Chapter 1

“I’m afraid, Ray, that you’re going to need a hip replacement.” The doctor pointed to the scan on the screen in the well-appointed office whose shiny white walls made it look like it belonged in a Star Trek episode, except for the natural light that poured in from the skylight. He sat in a high-backed Herman Miller chair. He gestured with a laser pointer mounted in the left index finger of his metal hand. “You have worn down the joint here, here, and here. Looks like osteoarthritis. Ordinarily we’d see this in someone who was carrying too much weight in their belly for too long, but well, you’ve been carrying another kind, haven’t you?”

Raymond Light looked at the screen and shook his head. “What kind of recovery time are we looking at, Doc?”

“With Argonian technology and ultraviolet healing rays, still at least six weeks.”

“Blast! I can’t afford to be out of action that long. Aren’t there any shortcuts we can take?”

“Oh, sure, there’s Zurn genetic therapy and cloning, but with the wild card effect, there’s a ten percent chance you could sprout a lizard tail.”

Ray stood up, painfully, and walked across to the doctor, trying to conceal his limp just out of habit. “All right, Doc, schedule it for as soon as possible. I need to get this done with as quickly as I can.”

“In the meantime,” the doctor warned, “try to take it easy, eh?”

“You know me, Doc.”

“Yes, that’s why I said it. Oh, and Ray? Happy birthday.”

Ray shook hands with Dr. Improbable and nodded toward the skylight above. The doctor pressed a stud on his Improbability Gauntlet, and the skylight slid open with a near-silent whir.

“I’ll see you soon.” Ray adjusted his leather jacket, fastening it over his white jumpsuit, lowered the aquamarine translucent goggles over his eyes, and launched himself into the sky in a blaze of swirling blue, green, and violet light, which all but vanished against the bright blue sky.

“If not sooner,” the doctor said to himself.

Raymond Light, better known as Borealis, hovered for a moment above the Chicago office, took in the beauty of the skyline, then started climbing while he plotted a course home, following the Lake Michigan shoreline. He transferred the navigation into his heads-up display and did a weather check. It was a nice, clear day all the way home to Traverse City Michigan. It was a bit chilly at seven thousand feet, an altitude that avoided most migrating birds, so he redirected some of his internal energies into life support, crafted a minor multicolored bullet-shaped force field to project in front of him, and put the rest of his considerable power into flight. He accelerated slowly as he hugged the shoreline, passing over Hammond Indiana, then Gary, then Michigan City, but once he crossed the Michigan border and passed Benton Harbor, he poured it on. His force field and ear caps protected him from the sonic boom as he accelerated north, past Mach 1. At this speed, he’d be home in about half an hour. There was no rush.

I shouldn’t need a hip replacement. I’m still young. I’m only—59? That can’t be right, Borealis thought, as he made a minor course adjustment over Holland. That would mean that I’ve been doing this for—41 years? How is that possible?

Ray’s thoughts turned back to the day when he, as a high school senior, first became imbued with power from mysterious charged particles during a particularly strong solar storm.

December 28, 1982

Young Ray Light was on his way back home from the State Theater in Traverse City on a date with his girlfriend, Karen. They had gone to see Tootsie. They were on Christmas break from school, and Ray was thinking about finding a place for them to park. The night sky was filled with the shimmering curtains of the Northern Lights. They held hands as they watched the rare spectacle. They’d been dating off and on for two years and were finally in a place where both felt comfortable. When an oncoming car drifted into their lane, Ray turned the wheel as slowly as he could to avoid it while maintaining control of the car.

The car just missed them, and Ray tried to navigate his way back to his lane, when he hit a patch of ice. The 1974 Chevy Nova with its 350cc engine, started sliding wildly. He overcorrected and caused it to fishtail once, twice, three times. On the third time, the car skidded sideways down into a ditch, sending a wall of snow flying over the windows, then coming to a sudden halt. Ray checked on his girlfriend to make sure she was all right. Karen was shaken up but nodded that she was okay. Ray opened the driver’s side door to get out. His shoe immediately filled with snow, as they were in pretty deep, about 100 feet from the road. He cleared the driver’s side of snow with the shovel he kept in the trunk and found that one tire had been taken off the rim, and the other one was completely flat. He had Karen get behind the wheel, while he pushed the car, and couldn’t get it to budge. They tried rocking it back and forth, but it was to no avail. He had no choice but to change the tire that was off the rim.

He retrieved the jack from the trunk and found the most stable spot he could. He got the car just high enough off the ground to get the back wheel off. As he replaced it with the spare tire, he tried to torque the lug nuts back on with the lug wrench. His hands were freezing. Just as he was pulling the last one on, the jack began to sink into the ground and the tire came down on his foot. He could feel his foot sinking into the hard-packed snow, but then it stopped, pinned against something hard: the frozen ground. The weight of the car continued to bear down on him. Only the air in the tire was preventing his foot from breaking. He realized that he was only moments from having his foot crushed, and in a colossal effort to free himself, he grabbed the car under the wheel well and lifted for all he was worth. It was no good.

Just then, Ray was bathed in shower of green, blue and violet light from the sky, and inexplicably, he hefted the entire rear end of the car into the air to the level of his chest. He could hear the metal of the frame straining. Karen screamed from the driver’s side door. Ray moved his foot to one side and slowly set the car down again. As he stepped back, he saw his reflection in the Nova’s rear window. He was glowing with the colors of the Aurora Borealis.

Karen was terrified. “Ray! Ray, what’s happened to you?” she screamed.

Ray looked confused. “I have no idea, Babe.” He examined his hands, which weren’t cold anymore. He could see light shimmering under the surface of his skin, like a veiled kaleidoscope. “But it doesn’t hurt!” Then an idea came to mind. “Put it in neutral. I want to see something.”

Karen shifted the car into neutral, as much out of fear as curiosity. Ray walked around to the back of the battered old Nova, curled his arms under the rear bumper and lifted. The back end of the car rose right out of the hole that the rear wheel had spun into the snow and dirt, and Ray moved it almost effortlessly, like a wheelbarrow. “Steer toward the side of the road!”

She guided the car toward where they had skidded off, and step by step, Ray’s entire body began to glow, and he nearly carried the car out of the field. And in just a few seconds, it came to rest on the shoulder. Ray tapped on the car’s roof twice. “I’ll be right back!”

Ray walked back to retrieve the tire he had replaced, and behind him, he heard the revving of the 350 engine and gravel crunching as Karen left him behind, running the Nova on a flat tire as fast as it would go. Ray ran back across the short distance to where the car had been and stood on the side of the road in disbelief. She’d left him there in sub-freezing temperatures without so much as a coat.

“AAAAHHhhh!” Ray roared in frustration, hurling the ruined tire like a giant discus. His arm glowed brightly again as he heard the rush of air passing over the surface of the speeding tire as it left his hand, far faster than any baseball he’d ever pitched. The tire sailed off into the darkness over a patch of 20-meter fir trees at the edge of the field. “Why? Why would you leave me here?” He couldn’t believe she had just abandoned him.

Extra-normal people had existed in the world since at least 1938, but Northern Michigan had not exactly been an epicenter for that population. In places like New York, Charm City, Crescent City, they had a presence. But Traverse City? Never. There would be an occasional incident and it would be front page news, but none of the heroes ever stuck around.

Ray started walking toward his hometown, which was about sixteen kilometers away. Though he didn’t have his coat, he wasn’t cold. The strange, colorful energy was still surging through him, coursing through his limbs and torso, but he didn’t feel any ill effects. Just the opposite, really. He felt strong, powerful. And most importantly right now, warm. He imagined that Karen was on her way to her house. If he made it there, he would take his car back. He’d have to figure out how to get another tire on it. The sidewall of the flat tire would be destroyed in just a few miles, the way she was driving.

As he walked, Ray thought, Well, clearly I have some kind of weird powers. I’m really strong and I can stay warm. Wonder what else I can do? I have nothing to lose by testing it out while I walk. It’s about a two-hour walk from here. Unless—what superpower does everyone fantasize about?
Ray paused on the side of the road for a moment, held his arms out to his sides, and rose into the air. His entire body gave off a radiant glow as he rose higher and higher. He had felt this once before, as a child playing around with magnets. This was definitely like holding two magnets with the same pole next to one another. They repelled each other just as he was repelling against the magnetic field of the Earth itself.


At about seven meters, he decided he’d better experiment a bit first. He maneuvered over the piled snow on the side of the road in case the power failed. He leaned forward and began moving along the snowbank. The shimmering energy trailed behind him, cascading in undulating curtains of purple, green, blue, and pink. He felt no signs of weakening, so he tried changing directions, over the open field. It was child’s play! The only problem he was having was seeing through the colorful effect. He was flying along an unlit roadway, the Aurora providing most of the light in the night sky. The wind was doing a number on his vision as well, making his eyes water. How did the famous flying heroes deal with this? He had some snowmobile goggles at home. If he could make it back, he would try those out.

If I stick to the main road, he thought, I should be all right. There will be occasional lights I can use to navigate. And the reflective road signs should react to this glow. I wonder if I can make it even brighter.

Ray concentrated for a moment on making the aura brighter, brighter, and brighter still, and for just a moment, he glowed like a multicolored star. Then he dropped like a stone out of the sky, hitting the ground with a cloud of white powder. The snowbank broke his fall, but the impact still knocked the wind out of him. He’d felt like this before on the football field, so he knew not to panic, and to let the breath come back to him in its good time. Good thing I stayed over the snowbanks, he thought, as he remained aglow. He began to shiver in the snowbank. It was suddenly freezing. Ray concentrated on bringing the glow down, and as he did so, he began to rise into the air again, and he felt warm once more.
So, I’m strong, I can levitate, produce light, and stay warm. That’s a good start! But it appears I can only do so much at once. Ray focused on two things, keeping warm and levitating, and took a couple of slow laps around the field. Success! He took off in the direction of Karen’s house. Crossing the Manistee River was just a little terrifying. Ray didn’t want to think about what would happen if he fell into the near-freezing waters, heat field or not. He approached the shore slowly and tried hovering over the water to see if it reacted differently to his electromagnetic push. It did not. He then surmised that he was pushing against the electromagnetic field of the planet itself, not just the ground. Ray wasn’t a physicist by any stretch of the imagination, but he understood basic science pretty well. He made his way over the river in safety, and accelerated. He could fly!