Four days later, at the Thunder City Gazette, Ben Fowler was finally able to take a breather after a busy work week. He had kept himself busy copy-editing for most of the week, as well as trying to reach City Hall's metahuman registry. It wasn't easy. Bureaucracy rarely wants to talk to journalists, even one starting out. Each time he called, he got the same kind of cold shoulder a telemarketer may get on a routine basis. Ben realized he was going to have to develop more of a thick skin if he was going to get anywhere in this business.
Finally, Ben's persistent nagging a few times every day paid off. The secretary arranged a meeting for him with one of Thunder City's retired metaheroes, a fellow called the Write Guy. Apparently, as she told him, he had been a big name in the late 1990s, but he had fallen into obscurity since then. She wasn't sure if the Write Guy even had any meta-abilities any longer.
Ben went to a local coffee shop a block from the Gazette Building and waited for nearly forty minutes that morning before a disheveled-looking man wearing thick, horn-rimmed glasses walked in and scanned the room before settling his eyes on Ben. He walked over to him.
"Are you Ben Fowler?" the man said.
"Write Guy?" Ben said, standing and extending his hand.
"Oh, I never shake hands," Write Guy said. "Too many germs. Anyway, I need a coffee."
Ben thought the man looked jittery, like he'd already had several cups of coffee, but said, "Sure thing. Coffee's on me... or at least on the company." He grinned as he pulled out the company credit card.
A few moments later, the two were seated across from each other on big leather chairs, with a small table between them.
"The thing you have to understand," the Write Guy said after a few moments of small talk, "is that they took away my metapower. I used to be a star. Back in the '90s I could write myself into anything, any big story. I'd been a nobody until I got my Cosmic Keyboard. But they took it away from me, and all I'm left with now is writer's block."
He took a large gulp of coffee. "They did it to all of us, all the reality changers. Name anyone today who has the ability to unilaterally alter reality as we know it. You can't -- our kind doesn't exist any longer. But back in the late '90s, there were plenty of us: me, Albino Chameleon, Rai, Gooz, Doug Silver, the entire membership of the Seven Senses, in fact... we were the bastard sons of the Moderator, all of us.
"Yeah, the Moderator... he was an okay guy for a cosmic being, standing right on the balance between order and chaos, and the light and the dark, where creativity thrives. He kept the world from falling into chaos countless times over the years. And he was sympathetic to us metas, too. It was his influence that kept on the right side of the law and government for so many years. Then the Antimoderator came around, the self-styled 'Lord of Chaos,' as he sometimes called himself. We didn't know who he was back then, but he'd been a mortal chosen by the other side to be the Moderator's opposite number. He arranged for the Moderator to be killed using a sleeper agent. The only thing is, the Moderator knew that he was going to die, and he had a plan.
"When he was slain, his last act on dying was to transfer a bit of his power into several of us. Yeah, all the reality-changers were created by the Moderator. We were all connected that way, even though some of us ended up on opposite sides. The power to alter reality has an inherently corrupting influence, you see. It can cause madness and a thirst for power. Once he found out about us, the Antimod began tempting a few of us over to his side. And he succeeded with several.
"Then the time wars began. Nobody seems to remember them all that well, but the timeline was changing all the time. Most of it was the Antimod trying to disrupt things. I'm sure he had a few reasons for doing so, but part of his motivation for instigating the time wars was to rout out all the last reality-changers who still had their powers. Y'see, us reality-changers were trying to set things straight again whenever the timeline changed, and the Antimod could detect us only when we were using our Moderator-given powers. Once he caught us, he took away those powers.
"I went underground around that time, as did a few other reality-changers. All I had left was my Cosmic Keyboard, which funneled my powers so that virtually whatever I wrote would happen. I thought that, if I didn't use my powers at all, the Antimod would never find me. I was wrong. I was so wrong. All I managed to do was end up being the last holdout.
"Once he caught me, he had everything he wanted. The universe changed, altered. Where metahumans were once free and only lightly regulated, now the whole world feared us and thought of us as terrorists. Y'know, it never really occurred to me at the time, since I was so preoccupied with the time wars, but the day that the Antimod caught me was kind of ironic. It was September 11, 2001. That was the day that the time wars ended, with the Antimod the victor. And it seemed over for the metas. I'm glad I was wrong about that, at least. The Antimod proved to be a lot less interested in destruction than he was in keeping order. Yeah, the former 'Lord of Chaos' was more interested in order, now that he was in charge. I suppose that's the way things always go. Liberals become conservatives once they get a little power, once they realize that order is the only way to hold on to that power.
"The Antimod didn't hurt me, anyway, didn't even think I was any threat once he took my metapowers and Cosmic Keyboard away. He just left me be. I was now just another ordinary human being, but not even a pale shadow of my former self. I couldn't write any more. All that time I'd sworn off using my Cosmic Keyboard had an effect on me. I'd developed a pathological fear of writing, since I'd feared for so long that writing would lead to my getting captured or worse. Now that I was a free man, and no threat to anyone, you'd think that I would've gotten over it. But I didn't. I was a nobody." The metahero formerly known as the Write Guy looked down at his now-empty coffee cup.
"Hey, you mind if I get another coffee?"
"No, not at all," said Ben, astonished by the man's story and still frantically taking notes. He bought him another coffee. While the Write Guy was taking a gulp from his cup, Ben decided to ask him a question, just in case:
"Hey, have you ever heard of Metaman?"
The Write Guy stared at him, a frown forming on his face as if he was trying to read the reporter. "I have to go," he said, standing suddenly and almost spilling his coffee.
"What?" asked Ben. "But why?"
"Look," said the Write Guy, "I don't know who you are, or what you're playing at, but I don't want any part of it. The time wars are long behind me. Leave me out of your little games."
"I don't understand," said Ben. "Why won't you talk about Metaman? Whatever happened to Metaman?"
The Write Guy just turned and left the coffee shop.
