He was born with a simple — and popular for the ’80s — name: Justin, meaning just, fair, righteous. His true first name was Roy — king — and the world could certainly use some just kings, both then and now. He was a bright child, but a dark cloud hung low in his skyline. He could never put a name to it, nor a meaning, nor a reason. But there it hung, all the same.

He grew into a wise (if not entirely success-driven) young man, but the cloud lingered still. It took various forms: despair, malice, apathy, conceit. Justin was never fully in its grasp, but he couldn’t escape the feeling that an encounter with true disaster lie swiftly ahead. He took up many careers: journalist, author, restauranteur. None fulfilled, and none did anything to shake the uncertain feeling that played the role of parasite in his tumultuous heart. He stayed near enough to his birthplace, an hour-and-a-half out, far enough to avoid constant contact with family, but close enough to allow him access when his soul needed repair or his belly needed that particular salve that comes only through a mother’s meals. This was his life, one which was discontented yet oddly comfortable.

It came quickly: Out for a walk in the cool night air, he saw a mysterious light, peeking through a crack in the wall of the flophouse down the street. He feared to go in, knowing the time of night and the sordid affairs taking place within… but his curiosity knew no bounds. He turned the knob slowly, opened the door swiftly (this was his time-tested method of going into a place without causing a stir — nay, turning nary a head, even in the quietest jaunts).

The light knocked him to the ground, and as quickly as it came, the light went out.

***

He woke in another place, a metropolis filled with traffic and noise and smog and such neon that he’d never before seen. It was grim and gritty and full of souls like his.

Or, we should say, how his once was. Because when he arose, naked, from the hotel bed, he knew something had changed. He was different, he was utterly another.

He put on his clothes — jeans, casual-cool shoes and long-sleeve T, his veritable uniform as of late — and stepped into the hotel hallway. He reached out to the elevator’s call buttons, and was drawn to push the wrong one. He was going UP, not down, although he couldn’t have told you why.

Into the elevator, he kept going up: Penthouse floor, do not pass go, do not collect. When the bell rang and the carcass carrier opened its mouth to allow him passage, he walked directly to a set of steel doors — NO EXIT | NO ADMITTANCE. But still he went, and with the stealth he’d used throughout his troubled existence.

Up a flight of stairs, out onto a rooftop. This was a landscape completely foreign to him, but one he suddenly realized had been calling him his entire life.

And that’s when the light returned, the exact instant that Roy Justin became Quantum, the teleporter:

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 6.55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.