A Tale of Two Brothers, Part 1
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Even in all the chaos your attention is drawn to a man wearing a goggles-like headset, carrying what looks like a jury-rigged flamethrower made out of hairspray, a lighter, and a handful of gears. The man is walking down the middle of the street, spraying small bursts of flame, and dodging things you can't see. When he turns your way, you hear him exclaim, "Holy moly, that's the biggest one I've ever seen! Wait, no ..." He lifts the goggles off his head. "Oh, wow! Curious. I should have realized, with that energy signature ... Excuse me, you're a hero, aren't you?"
That's not the kind of question you're expecting, and you're not quite sure how to answer. The strange man flips down the goggles again as he approaches, tilting his head and clucking to himself. "Here, look for yourself," he says. He pulls the set off his head and hands them to you. You take the goggles, and when you don't seem to be using them fast enough he makes impatient gestures that you should be looking through them. You put the set to your eyes ...
The world around you is an explosion of color. Little streaks of light zip around. At first they're just blurs, but as you get used to what you're seeing some of them resolve into animals. Insects, birds, even a squirrel, and possibly a dog. All visible clearly through the goggles, but completely invisible to the naked eye. As you put the goggles back up to your eye, you catch a glimpse of your hand. It appears to be glowing brightly, similar to but more solid than the other glowing animals.
The man notices you looking at yourself. "Yes, your energy signatures are surprisingly similar to the frusion energy. The source of your powers must at least partially reside at the quantum level."
"Frusion?"
"That's what my brother and I call it. It's subatomic energy -- quark energy. At that level the uncertainty principle says you can't tell if it's fusion or fission, and the quantum chromodynamics give it fruit colors, so we called it frusion." He appears to note your confusion, and says, "Okay, let me back up and start at the beginning."
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References
- The name of the adventure refers to the novel A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.