My friend and I were talking about what super power we would want and they said probability manipulation cause then you could technically have any power, just change the probability of you having that power to 100 and boom you got it. That sparked my brain and I decided to explore that a bit :3
TW: physical abuse, death, food-based trauma, bad foster system
Sometimes, a person is born, and no one knows. Sometimes a mother is on her own, and sometimes she dies. Sometimes, a baby is left somewhere no one could find them. After all, what are the chances that a random person would wander into a specific abandoned building in a specific town in a specific state at a specific time, just in time to save a child crying by his mother’s corpse? Usually, the chances would be pretty low. But sometimes, the stars align just right for a life to be saved. And if the baby had something to do with its miraculous rescue? Well, I guess no one would be the wiser. After all, who could guess a baby could change its fate?
“Timothy! Wake up! It’s your first day of school!”
Those were the first words he heard on this fateful day. He hadn’t had the worst time so far, bouncing from home to home, but now there was a new element to the mix. He watches as the category “school” appears in his brain. Other people don’t talk about their categories, so neither does he. Maybe it’s just something people don’t mention. A five year old wouldn’t know the difference between a well known secret and an individualized experience, after all. He decides to look through the category while he readies himself, dressing in his favorite yellow t-shirt that’s a few sizes too big and his favorite shorts, worn from years of use and hanging off his bony hips with only a threadbare belt with a few extra holes to keep it up. In the category he finds many things he’s seen in other categories such as “make a friend” and “enjoy the morning/lunchtime/evening”, but there’s other options as well such as “bus crash” or “the teacher gets your name wrong”. All in all, he quite likes the probabilities for the day, as far as he can understand them, and decides to leave them as is.
Teacher gets your name wrong: 10.1%
There is an emergency: 00.1%
He knows there are other things that could happen, but those are the most likely, and the ones he most cares about. If he really tried he could see the probability of every little thing that could happen that day, he could also see the probabilities of things that could happen that week, or even that year, or even for his entire life. But that’s a bit overwhelming for a five year old to take in, so he likes to stick to the day. He used to change the probabilities all the time, before he realized that changing the probability of one thing always changed the probability of multiple things. When he was born, he only saw two probabilities:
He didn’t really understand what they meant, but due to the nature of his power he could get the gist. He changed his probability of living to 100%, and ever since, he tended to have lower probabilities for things that would help him survive. The first home he was placed in, the probability of having guardians that cared about him was lower than 50%, he decided to keep those odds and went to a house with a junkie who forgot to feed him most of the time and used all the stipends to buy more drugs. Every day there was a probability that someone would find out what was going on and move him to a new house. Every day that probability was in the 20s or lower. So he decided to take matters into his own hands for the first time since he was born. He changed it to 100%. That changed the probabilities around enough that someone came and robbed the house, found him half dead from starvation, and took him to the closest orphanage where they just barely managed to bring him back to a healthy state. That was a scary time. Every day there had been a probability of whether he lived another day. Every day he moved it so it would be above 80. That was when he learned he didn’t need it to be 100 for something as ambiguous as whether he would survive. After all, the definition of survive has quite a bit of leeway and covers a lot of ground. You can survive on no sleep for weeks. You can survive with no food for months. You can even survive your heart stopping if it gets back going fast enough. Eventually he was placed with another family. Then another, and another. Until now, he is with his fifth family and he’s considering changing the probabilities to be able to leave them. They’re better than most families he’s been with. They leave him to fend for himself most days, scrounging whatever food he can from the kitchen, putting himself to bed, finding ways to entertain himself. He’s even able to look at the probabilities for ideas of what to do for fun, even see the probabilities of what will bring him joy to do.
Today though, he’s going to kindergarten. He’ll ride the bus for the first time. He’s not entirely sure where the bus stop is, and he doesn’t expect his guardian to show him, so he’ll just check the probabilities. See which street has a higher chance of him making it to the bus stop on time until eventually he gets there. As he’s checking his possible routes, he starts getting his lunch ready and packing his rugged blue backpack with a missing strap.
All packed up and with his chosen route in mind, he starts off towards the bus. Eventually he reaches a place where everywhere he looks the probability of him reaching the bus on time is lower than right where he is, so he figures he must be at the bus stop. Sure enough, the bus soon comes and he gets on. The ride to school is pretty uneventful, there was a time that a car ignored a red light and almost rammed the bus, but they hadn’t started moving soon enough for that to happen. Now the probability of getting in an accident was 00.0%. One disaster avoided, pretty good day so far.
He gets to school and finds his classroom without much trouble, watching the probabilities to find it. One downside of his power is that there is nothing to show what can naturally cause a probability to change, however he can make an educated guess. With that in mind, he immediately goes to introduce himself to his teacher and introduces himself as Tim. That is his least hated version of his name, as he is not overly fond of his name in general. The probability of the teacher getting his name wrong decreases to 03.1%. Not perfect, but it will have to do. Only thing he could do now to make it lower would be to manipulate it with his power, but he’s already learned that manipulating one probability can change the others in ways he doesn’t quite know how to predict yet. He leaves it alone for now.
The bell rings signaling the start of class. The teacher starts the roll call. The teacher calls him Tim. The probability goes away.
As the day goes on, he keeps to himself and keeps his head down, but notices that the probability of him making a friend is slowly ticking down as well. He wonders if it really matters all that much. After all, he’s survived this long and never had a friend before. He decides he doesn’t need a friend, they’d probably just get annoying and mean like his guardians. He lets it tick down, watching it speed up as his resolve to not make a friend strengthens.
Lunch is enjoyable. He is left alone to his lunch meat sandwich and carrot sticks he had prepared this morning. Through the years he has found he likes being alone. People tend to complicate things. They make the probabilities harder to track. He doesn’t like when the probabilities act up. So he avoids people as much as possible.
It’s the end of the day. He successfully avoided interaction with anyone. The bus ride home is just as uneventful as the one to school. More so even due to the lack of a near miss by an inattentive driver.
He finds his way home with the probabilities, which road is most likely to lead him to the house. When he gets inside, no one greets him. He hears laughter from another room. His guardian is watching television again. He heads to the kitchen to grab something for dinner, some leftover soup, before heading to his room for the night.
The next day he repeats the motions of the day before. Making sure nothing will kill him today as he tries to get through kindergarten. The year passes with nothing remarkable happening and by the next year he is still under the care of the same guardian. He has decided being ignored is better than being hit and that at least he still has access to food and a comfortable bed. He’ll stay for now.
