Fine Structure

There was a war in Heaven and the debris fell to Earth.
1. Every year, a randomly chosen person on Earth is struck by lightning and gains superpowers.
2. Each new superhuman is twice as powerful as the previous one.
3. This has been going on for ten years.

—"Power of Two"

A Web Serial Novel of science fiction short stories by Sam Hughes, kept on his website, Things of Interest, and on Everything2. It was finished January 2010 and Sam intends to publish it once he's gone back and polished it up.

For the best experience, read it all without reading this page, or any of the comments on the stories themselves. Then go back and read it again, this time reading the comments along the way. And don't forget to read the extras and appendices.

It's difficult to describe the story without spoiling it, since the story was revealed in brief episodes, in Anachronic Order, and with a Retcon for good measure. Hence, the examples will provide UNMARKED SPOILERS. However, here is a brief "dust jacket summary" of the three main plotlines without major spoilers.

Twenty Minutes Into the Future, scientists have discovered a set of technologies that break the laws of physics as we know them, such as teleportation or other dimensions, as well as a list of the real laws of physics. Worryingly, the scientists studying these technologies are dying in mysterious "accidents". More worryingly, the laws of physics are changing to prevent the technologies from being used.

Once a year, a random person gets struck by lightning and gains Flying Brick superpowers. They are creatively known as "Powers". Each is twice as powerful as the last, and when a Power is Born, they go berserk for 15.8 seconds (in their Caffeine Bullet Time, that's a lot). This means that there's a good chance every year of someone leveling a city.

Finally, there's Mitchell Calrus, the "Four-Dimensional Man" at the center of the story, and thus Spoilered Rotten. He has a mysterious backstory, inexplicable (even by the story's standards) powers, and he's very good at long-range planning.

The main characters, a ragtag band of scientists (mad and otherwise) and superheroes (cape-wearing and otherwise) must untangle these plotlines to decipher the laws of the universe, keep the Powers under control, and figure out why all of physics is going haywire.

The Structure of the universe is Fine and delicate... handle with care.

WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware.

Tropes used in Fine Structure include:
  • After the End: Crushed Underground takes place in the last known refuge of humanity after the Hot Wars. Eventually Mitch and Anne restore the environment enough that people can survive in it again.
  • Alien Geometries: The universes with more dimensions than ours are described like this when they are described from a human being's point of view, in Sundown.
  • All There in the Manual: Once the story was over, Sam released a few excised chapters, as well as laying out the cosmology of the Fine Structure universe in full.
  • Alternate Universe: First seen in Last Ergs.
  • Anachronic Order: The order in which the stories are presented is more-or-less chronological at first, but increasingly skips forward and back decades, centuries, and millenia.
  • And I Must Scream: Anne Poole, who cannot die, is sealed inside a coal seam for eighteen months. Her mind is completely destroyed by the sensory deprivation.
  • Anti-Villain: Ching.
  • Anyone Can Die: Especially after 'Verse Chorus.
  • Apocalypse How: Humanity nearly causes a Class 3 in the "Hot Wars". The heroes deliberately induce Class 2, repeatedly, in order to prevent humanity from causing another Hot War while they save it from Oul. The Final Battle features a Class X (wherein humanity is rescued en masse by the universe next door, which happened to have specialized equipment for rescuing interdimensional travelers because they were next-door to Earth's dimensional anomaly).
    • Class 2s occur on a regular basis after the Time Skip. Mitch and Anne learn how to provoke the Imprisoning God into wiping all information more condensed than text from the face of the planet, wiping every disk drive, human brain, and electronic device. It's Anne's idea, because she wants to prevent a class 3a. When Mitch is killed by a nuclear blast, she realizes that humanity cannot leave the Solar system, and the only way to keep humanity alive is to knock them back to the Stone Age before they kill themselves in the Atomic Age. They're probably justified, because at one point all of humanity is confined to a single underground bunker and the surface is uninhabitable.
    • Oul is capable of an X-2, and possibly an X-4 if he tried hard enough. But he "has no mind. Just firepower."
    • Oul had achieved an X-5 by the time Xio imprisoned him. Xio reasoned that an X-4 was better than an X-5.
  • Apocalyptic Log: Failure Mode is interspersed with one.
  • Area 51: Not the Area 51, but the base where the Power experiments are carried out is certainly the next best thing, a fact of which Ching is quite aware.

A desolate air base smack in the North American heartland, surrounded by a sixty-kilometre ribbon of electric fence and razor wire hung with intimidating red, yellow and white signs warding off photographers, trespassers and enemies of the state respectively, plus incomprehensibly secret experiments going on within? It's a little greener, vegetation-wise, but Kuang Ching-Yu thinks you might as well call it Area 51 and save yourself five pages of description.

  • Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Appears to be what the Klick device was trying to do, but due to the Imprisoning God it just kills everyone in range.
  • The Atoner: Arika, after Jason's death. At that point she's killed or caused the death of 223 people since she got her powers. A few years later, when she loses her powers, she's in the middle of saving her 223rd life.
  • Big Bad: Oul, a mindlessly destructive Eldritch Abomination.
    • Justified, as he is in fact a weapon and was programmed to do exactly this.
    • Ching at least points out quite rightfully that from the beginning, Xio's only motivation was his own self-interest and he brainwashed scientists just as much as Oul.
  • Big Good: Alternate Character Interpretation aside, Mitch Calrus/Xio is this. Ching is also this in that he represents humanity's interests and ultimately defeats Oul.
  • Blessed with Suck: Powers don't need to eat, and anything they do eat isn't digested. Arika is bulimic because of this.
    • Powers also kill everyone around them when they gain their powers.
  • Body Surf: Mitch/Xio is distinctly not immortal, but he needs to still be around in 20,000 years or so to fight the Final Battle. So he has his mind copied a countless number of times and installed into new bodies as required.
  • Bolt of Divine Retribution: Anyone who uses a forbidden technology will find themselves subject to this, either on a personal or regional level. Ching abuses this to destroy Oul.
  • Brain Uploading:
    • Mitch achieves immortality this way for a few hundred thousand years, so that he can keep living with Anne Poole..
    • Alternate Universe humanity uses this to save anyone whom they come across with seconds or less to live, such as everyone on Earth 0.
  • Bullet Catch: Arika catches the bullets from the Shooting Superman example below. She could have dodged, but she was making a point.
  • Cape Busters: The first artificial Powers from the Department for Special Flight Research, later known as the United States Special Air Corps are this, putting them somewhere between Cape Busters and Mutant Draft Board. They have to find and restrain new Powers because they go berserk for the first few minutes of activity. The ideal solution is to sedate them a few seconds after they're struck by lightning, but another Power can provide sufficient distraction to minimize civilian casualties.
    • In "Capekillers," it's revealed that the government's plan is to create artificial Powers to hunt down and kill new and existing Powers.
  • Capital Letters Are Magic: The Powers, the Script, the Structure, The Line, Born/the Birth
  • City in a Bottle: Crushed Underground takes place in one that is totally justified by the uninhabitable surface outside. Later the Solar System becomes a bottle basically.
  • Chekhov's Gun: In The Four-Dimensional Man, Seph notes to herself that Mitch could kill someone instantly by materializing his hand inside their head. In There Was No Leak, he's prepared to do just that to Twelve before she's Born. In this is not over and I am not dead, he kills Hugh Davies that way. In a separate but related Chekhov's Gun, it's strongly implied that Mitch is also a telepath and therefore he could have read that idea from her mind at the time she thought it!
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Ching both inverse and out; he disappears for the bulk of the the final third of the novel before suddenly appearing at the end, and in story he disappeared for 20,000 years by outrunning the Imprisioning God via time travel.
  • Civvie Spandex: The first Powers wear thick jackets to keep themselves warm when they're flying above the atmosphere. In one chapter, a Power takes his jacket off as soon as he hits the atmosphere to avoid wind resistance.
    • One of the Powers speculates that the higher-rank Powers will have to start fighting naked because there's no material that can handle the speeds they move at.
  • Clarke's Third Law: "Indistinguishable from magic", in which Mitch makes his first appearance, is named for this.
  • Code Name: The Powers refer to each other by their number, or the number of the year they were "born" in.
  • Comes Great Responsibility: Mitch invokes this in his first appearance.

I seem to have acquired a set of powers which-- which are open to abuse, but I've read the odd comic book. Great responsibility et cetera.

She has the kind of hair that's ideal for pinning up in a tight bun and then shaking down in slow motion halfway through the movie, and even has the thick, nerdy glasses to take off dramatically too. Unfortunately, this will never happen, because she needs the glasses to see.

  • God in Human Form: Mitch/Xio and Zykov/Oul are, for all intents and purposes, this.
  • Good Thing You Can Heal: Averted. Powers actually take longer to heal!
  • Grey and Gray Morality
  • Guardian of the Multiverse: On several levels. The Imprisoning God itself is a guardian of the parallel Earth universes, but its only motivation is to keep Oul from escaping. It turns out Xio tried to protect billions of levels of reality by locking Oul in ours.
  • Heel Face Mind Screw: It is implied that Mitch/Xio uses the same More Than Mind Control powers as Zykov/Oul does, especially on John Zhang, leading to Zhang's Heroic Sacrifice below.
  • Heroic Build: Averted. Powers can't gain muscle mass or lose weight.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Five examples.
    • Jim Akker kills himself while Zykov/Oul is telepathically probing his mind, in an attempt to take him down too. He also sends a last-minute warning to Ching.
    • Jason Chilton sacrifices himself to save millions of people and several named characters from the Unstoppable Rage of the Twelfth Power.
    • John Zhang kills himself in an ostentatiously physics-breaking way, forcing the Imprisoning God to isolate our entire solar system from the rest of The Multiverse, which locks out Oul.
    • Anne Poole jumps onto a black hole to undo the results of John Zhang's actions, allowing the Final Battle to go forward.
    • And finally, Ching sacrifices himself in the Final Battle, taking Oul with him.
  • High-Pressure Blood: The slaughter at the top-secret Soviet lab in halfway homes, catacombs, twilight zones features far too much blood for a normal gunfight. Justified by the fact that the scientists had just unleashed the Sealed Evil in a Can.
  • How Do I Shot Web?: Averted mostly, but subverted when the government uses it to kill a new Power.
  • Humans Are Special: Humans are (according to Word of God) only the second intelligent life to evolve in a universe at the far end of habitability (that is, 3+1 dimensional): extremophiles, like deep-sea vent dwelling archaeobacteria, and Oul killed the first already.
    • Definitely in full force with Ching, who scares two functional gods and kills one of them.
  • Hyperlink Story: After "On Digital Extremities", all the scientists go their separate ways and have seemingly unrelated superscience-related adventures, only reconvening back at the MPR in "The Story So Far", which is also a recap episode and roughly the midpoint of the series.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: But Arika eventually gets over it.
  • Immortality: Anne Poole has Type I. She's finally killed when she's dropped into the black hole bottleneck that connects the Earth pocket universe to the rest of the universe.
  • Intangible Man: Mitch can walk through walls, phase objects into each other, and has extradimensional X-Ray Vision.
    • Amazingly, the scientists' biggest question about his powers is "what's illuminating the stuff he can see with the X-Ray Vision?"
  • It Only Works Once: Because the Imprisoning God breaks it once you use it (not after merely one use at first, but faster and faster over time.)
  • Jumped At the Call: Arika tried to become a superhero. She mostly succeeded in making herself a target for muggers.
  • Just Before the End: The appropriately named Endworld subsection has the main action take place as earth is spiraling into the sun, while the last remaining protagonists are en route to the Final Battle.
  • Just Think of the Potential: The US Military is studying the Powers in hopes of learning how they tick, with the eventual goal of creating artificial Powers (an endeavor in which they succeed). Ching also believes that they're hoping for an eventual American Birth. This is the Military Applications variant, though they also use the artificial Powers for life-saving civilian applications.
  • Kill'Em All: Other than Mitch/Xio who gets to go home, not one major named character survives to see Oul destroyed (though a few die of old age offscreen).
  • Kryptonite Factor: Averted. Much to the US government's dismay, there's no easy way to dispose of a Power.
  • Language of Magic: It's science, not magic, but the fact remains that various people gain Reality Warper powers by becoming fluent in Eka.
    • Unfortuantely, due to the nature of the Imprisoning God, you can only do any given thing once. If anyone tries something that was banned before, it won't work.
  • Lethal Harmless Powers: Mitch can kill people by hitting their brains with his hand.
  • Lightning Can Do Anything: Each Power is empowered when a bolt of lightning strikes them, earthing a fraction of Oul's or Xio's power in them. Other incredibly precise lightning strikes turn out to be the will of the Imprisoning God. The most common thing the bolts of divine will do is reprogramming computers.
  • Lost Technology: Anne Poole spends thousands of years trying to slow down humanity's inevitable rediscovery of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons. When she inevitably fails, planet-wide mind wipes are carried out, returning such tech to Lost Technology status.
  • Magic Pants: Lampshaded in Power of Two. Jason Chilton notes that his body armor has been torn almost completely apart after his fight with the Tenth Power, but his pants have remained miraculously intact.
  • Meta Origin: Anybody with a superpower got his or her powers from either Xio or Oul. Or, in two cases, was Xio or Oul himself.
  • Mind Manipulation: Mitch and Zykov can both do this because they're Xio and Oul respectively.
  • Mind Screw: Not helped by Sam being fairly tight-lipped as he was writing it.
  • More Than Mind Control: Zykov/Oul uses overpowering telepathy to the point where his servants try to kill millions on their own initiative, because they believe its the right thing to do.
    • Xio uses the same thing on Anne and a few other scientists, partially because Anne is necessary for him to remain immortal, but mostly to cover his tracks.
  • The Multiverse: Introduced (and created) in 'Verse Chorus.
  • Mysterious Antarctica: Anne and Mitch calculate the Solution in a base on the seventh continent, to keep it from being disturbed as humanity rises and is cast down.
  • Not So Different: In the final installment, Ching reveals that he's figured out that Xio has been mind-controlling the various scientists, just like Oul has. There is even some doubt as to whether Xio or Oul is the aggressor because Xio would have been as destructive as Oul if he had the power, though Sam clarified that Xio's story was not misleading.
  • Not the Fall That Kills You: The Powers can survive re-entry, but it's subverted hard later on. See Trainstopping.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: Oul.
  • Optional Canon: Marooned, by Word of God. See Retcon below.
  • Power Glows: Most of the time, anyways.
  • Power Levels: Deconstructed, as the ever-ascending power levels make the individuals in question too dangerous to be left alive, especially coupled with the Unstoppable Rage that accompanies their Birth. Power levels in Fine Structure are measured in powers of two, with (for example) the Ninth Power (Jason Chilton) being twice as powerful as the Eighth Power (Arika McClure). After the Twelfth power, most of the rest are handwaved away (except one story about the Sixteenth power, and a single mention in passing of the Nineteeth Power).
  • Power Perversion Potential: Deconstructed with Mitch. He can see through clothes, but he can also see through skin, guts, and everything else, and it's not pretty.
  • Precursors: Our civilization, and at least half a dozen that followed it After the End, are this to the civilization of 1970-.
  • Punny Name: Powers refers to both superpowers and the fact that every year each member of the Line's abilities increase exponentially.
  • Reality Warper: One scientist decides to start reading the Script halfway through, instead of from the beginning like everyone else. This eventually leads to the development of Klick devices, which can do practically anything.
  • Recap Episode: "The Story So Far". See Hyperlink Story.
  • Required Secondary Powers: The Powers' brains are accelerated while using their abilities so that they can keep up with their reflexes, but they can freeze in vacuum. Mitch can see through walls, but he can't breathe while he's phased. Anne can survive anything, but has been trapped in uncomfortable circumstances more times than she can count.
  • Retcon: Marooned, formerly the second segment of the final chapter of Fine Structure, changed the accepted fact of when Mitch/Xio came into his powers, implying a much darker characterization for him. It was sufficiently controversial that it was, itself, retconned out, and is now considered Optional Canon.
  • Schizo-Tech: The societies after the crashes rise up surrounded by the detritus of ages of technological civilizations. Their development is therefore quite erratic: one society develops spaceflight before antibiotics (justified by the fact that an immortal physicist guides each society’s rise, and she needed to reach Neptune real quick).
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Repeatedly and recursively (cans in cans!)
    • Oul's Egg contains the local manifestation of Oul. Due to the actions of some Soviet scientists, Oul inhabits the body of condemned convict Mikhail Zykov.
      • When the Soviet scientists accidentally unleashed Oul into Zykov, they sealed their lab off from the rest of the world to contain him. This lasted at least a year while Zykov/Oul worked himself free.
    • The Imprisoning God is a sentient prison wall keeping Oul sealed in our universe, thus keeping the rest of the higher Multiverse safe from its ravages. Yes, our universe is the "can".
  • Sealed Good in a Can: As the cost of keeping Oul sealed in with him, Xio is unable to leave our universe as well.
    • In the Optional Canon story "Marooned", something similar to Oul's Egg is described, shortly before Mitch's accidental death and subsequent possession by Xio. By parallel, this would be Xio's Egg.
  • Secret Public Identity: Arika does this. In fact, nobody in the series has a Secret Identity.
  • Shooting Superman: Subverted. Low-rank Powers can be hurt by bullets, especially armor-piercing rounds.
  • Shout-Out: To "The Elements" by Tom Lehrer (a song) in this was supposed to be a parable about the power of the imagination.
  • Shrug of God: At least one question in the comments on the Q&A is answered "Who cares?"
  • Spandex, Latex, or Leather: Sam put a lot of thought into this. The Powers end up wearing something made of plastic and metal that's shaped like a wingsuit, because they have trouble maneuvering with their reactionless thrust.
  • The Stars Are Going Out: In The Astronomer's Loss. This turns out to be a good thing though.
  • Subspace Ansible: As far as most of the scientists are concerned, the plot is kicked off by the discovery of the A-Layer, which should allow faster-than-light communications, but doesn't.
  • Superhero Paradox: And it gets scarier when you realize that each new one is twice as fast and twice as strong as the strongest one alive. Ultimately, this is the reason the government implements a squad of Cape Busters.
  • Superpower Lottery:
    • All the standard-issue superheroes are Flying Bricks, most notably Arisa McClure and Jason Chilton. Later members of the Line are stronger, but few manage to live long past their Birth.
    • Anne Poole has almost perfect Immortality, although this is really more of Blessed with Suck considering she got it and then spent 18 months trapped in a coal seam completely conscious and insane.
    • Mitch Calrus/Xio can become Intangible, and extend the effect to things he touches. He can also see through things. Evidently he also has More Than Mind Control, but just how often he uses it is up to the reader's interpretation.
    • As Zykov, Oul has More Than Mind Control, as well as an unknown degree of super-strength. In the Final Battle, Oul's power is reality warping, to an even greater degree than Ching, but less imaginatively applied.
    • Ching ultimately gains the powers of a self-aware Reality Warper, but he can only warp reality in a particular way once before that option is excised by the Imprisoning God. Any Eka speaker theoretically has this power, Ching just has it to an incredible degree due to earthing all of Xio's power in himself.
  • Super Serum: The creation of artificial Powers is never explained.
  • Super Soldier: The US government can evidently turn people into Class VI supermen at will.
  • Super Villain: Played straight, oddly enough. And then it turns out the Big Good is just as much at fault.
  • Super Weight: Ranging from -1 for normal humans to 5 for the Imprisoning God, and everything in between for high dimensional beings.
  • Teleporters and Transporters: Teleportation works by swapping two areas of space. The very first teleportation experiment results in Anne Poole being sealed in a coal seam. The consquences only get worse from there - later, four scientists are simultaneously killed. Finally, an entire building is teleported underground, and teleportation is excised from the fabric of the universe.
  • Time Abyss: Anne Poole lives around 20,000 years, and experiences every minute of it, including the centuries buried alive.

Sometimes the discovery becomes massive and everybody in the world finds out at once and I end up on a pedestal. Sometimes they make me their leader, sometimes they call me an abomination, sometimes I get arrested and studied, usually it's all of this at once. I've been everywhere. I've done everything, spoken every language, built a pyramid, survived re-entry. History goes in cycles. If you watch it for long enough you can see the tipping points coming and be there when they happen. I invented fire, the wheel, the electric motor, antibiotics, you name it, every era, every country. Fought in X number of wars. Once, I actually ruled the whole world.
I've walked on the Moon barefoot.

  • Time Skip: Even disregarding the Anachronic Order, the story spans over 20,000 years and most of that time understandably doesn't get examined in detail. In detail it only really covers from 2000-2020 or so, and a few brief segments in between, before jumping to the end.
    • When astronomers discover something in space traveling at near-light speed, setting off supernovas, and headed straight for Earth, they convince one of the leading Script scientists to use some Magic From Technology. He bubbles the Solar System into extradimensional space, but this results in a Post Apocalyptic Earth.}}
  • Time Travel: With automatic anti-paradox protection going backward. Each direction only gets used once. It's used by one of Oul's slaves to blow up Manhattan.
  • Title Drop: In the very first story. A few of the individual chapters do this as well.

Then it's over, Heaven number seventy-nine dopplering into our wake, torn bodily from its extradimensional moorings, fine structure bucking, scattering and shattering.

  • Trainstopping: Arika tries to stop a crashing plane... and she can't find a good place to grab it, it falls apart in her hands. Eventually, she settles on lightly prodding it (at super-speed) all over to slow it down, and corrects for spin every quarter-second or so.
  • Triple Shifter: Subverted. All of the Powers live on a military base and go out once a year to find the next Power. They don't need jobs because they don't need to eat. They don't need homes because they can't die of exposure.
  • Unperson: The result of applying an anti-memetic weapon to a human being. Such a person cannot be remembered or recorded. As far as anyone is concerned they don't exist. This happens to , and as a result, we, the readers, cannot ever know why[1]!
  • Unspoken Plan Guarantee: In the lead up to the Final Battle, Mitch/Xio has a stated plan of reaching the Solution in Antarctica, and we hear a fair amount about the trip. He shows up just hours too late, but Ching, whom we haven't seen since he tried to drag Mitch out of the universe, shows up with the Solution and all of Xio's remaining power, ready to challenge Oul.
  • Unstoppable Rage: For the first 15.8 seconds after becoming a Power, the person in question is an absolute berserker. Civilian casualties are usually very, very high. This is why most of the Powers 10 and higher are killed.
    • Powers perceive time differently. For a sufficiently high Power, that 15.8 seconds can mean many hours. Plenty of time for them to destroy a whole city.
  • Utility Belt: Scarily enough, full of weapons designed to kill Powers.
  • The Wall Around the World: The Imprisoning God prevents any travel out of 3+ 1 dimensional space, keeping Oul and everyone else in.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Xio.
  • Wham! Episode: 'Verse Chorus, where the story officially makes the transition to Anyone Can Die.
  • Wham! Line: The shocking revelation when Ching confronts Mitch.

"I have enough mental control over these sheep that I could kill you right now in front of them and never serve a day--"

  • What the Hell, Hero?: Once Mitch figures out how to get around his lack of Required Secondary Powers, he robs a bank to test it out.
  • Wild Mass Guessing: Just read the comments on the various stories. Note that comments were not there from the very start, but were put in place about halfway through.
  • Word of God: Anything Sam says in the comment threads is this. He generally only clarifies points in his stories, rather than giving new information. The Q&A is the major repository of Word of God.
  • Your Mind Makes It Real: Word of God is that a Klick Device is "a metal box with nothing in it, which serves as the focal point for a machine which its user builds entirely in his or her head".
  • You Shall Not Pass: Zhang's Heroic Sacrifice creates the New Cosmology, an impenetrable barrier around the solar system, keeping Oul at bay for the necessary thousands of years.
  1. ↑ It's implied he realized what Mitch really was and/or realized he was brainwashing the others
This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.