Calvin Kilpatrick was an IT guy, at least that's what he told himself. At barely 5 foot 8, and 120 pounds soaking wet, the pallid and awkward young man shambled through life, both physically and metaphorically. He was bullied a lot in his early years, and after his parents divorced when he was 10, his life always felt incomplete. He moved a few times during his formative years, and failed to make any lasting friends in highschool. He never went to prom or a party. In those days, he spent most of his spare time curled up in odd corners of the house with his laptop, working on ideas and projects, avoiding his stepfather. When he was forced to get out of the house, he was alone, cruising down the backstreets on his skateboard. Often, when Calvin was flying down a hill, going straight, he would close his eyes for just a moment and picture himself lifting off the board and soaring into the sky, free.
Calvin graduated on time. His main motivation was that, once he was finally through highschool, he could escape the authoritarian grip he lived in, and rule his own life. Unable to finish college due to his dyslexia, he'd been through a few hellish wage slave jobs, went to night school for awhile, and just managed to squeeze his way into an IT role at a top pharmeceutical company.
In addition to dyslexia, Calvin had a few other invisible conditions that were difficult to live with. He was also "face blind", meaning that he could not recognize a person by the features on their face, nor read a facial expression. He relied on other factors to identify and read people, such as their voice or gait. This he was born with, but nobody really believed him. He was not born with his right ear drum blown out, that came when he was in 6th grade, an older boy who was bullying him in gym class stuck a basketball pump into his ear. Nothing ever happened to the older boy for what he did. He was suspended one day, and Calvin was also suspended due to the school's "zero tolerance policy" for "fighting". His mother was disinterested and didn't even pay attention when Calvin tried to explain that he didn't do anything, he was just minding his own business when the boy came and hurt him. She treated Calvin as if he was no more in the right, as if he was asking for it. She said something about how his being suspended made her look, and made him spend the day laboring through house chores. She had little, if any, sympathy for Calvin's wound. The other boy's parents were even more disinterested, and the other boy was able to treat his suspension as a day off. That, Calvin thought, was a perfect model of how the world treated him.
After several weeks at his new job, Calvin had still not received his security training. He was walking around with a silly-looking "Visitor" sticker instead of a real badge that would grant him access to the building and its amenities. And due to a mess of paperwork between the two contractors that hired him for the job, he had also not yet been paid. Calvin felt rightfully disgruntled . It had been 10 years since he graduated high school, almost 17 years since the bully wounded him. He finally had a decent paying job (if he could get paid) in the field he wanted, he finally had all the freedom he wanted before. He even had a serious girlfriend, Patty, that would spend the night off and on. Why wasn't he happy now? Why did he still feel so empty?
"I'm not all alone anymore, I'm not getting hurt and laughed at anymore. I even sort of have my life together now. Why do I still feel like a joke to the world?" Calvin muttered, thumbing the sticker, as he walked into one of the labs to do some maintenance work on a computer. While Calvin installed a routine update on the desktop computer, a laboratory machine whirred quietly next to it, moving liquid-filled test tubes around with a robotic arm, and checking them with different instruments.
At that exact moment, a single stray cosmic ray shot toward Earth. Deep in outer space, an unnamed star had gone supernova after a few million years of waiting, and the ray was finally reaching its destination after traveling a few hundred thousand lightyears. The ray managed to slip through the magnetosphere and ozone layers, finding its way into a poorly-insulated electrical service box. A bit flipped in the memory of the electronically controlled management system, changing a variable in the real-time operating system, disrupting the flow of electricity in the building where Calvin worked. The robotic arm preparing the samples jerked suddenly, casting a glass vial against a brick pillar. The chemical inside splattered around the area. Calvin had not yet received his security training, and though the lab was open to him, he did not yet have a badge to operate the safety glasses dispenser. The chemical splashed into Calvin's unprotected eyes.
Calvin screamed. The electrical disruption had caused lights in the building to go out. Still screaming, Calvin fumbled around the lab, aimlessly panicking. He remembered the emergency eye wash station and practically fell over to it, feeling around it with his hands. He held himself up over it and activated it, washing out his eyes for about a minute. Calvin calmed and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. The windowless lab was now was pitch black, but Calvin could still see. As he caught his breath and looked around the room, he realized he could see the bones and muscles in his hands, the motherboard inside the computer, the wires in the walls, even the electricity itself. The whole world was brilliant with ultraviolets and infrareds. All sorts of radio waves bounced every which way. He was able to see every frequency on the electromagnetic spectrum, and by changing his attention and focus, he could narrow or filter down to the desired ones. His field of view had somehow increased to nearly 300 degrees, and he could see incredible detail at great distances or microscopic sizes.
It took him some practice. Driving home that day was challenging and dangerous. In general he felt far more distracted and stimulated, and as a result, mentally exhausted more easily. It was hard to sleep while being able to see through his eyelids. The next morning he managed to read the newspaper without opening the plastic wrap, simply by turning it over in his hands and focusing on each layer. He drove by his mailbox, and decided not to open it, because he could tell there wasn't anything but bills and junk mail. He saw and avoided the worm in his breakfast apple, and knew exactly when his coffee was cool enough to drink without testing it.
Despite his new abilities being quite useful for just about everything, Calvin struggled at work. He found boring things even more boring, and got frustrated more easily. He took breaks more often than he needed to. He felt, now, that he could do a lot more with his life, something more interesting than fixing computers for (surprisingly technically illiterate) doctors and scientists. Maybe, he thought, he could make some real dough and buy a place for himself and Patty.
At this moment, he was reclining in the broom closet, whose lock he picked by seeing through it. He was reading an interesting science book through the brick wall as it sat on its shelf. He still had to read slow enough for his dyslexia, but he took his time. Calvin was being careless. As far as he was concerned, nobody's computer needed fixing and he was being paid, so he didn't care. His contract would be over in a few months anyways.
He was trying to think of careers that would be better suited to his new abilities, something that would make him a lot of money quickly. He had decided that he wanted to work as little as possible. He thought perhaps he could be an oil or mineral prospector, or an archaeologist, since he could now see through the ground for a considerable distance.
Calvin's real passions were bird watching, plane spotting, and amateur astronomy, all of which he enjoyed much more now that he could do them without a telescope or binoculars. He was unsure if this would eventually wear off, and he wanted to enjoy it for as long as possible. He tried often that day to spot planes and birds through the walls while he was working. His mother and stepfather never let him have a camera for his passions, and he had not got around to buying one since, but he realized now that he was beginning to develop a photographic memory.
When he had returned to the labs, later on the day of the accident, Calvin had speedily cleaned up all the evidence. He hadn't even filed an incident report. He wanted to fly under the radar. He wanted to keep his new sight a secret, as he was under the impression that someone might try to take it somehow. He wasn't sure if the company had meant to make a chemical that could do this, but he wasn't about to give them his miracle for nothing. Calvin thought that they would hold him, study him, and then sell it to the military or something. If he couldn't literally see through walls, he might have gotten more paranoid. At least, he thought, nobody could sneak up on him now.
He would see them coming, and recognize them too. Now that Calvin could see through people, he would identify them using internal factors as well. Replaced hips and steel plates were plain as day to him. Being face blind was less of a challenge now. He had not noticed anybody following him, and as far as he could tell without face reading, nobody had become suspicious.