"Lucky Max" by Mark Jansen

Sometimes, when I picked up the stories from my post office box in the Galleria, they'd go into my briefcase (which is what I think we used to call a satchel, but now they're marketed at Office Max as briefcases) and I'd read the story later, at home or in a coffee shop.

I guess I was feeling leisurely the day I got Mark's story in the mail. I remember pulling it out and wandering around the mall, reading it as I walked (a dangerous, bad habit I have--reading while I walk).

I should note here that I don't like malls, particularly. I used to love them, but at some point they lost favor with me. The only reason I ever go to the Galleria is because it's across the street from where I hold the day job and its food court is very nearly the only place to get something reasonably priced for lunch for blocks around. Oh, and there's the post office in the Galleria, where I have my post offfice box. But I don't generally like shopping and I usually go in, get my lunch or my mail, and I'm gone again.

But that day, I guess I wasn't anxious to get out and I wandered aimlessly as I read Mark's tale of young Max and how he slips into the quantum field and alters reality. At some point, I got tired of walking and reading (and watching out for people between phrases) but by that time I'd found myself in a part of the mall that I'd never been in before, and it was nearly people-free. I found a bench, sat down, and finished reading "Lucky Max," knowing I had another story for my anthology.

In terms of genre, "Lucky Max" is the Able to... story that most comfortably fits into the science fiction category. There's talk of "sidestepping" and "I-maps" and other such technical jargon, but one of the things I found appealing about this story was that it uses these terms without requiring the reader to have a degree in quantum physics. I'm not a scientist, but Mark kept me up to speed with deft, nearly invisible explanations of the science terms while keeping to the task at hand, that being telling a story about a little boy and his friends and how he tries to use his ability to help them feel better.

In my introduction to the book, I talk a bit about how, with the call for stories, I was looking for "adult power fantasies," in contrast to how superheroes are often referred to as "adolescent power fantasies." This story really plays into the sort of power fantasy it takes some amount of water under the bridge to appreciate. The opening scene in the story is at a funeral and Max slips onto (into?) the I-map to alleviate his friends' grief. It may be a little boy doing this, but it's not many adults who haven't felt the sting of grief and wished for a way to alter reality so that the deceased were not deceased.

Like all really good science fiction, the story isn't really about the technical stuff. It's really about the humanity behind it. And that's what we have here in "Lucky Max."