With his friends at a graduation party

Your name is Chase Wallin, and tonight is the night. You’ve graduated high school - now it’s time to party.

You don't know whose house this is, but it's huge, with vaulted ceilings! There's plenty of room for the twenty or so odd people you know, and twice again as many people whom you don't. There's a DJ, no adults (adults being those 21 years and older, everybody at this particular grad party is 18 years or older, naturally), and drinks (all legal, not everything can be perfect).

After cracking open another can of Dr. Pepper, you return to the corner your friends have claimed as their own. Your party count is five all together, and you're a motley group.

"Thanks, man," says Sullivan, taking the second can of Dr. Pepper that you offer him. "You always have my back."

Sullivan is a big, tall, athletic dude. You don't have much in common now, but you've been playmates since you were young. You're practically brothers. (Friend #1)

"Don't know why your lazy ass can't go get a refill yourself," you say, loud enough to be heard over the music.

"Loyalty terminated," Sullivan replies, his face serious, but with a twinkle in his eye.

"I'll take the drink back then," you say, beckoning him to return the can of Dr. Pepper.

Sullivan slowly opens the can and takes a sip, never letting eye contact lapse.

"God you two, get a room," says Pearl, another one of your best friends, rolling her eyes.

You also roll your eyes, but in retaliation. "C'mon, it's a party. Don't be like that.”

"It's graduation day, I can be like however I want," mutters Pearl, simmering as she sips her red solo cup.

Pearl’s hair is black as night, and she wears a surplus of dark eyeshadow and dark gray lipstick. Complementing her darkness, your friend wears a pair of baggy cargo pants and a sweatshirt hoodie, also all black.

Pearl’s been your friend ever since you started high school. She and Sullivan don't get along at all. Whereas Pearl displays a tempestuous disposition and spends her days reading edgy manga and studying criminology, Sullivan enjoys Marvel movies, sunshine, and explosions, in that order. (Friend #2)

Another girl in a cute dress gloms onto Sullivan from behind - her skin is a deep black, and her dark hair is shorn shorn close to her scalp.

"Aw, don't tell me you and Pearl are at it again," she says, throwing all her weight onto Sullivan's broad shoulders.

Sullivan takes the pretty black girl’s weight, sliding a familiar hand around her waist and holding her close. "I can promise you one thing babe," he says. Then he points accusingly at Pearl. "She started it."

Pearl rolls her eyes.

Sullivan’s girlfriend swats his arm. "Be nice."

That'd be Indigo, Sullivan's girlfriend. Indigo is on the cheer squad, but she’s an artist first. She spends most of her free time drawing and painting. She and Sullivan had a rocky start with spectacular blowups, breakups, and makeups, but this whole year they've gone steady, and there’s barely been any gossip worthy drama to speak of. Jocks and cheerleaders can work in real life too, you guess. (Friend #3)

You have questions about whether the two of them will stick together after high school, but neither Sullivan nor Indigo are keen to discuss the topic.

But hey. It's none of your business.

"This is nice. You should see me when I'm mean," jokes Sullivan.

You jump in. "It's true. I saw him be mean once, I forgot what happened after that, but I'm pretty sure it was bad."

Sully wags a wise finger at you. “He knows what he’s talking about.”

"If you forgot what happened," asks Jane, looking over from her private conversation with your last friend Yutong, "then how do you know it was bad in the first place?"

Jane's way more into the outdoors and exercise even than Sullivan is (they're actually cousins). She loves skateboarding, snowboarding, and surfing -- anything that involves standing on an unstable piece of wood while going fast.

Jane has a ton of freckles and bright red hair on the orange side, styled in a messy pixie cut. Right now, she wears a tank top, gray beanie, and a pair of denim shorts. Typical fair for her, if on the dressy side. If you weren't at a party she'd be in sweat pants and a t-shirt. (Friend #4)

"Emotional memory is a hundred times more powerful than trivial factual recall," you boast, easily deflecting Jane's doubt.

"Yeah right," Jane doubts further.

Yutong, your token Chinese friend standing next to Jane, adjusts her glasses and clears her throat. "Actually it's true. Maybe not a hundred times, that’s hyperbole, but we remember emotions a lot longer than details."

Yu's a dork. A geek. A nerd. All those things. But she's super smart and easy to get along with, so long as you don't mind occasionally being subjected to her encyclopedic knowledge.

You and Pearl find her interesting. Sullivan and Jane tune out when her tangents get too boring. You don't know how Yu and Indigo get along, but they’re able to exist in the same conversation circle without canceling each other out, so that's a good thing. Yu has a wide array of interests and is interested in just about how everything works, so she's a good wildcard when it comes time to split the friend mob into smaller groups.

Physically, Yu is short, petite, and very normal. She has a blue streak in her dark hair to be cool, but her Nintendo shirt and plain jeans mark her as a casual at heart. (Friend #5)

You're about to launch into how powerful your brain is to back up Yu’s statements on emotional memory, but the second you open your mouth, you also shift a foot forward, and something crunches underfoot.

"What's that?" asks Jane, pointing.

Looking down, you find the edge of a golden envelope under your shoe.

Curious, you bend down and pick it up. It has your name on the front - Chase Wallin - not in any handwriting you recognize, but that only heightens the mystery.

You turn the envelope over. No return address, no stamp. Somebody at the party must've thrown this your way while you were distracted.

Indigo hugs Sullivan’s arm with a sly smile. "Ooh, secret admirer," she predicts.

Sullivan tut-tuts his girl. "Don't kid yourself, Chase is Ace. He knows nobody would ever touch him, he gave up on life and love long ago."

"Brutal," says Pearl, in a rare moment of appreciation for Sullivan.

"What's inside?" asks Yu, leaning in to look at the envelope with you.

"Maybe it's graduation money," says Jane.

You do like money. "Let's find out," you say, opening it.

Inside the envelope is a single black card. It's cool to the touch. Metallic. It catches the light in weird ways. Silver lettering gleams legibly when you tilt it side to side.

Anything you want is now yours, whether physical or immaterial. All you have to do is claim ownership of it.

Instinctively, you know the words on the card are true. Er... somehow. Unfortunately, understanding doesn’t come with your inexplicable emotional conviction. "What the...?"

Yu peers at the words along with you. "Anything you want is now yours, whether physical or immaterial," she reads aloud for all your curious friends. "All you have to do is claim ownership of it."

The same feeling of truthful acceptance sweeps visibly over your friends. You feel the mood shift among you.

"Anything you want? Damn," says Sullivan, impressed. "Guess statistics finally paid you back for your crappy life up to this point."

Jane is more practical. "So you could just walk into a bank and claim all the cash as yours?"

"It says he can claim anything physical or immaterial," Yutong points out, squinting again at the card. "If Chase wanted to be rich, he could claim a lot more than some money in a bank. Technically, there'd be nothing stopping him from claiming the whole bank outright. Company, stock, and all."

Indigo furrows her brow. "Wouldn't that hurt the economy?"

Yu nods. "Yep, it would be catastrophic if a whole bank and all its accounts suddenly stopped belonging to its customers and belonged to Chase instead,” she says. "I don't think he would do something like that, at least not without letting people still use the money that used to be theirs. But at the end of the day if he claimed it, it would be his, so..."

Pearl clears her throat, her expression skeptical. "Excuse me, are we not going to ask how this even makes sense?" She spares an annoyed look at you and everyone else. "Is this magic or what? Are we in a simulation? Did someone make a wish on a genie lamp? Are we in a sleeping god's dream?” She shakes her head and folds her arms in disapproval. “Chase being able to claim literally anything he can think of feels pretty dumbly overpowered to me. Not to mention unfair, especially if he claims something that belongs to someone else."

This is all too much for you. Your fingertips buzz with unknown potential. What they said is all true. You feel it in the soles of your feet.

"Everybody stop talking," you say.

Your friends fall silent and turn to you, rather like how you'd expect everyone to quiet down at a birthday party when the birthday boy stands up to speak.

You're bewildered at their understated acceptance of the card’s bold (yet true) claim. "Why aren't you all freaking out? Doesn't any of this seem weird to you guys?"

Yu opens her mouth to reply but frowns and thinks it over instead.

"Of course it's weird," says Jane, indignant.

Sullivan offers only a casual shrug. "It's weird, but you're weird too, so it balances out."

Indigo smiles. "I don't know about everyone else, but I'm happy for you. It's kind of like you have a superpower now, isn't it?"

Pearl sighs, resigned to the situation. "It's probably the card making things feel less weird than they are. If that piece of plastic can grant you of all people omnipotence, for sure it can **** our puny meat brains into compliance."

"That... actually makes sense," you say, eying the card one last time before tucking it into your pocket.

"So, back to the party?" asks Sullivan, apparently done with the whole interruption.

"I'd want to experiment first if I were Chase," Yutong says. "Logically speaking, it’s highly unlikely the card’s claims are true. Regardless of our feelings."

"The fact we're all discussing it is evidence enough," argues Pearl.

"So long as we're not fighting," Indigo adds, making sure everyone's still on the same page.

Jane snorts and downs the rest of her cup of punch. "I'm not sitting around while Chase makes up his mind about whether he has powers or not. I'm getting another drink." She walks off to the kitchen to make good on her promise.

Pearl shoots a warning look at you. “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should."

“But we don’t know if he can at all until he tries,” Yu counters, reasonably. “Maybe all of us are suffering from a group delusion. Maybe it's a gas leak, or spiked punch.”

Sully laughs. “Hey, I could go for some spiked punch right about now.”

Indigo laughs with him.

You look between Yu and Pearl. Both your friends are offering good advice, and normally you’d listen to them, but this whole situation is like something out of an episode of the Twilight Zone.