So, here we are. The awaited reboot of Mosaic.
I'll be taking this one in a different direction than before from the very beginning, as you'll see soon. I don't plan on often retreading much ground from the previous story. You may see some elements that pop up, but this is ultimately its own beast.
I have a few chapters pre-written so that I can keep up a relatively consistent posting pattern for the foreseeable future.
OSMOS V
June 1, 16:14 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWELVE
I was three years old - again - when my second life decided to veer off of the expected course. I might never get used to the idea of a second life at all, but I am living it all the same.
There were clues, certainly, that things were headed in a weird direction. Yet, the limitations of a toddler's development kept me from fully realizing the gravity of the situation, the strangeness of this new life. Somewhere in the haze of a baby's neural networks lie memories of a history teacher in his late twenties who longed for more than a meager existence in the throes of late-stage capitalism. Nothing in those old, fading memories could have prepared me for the first time my grandfather visited and unraveled everything I thought I knew.
I stared, slack-jawed, as a figure I only knew from Mother's stories stepped into the family living room. He shifted on one leg as he removed his wet boots by the door. The dented cleaning robot shifted into position to dry up the mess, bumping into Grandfather's knee. The man's face brightened when he finally spotted me on the other side of the oval sofa, a redness in his cheeks reaching to his horns.
Horns.
Horns.
I rubbed at my forehead with tiny fingers, as confusion only grew. I rubbed my eyes next, wondering if I was just seeing things.
Nope - all four of them are still there.
"Hello, little one." The man crossed the distance and leaned down on one knee to come closer to my height. "You must be Cassian."
I nodded. Any discomfort from the use of a name that was not my own paled in comparison to learning that my grandfather had horns tucked beneath short, silver hair. I failed to rationalize it - they were too perfectly symmetrical to be a freak birth defect. What was this…?
"Hi," I said nervously, speaking not in English but in whatever language took over Earth in this future time. Perhaps these horns were a futuristic surgical body mod? "You have horns?"
He smiled slightly. "Oh these? You'll get them eventually."
I'll… get them?
"I don't understand."
"You will one day - it's a natural part of who you are, Cassian."
A natural part…?
Before I could clarify, his attention turned to Mother, who exited her room to greet him with a worried expression written across her face. Faded laugh lines hid how she really felt, and her perfume was different again for the third time this week. "Have you any news?"
The man with inexplicable horns returned his daughter-in-law's expression. It was not lost on me that this was my first time meeting my grandfather, and Mother had not commented on the occasion the moment she saw us together.
Whatever news she expected must be big.
"There was no landing," Grandfather said simply, a grave expression written on his face. "Zenoan drones sent over the expected site found nothing of note."
Mother arched a brow of her hornless forehead. Was she supposed to have them? Was I? What did he mean?
"Did they check the calculations?"
"Mother, why does Grandfather have those things on his head?"
She glanced down at me and then back to her father-in-law, face awash with worry. "Son, the adults are talking."
My knuckles tightened, and my jaw clenched tightly enough to nearly draw blood.
Grandfather ushered her into the one room in which I could not go and had not gone - Father's office. A metallic door whirred to life at their approach, as though it knew they were allowed, and I was not. Cool air from the only air conditioned room in the house spilled blissfully into the living room. "Yes, I'm told they triple and quadruple checked, and accounted for any reasonable margin of error. Clan Zenoan does not do half-measur-."
The door closed behind them, cutting me off from Mother's swift reply.
I scurried over to follow them and to continue listening, eager to hear about news from the outside world. Mother and Father almost never talked about anything important around me, and I barely knew that we lived in the outskirts of a city I'd never heard of in my past life, speaking a language I did not recognize. If not for neural plasticity, I'd have continued to confuse them with English words they took as baby talk. I held precious the few bits of knowledge I did know, things they did not hide from me.
I craved an adult conversation. I'd even take a contentious political or religious debate at this point over Father trying to teach me to count, or Mother reading bedtime stories about fanciful morality tales. None of them were even the familiar ones I remembered, so it was difficult to feel invested at all.
The door to the office did not open at my urging or my presence and remained closed, locked and unresponsive. Frustration grew yet again, and I kicked at the floor just to let the feelings go somewhere.
The cleaning robot rolled onto the space where I kicked and began scuffing out any potential damage, however minor, to the floor. The buggy thing cared little for my personal space, almost rolling over my outstretched toes.
I sighed and patted the thing on the head like a pet. "You'd understand, wouldn't you, if you were in my shoes? Not able to ask proper questions without the people you love looking at you like a freak?"
The robot did not respond. It couldn't - I'd heard of robots who could speak on the broadcasts, but this was barely more complex than a Roomba. Telling it my woes in private, away from my parents, was a frequent way to spend my evenings, even if it could not listen or engage. It was just responsive enough sometimes that I could convince myself it cared.
I did love them. Second set of parents or not, I had never been the kind of person who rejected connections. Even in my first life, my best friends' parents were almost like a second set for me. When you spend the first few months of renewed life nursing, it was difficult to not feel connected to Mother, even if most of that time was a hazy-mess in my memory.
I was grateful for it - I had no desire to unpack that.
I did have a desire to figure out how this door worked.
OSMOS V
June 1, 21:23 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWELVE
"Cassian."
Mother's voice interrupted my almost sleepy state. I'd almost fallen asleep despite worrying over horns and Zenoan drones and confusing reincarnations into a future era of Earth.
She crept into my bedroom and stopped near the edge of the harsh bed. She tucked a stray strand of her ginger hair away and cleared her throat. "Cassian, how are yo-"
"Why does Grandfather have horns?"
She blinked at the question. "Everyone grows horns eventually - it's part of maturing, Cassian. You won't have to worry about it for a long time."
Not to worry about it? If that was something natural, then… that meant my humanity was in question! If I was not human, and this second family was not human, then what did all of it mean? Was there a transhuman movement in the past?
Nothing added up, and one question came to mind. "Where are yours and Father's?"
Mother touched a spot on her forehead. "I still have nearly thirty years before they begin to grow. Your father has probably twenty." She repeated the numbers again in a sing-song voice, and I had to remind myself to look like a stupid toddler learning math for the first time.
"An old age thing?"
How had humans changed this much?
"Oh, no!" She chuckled. "I am nowhere near old. My grandfather is old - nearly four hundred and ten. That is old."
…!
I had so many questions.
"Listen, Cassian, your grandfather wanted to visit with you today. Some work came back up in the capital with your aunt, and he left via transport ship this morning shortly after he arrived here," she began, a solemn look in her eyes, but I cut her off. "I know that it is all sudden, but can you-"
"Okay, that's fine - but Great Grandfather is four hundred and ten? Is that a long time?"
She grinned. "He'd disagree with you, I'm sure - he's always been stubborn about all that. When I was young, I knew an Elder who lived to be six hundred and eighty-two, so old depends on who you ask."
I nodded, not fully taking in anything she said. Horns… living for centuries…
More so than before, I needed to learn to read the language they used to speak, that I learned as my mother tongue in this body. I wanted to ask her if they have any datapads in English, but they were remarkable unhelpful about that. There were limits to what you could ask without your parents thinking you needed a psychiatric evaluation.
"Does that mean you'll teach me to read instead?"
Mother gently smiled. "You meant that?"
I fervently agreed. Grandfather had been a teacher once, a professor later in life - so had I, once. If anyone could teach me to read before any formal schooling, it would be him. That was something I'd asked Father a week ago when Grandfather told us he was coming for an extended stay.
"If you're serious," she began, her eyes steady and warm, "then we can get started soon. It won't be easy, and you'll have to work hard, Cassian."
I was reading chapter books well before any of my peers in school in my first life - if anyone can learn to read earlier than most children, it would be someone with the memories of an adult brain. Surely that would help.
"I'm sorry your Grandfather had to leave on business with your aunt," Mother finally said, pulling me from my thoughts. "He was looking forward to spending time with you, but so am I and your father. We'll get you reading, Cassian, in no time."
The idea of unencumbered learning made me salivate. I would read every piece of text I could get my hands on until I learn exactly what was going on, with Grandfather and horns and long lives and Zenoan drones and whatever else was damn curious about this place. Either medical technology had progressed far, far beyond its rational limits, or… I was not human at all. If the latter was true, then asking either of my parents was no simple task.
No - I'd have to figure this out myself.
MUMBAI
June 2, 3:23 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWELVE
A young girl stepped into the city street, bundled in nearly every piece of clothing she owned. The sweltering heat - even in the middle of the night - made this a miserable choice, but she'd seen how others look at her. She could not make a different choice, or she... she would suffer.
Covering all but her eyes and the soles of her feet, she felt her way through dingy streets and back-alley crossings, sticking to the shadows as much as she dared. The dark was scary and full of nightmares, but the streetlights brought attention and focus toward her.
She did not want either of those things.
What she wanted was something to fill the empty pit in her stomach, to fill out her scrawny arms, to give her energy back. She had next to none, and every day, it got worse.
As she lifted a heavy dumpster lid with all her might, it suddenly snapped shut as the weight was too much for her tiny body. The sound echoed throughout the alleyway, and she couldn't avoid remembering the screaming, the shouting. Loud sounds of rage and of fear could not escape her mind for a moment, and she tumbled off the side of the container and collapsed onto grimy asphalt.
The creak of a metallic door opening nearby forced her to try to climb to her feet, but she stumbled over her own weight and fell face-first into a leftover puddle. Before she could react, a voice slurred, "Hello? Whooo's there...?"
A brown man in glasses and a thick beard approached her carefully, stopping when she tensed. Loud music from inside the club behind him died out when the door finally closed again.
"Are you there or have I-" he burped- "finally proved my mātā right and drunk too much?" Groaning, he waited expectantly for her to do something.
What, she didn't know.
The girl had two choices, she figured: ignore him and run or stay and beg. She hesitated long enough for the man to brace himself against the wheelchair ramp railing.
"You're short- no, you're a kiiiid," he muttered as his senses slowly tried to return to him. He blinked behind his glasses. "Why are y-you out here?"
She considered running or talking, and then immediately tensed. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes as she realized her hesitation would get her killed one day.
"You don't have to be scared," he said calmly, taking a step closer. "I'm a friend. My name is Abhi. What's yours?"
She felt frozen, unable to push herself to her feet. Her hands tingled against the earth.
"How old are you?" he asked. When she didn't tell him she was barely four years old, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. The motion spread a shiver across her palms. "You really should not be out here, kid, especially not at this time of night."
He glanced over his shoulder toward the door for the club, phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder. Hands pull at the door to open it again behind him, drowning the silence of the alleyway in dance music again. "Don't go anywhere, kid. You-"
Not even a moment later, two women barge through the exit, laughing in their bright colored clothing and not having a care in the world about showing off beautiful skin. She didn't know why she did not like them, but it takes them all of ten seconds to realize that she is there.
"Hello, little one," one said, a soft smile across her face. "Abhi, you didn't mention this."
"It just happened," he countered, "and you didn't answer your phone."
The other woman scoffed. "Who cares about that? We gotta figure out what to do with the kid. He could be hurt or something."
He? She frowned again, annoyed that they could not see her through the mud, through the clothes, through the cloth coverings. "I'm a girl!"
"She speaks!" Abhi called, speech still slurred. "The three of us were here together tonight, and we're going to work together to get you home."
She wanted to answer, but every time she had talked lately, it just made things worse. The other orphans hated her guts after what happened, and any one who's tried to help just ended up dead.
"You hungry?" the first woman asked carefully. The girl could not stop herself from nodding. "Okay, good. My name is Fatima, and this is Thya. We were going to go to a midnight snack joint just down the street. You want to come with?"
"We'll get some food in you," Thya added. "You have anything you want to tell us?"
Slowly, she followed and ignored Thya's question, allowing her stomach to guide her along. She kept an appreciable distance between herself and the three adults, and the earth tingled beneath her feet.
"This is crazy," Abhi said too loudly, before their conversation devolves into a whisper she was too far away to hear. The women said something in argument with each other and with him, and the girl was not liking her chances of making it through this dinner in one piece.
The small midnight diner reminded her of a place her father once took her, before he got sick three years ago. Not the same place, but the smell of breakfast food wafted into the area outside the restaurant, serving to only make her sicker.
When they opened the door to escort her inside, she almost turned around and hightailed it out of there. Instead, she let her stomach pull her through the doorway.
"Why's she covering all of herself?"
"Maybe it's a religion thing."
"That's not a burqa-"
"She's like three years old or something," Thya finished as they took their seats, allowing the girl to sit on the side facing the aisle. "Too young to be worried about all that."
Fatima met the girl's gaze, running her finger through her shortened brunette hair. "Listen, you can't keep wearing those clothes forever. They reek, it's not lady-like, and - well, let's just see!" The woman reached a hand across the table suddenly and yanked down part of the hood covering the back of her head, revealing the girl's pink hair to the few people in the diner during the middle of the night.
"Ooh, pretty!"
Untapped power surged from the girl for a single instant. The table between them shook for half a second, knocking Fatima's water onto her lap.
"Damn it," she cursed, trying to use a paper towel to address it. "Did one of you shake the tab-"
"Uh, guys - check this out!"
Abhi cared little for the gushing over the girl's unnatural hair color dye job nor for the arguing over the spilled drink. He pointed to one of the televisions showing a live-feed of something happening on nearly the other side of the world through GBS. A helicopter crew caught footage of a spandex-covered man with a red cape stopping a rampaging semi truck from crashing into a freeway full of crossing pedestrians and smaller vehicles using one hand.
"Is he flying?"
"How's he picking up that tractor trailer like it's nothing?"
"Did he just laser weld using his damn eyes?"
The girl stared up at the feed with interest. She couldn't read the captions, but she could hear fairly well if people were quiet. In English, she thinks, the words, "The Superman" rolled across the screen.
Strong, flying, heat vision, durability... where was he when she needed him last week? Or the week before? She doubted very much that he just appeared out of nowhere. If he had all that power, he could have done something for her, to help her, to not have her endure all of this.
He could have removed the heads of her first set of foster parents a year ago so that she didn't have to.
Fun fact: June 1st, 1998 (Team Year Negative Twelve) is the date of Superman's public debut in Young Justice. Batman would debut around a year later.