The Outside World (Short Story)

In this world, Superpowers exists. People are either born with or without them, you don’t get a choice. There are many different powers, from fire manipulation to being able to turn into a smoke monster, there is no limit to what power you can have. When you are born your power typically manifests itself within the first few years. There is no common pattern to what power you’ll get, it appears to be random, but that doesn’t stop them.

In this world, there are many different groups. From the typical superheroes to the usual villains all using these Superpowers in any way they can to get what they want. As a result of this, ‘Farms’ have been set up in secret. A place where women are forced to give birth against their will to create more Superpowers. In the last few years, Human Farming had increased drastically, The world ended up becoming overpopulated and farms had to start ‘killing’ the ‘useless cattle’.

If you were born into a farm, you should hope that you have a power that the owner is looking for, or else you’ll be dead before your sixth birthday.    

I don’t know my mother very well, I know that I have around 20 brothers or sisters. How many of them survived is something I may never know. I wasn’t allowed to see my mum as she was always ‘needed’.

These farms were set up to look for powers that could turn the tides of war, the villains were the first to do it and their powers ended up becoming too strong, so the heroes did the same.

I was born by the heroes. Created as a weapon that would fight for them.

When I was born it looked as if I had no power, there was no way for people to have figured it out on their own. I was kept longer than most, lasting almost 9 years before escaping.

A child wouldn’t understand what was going on at that age, it would be impossible for them to understand anything. Luckily for me, my power allowed me to understand.

I learned about the farms and what normal civilization was like, and I had hope. Hope that if I could escape then I could live normally. Away from all this. I didn’t understand much about the world I hadn’t seen, but I knew that once I was out there I needed to hide my powers. I needed to act powerless in order to survive. From what I learnt about the outside world. There was a group of people who were destroying these farms. They didn’t affiliate themselves with superheroes and they were doing too much good to be called villains. I guess they were just ‘Good guys’.

I started planning my escape at the age of 6 when I started to understand my power. It was a simple power that would benefit anyone. I could access the minds of anyone. I could hear what they were thinking and access their memories even the ones they had forgotten. If I tried hard enough I could temporarily evolve my power more, to be able to alter memories, tricking people into thinking something that didn’t happen.

Using this power I worked out what it was like on the outside, as well as how to escape and when. I knew everything about the guards and the people inside this farm more then they knew each other. The guards never leave the farms, they stay and watch us all day, just like us they sleep on the farm, eat on the farm, and die on the farm.

There were people who had tried to escape before me, anyone who tries is executed regardless of how strong your power is. The deterrent was strong enough to stop people from ever wanting to escape. Despite this people still tried, they believed that it’s better to have died trying than to not have tried at all.

The only way to escape a farm is to kill all the guards, however, these guards are just like us, people with powers that will do anything they can to stop us from escaping.

If I was to escape I’d have to train my power, push past my limits and erase my self from the minds of everyone as if I never existed.

It took me three years of painful training. Everyday my eyes would bleed and I’d pass out from training. The only reason they kept me was that they thought it was my power trying to activate its self, or at least, that’s what I wanted them to believe.

The day of my escape came and it was easier then I imagined. The guards were easy to trick with most of them being powerless to stop a potential revolution from inside. The hard ones were the ones watching with cameras, I could trick a mind but I can’t trick a camera. They were my first victims.

After that, I killed anyone who would be able to find out about me, using a knife I stole from a guard.

The door to the outside wasn’t guarded, it wasn’t even locked. I had made it, beyond that door was the outside world I had dreamed of for years. It was a chance for me to escape and hope for everyone else living like this. As I opened the door I was excited thinking about my new life, a life where anything can happen, I’ll finally be happy!

Or at least… that’s what I thought…

On the other side of the door was nothing more than a wasteland. There were no signs of life. Any and all vegetation had been destroyed. The memories I had accessed from the guards shown a rich land full of water and buildings, but I guess those were just memories, everything in their heads was nothing but memories.

There was no longer an outside world…