This morning on planet Earth there are one thousand, six hundred, and eighty-six enhanced, gifted or otherwise-superpowered persons. Of these, one hundred and twenty-six are civilians leading normal lives. Thirty-eight are kept in research facilities funded by the Department of Defense, or foreign equivalents. Two hundred and twenty-six are aquatic, confined to the oceans. Twenty-nine are strictly localized powerful trees and genii loci, the Great Sphinx and the Pyramid of Gaza. Twenty-five are microscopic (including the Infinitesimal Seven). Three are dogs; four are cats; one is a bird. Six are made of gas. One is a mobile electrical effect, more of a weather pattern than a person. Seventy-seven are alien visitors. Thirty-eight are missing. Forty-one are off-continuity, permanent migrs to Earths alternate realities and branching timestreams.
Six hundred and seventy-eight use their powers to fight crime, while four hundred and forty-one use their powers to commit them. Forty-four are currently confined in Special Containment Facilities for enhanced criminals. Of these last, it is interesting to note that an unusually high proportion have IQs of 300 or more -- eighteen to be exact. Including me.
I dont know why it makes you evil. Its just what you find at the extreme right edge of the bell curve, the one youd get if six billion minds all took an intelligence test and you looked at the dozen highest scores. Picture yourself on that graph, sliding rightward and down slope toward the very brightest, down that gradually gentler hill, out over the top million, the top ten thousand all far smarter then anyone most people ever meetout to the top thousandnow things are getting sparserthe last hundred, and its not a slope at all now, just a dot ever once and awhile. Go out to the last few grains of sand, the smartest of the smartest of the smartest, times a thousand. It makes sense that people would be a little odd out here. But you really have to wonder why we all end up in jail.
-Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman
Six hundred and seventy-eight use their powers to fight crime, while four hundred and forty-one use their powers to commit them. Forty-four are currently confined in Special Containment Facilities for enhanced criminals. Of these last, it is interesting to note that an unusually high proportion have IQs of 300 or more -- eighteen to be exact. Including me.
I dont know why it makes you evil. Its just what you find at the extreme right edge of the bell curve, the one youd get if six billion minds all took an intelligence test and you looked at the dozen highest scores. Picture yourself on that graph, sliding rightward and down slope toward the very brightest, down that gradually gentler hill, out over the top million, the top ten thousand all far smarter then anyone most people ever meetout to the top thousandnow things are getting sparserthe last hundred, and its not a slope at all now, just a dot ever once and awhile. Go out to the last few grains of sand, the smartest of the smartest of the smartest, times a thousand. It makes sense that people would be a little odd out here. But you really have to wonder why we all end up in jail.
-Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman