In theory, Kerry Angel should have been back on her farm in Wellington, feeding her ridiculously large cat and twiddling her thumbs. Sure, New Zealand’s fire season had expanded like Australia’s, but nowhere near as much, and this time of year it was still soggy in the land of the long wet cloud while the West Island was busy combusting.
But that was the thing, wasn’t it? Australia was not, in fact, combusting. A rather attractive young godling had come along and done intimate things to the laws of physics and now climate change’s poster child, the nation that had been well up in the running to host the new offices of The Devil And All His Works Incorporated because Hell just wasn’t up to the task any more, was miraculously free of fires for the first time in, well, ever. And so all the fireys sent over from NZ and Canada and an assortment of less flammable nations, as part of the eternal you-scratch-my-back exchange program, were sitting around waiting to find out if the Powers That Be were going to call them home or let them stick around in case it all turned out to be a trick of the news cameras.
After a fortnight of that, Kerry was in need of a drink. Lucky thing, then, that she was staying with friends in Melbourne, the place where bartenders go when they die if they were especially good in life.
The bar she found herself in was not the most salubrious of venues, but the cover price was bugger-all and the prices, in the funny miscoloured dollars of this alien nation, were well within her budget, even if Fire And Emergency didn’t end up paying out her full contract in light of the shortness of the deployment. It wasn’t until she had purchased a suitably soothing glass and navigated it to a booth by the loos that she realised what she’d forgotten: she was a twenty-something woman without a male chaperone, and that made her dish of the day anywhere that served alcohol to Aussie men.
The first three chat-up attempts were so pitiful she almost called the paramedics to have them put on life support, but she took the merciful route instead and told them to fuck off. Then there was a pause of a few minutes while she made inroads into her beer, after which a fourth interloper sat down uninvited. She was about to growl menacingly when he spoke.
“Sorry about those wankers, love. I’ve had a word with them. Just letting you know you can drink in solitude for the rest of the evening. See ya!”
He got up to leave, but Kerry was curious. “You run this place, do you? Secret owner of the pub? You don’t look old enough.” He didn’t, either. Couldn’t have been more than thirty, and honestly he was a bit of a looker, even in the dim light. He sat back down again.
“Tony Sung. Not the owner, but I hang here a lot and I can be convincing when I have to be. Other bars are fine as meat markets. This place should be a haven. So I take steps.”
“Well, thanks. Appreciated.”
“And you would be a Kiwi then? The vowels give it away, though you’re tanned like an Aussie. Fit too. Firefighter then?”
“OK, that’s some detective work, Tony Sung. Well done. Yes, arrived on deployment just before Bronze Whatsisname showed up and put us all out of business, with any luck.”
“Well, out of business or not, you’re welcome here, and please don’t bother opening your wallet any more. Drinks are on the house for super-heroes. Standard policy.”
“I thought you said you weren’t the owner.”
“Yeah. Might have fibbed a bit. Co-owner, to be exact.” He got up again, evidently not wanting to be even in the same suburb as pushy. “Enjoy your evening, Ms…”
“Angel. Kerry Angel.”
The most astonishing change came over Tony Sung. He sat down again with a thud. “Oh! I’m sorry, I was thrown off by the– never mind. You’re a long tailer then? New? Or just not monetising? Sorry, that’s presumptuous. Just, I’m sure I’d recognise you if you were in the ranks. I didn’t know it had spread to–” He stopped when he saw the look of utter mystification. “You… don’t know what I’m talking about?”
“Umm… not a word of it, sorry. Did I say something unexpected?”
“It’s just… Kerry Angel sounded like a Nym. You know, a made-up name. An Extras name.”
“Oh! No, I’m just a plain old human being, no special powers. Angel is just a surname. French, probably. Source of much teasing in primary school and crappy chat-up lines ever after. You didn’t know what had spread?”
“Uh, sorry?”
“You said ‘I didn’t know it had spread–‘ and then you stopped. You mean to New Zealand? What is ‘it’, exactly?”
Tony sighed. He looked like he was going to get into trouble for something. And then– was it a trick of the light? His facial features seemed to shift. His hair writhed. His cheekbones wobbled. In a matter of seconds his whole appearance changed. He looked, Kerry realised with a start, very much like her. Same sharp chin, same arrow-straight nose, even the same shaved-sides rough-cut hairstyle. It was still definitely him, in the overall look of his face, but it was her too. “I’m called The Flatterer, Ms Angel. As in, ‘imitation is the sincerest form’ and all that. I’m on the long tail, like most of the Extras who aren’t famous. I can shape shift my face to look like whoever I’m talking to, though it never goes as far as a proper impersonation so I’m lucky my mother owns a bar and lets me act like I run the place, because I’m not exactly monetisable as I am.”
Kerry took another sip of her beer. “Right, then. You’re an Extra, you though I was one too, and you let slip something you shouldn’t have. Right?”
“That’s about the shape of it, yeah.”
“And you’re not going to tell me what it was, I’m guessing.”
“Not a choice I can make, I’m afraid.”
“Right then,” said Kerry. “In that case, you can grab me another one of these, and tell me what life is like for the not-very-super elite.”
…
After his chat with Jeff, the Bronze Adonis changed his tactics considerably. With the megafires firmly thumped and the smaller blazes contemplating their own mortality for a change, it was possible to be a bit more leisurely about the super-powered firefighting. Kevin began interacting a lot more with both his followers and the entourage of reporters. He also managed to take time out to do things like washing his uniform, which seemed to cheer him up remarkably. He was looking particularly resplendent when he sat down to an interview with ABC Commercial in the Warkend National Park visitors centre.
What remained of television news in these diversified times was going through a trend for employing exciting young trendsetters with all the latest tattoos and scarifications, so at first Kevin thought he was being interviewed by an Extra with a talent for storing random pieces of metal in her head, but it turned out she was just a NIDA graduate with an ambition to direct, slumming it in the news division. She began by asking him how he felt the fire campaign was going overall, and he played the fine upstanding super-citizen, lots of “the fireys are the real super-heroes” and so on, until she got to the question of why, exactly, he had taken so long to get started. The fires had already been taking their usual toll of property and some lives for a good month before he came along to save the day. What brought him out of his shell?
Kevin protested that going from celebrity to being genuinely useful was not as obvious as all that: look at all the Extras who were still doing nothing much. He expressed the opinion that he might even be the first to take this step, and that was where his interviewer surprised him.
“We did think you were the first to step outside the bubble, but it turns out someone else beat you to the punch.” She nodded to her producer and a video clip played; she and Kevin watched on their own implants while the viewers at home saw it in full screen. “This,” the interviewer said, “was recorded last month, in secret, but only released earlier today.”
The vision was shakey, obviously amateur video taken by someone with last year’s iMod. It looked like a medical centre. The interviewer explained. “This is the Bonaventure Creek Clinic in western Victoria. You can see a GP and a few nurses — we’ve blurred their faces for privacy reasons. And here’s a visitor of a different sort. See how he’s obviously at home there? He’s wearing a visitor’s lanyard but the staff seem to know him.”
Kevin did, in fact, gasp. It was shocking enough. That was The Doctor! Luke Reddell was his real name, though even most Extras didn’t know that. His powers were impressive: he could heal injuries, his own and other people’s, and his channel spent a lot of time combining sound medical advice with some truly gory stunts from a procession of guests. If one of his videos didn’t end with at least one important bone sticking half out of an idiot’s limb, it was considered a failure. Luke would fix the injury and turn it into a cheerful parable of what not to do next time.
Yet here he was, slightly smug medical preacher to the stars, lurking around a medical centre in the middle of nowhere. For at least twice as long as Kevin had been out in public fighting fires. That was truly bizarre.
“It appears,” the interviewer continued, “that the Extra known as The Doctor has been providing his services in secret to the overworked staff of a rural medical centre. This despite the often-repeated rule that Extras do not use their powers off-camera or without an audience.”
Kevin didn’t know what to say. He sat while the interviewer dismissed the playback and the camera zoomed in on his handsome, baffled face. At length, he spoke. “I guess it makes sense. The Doctor may seem a bit… gimmicky, maybe? I mean, we all do, don’t we? But I’ve met him a few times, and I think he really does care about people. If this means he’s been using his power to help people without looking for a payday, I think that’s a good thing. I kind of wish other Extras would do the same. It’s why I’m here, talking to you right now, honestly.”
“It certainly seems that other Extras are heeding the call,” the interviewer said. Have you heard about Anny Cray-Cray up in Queensland?”
Kevin hadn’t, but another video filled him in. It showed Anny floating above floodwaters, using her crowd of poltergeists to lift livestock and equipment to safety. Considering how violent they could be when she wanted, they were remarkably restrained and helpful here.
That wasn’t all. Apparently Max Anarchy herself had shown up at the office of a Greens state MP in Tasmania and asked how she might help with the ongoing issue of illegal logging in national parks in the south of the state. After some consultation with the Party’s overworked lawyers, she had been permitted to visit her talents upon the confiscated trucks and equipments of several already-arrested offenders. Video of two petrol-powered Landcruisers and a pile of chainsaws spontaneously disassembling into component parts was just now being posted on the Greens polycast.
“And I believe we have visitors of our own. Bronze Adonis, I believe you have met Lady Lady and, uh, Mr Bubbles?”
The two Extras stepped forward and shook Kevin by the hand. Kevin had not, in fact, met Lady Lady previously, and was only vaguely aware of her channel, but he knew the other man entirely too well, and knew what to say. “I believe he prefers to go by Mr Shield, rather than… that other name. Isn’t that right?”
Mr Bubbles-as-was smiled grimly, but he looked pleased that someone had remembered. The look on Lady Lady’s face suggested she had been bracing herself for a tirade and was about ready to do some violence. Kevin wondered what her power was.
The rest of the interview became more of a group affair, and Kevin was pleased to let it all wash over him. The Extras were listening! They were getting involved! After however-many years as a publicity-hungry waste of pixels, they were finally getting involved in the world!
He felt quite dizzy.
Lady Lady, it turned out, could fly, swiftly and with no obvious limits in range. She could also carry a remarkable amount of mass within a field around her body. She was there to use that skill to help out the water bombing choppers and planes, and perhaps to ferry people to safety if needed. Meanwhile, Mr Shield was able to create bubbles (hence the nickname) of force, pretty much any size, and control quite a large number of them remotely. He was intending to do much the same, and one got the immediate impression that Lady Lady’s presence seemed to him a redundant, thunder-stealing intrusion.
Kevin found himself wondering how much of the next few weeks would be spent dealing with Extras’ egos instead of burning trees. He preferred the trees.
…
It didn’t come as a complete surprise to Kerry to wake up in a strange bed. She always had that amnesia thing first thing in the morning, regardless of how much she’d been drinking the night before, but when the memories came back she was pleased that they weren’t tinged with too much drunkenness. She’d made a decision before very many free beers had been consumed, and paced herself thereafter in the hopes that, if the evening turned out to be an enjoyable one, she’d be able to remember the details later on.
She did remember the details. They were rather nice, in fact.
Tony was taking a shower. The noise that had awoken her was him singing. Quite a rich baritone, a bit nasal in the high registers but not wholly unpleasant to the ear. He came back, wearing his own face again, towelling himself nonchalantly, and Kerry remembered more of the evening. And the morning! My, my, the boy had some stamina. This one would bear cultivating.
When in Rome, as they say, do some Romans.
“Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I was feeling strangely cheerful this morning. Can’t imagine why!”
Kerry opened her mouth to speak, and the room was suddenly very bright. She grimaced. “Oh, that’s a bit bright. What’s out there, a spotlight? Who’s shining it in your window at this time of morning?”
Tony was looking pale. He dropped the towel. “That’s no spotlight. It’s… well, look.” He shifted his own features again, to look like hers: chin, cheekbones, nose… burning eyes. Bright, burning eyes.
Kerry scrambled off the bed and lunged for the bathroom. In the mirror, she saw through a glass clearly what The Flatterer had been imitating: herself, somewhat dishevelled, same as always, but with eyes shining like two suns. As she watched, the light faded. In a moment she was back to herself. “What… the fuck… was that?”
“That, Kerry my dear, was your awakening. Congratulations, you are now an Extra. Which means it’s probably time for me to tell you where Extras come from.”