I had a dream that I decided it was time to get the old gang back together.

What old gang, you ask? Why, the old gang that I used to run in where we all had magic powers.

Me, I could push small amounts of words into people’s minds. Here’s an example of me demonstrating my power to someone.

Me: Okay, I’m going to write a word on this piece of paper and then not show you. You’ll tell me what that word is. Them: Okay.

I write “Russia”.

Me: Okay, what did I write? Them: Russia. Me: Right! See? I totally put that thought into your mind. Them: whatever, it’s probably just a coincidence. We’re probably both thinking of Russia for the same reason. Me: Okay, then. You write a word. Whatever word you want. The first word that comes to mind. I’ll tell you what you wrote. Them: Okay. Me: You wrote “codfish”. Them: Yep. Me: See? Why did you think of codfish? It could have been any word at all. Chicago, pop tarts, rubber. Why codfish? Them: I don’t know. Me: Because I put that thought in your mind! Them: Whatever.

Anyway, Me and other people with magic powers used to hang out a few years ago. At that time, I had found out that I had my power, and then met other people with powers. We sought out other people with powers, and we had formed a kind of self-help group. We would get together and talk about what in the hell was going on. We’d try to understand it, and encourage our development. It felt really good to have people to talk to, who didn’t think we were crazy.

Once we found Calla, it got a lot easier to find these people. Calla’s power is that she could find anything. Ask her where it was, and she’d point there. She could even mark it on a map. “Hey, Calla. Where’s my keys?” “Hey Calla, I gotta pee. Where can I find a bathroom I can use?” Or, “Hey, Calla. Where is someone else with powers like ours?” She seemed to have a limited geographic range. She couldn’t find things anywhere in the world, but anywhere in some radius.

And Rebecca? She could read minds. But not mine. And I couldn’t push into hers. Go figure.

Well, we hung out over those years. Eventually, for some reason, we started feeling really silly about it. Yeah, right. Powers.

And we were all really different kinds of people, so we probably wouldn’t have been hanging out naturally. The lady that could make pockets of alternate dimension? She’s like 50 and upper-middle-class. There was the guy who could explode – he was 40 and a Japanese businessman. He didn’t speak very good english. BTW, he hated exploding, because it hurt like crazy. But he could put himself back together.

So we all felt a little silly eventually. Like, the older people would be like “Why am I sitting around talking nonsense with these kids?”

And eventually, we did stop hanging out. We mostly felt kind of embarrassed about that period of our lives. We avoided thinking about our powers and about each other.

Me and Rebecca remained friends. Probably because our powers didn’t work on each other. Mind you, I was never terribly embarrassed about this stuff. The reason I hadn’t been trying to hang out with these people is that there was a bunch of conflict when we split up, and I didn’t want to push anybody’s buttons.

But one day I was just like “Let’s get the old gang back together.” So I put my address into everybody’s minds, along with the word “Come.”

I don’t know why they decided to, but they all came trickling back. There was the people I mentioned, and also some of the other members of the old gang.

There was the guy who could fix any machine. Any machine that wasn’t working to manufacturer’s specification, he could restore to manufacturer’s specification. He was in his middle thirties, and he liked riding and fixing motorcycles. It was at his job as a motorcycle repairman that he discovered this ability. Lately, he’d been pretending not to use that ability. He was in his middle thirties. He reminded me of Charlie I-forget-his-name – the guy who lived at Mich house.

And there was the homeless guy, who could heal from anything (like Wolverine). He appeared to be about thirty, but he was actually over a hundred years old. He didn’t like to talk about that.

So, while I was meeting back up and getting re-acquainted with these people, I found out some stuff. It turns out that not all of us were as divorced from our past as we had thought. For example, the motorcycle repairman and the lady who can create pockets of alternate dimension? They were married! Although they wouldn’t normally seem like the type of people that would get together, they denied that their marriage had anything to do with their past or their powers.

Also, he spent a lot of time tinkering around in a place in the house that they called “the attic”, but was actually a piece of alternate dimension, that she had created. And guess what he was doing in that room? Cheating on her. With Rebecca! That’s what I was most startled to find. Rebecca and I were friends. i would’ve thought I would have heard about that before. This was the level of denial that we all had – she never spoke to me about this.

When people started gathering, I asked Willow (who didn’t have any special powers that he doesn’t have in real life) if there was some astrological reason that we would’ve been more willing to accept this stuff back then and now, and why we would’ve stayed apart when we did.

Willow said something about Trines that I didn’t understand.

Well, that’s pretty much it. We had a tense little meeting, and I talked about how I thought that it would be best for us all if we got back together and started talking about this stuff out in the open. People grudgingly agreed.

One thing I’d like to point out is that AT NO POINT was crime fought by us. Nor was the topic discussed or conceived.

… although when I woke up I thought about how we could use our silly powers to fight crime.

Rebecca and Calla could go to see George W Bush speak. Rebecca could find out about the existence of some sort of indicting document. Calla could tell us all where it is. I could distract the guards by making them think things like “I wonder what’s on TV” or “Say, is anyone in that other hallway?” The alternate-dimension lady could give us places to hide when we needed them. By the way, I should mention that she can’t make hallways or ways to travel through alternate dimensions from point A to point B. Her pockets could only have one door. Anyway, if we found a locked door, the exploding guy could blow it up, and the fixing guy could fix it so that nobody would know we were there. The healing guy could be useful in case of a physical confrontation.

We could get those documents out to the newspapers and whatnot. It’d be totally awesome.

But that’s not what we did. Maybe I’ll tell them about that next time I have a dream.