It used to amuse Maxine Ellis endlessly that, even after she and Shoutlander had been together for three months, his friends always referred to her as “The Virgin”. It was like her own special Extra nym, even though she could have told any one of them that virginity was not her super power. Definitely not. And Shoutlander must have agreed; it was rare for an Extra to settle down with one partner, especially a non-Extra like Maxine, but he showed every sign of being happy to buck the trend.
As far as Maxine’s friends were aware, she had a steady boyfriend named Jae Kim, a truck driver who spent a lot of time on the road. In fact, Jae’s absences from Melbourne were due to his ongoing vid series, Shoutlander Presents Edifice Wrecks, in which he visited condemned buildings all over the country and destroyed them with the power of his voice.
(Jae tended to make a fair bit of noise when they were alone together, too. This was definitely the only relationship Maxine had been in where “do you have protection?” was a reminder to wear earplugs.)
They did use the other kind of protection, it must be noted, despite Maxine and Jae both being on semi-long-term birth control and viral blockers. Neither of them had perfect faith in any one piece of technology. Maxine had been a surprise to her mother, she happened to know, so she figured it was worth learning this one lesson from the older generation. This must be pointed out because it emphasises the point that, after three months of a frequent and energetic sex life, there wasn’t anything about this one particular Tuesday afternoon that was obviously different — until afterward, when Maxine was lying somewhat sticky on Jae’s enormous bed and noticing that the curtains were looking a bit more threadbare than they had.
That was the first sign: the curtains. Curious, she got up to examine them. When had they managed to rip the curtains? Jae hadn’t even been especially noisy this time, thanks at least in part to some of their recent purchases from a trip to an establishment in Canberra. As she examined the fabric, which had always been ugly but was now riddled with holes, a sound behind her caught her attention. It was the ornate wooden bed frame, quietly collapsing into splinters.
Around Maxine, the bedroom was crumbling.
Through all this, Jae was in the kitchen making coffee. Maxine’s yell brought him back in time to watch the first flakes of the ceiling drift down onto the mattress, which was turning into an amorphous bag of springs and wadding as they watched. The drift of flakes turned into a cascade. They only just leapt out of the way as the whole ceiling fell in.
Maxine’s voice was level. “Jae, did you weaken the ceiling by shouting at it, without… me… hearing you? Right beside you and I didn’t hear you demolish the whole bedroom? Is that even possible?”
Jae looked funny. Not surprised, exactly. Almost like this was an aspect of life’s rich pageant that he’d been half expecting. Everything, his eyes said, made a little more sense. “I’ll call a friend who does handyman stuff, when he’s not out demonstrating his anti-gravity parkour. He’ll make it that the whole house won’t collapse while we’re away.” She looked askance at that. “Yeah, we’re going for a drive. I think it’s time for you to see a Doctor.”
On the way, Jae explained what he knew. Extras, he told Maxine, all knew this, but they were under strict instructions to keep it quiet. To put it simply: super powers were sexually transmitted. Everyone who was now an Extra, whether long tail or top tier, had developed their powers suddenly and randomly after having sex with someone else who was already an Extra. He himself had developed his powers after an otherwise disappointing fling with The Awesome Athene, a self-described “super wog girl” who could bench-press a Land Rover. He knew exactly when the powers kicked in because he hiccuped and broke her pelvis.
The Doctor had explained it all to him, in between repairing the poor Athene’s injuries, including the detail that his powers were going to be a little erratic until he got them under control, which could take a day or two. Athene confirmed this: her awakening, as they called it, had come after a drunken night with Captain Chlorophyll, a long tail Extra who could make plants grow and was thus always the life and soul of a certain kind of party. In turn, his awakening had arrived in the arms and other body parts of none other than Lady Lady, one the toppest of the top tier. But putting aside the biblical begats, she did agree with the Doctor that the first forty eight hours as an Extra had involved a prodigious amount of property damage.
(Dramatic irony being what it is, just as he was relating this detail, Jae’s car lost power and rolled to a halt on the highway. They got out hurriedly, remembering the bedroom ceiling. With a surprisingly restrained “crump!” the car caught fire. Jae shrugged and made a phone call. While they waited for whoever it was he’d called, he continued his tale.)
At first, the newly awakened Jae had been unable to make a sound without it causing tremors. Then the tremors increased, until he was unable to inhale or exhale too sharply without breaking one or more of The Doctor’s bones. The Aweseome Athene had hurried them out of her flat by this stage and insisted they go and stand in the grotty little cement-lined playground across the road. At least she let him put his jeans on, though in his haste he’d nearly had a nasty accident with his zip that indirectly resulted in the demise of Athene’s TV. Across the road in the playground, the Doctor divided his time between calming Jae down enough to get a handle on his powers, and healing his own internal injuries as fast as they were incurred.
Over the next few days, Jae had his ups and downs. Safely ensconced in an Extras-only facility outside the city, he was able to let rip with his voice and discover its limits. He was also able to contemplate the very real possibility that he may never be able to speak normally again. Thankfully, around thirty six hours after his initial introduction to this new world, he found himself able, really without having put any extra effort into it, to control his output much more precisely. He found the ability to whisper without shattering glass, and then to speak softly without shaking the walls, and then even to shout and sing and yodel and weep with sheer body-purging relief at not making anything shake or break or fall to bits at all. And yet, when he wanted to, he could direct sound waves to do as much damage as a quantity of TNT too heavy to lift.
He was, in short, a top tier Extra, combining the fine-grained control that allowed maintenance of a secret identity with the sheer power that guaranteed a highly lucrative spectacle on the polycasts.
Other Extras working at the facility made arrangements, and his first channel was opened within days. He went back to his old life, though The Awesome Athene never answered his Bumps. He enjoyed his new pseudonymous fame as Shoutlander, and even carefully had some more one-nighters and flings, but none of the Virgins, as his fellow Extras called their non-powered dalliances, ever had that particularly problematical kind of awakening. After a year or more of no side-effects beyond the usual for twenty-something horndogs in the big city, he began to think that maybe he was doing something to prevent the transmission of Extra-ness to his partners. Or maybe he was some sort of Extra “mule”, safe from the hassles of passing the condition on. In time he met a lovely, sweet, sexy girl, and they got friendly, and they became exclusive, and for three months he thought he was safe and there would be no side-effects to him having a life.
And then came the curtains.
Jae finished explaining all this before the fire brigade came along and put his car out. Maxine walked away and hid in an alley while the truck was there, because she didn’t feel like being responsible for any more damage. The alley was between two ugly warehouses, and she was pretty sure the walls were no uglier by the time she left, when Jae told her the fireys and the tow truck had gone and his friend had arrived to pick them up, though some of the graffiti looked a lot more random than it had. She hopped the barrier back onto the highway where she expected to see a new vehicle, hopefully one more robust than Jae’s departed Jeep. Instead, she was met by a very young woman with the longest blonde, flowing hair Maxine had ever seen. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Kim Portable. I’ll be your driver.”
“Uh… OK,” said Maxine. “Where’s your car?”
Kim laughed. “Oh, you’ll see. Listen Jae – are you staying behind, or do you want to tag along? I can do you both at once.”
“I’m coming too. I need to see The Doctor about a related matter.”
Kim looked serious. “Are you having capital-I Issues?”
“Uh, yeah. I tried shouting out the Jeep fire just before while Maxine was out of range and I got nothing. Nada. Zip.”
“Oh,” said Kim. “Downgrade, do you think? I’ve heard of that. You remember Pixie?”
“Don’t know. We’ll see. I’ll ask The Doctor. No use jumping to conclusions.”
Maxine was not following all this. She protested, but Jae put a finger gently on her lips. “Watch,” he said. “This is pretty awesome.”
Kim Portable stood back and waved her hands. Maxine supposed it counted as “gesturing mystically”, considering what happened next: her long blonde hair seemed to lengthen and float, forming a wide circle around her body, reaching to the road and as wide as a truck. Sparks flew, and the whole golden halo began to flicker, strobing painfully bright and deepest night-time black. Over the growing buzz of electricity, Kim shouted “sorry about the flickering. Hope you’re not epileptic! Step forward now, please!”
Kim disappeared. The circle of golden hair flickered into an infinitely black portal. With Jae’s hand on her waist, Maxine walked into the circle and through.