Against My Will 13A

JULY 18, 2025
SHOWCASE SUPERLUX CHESTNUT HILL
BOSTON, MA

THEN

Priya was still talking in his ear, going on and on about the AC in the Superlux and how it was way too high.

AC is kinda doing too much. Orin couldn’t deny that fact but it wasn’t even all that wild for a movie theater. Hell, on top of that, seeing how he was wearing a t-shirt and she had on a whole cardigan, it was also crazy for her to be the one even complaining anyway. Button up the cardigan, girl.

He didn’t let that last thought leave him even as a whisper, not trying to start a fight in the theater. For one, he liked this theater and, for two, he was busy watching the movie.

He sank further back with the recliner button, and Priya sank back with him — the both of them going all the way back until they were almost horizontal and staring up at the screen. Twenty-six dollars a ticket and she won’t shut up. He took a handful of buttery kernels from an oversized popcorn bucket; popcorn he didn’t even like, but he paid for it and he was gonna make himself enjoy it.

Onscreen, the movie was getting to a dramatic part — a kid on-screen crying in some dusty Eastern European country that looked more like it belonged in the Middle East — music swelling and tanks rolling and a whole army about to close in on the kid and then…

“Sorry, kid.”

A ginger bowl cut floated down.

“Superman couldn’t make it.”

Boots hit the dust, the bowl cut raising an eyebrow high as he stood tall in that green and white bodysuit. One hand adjusted a jacket in those same colors, the man just chewing gum with an open mouth like he never learned table manners.

“So you got an upgrade.”

Priya leaned in as the green Bowl-Cut stomped forward on the big screen, her hair up against his shoulder as she whispered questions about the guy’s haircut.

Questions he didn’t think the movie answered, honestly.

Orin didn’t answer them either.

He was too locked in as the ginger man just waved.

A hand went up like he was shooing a fly and an enormous green hand came out of the ground bigger than a minivan and slapped a row of soldiers sky-high before they could even aim their rifles his way.

Another one — just as green and equally as bright — came down from the air and folded an APC without him even looking. The man on screen just glanced off to the side, eyebrow still cocked and mouth open as that gum popped against teeth.

Orin leaned forward. “Okay…”

Tank after tank rolled forward, and even their turrets coming around to point his way didn’t even get anything out of the man but a yawn as a green middle finger popped out of the dirt underneath the first tank and launched it skyward.

That middle finger lasted for all of a solid second before another appeared a good distance down the battlefield, another tank sent flying and soldier after soldier hurled with it.

People were laughing.

People were whooping.

Somebody was even clapping.

Orin just sat there with the recliner all the way back as he watched a guy named Guy just do whatever he felt like and somehow look cool the whole time.

Green Lantern. He’d always known Green Lantern; a space cop with a magic ring. He’d known about him even before that Ryan Reynolds movie that he could never really hate. Back when Green Lantern was just a bald black dude that was either getting with Hawkgirl or Vixen, he knew Green Lantern.

But none of that ever made him sit up.

…figuratively, of course.

Superman was strong, and he could punch things so hard that everyone had to listen, but the alien space weapon sitting on this guy’s middle finger just needed him to think fuck you hard enough and it turned that into hundreds of tons of hard light.

This thing just made you more you, and that was just…

So fucking cool.

Priya whispered something else in his ear, Orin leaning back toward her with his eyes still on the screen. “Ohhh, that’s hard.”

“…right now?”

“What?” His head snapped over to her, blinking fast. “What, no… I mean, wait… do you wanna?”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

JULY 18, 2002
QUEENS, NYC
NOW

Twelve months later, twenty-three years earlier, and one whole universe over, Orin Hunter Kelly sat cross legged on a dirty mattress in a basement as he counted through the same crumpled-up bills for the third time.

Seven-eighty-two.

He knew it was seven-eighty-two.

He’d known it since the first time he counted it a quarter-hour back, but he counted it again anyway because his brain was holding out some sick hope that he’d find another hundred stuck to a twenty somewhere. Unfortunately, there was no extra hundred to be found by the time he finally finished again. The stack had a lot of singles in it, more twenties than fives, and only one hundred-dollar bill soft as cloth.

Orin shoved the stack into a pair of tube socks, tied it up and tossed it aside before he let himself fall back on the bed with a sigh. Most of the money had come that first night with everything downtown wide open for the taking. Thor’s lightning had done a good job in wiping out a bunch of the power and the fight itself had shattered so many windows. With a few hundred people as camouflage in all the chaos and no cops with the ability to stop pretty much any of them, Orin had walked into a bodega with the door hanging loose and gone through the register quick as he could.

A man in a Mets jersey had chosen that moment to walk in, the both of them making eye contact. Man, I must have looked crazy. Rail-thin and half-manic after that fight, Orin had been hunched over a bunch of money and bodega snacks in the dark.

It was no surprise the guy had turned right on his heels and walked right back out.

The rest of the money came from whatever shops were open and pawn shops the rest of the week, places that didn’t bug you with questions or ask anything at all. With electronics he pulled out of a busted storefront, a bunch of watches and a fistful of jewelry and gold chains, he made a little bit of money and gotten incredibly ripped off for his efforts. Still…

He hadn’t gone into anybody’s apartment, though, or even touched a body no matter how many there were that still had wallets and other stuff on them.

Nah. Forget about it being wrong, that was just weird.

You had to give the dead some dignity.

Even animals did that.

So… seven-eighty-two.

A hand came up to drag itself down his face, Orin fighting a groan the whole time. That’s not enough to live on. It might have been, actually, but nowhere longer than a couple months at least.

It was just an insanely small amount of money when his 16 inch M5 Pro had cost more than three times that much, and that was with the student discount. And the 18 was another thirteen hundred on top of that. True, his dad had paid for half of that as a bribe for something, but even still…

It was hard to deal with the fact that entire net worth in the year 2002 was sitting around a third of a computer he mostly used to mess around with PyTorch and shoot off shitty webapps and shovelware games for quick cash. No, this isn’t just a clone of Battle Network 1. I put my heart and soul into it. Now, pay me 4.99.

Money was different here, though; a simple fact he’d been quick to clock. All the hot dogs were still Costco prices, for one, and it didn’t stop there. Hell, the rent in this building was probably nine hundred a month for a real apartment.

Not that I’m paying it. The room he was in wasn’t for rent, and for obvious reasons. The basement space was a maintenance room, or at least it was at some point. The slop sink and shelf with paint cans gone hard on it said as much, and the the pipes running along the ceiling ticking and banging every half-hour only made it more clear.

Nobody had said a word in the whole seven days since he found the space, which was… kinda weird, honestly. Is it this easy to be a squatter? No super had come yelling since day two like he expected and, if anything, people just nodded at him as he walked by them in the hallway. One lady was even so used to him she was already saying mornin’, hon’.

Whoever she thought he was — somebody’s nephew, kid, or whoever else — she and the rest of the place had decided he belonged to another apartment and not bothered to look any deeper.

He had plenty of clothes shoved in one backpack, the vast majority of it stolen and ill-fitting but that was what belts were for anyway. Food was all over the place; not the floor, because he wasn’t an animal, but all of it not too far from arm’s reach of the mattress. Powdered donuts, a jar of peanut butter with a spoon sitting in it, six candy bars, a sleeve of Ritz, some vanilla wafers, and an entire bag of apples he was going through like a horse.

Not to mention all the Gatorades and water bottles.

More than anything, Orin just needed food.

Not the most nutritious and healthy assortment, but he also didn’t care.

What he did care about was getting clean and, while the slop sink and faucet wasn’t the best setup, he was managing to do just that. As long as he let it run for four minutes, it even made it close to hot — before immediately getting cold two minutes later.

Still beat the hose. By a mile, honestly.

Orin raised a hand, no glove in the way this time, and stared at the ring on his middle finger; the thing solid and present and there. A week of being loose and eating and sleeping and walking around and reading every newspaper he could get his hands on — and all it had done was show him how much he didn’t know.

Comics and shows and movies had given him a lot of info about the Green Lanterns and their rings and he was starting to get the feeling that his was a dud. All the other rings talked to you with a calm little AI voice and do things like scan a dude to tell you his whole medical history and translate every alien language automatically and they had a database on everything in the universe.

Ask it about a planet nine sectors deep and it could give you the atmosphere, population, and the average number of penises in that population. For example, on Earth, it’s 0.5.

Important info like that was useful for the job.

He held his hand higher up.

“Yo.”

[QUERY]

“Right… uh.” His eyes narrowed up at the piece of non-metal jewelry. “What’s my blood pressure?”

[CONFUSION]

“Mm.” His hand dropped, another test coming out the same way he expected. “Cool.”

Six days he’d been at this, and he had a whole list of what the ring could not do for him; a list getting surprisingly lengthy for the most powerful tool in the universe.

Where’s the nearest Lantern? [CONFUSION]

What sector am I in? [CONFUSION]

Ring, translate the TV for me. I don’t speak Spanish. [CONFUSION]

Over and over and over with this thing.

He’d even asked it a while ago, a simple request at four in the morning: Ring, how do I get home? 

[CONFUSION]

He had to sit with that one for a little while, honestly.

There was something in there, inside the ring on his finger; not just a calculator with a catchphrase. He was sure about that with the way it reacted.

The way it had opinions, it got — he wanted to say pleased, which was insane, but using it to stick the landing from that tree without landing on his face, the light had almost gotten brighter in a way he could only describe as enthusiasm.

More than an AI assistant — or maybe less than, because the assist part was minimal — it was closer to a toddler. A green magic space toddler; an extremely well-behaved green magic space toddler because it never talked back. It had no idea what any world longer than five letters meant but it never talked back.

Like… He blinked back to two little curly-haired girls that used to run around all over the place when they were no older than two. They’d just go get whatever you pointed at. 

Not what you asked for. 

What you pointed at.

Huh. Orin found himself frowning again, rubbing his face with both hands and scratching at the stubble still coming in. That’s… huh.

“Alright. Last one.” He looked down at his hand again under the light of the single bulb in the maintenance room. “Can you do anything to help me?”

The answer came right back to him, no different than usual.

[CONFUSION]

Orin let out a breath through his nose as his head lolled back again.

“Yeah. That tracks.”