Fred's life smelled like cheap toner and lukewarm coffee.
He was twenty-nine, a human spreadsheet validator for an asset management firm in downtown Los Angeles, surviving on a salary that barely kept his inherited bungalow—a small, stucco relic in Torrance—from being swallowed by the Californian property tax beast. The view from his cubicle on the 17th floor was a glorious, smog-filtered panorama of financial success, none of which was his own.
His parents were gone, having passed within a year of each other, leaving him with an emotional gap and a mortgage. His only anchors in the swirling mediocrity of his existence were two people: his childhood friend, Dusky, and Dusky's sister, Diana.
Dusky worked at The Gilded Cage, a cramped, musty pawnshop a few blocks from Fred's house. Dusky was Fred's confidant, a man who spoke in cynical half-sentences and knew the street value of everything from broken Rolexes to vintage comic books. Fred often visited, not to sell anything, but just to feel the weighty silence of things with history—an antidote to the soulless transactions of his day job.
Diana, however, was his unattainable sun. She was a model, a professional beauty whose image occasionally graced the glossy pages of Vogue or Designer Magazine, a world away from his spreadsheets. Fred saw her maybe twice a year, always at family gatherings, where her effortless glamour and easy laugh rendered him socially catatonic. He was in love with a woman he knew only through fleeting glances and magazine reprints.
On a Tuesday, his life was precisely 2.0 standard deviations from interesting. On Wednesday, everything changed.
He was walking home, ignoring the drone of the 405 freeway, still seething over an email his boss had sent about "critical underperformance." It was just past 7 PM, the air thick with the scent of jasmine and gasoline.
Then came the light.
It wasn't a flare or a headlight. It was a blinding, instantaneous bolt of pure, cobalt energy that bisected the sky. It lasted less than a second, followed by a sound that wasn't thunder, but a wet, sickening thwump as a piece of the cosmos collided with the pavement twenty feet in front of him.
Fred didn't see the meteoroid, only the aftermath: a sizzling crater, a puff of acrid, metallic smoke, and an impact wave that tossed him across a hedge and into a neighbor's meticulously kept flowerbed. The thing that hit him wasn't the main body, but a piece of high-velocity shrapnel—a fragment no larger than a tennis ball—that grazed his skull and embedded itself in a nearby palm tree.
He didn't pass out, but the world tilted, then dissolved into a kaleidoscope of screaming, impossible colors.
Fred woke to white. A sterile, hospital-grade white that was supposed to be soothing but, to him, was absolute pandemonium.
His first conscious sensation wasn't pain; it was an unbearable clarity. His eyes, blinking against the fluorescent glare, didn't just see the sheets and the bedside table. They saw through them.
The nurse standing by the bed—a harried woman named Brenda, according to the chart details he could inexplicably read on the clipboard under the clipboard—was a walking skeleton. Her bones were a startling lattice of gray-white, her veins snaking rivers of blue. He could see the thin, insulated copper wires running through the wall, the tiny capacitors humming inside the heart monitor, and the exact placement of every rusty screw in the ceiling light fixture.
Panic seized him. He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head against the pillow. When he opened them, the world was still transparent.
"No, no, no," he muttered, his voice raw.
He tried to focus on his hand, holding it up. He saw the skin, the capillaries, and the compact, newly defined musculature beneath. This was the second, more subtle change. His body felt… heavy. Solid. Effortless. He knew, with a certainty that defied logic, that the physical limits he'd had an hour ago—his moderate strength, his average endurance—had been doubled. A low-grade, constant hum of energy thrummed beneath his skin, the nascent stage of the enhancement the meteor had granted him. He was 2x Fred, and the feeling was both thrilling and terrifying.
He absorbed the data of his surroundings unconsciously. The chaotic energy of the meteor fragment—an alien mineral he would later call Aetherium—had forced his brain to process sensory input at an impossible scale.
He looked at the cheap plastic water jug on his tray.
Appraisal Data Log:
Object: Standard Polypropylene Water Pitcher, Model 714-B.
Origin: Shenzhen, China. Mass produced, batch 44, 2022.
Composition: Polypropylene (98.5%), Trace mineral oils (1.5%).
Value: Production cost $0.45. Retail value $3.99.
History: Used consistently in this facility for 18 months. Surface micro-scratches consistent with high-temperature dishwasher cycle.
The information flowed into his mind like reading a flashcard. It wasn't guesswork; it was absolute data retrieval. Every item, every object, was suddenly screaming its history and composition into his brain.
He spent four days in the hospital, mostly silent, claiming blurry vision and disorientation. In reality, he was mastering the new inputs. He learned to "mute" the X-ray vision, focusing his perception until he could see the world normally. He learned to control the identification, turning it on only when he focused intently on an object. He was a living scanner, an enhanced observer, built on a human platform.
His initial attempts to explain his powers were met with psychiatric consultation forms. Fred quickly learned the greatest rule of his new life: Silence is survival.
The fifth day was worse than the impact. It came via a curt video call from his boss, Mr. Thompson, a man whose skeletal frame, Fred noted with morbid clarity, had the density of a bird's.
"Fred, I'm afraid this is the last straw," Thompson's voice crackled over the secure hospital connection. "Missing the Q4 Reconciliation Meeting—a meeting you were specifically required to lead—is grounds for immediate termination. Your two weeks of PTO have been accounted for, and your severance package is… minimal."
Thompson clicked off without a goodbye. Fred stared at the black screen. The severance was barely enough to cover three months of the mortgage, and the hospital bills were already stacking up. The white-collar treadmill had spat him out, leaving him disoriented but impossibly strong, like a newborn Spartan left naked in the Californian sun.
He dressed slowly, the newly doubled strength of his muscles making his movements precise and almost unnaturally controlled. His white shirt felt paper-thin against his enhanced chest. His mind, however, was already racing.
He walked past the nurse's station and instinctively appraised a forgotten, battered suitcase.
Appraisal Data Log:
Object: Hard-shell Suitcase, 1980s Vintage, heavily modified.
Composition: ABS Plastic, aluminum frame, concealed compartment (false bottom).
Contents: Four antique poker chips (Ivory, 1930s, low value), one hand-written letter (German, 1944, water damage, potential historical significance).
Value: Current auction estimate (letter): $5,000 – $8,000.
The owner—an older woman in a waiting room—was oblivious. Fred stood frozen. Five to eight thousand dollars for a damp letter inside a suitcase?
The idea hit him with the force of the meteor, but this time, it was pure, beautiful inspiration. He had been given the ultimate cheat code for the world of physical assets. He couldn't go back to spreadsheets, but he could become the best—the only—asset identifier in the world. He was broke, fired, and powered-up. The answer wasn't a job; it was a crusade.
Treasure hunting.
He took a cab straight to The Gilded Cage.
Dusky, his friend, was behind the counter, polishing a tarnished silver candelabra, his dark hair pulled back into a messy bun. He looked up, his expression going from bored to worried.
"Fred, man. Heard what happened. You look like you got hit by a bus full of lead bricks," Dusky said, leaning on his counter.
"Worse, Dusky. I got hit by the universe," Fred said, managing a shaky smile. "I need you to show me your next five auction leads. No, don't ask. Just trust me."
He casually rested his hand on the silver candelabra. The flood of information was instantaneous:
Object: George II Style Candelabrum, Sterling Silver (92.5%), London 1748. Hallmarks: G.R., Lion Passant, Date Letter (n).
Value: Liquidation value (metal only): $900. Auction house estimate (antiquity): $12,000 – $15,000.
Dusky was about to sell the heirloom for scrap. Fred knew, with absolute certainty, how to save it, and how to use his new gift to start building an empire. He just needed to learn to lie without the Appraisal Log screaming the truth in his own ear.
He looked over Dusky's shoulder at a discarded copy of Designer Magazine. Diana was on the cover, radiant, unreachable.
Appraisal Data Log (Magazine Cover):
Object: Diana Rodriguez, Model, Aged 27.
Current State: Professional makeup, flawless skin texture, slight fatigue behind eyes (early morning shoot).
Composition: Human female, 98.6°F, heart rate 68 BPM (in the photo).
Motivation: To pay off her mother's medical debts.
Fred blinked. His abilities were expanding beyond the inanimate. He could read the truth in a photograph, the motivation in a face. The prize wasn't just gold; it was a way to step out of the spreadsheet fog and into Diana's bright, complicated world.
"Start with the local flea markets, Dusky. The small stuff. I need to practice," Fred said, pulling out the small wad of cash that was his severance pay. "We're going to be rich."
Dusky squinted at the intensity in his friend's eyes. "You got brain damage, Fred. Serious, rich-people brain damage."
"Maybe," Fred agreed, a terrifying calm settling over him. "But I can see the gold under the rust now. And I need a map."