The vanguard

My name is Noriko Null and I've never met my mother before.

There was never a picture of her in the house. Dad never mentioned her unless I asked first, and he always seemed very careful to say as little as possible. All he ever said was that my mother had to go back to Japan when I was very young.

I always asked him why, and the answer was always the same: she was a very busy woman and he'd explain when I was older. I'm eighteen and I still don't have the answer.

While it's not really that rare to be biracial, especially when you live in New York, it's impossible to avoid questions when people hear my full name or see me with my father: he's white and I look distinctly Japanese. Which would be fine if I knew how to answer, but the mystery's always been there for me.

Until this week, when I received a letter from Tokyo...an actual paper letter inside an envelope, with a hundred-dollar bill.

"Meet me at the Empire State Building, 87th floor, next Friday at eight PM. Don't tell anyone. Leiko Tanaka, your mother".

Every fantasy I've ever had about my mother flared up when I received that letter. I still have it in my pocket, together with the hundred dollar bill.

Sneaking out of the house, catching a cab to the other side of the city, taking the longest elevator ride of my life, my heart feels like it's going to explode.

What will she look like? Why hasn't she said a word all these years? Why did she leave me?

An Asian man in a business suit is waiting for me, quickly showing me his card.

<Miss Null, I presume. I represent Miss Tanaka; follow me, please.>

I mumble something and follow him. Before you know it we're in some kind of brand new conference room. I couldn't miss the Scion Corporation logo if I wanted to.

There's a woman in front of the window overlooking the city. She's wearing a stark white office suit, in contrast with the very dark hair reaching her shoulders.

She turns and walks towards the table. I don't know why I'm surprised by the resemblance: I knew I'd look more like my mother.

She's beautiful, more than I'll ever be. But beneath the makeup and the confidence that clearly sets us apart, you can see that she's my mother. It's the first time in my life I experience family resemblance and I can't help staring at her. Probably looking like an idiot.

<Sit down. Don't just stand there looking at me like an idiot> she says.

<Miss Null, as you may know, as daughter of a Japanese citizen born in the United States, you currently have both citizenships. However Japanese law does not recognize dual citizenship: before you reach age 22 you are required to choose one of the two nationalities.>

<What? I'm sorry, but…this is the first time I see my mother…what's this got to do with anything?>

<Miss Tanaka wishes you to renounce Japanese citizenship, never visit Japan, never acknowledge your mother's identity and sign a nondisclosure agreement. In exchange, miss Tanaka agrees to pay you one hundred thousand American dollars.>

I feel the weight of my fantasies crashing down. My mother stares at me like she's studying a clinical case. I've never seen so much coldness in someone's eyes.

<Wait wait wait. You're showing up after all this time to give me hush money!?>

<Miss Tanaka is a very important person, miss Null. News of a secret teenage pregnancy could damage her image> the lawyer explains very calmly.

<That's what you care about? Your image? Is it more important than me?> I shout at her.

<Yes.>

The black hair slips in front of her left eye, but she doesn't even blink as she looks at me and explains:

<Life is full of disappointments. You are one of them, just like your father. Your name suits you well: you are nothing and will always be nothing. If it had been up to me, you wouldn't even exist. Take the money, it's probably the best thing that will ever happen to you.>

<Miss Tanaka, please, is this really the best way to handle the situation?> the lawyer asks, his voice a mix of embarrassment and fear.

She answers something in Japanese. I don't understand a word. All I understand is that I've never felt this insulted and betrayed in my life.

I reach for the letter in my pocket and throw it at her. It's still got the hundred dollar bill inside.

<Don't worry. You don't have a daughter.>

I manage to hold the tears until I've stormed out of that horrible place. There's no way to explain what's going on inside my head right now, but as soon as I reach the elevator I hear a voice:

<Your mother's quite something, isn't she?>

She startles me: I have no idea how I missed her. Admittedly it's easier to see other people as giants when you're only five feet tall, but she must be at least seven feet. Long blond hair and a yellow office suite that doesn't come even close to hiding the figure of a swimsuit model. Pretty hard to miss.

<You have no idea> I tell her.

<Maybe I do. I've never met my mother, actually, she was eaten by my father before I was born.>

<…>

<It's not as bad as it sounds, he turned her into a fly first. He doesn't like eating people. Family issue.>

<O-okay. Nice meeting you.>

This isn't the best day to deal with crazy people, so I decide to ignore her. The elevator door opens, but on the other side there's no elevator: just a grass field. I turn around and all of a sudden I'm no longer in the building.

<Central Park, in case you're wondering> the woman clarifies.

For some reason I'm not freaking out. Part of me wants to run away, sure, but a much bigger part wants to understand what the heck is going on. She nods approvingly.

<You didn't scream. I'm not easily surprised, but I didn't expect that.>

<Why am I here?>

<I like the place and I didn't want to blow up the building. Listen, this is awkward enough...>

I'd laugh if the situation wasn't so absurd. I'm arguing with someone who just teleported me!

<Awkward!? What happened in that office was awkward, this... this is crazy!>

<I'll get to the point: I am Athena, goddess of wisdom and war.>

<A goddess> I repeat.

<I assume you are familiar with the concept. I want to offer you a job.>

<What… what kind of job?>

<The universe is far stranger than you know. Things you thought fictional like gods, aliens and monsters are real. Humanity is ridiculously unprepared and I can't shield you forever.>

<I don't understand.>

<You will> she answers, reaching inside her jacket. She shows me something fitting in the palm of her hand: a swirling path of energy, shaped like the symbol for infinity.

It looks like electricity, but at the same time it feels like nothing else.

<This is human knowledge. All of it, throughout the ages of mankind. It will make you the most intelligent being native to this planet. The vanguard of Earth's defense against the impossible.>

<And you're giving this to me?>

<You have determination, you don't scare easily, and I have a thing for heroes with family issues. Heroes have been chosen on far shakier grounds.>

She leaves the energy glow floating, right in front of me. I stare into her silver eyes, my mother's voice still echoing in my mind. "You will always be nothing", she said.

<What does this have to do with my mother?>

<Let's just say that your family makes mine look normal, and my uncle is the Lord of the Dead.>

<Where's the catch?>

<The catch is you'll have to live with the darkest part of humanity crawling inside your head. If you can live with that and with the responsibility of my gift, just touch the energy.>

I hesitate. This is too crazy to be true. But it would be crazier to throw away something like this.

My hand gets closer to the infinity symbol. It's not warm like I thought it would be.

<Will it hurt?>

<Immensely. But it's worth it.>

<This is probably a bad idea> I say, touching the energy.

The energy flows from my hand to the rest of my body. All my pain receptors go into overdrive; I can't move a finger. This is the easy part.

Then the process reaches my head; I feel like somebody's peeling off my brain with a rake and pouring acid into it. Making new space.

Every man, woman and child feels something at the exact same moment, like they've heard a distant sound they don't recognize. They don't know their mind is being linked to mine.

As this happens, the sky over New York is lit by a lighting storm the likes of which has never been seen, mostly because there's almost no cloud. It's literally a storm of knowledge, as the information is reaching it from all over the world.

As I look up to watch it, the download starts. No wonder Athena didn't want to do this indoors: a massive bolt of lightning strikes me.

It takes seventeen seconds. Seventeen seconds to download EVERYTHING.

You think it's not much? Try squeezing ten thousand years of civilization into it, in a continuous stream of data. Think of every book and magazine ever written, every song and speech ever recorded, every theory and fantasy and nightmare and hope ever passed to future generation.

I fall on my knees. The grass has been burned to ashes but there's not even a scratch on my clothes. My brain is still stitching together neural pathways to process the new information. I will probably need to rewrite neuroscience from scratch to understand what's going on inside my head. Suddenly I realize two things: I can do it, and it will be easy.

I stand up. I can see Athena as the ancient Greeks saw her, with her golden helmet and majestic shield. I also see my reflection in the shield. My eyes are now bright silver.

<How do you feel?> Athena asks.

"You are nothing and will always be nothing" – says my mother's voice.

I feel like I can do anything. I feel like showing my mother what I have become.

But I am not the sweet innocent Noriko anymore. I am something more, something born out of every battle that's ever been fought, every mystery that's ever been solved, every threshold that's ever been shattered.

I am a single mind backed by seven billion souls, and there's only one thing that I can answer, the one thought that keeps the other seven billions in check.

<I am Null. I feel like I could take over the world.>

Athena looks at me approvingly, with half a smile on her face. I see her differently now... not just because I can see her armor. I can see everything now.

Suddenly I know how she's been represented over the centuries. I know how every single statue of her looks like, I know the name of each sculptor. I read the entire Odyssey in the time I need to blink, which leads to all the translations, to the biography of every translator.

It's too much in such a short time; I have to close my eyes. I feel them burning.

<Relax, my child. It will take time to adjust to your new mind> Athena tells me; her motherly voice makes things easier, but just barely.

When I open my eyes, they shine so brightly that I can see the reflection on her armor.

<Bioluminescence. You didn't just download information into my brain, you have also physically altered my body. Why?>

<You tell me.>

I feel a surge in my head, reverberating through my eyes. I know they are shining again.

<The human brain isn't supposed to handle this much work. I'm constantly overclocking. Did you give me new eyes to discharge the energy in excess?>

<I see you are adjusting just fine. I'm sure the next time we see each other you'll have grown to your full potential> she tells me, taking a step back.

<What, you're leaving? Already?>

<I am a busy goddess, Noriko. I have other matters that require my presence.>

<But... but what am I supposed to do now?>

Athena smiles. Not the way you do when you're happy or you're having fun, but the way you smile when you've won the game before everyone realized you were playing. Somehow, I have a feeling that's the only way Athena smiles.

<Anything you want, Noriko. This world is yours now.>

She disappears in a cloud of golden light, leaving me alone. Now that the adrenaline rush is going away, I begin to realize the magnitude of what just happened.

The Greek gods are real! And they've chosen me as their... their what, really? She said I was supposed to be "the vanguard". What's that supposed to mean?

Vanguard, the leading part of an advancing military formation that seeks out the enemy and secures ground in advance of the main force.

The answer comes to me before I ask it. It will take time to get used to this.

I look around, feeling slightly disoriented. How am supposed to get home from here? It should be easy: apparently I know New York's map into its finest details now. I can see all the ways I can get home on foot, and I know the number of every taxi I can call.

I decide to take a walk, to clear out my head. Easier said than done with all the stuff that's been put there: I feel like my mind has indigestion.

I know I'm in Central Park. I've been here before, of course: you can't live in New York all your life and miss it. But everything is different now. Or really, I am different now.

I get some stares from a couple of tourists; I must look drunk by the way I'm watching everything with amazement. Wait, how do I know they're tourists?

Faces. Driver's license. Job application. Internet profile. I don't want to know the details of what they've posted online for the last twenty years, but it comes automatically.

It's just a couple people several feet away and I have to look away. Find something to focus on.

I get to Cleopatra's Needle, the park's obelisk. I already know it has nothing to do with Cleopatra, but I don't want to know its full history. It comes anyway.

It's overwhelming, I don't know where to look now. I stare at the hieroglyphs on the obelisk, will that help? "The crowned Horus, Bull of Victory, Arisen in Thebes", yes, I can read that.

I reach the nearest bench and sit down. I'm reading thousands of pages of Egyptian history, how do I get this to stop!?

Take a deep breath. Don't panic. No I don't want to know about the respiratory system, you stupid brain, can't you slow down just a minute!?

Calm down, Noriko. You can do this. You can focus. You are Null. Take a deep breath. Open your eyes, you can handle this. I'm looking down, all I can see are my boots on the grass.

Biker boots. Paid 39.99 dollars. A list of where they're sold. Financial records of all the manufacturers. Grass. Poa pratensis, commonly known as Kentucky bluegrass. There are more than 12,000 grass species, about 800 genera that are classified into 12 subfamilies.

No no no. Stop it. Focus focus focus. I have to stop this.

This is just noise, useless junk information. It's all the same to me. I take another deep breath. My eyes shine, discharging excess thought process. It gives me a solution.

It's called the von Restorff effect: when multiple homogeneous stimuli are presented, the stimulus that differs from the rest is more likely to be remembered. In other words, if I isolate the one thing that I can't mistake for anything else an focus on that, I should be able to filter the rest.

<I am Null> I say out loud.

It's just a name. It means "zero" in German. "You are nothing and will always be nothing", isn't that what my mother said? Focus. Focus everything through my sense of identity. Filter the rest.

Seven billion minds back off. The collective brainpower and experience of an entire planet is at my fingertips now. I wonder if they feel who's the boss now.

I seem to have gained more interest than Cleopatra's Needle, because there's half a dozen people around me. This is still a short distance from the absolutely massive lightning strike that everybody in the state must've seen, but I can understand that from their perspective I'm acting strange.

They probably think I'm high as a kite.

Maybe it's best to avoid attracting too much attention at this point: I'm still new at this. I take my leave and start thinking again, but this time my head feels a little clearer.

I think about Athena. So many implications in the fact that gods are real, I have no clear basis on how to deal with that. She mentioned Zeus, so I have to assume that other gods are real as well; at the very least, the Greek ones are.

Are there any others on Earth? Athena looks human, but not exactly the kind that goes unnoticed. A quick glance at all the photographic records in existence doesn't show a match; I do that by reflex before I realize I can do it. This might prove to be a useful skill. Let's try it out.

I turn around. And sure enough, I face I see is accompanied by an instantaneous background check.

Except one. There's a woman with long black hair and a green office suit staring at me, immobile. She's not even blinking, and I have no idea about who she is.

Something's not right. I walk away, speeding up my pace until I'm out of the park, before I turn again. And there she is again, still staring. Still unknown.

I try not to be paranoid. But she's the only face I can't recognize, and she's following me. Even after I've left the park, sure enough, she's still at the same distance from me. Still staring.

Think. Is she working with Athena? Or against her? The term "vanguard" that she used suggests the existence of an enemy. Should I confront her? I'm not ready for this.

My subconscious provides a suggestion, again. Or at least I think it's subconscious; can I hold two simultaneous trains of thought, now? I'm confused. It's still hard to avoid thinking too much.

So I run away. I need to shake off the adrenaline rush, and I won't do that if I keep overthinking every little thing. I run by familiar buildings that now feel like they belong to a different life.

I stop when I come by a shop window, looking at myself in the reflection.

I see an eighteen year old Asian American girl with a green leather jacket. I see the faint glow coming from my new silver eyes, and my new abilities come bite me in the ass to hammer down how truly unremarkable I am.

A teenage girl like a million others. With the brainpower of a planet. And I smile the same way Athena did when I see my stalker's reflection in the distance.

Lady, if I'm right... and I know I am... you won't like where I'm going now.