Abby was the heiress of a tech company. She should have a better idea of how these things play out.

"What, the Substation page?"

"All of it." Dan gestured at the screen. "Shouldn't this all get, I dunno, seized by the government or something?"

"There's not a magic button in the Oval Office that shuts down parts of the internet, Danny," Abby said patiently. "I'd imagine all of these donation pages will be flagged, and eventually removed, but that will take time. The internet like the Wild West. All of this is unexplored territory."

"I guess I just figured the internet would be more strictly controlled in this dimension," Dan admitted.

Abby shrugged as she tabbed through web pages. "Nextcorp owns most of these. They are pretty big in the tech industry. Gobbled up a bunch of Genius patents back in the 80's. Very connected." She looked up to meet Dan's eyes. "Nobody's looking to pick a fight with them."

"Great," Dan muttered. "Stupid dimension can't even do totalitarianism right."

Abby snorted at the comment, giving him a gentle shove.

"Whatever," Dan said, after sitting back up. "It's disturbing, but not really our problem."

No point worrying about what he couldn't control. Dan just hoped it wouldn't become a fad.