Emergency Response Class 

 

ERC has two different but related meanings, though the initialism stands for “Emergency Response Class.” ERC can either mean a certificate one acquires or a class one takes to develop that certificate.

 

An Emergency Response Class is a certification of expectations and competencies based on observed responses to emergency situations, simulated or otherwise. It is commonly thought of as a “license” for superhero work, but it isn’t. America doesn’t have superhero licenses. Earth State does, but owing to our rich history of superpowered individualism and vigilantism, we do not. Americans do not need a license to have superpowers, acquire superpowers ,bestow superpowers, or use superpowers, be it for business or for emergency response (the “proper and legal” term for what is commonly called “superheroics”). Emergency Response Classes exist to facilitate superhero interactions with the legal system. Say something goes wrong in a routine superhero vs supervillain skirmish and someone gets hurt. Say someone is hurt bad enough that there has to be a trial and investigation. How does the jury know the superhero acted competently and to the best of his abilities or that the superhero is criminally negligent and responsible for whoever got hurt? How does the jury know the difference between a superhero failing despite his best possible effort and a glory hound who had no business intervening in the first place?

 

An ERC is how the jury knows. An ERC is a guarantee from the superhero community that a superhero is trained, competent, and trustworthy.

 

An ERC is, to reiterate, not a license. If you see an emergency underway, nothing is stopping you from acting, and in some situations you may even be legally obligated to act. A superhuman with the ability to disperse flames by snapping his fingers who does nothing while a person burns to death next to him is a clear example of criminal negligence, perhaps even homicide. But with this freedom to act comes responsibilities. “The superhuman is responsible” is a common legal axiom for a reason. In any legal dispute, people are going to look at the person with superpowers as being more culpable regardless of circumstances. Prosecutors will ask “Why did the superhero act? Why didn’t the superhero act? Why did the superhero act that way and not this way?” ERC is a way for a superhuman to declare “No matter what I did, I did my best.” and declare it with objective, legal authority.

 

Nothing is stopping a superhero from acting without an ERC, but they should be warned, if anything happens under their watch, they are toast in the courtroom. Having the freedom to acquire and use superpowers means the burden of deciding how and when to use these superpowers is all on you. It also means the burden of consequences resulting from those powers is all on you.

 

ERC does function with a secret identity, though we see fewer and fewer superheroes with secret identities every year. This is why penalties run very high for impersonating a superhero. You not only steal their identity, but also their ERC. Shapeshifting supervillains, once captured, often find out that they have several decades worth of ERC falsification violations attached to their sentence. This is also why superhero legacies–a mentor superhero passing down the costume, supername, and skills to a younger protégé–are much more than a matter of someone dressing up as a superhero they like. To take on the identity of a superhero is to say that you have the ERC of a superhero–and it’s fraud if you don’t. A superhuman dressing up as a superhero without permission isn’t his legacy–he’s his fanboy. 

 

ERC comes in levels with each progressive level representing greater and greater trust invested in the superhero. Let’s say four different superhumans with ERC 1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively call the police to report that a giant robot dinosaur is eating downtown. The superhuman with ERC 1 is treated as a civilian and is given the best possible route to get himself to safety. The superhuman with ERC 2 stays on the line and is instructed on how to evacuate civilians, treat injuries, and mitigate property damage. The superhuman with ERC 3 is already known to the local police and uses a special noosphere connection to network with police and first responders. He works to direct ERC 2 and ERC 1 superhumans and to assist ERC 4 superhumans. The superhuman with ERC 4 doesn’t call the police, the police called him and he’s leading the ERC 3 superhumans in fighting the giant robot dinosaur.

 

A person with a high enough ERC can walk into the White House and President George will drop what he’s doing to talk with them because it can be trusted that whatever that person needs is more important than the President’s day-to-day activities.

 

The highest possible ERC is 20, a rating reserved only for the most capable and trusted superhumans like Captain Marvel and Gold Star. A person with ERC 20 is invested by humanity–and many other races–with absolute trust. These beings have saved all of reality from cosmic destruction in the past and will continue to do so in the future. America, ARGO, the Warp and Weft Authorities, the Statesmen, Japan, and even Earth State recognize that the best thing to do is put mankind’s full support, paltry as it might be, behind these beings. No place is barred from them, no file is too secret from them, and no favor is too great for them to ask. They could execute someone on the spot and it will be assumed that they had a good reason to do so.

 

By the way, ERC is an initialism, not an acronym. You pronounce the letters, you don’t say “erk” like “I am irked about failing my last supervillain combat test.” You also don’t say “Eric.” I don’t know why people say Eric. I don’t know where they get the “i” from, but that’s what they do.

 

Emergency Response Class Classes

 

An Emergency Response Class is also the class students at Martin’s take to develop their Emergency Response Class. They are Emergency Response Class Classes, but are simply called ERC. ERC classes are separated by the ERC of the students. ERC 1 (the class) is for students with ERC 1, ERC 2 is for students with ERC 2, and ERC 3 is for students with ERC 3.

 

Since the class is so heavily tied to the certificate system, there usually isn’t much of a need to clarify if someone is talking about the certificate or the class. If a student suddenly jumps in the hallway and exclaims “Yeah! I made ERC 3!” he could be talking about the class or the certificate, but to talk about one is to talk about the other.

 

The three ERC classes offered at Martins (ERC 0 is a rare and special class) are often explained using a “danger” metaphor. ERC 1 students are trained to run away from danger. They learn basic self defense and first aid so that they can fight off pursuers, treat their own injuries, and protect and aid those in their immediate vicinity. 

 

ERC 2 students are trained to stay in danger. They find survivors and pull them from the wreckage. They have enough medical knowledge to assist paramedics. If no one else is around, they handle the instigating element of the emergency be it an erupting volcano, sinking ocean liner, or supervillain, though ideally they only engage with the effects of the instigating element. They aren’t supposed to deal with the volcano but the lava flowing out of it.They aren’t supposed to save the ship but get people off of it.They aren’t supposed to fight the Harvestman but his scarecrow minions. But if they need to engage with the instigating element, they can.

 

ERC 3 students are expected to quickly and decisively respond to the instigating element. They’re the ones who plug the volcano, fix the ship (and figure out who sank it), and fight Harvestman. They’re also expected to have the discretion to know when to take a step back from their main goal of stopping the emergency and act more like an ERC 2 student. They’re expected to know when to go find a rock to plug the volcano and when to get people away from the lava. They’re expected to know how to completely respond to an emergency from saving lives to taking down the bad guy.

 

ERC 0, which is a rare class a small number of students are enrolled in, is sometimes added to the list as “those who can’t be in danger,” and ERC 4, which ERC 3 students usually graduate into, is sometimes added tongue-in-cheek as “those who are addicted to danger.”

 

ERC 0

 

This is the rarest ERC given only to an extreme few. ERC 0 means that a person is either obligated to not involve themselves in emergencies or has no practical way to respond to an emergency. 

 

Note that ERC 0 is not the same as not having an ERC. Until you’re certified, you don’t have an ERC, and ERC 0 is a certification. It as a judgment based on one’s observed circumstances and powers.

 

Shepherd 11, an MS who contains most of Martin’s ghost students within his gaeite-laced circuitry, is ERC 0 because he is responsible first and foremost to his charges and getting them out of danger. All else is secondary to the well-being of those inside him. But off the record, he and his “spookies,” as he affectionately calls his ghosts, have helped out in emergencies before. Case in point, when they worked together with Danny Davinksy’s ghosts to decay Bleddyn’s sleg into “tarnished sleg” as part of a plan to trick Dr. Warlock. We won’t make a big deal out of it if you won’t.

 

Donald Swift was ERC 0 back when he had very little control over his “parents,” but after developing greater control with TIMS and Dr. Bell he was promoted to ERC 1. When he was ERC 0, he was legally obligated to remove himself as quickly as possible from an emergency. He could have suffered legal punishment if he went out of his way to help someone, because if  his “parents” acted up due to something happening to him, he could have made the emergency much, much worse.

 

For examples of ERC 0 superhumans unable to assist in an emergency, look towards Jigsaw Judy and Morgan McGraw. Jigsaw Judy “goes to pieces in a crisis,” though this only describes her physically, not mentally. Her metapathogen causes her to explode into a cluster of floating “jigsaw pieces” incapable of being moved or destroyed which only reform her body after hours. Her metapathogen decides what she’s going to do in an emergency, and it always decides that she does nothing. Morgan is a cosmically powerful god–but only in the Astral, and only in his dreamworld. In physical reality, he’s a boy in a coma at Hall and Greer Hospital. Theoretically, he can be of use in an emergency if someone were to, for instance, throw a supervillain into his dreamworld, but beyond precise circumstances that involve blending the borders of realities, he’s not useful in an emergency.

 

ERC 1

 

ERC 1 students are “those that run from danger.”

 

Every student at Martin’s is required to take ERC 1. ERC 1 teaches basic self-defense first-aid, survival skills, and how to observe, document, and report an emergency. 

 

The primary goal of ERC 1 is to teach students how to rationally respond to an emergency. If a supervillain attacks, if a bomb goes off, if an alien armada invades, we want our students to be able to stay calm and not exacerbate the emergency through panic. Panic is the first thing students are taught to overcome. ERC 1 sims can be scary. They’re supposed to be. Real emergencies are scary. Students will encounter simulations of wounded people, dead bodies, and frightening supervillains. Because of this, students can opt out of ERC 1 with a parent’s permission, but this rarely happens. Most parents understand that it’s best that students learn how to handle their flight or fight response in our CRS then out on the streets.

 

We teach that there are three steps to rational responding to an emergency situation. First, recognize whether or not to take action. Next, take action to protect oneself. And finally, take action to help others nearby.

 

The first step is sometimes seen as a dull formality by our students, but it is one of the most important things we can teach our students. Most of our students have superpowers, and in some situations using superpowers in an emergency is akin to pouring gasoline on a raging fire. The very first ERC sim students take at Martin’s is Rescue 1: Smokey the Cat, in which students have to rescue a large black cat named Smokey from a house fire. The sim teaches ERC maxim “first, do no harm.” If the student does nothing, Smokey will jump to safety on his own, as cats do. But if the student flies or climbs up to Smokey, they will frighten him into jumping back into the flames. It’s an important lesson for students to learn, because sometimes even the most trained and powerful superhuman can only add to an emergency by taking action. It all depends on the situation and correctly identifying whether it’s a situation that warrants intervention. If someone like Mary Marvel of Gold Star flies in to save the day, the best thing is usually to stand back and let them go to work.

 

Smokey, by the way, is a well-beloved feature of our school despite not being real. Plushies, t-shirts, and caps are available at the school store.

 

The second step is taught by first developing skills such as self-defense, first aid, and documentation and then testing those skills in ERC sims. Self-defense is typically taught through the sim Combat 1: MMA Gym which simply creates a well-stocked gym complete with a mixed martial arts cage with our school’s logo on the mat. Sometimes, for all the fancy stuff our controlled reality simulations can create, the simple solutions work best. But there are fancier sims for when the kids are in a playful mood. Combat 1a: Gladiator Arena resurrects the sandy Colosseum of Rome complete with cheering crowd, Combat 1b: Rooftop Rumble has students fight on the roof of the AEon building in Mainline City, and Combat 1c: Ninja Pagoda has students fight in a 17th century Japanese pagoda with optional shadow warriors. 

 

First aid is taught first by specific treatment sims such as Injury Minor 1: Sprained Ankle and Injury Major 1: Broken arm. These sims help teach the skills which are then refined in sims that randomize injuries such as the commonly used Injury Randomized 1: Car Crash. A lot can happen to a person in a car crash and students have to learn how to deal with it all. Students are also taught how to treat their own injuries through simulated wounds. ERC 1 and 2 students learn how to handle a broken leg simulated by photite imagery which gives the appearance of a wound, and forcefields which immobilize the leg. ERC 3 students also learn how to handle a broken leg–but the difference is that a bioelectric pulser stimulates their nerve endings to simulate pain–which, though called simulated pain, is a very, very real sensation.

 

Documentation skills are often dreaded by students because they’re seen as the paperwork portion of the ERC 1 course. We try to use the CRS as much as possible when teaching documentation skills, but ultimately it comes down to “watch the emergency, write a report on the emergency, and answer questions about the emergency.”

 

It doesn’t matter how many documentation sims you make. Ultimately, real-life documentation comes down to sitting in a police station and using a pen to write on forms, thus in the documentation portion of ERC 1 it ultimately comes down to a student at a desk using a pencil to write on forms. You can simulate the desk to be on the moon, at the bottom of the ocean, in the middle of a tornado, but it’s still going to be a desk, and the kids are still going to be sitting in it.

 

All these skills are then tested in emergency sims. Emergency sims do not focus on refining specific skills but on simulating real-world emergencies that students may have to one day face regardless of their chosen profession. Our sim library is large enough and diverse enough to cover any kind of emergency imaginable. The emergency situation can be a minor disturbance (such as Minor Disturbance 1: Angry Drunk or Minor Disturbance 5: Mugging), natural disaster (such as Natural Disaster 1: Blizzard or Natural Disaster 1m: Fimbulwinter), or cosmic crisis (such as Planetary Emergency 1: Wild Planet Eater or Stellar Emergency 5: photino eggs), our kids will know what danger looks like before they leave our campus.

 

The third step is taught as students are tested in sims. Students are only ever told to save themselves, but they are given opportunities in their sims to save others, and it’s up to the students to take into account the situation and their competence and decide whether or not it’s worth trying to. Though ERC 1 is often described as ‘those that run from danger,” we teach our students to prioritize their own safety, not to completely ignore the safety of others. It’s not an easy thing to decide when one can safely help someone else in an active emergency situation, but that’s the very reason we teach it.

 

ERC 2

 

ERC 2 students are “those that stay in danger.” They are also thought of as “superheroes, but only when the occasion calls for it.”

 

Students are not required to take ERC 2, but we encourage them to at least try it. Studies have shown that emergencies with at least 1 ERC 2 superhuman have much better outcomes than emergencies composed 

 

ERC 2 students learn the skills ERC 1 students do but at higher levels. They advance beyond self-defense into superhuman combat, first-aid into life-saving triage, and from escaping an emergency to staying active within an emergency situation to help resolve it. Sims that are occasional for ERC 1 students become routine for ERC 2 students. What an ERC 1 student thinks is hard an ERC 2 student thinks is easy.

 

ERC 2 students learn how to fight supervillains. In ERC 1, they learn how to elude supervillains and, if they’re ever cornered, how to fight, but in ERC 2 fighting supervillains becomes a dedicated part of the curriculum. Of course, we don’t want our kids to ever do something like charge at a supervillain currently being taken care of by several superheroes several ranks above ERC 2 while shouting “Hey can I help! Can I help!” like it’s all a game, but if they’re faced with some BOL flunky, they should take him–because they can. They have the training and skills to win.

 

We usually have beginning ERC 2 students fight someone they can beat (think a Z-grade BOL flunkie like Dr. Leo the Walking Catfish or Pick Pocket Princess) and someone they can’t beat (think Dream Sultan or Stardust the Super-Wizard, but keep in mind some students can beat them. Always check to make sure if a student is on the “infinite power” list or not). We want to give our students confidence, but not overconfidence. We also want to prevent them from forming the habit of thinking that all supervillain emergencies come down to fighting (please stop calling it Ishinomori syndrome. They do teach more than fighting at Ishinomori, let’s be polite, especially when our kids are going to be doing a lot of activities with their kids), and so we front-load a lot of supervillain scenarios that require non-combat solutions. Sims against Glass typically revolve around revealing who Glass is disguised as and then setting a trap. The BOL’s Gingerbread Man is incredibly fast owing to an enchantment a Seelie princess placed on him, and is a (fairly) non-violent pickpocket and storefront thief, meaning that sims against him aren’t so much about fighting him as they are about taking advantage of his infamous overconfidence to trick him into defeating himself. Sims against the assassin Locked Room focus on rescuing his victims from his death traps. 

 

The great superhero sociologist Dr. Eisner once said that emergency response had three elements–action, mystery, and adventure. It’s easy to make sims featuring action. You plop a supervillain down and ring a bell. If you want students to fight Glass, you just spawn him into the sim, sit back, and take notes. But featuring mystery and adventure takes a little work. You have to come up with a plot and how you intend for this plot to be revealed to students. Glass is impersonating someone–why? Who is it that Glass is impersonating? Where are they being kept while he runs around in their identity? Who is Glass fooling? Could they be turned against Glass if enough evidence is presented? Where are the students? Is it at a robot factory in Mainline City? In the caverns of Joyus Harbor? In the courts of Fairy? Who are the students? ERC 3 superheroes? ARGO explorers? Themselves? Glass’s victims realizing that someone is impersonating them?

 

It takes a lot of work to come up with solid ERC sims that combine action, adventure, and mystery, but we’re up to the challenge. We include science fiction writers as part of our CRS team for this very reason. Universe 161’s Quantum Detective once said that a good superhero thinks like a science fiction author writes, and he was absolutely right.

 

ERC 1 is very generalized compared to ERC 2. In ERC 2, more of a focus is placed on how a student’s specific powers and abilities can be used in an emergency situation, thus sims become tailored to specific students. Let’s take Lucia Regio as an example. Lucia works with the Kurtzberg Foundation to put on performances with her somatic telepathy, which creates tonal energy forms across the universe and beyond. We take into account her aspirational career when we have her run through sims featuring the Anti-Artist crashing one of her concerts, a political assassination taking place in front of her as she performs for the Star Chamber of the Chromian Empire, the Siren challenging her to a singing contest, or being kidnapped by the Game Master to score one of his narrative-based games. We take into account her powerset when we have her run through sims that call on her to move radioactive ultra-meteors from Mr. Stranger (his one weakness!) without getting too close to them, to set up communication between two damaged United Blood Clan starships (both believing the they were attacked by the other), and to calm starchild throwing a tantrum (they’re usually about the size of a planet) with a song.

 

The kind of students that take ERC 2 are usually the kinds of students whose career choices can potentially place them in danger, though some students take it just for the thrills. School is a much more exciting place to be when you have fighting Mr. Blue sandwiched between Biology and Home Ec. Tanya Ableman provides an example of a student taking ERC 2 for thrills. Martin’s best flier loves to dogfight. An example of a student taking ERC 2 because of their career aspirations would be August “Auggie” Mars, who plans to be heavily involved in the medical field. Superhuman medicine is often a target for supervillains looking to score strength-enhancing serums and the like, so it would do Auggie a lot of good to learn how to throw down.

 

It is stressed to students that ERC 2 confers not only greater challenges compared to ERC 1 but greater responsibilities. You’re expected to help during an emergency, and if you don’t you’re being criminally negligent. That doesn’t mean you bite off more than you can chew or never run away, but when police review an emergency, they understand reading that an ERC 1 superhuman ran away and left survivors behind. They don’t understand an ERC 2 superhuman doing the same thing.

 

ERC 3

 

ERC 3 students are “those that run to danger. They are also known as “junior superheroes,” and though some people consider the term a pejorative, I fail to find anything offensive about it.

 

Unlike ERC 2, we don’t recommend ERC 3 for the common student. ERC 3 is, relatively speaking, brutal. We have ERC 3 kids run sims we wouldn’t dream of giving ERC 1 kids. To an extent, all ERC can be traumatic. The gore is realistic. The deaths are realistic. The peril is realistic. We’ve missed out on having several promising superhumans as students throughout the years because their parents didn’t want them to take ERC. But ERC 3 is designed to be especially traumatic because superheroics is a dangerous, traumatizing lifestyle. It would be the ultimate cruelty not to expose our kids to the surreal and bizarre dangers superheroes are expected to readily throw themselves into–mental possession, timeline desynchronization, death curses, and above all else–failure. No one can save the day like a superhero, and no one can let others down like a superhero. There’s not a single student in the school with perfect marks on every sim. If a student has a record like that, we aren’t doing our job. They need to experience what it’s like to blow it and blow it big so that if it ever happens to them in real life they can recover and come back twice as strong.

 

Students who take ERC 3 are either firmly set on becoming superheroes or have way too much time on their hands. The official terms for superheroes and superheroes are even emergency responders and emergency response, and the entire ERC ranking system takes its name from these terms. That isn’t to say there isn’t any variety among our superhero kids. Every ERC 3 student takes a specialization in ERC 3 as part of their personalized curriculum–in this way, no one just takes ERC 3. It’s always “ERC 3 with a focus in superhuman combat” or “ERC 3 with a focus in rescue.”

 

ERC 3 with a focus in superhuman combat tends to be the most common focus taken because “fighting bad guys” is what students usually think about when they first think about superheroics. These days, it seems that nothing gets peoples’ attention like a superhero vs supervillain. Every superhero biopic features at least one fight against a supervillain, and so kids come into Martin’s wanting to beat up supervillains. But some choose to take a focus in rescue, like Flying Robert, and still others choose to take a focus in support, as in providing the logistical and tactical backbone for a superteam, like Adam Brigham. Lily Siegle, due to the nature of her powers, takes ERC 3 with a focus in support and superhuman combat, though it’s rare to see an ERC 3 student with two focuses.

 

Besides the sims increasing in difficulty, 4 main elements distinguish ERC 3 from ERC 2–integrating the student in the superhero community, a larger focus on the legalities of superheroics, preventative superheroics, and long-term superheroics.

 

Given that ERC 3 students are “junior superheroes,” it makes sense that they integrate with the superhero community. They establish contact with ERC 4 superheroes, preferably those with similar backgrounds, powersets, and interests so that they can serve as models who may even become mentors like Grandmaster did for Adam. They introduce themselves to their local Statesmen center and police station, meaning that if they live out of a dorm on campus they talk to Statesman Organizer Garrett and police Chief Norton, or more specifically, Dr. Jefferson talks to them and then schedules meetings. They may be called upon to assist ERC 4 superheroes in responding to certain emergencies, and if there’s an emergency ERC 4 superheroes can’t address for whatever reason, they’re expected to step up to the plate.

 

Given that ERC 3 students are expected to be more proactive in fighting evil, extra law classes are a necessity. Our kids have to learn how to take care of supervillains in their custody until they can hand them off to the police. It may sound strange, but when they capture a supervillain, even if that supervillain is as warped or as twisted as Gravestone or Killshot, our kids are responsible for them. Songbird provides an example of an ERC 3 student totally devoted to the imprisonment and care of supervillains. 

 

Preventative superheroics becomes a topic of discussion in ERC 3. Patrolling hotspots for crime has been a superhero tradition ever since Blue Beetle and Captain Marvel patrolled New York City and the Fishermen patrolled Joyous Harbor. Nowadays, superheroes receive training so they know how not to trespass or violate privacy laws. Superheroes are night watchmen. They don’t spy without a warrant and don’t ruin evidence so that a prosecutor has to let a bad guy go free on a technicality. It’s not all law classes though–students are also taught which all-night diners give the best discounts and where to find “candlelit paths” toward safehouses.

 

Long-term superheroics refers to students running sims that involve several interconnected emergencies instead of one. Emergencies are typically thought of as flashes of disaster, fires that spread and then are quickly extinguished, but sometimes a certain location is besieged by a series of emergencies and our kids have to learn how to mitigate the damage these emergencies causes, find the source of these emergencies, and stop them from ever happening again. To give an example of what we mean, look at Long-Term Scenario (LTS) 1: Crime Wave. ERC 3 students pretend they’re part of the fictitious Martin City and have to protect it as its dedicated ERC 4 superheroes as crime rates rise throughout the city. The reason the crime rates rise is always different. Sometimes it’s because a shadowy criminal mastermind is operating behind the scenes and pulling all the strings. Sometimes a supervillain has placed a telepathic device in the sewers that causes cortisol levels to spike out of control. Sometimes there is no reason, and the city is just having a bad time. But it’s up to every group of ERC 3 students to care for their assigned Martin City. Think of the long-term superheroics portion of their education like a combination of the classic “care for this egg like a baby” assignment and group essay.

 

ERC 3 is a lot of work. A LOT of work. No other class we offer comes close to the number of washouts it produces every year. But those that make it through will become the guardians of the future, the guarantors of mankind’s safety. When the sky is falling, they will be there to hold it up. 

 

ERC 4

 

ERC 4 is sometimes thought of as “ERC 3 with more responsibilities,” but that’s a simplification. It’s more than just ERC 3 with a different number, but it’s understandable why people would think that.

 

You have to have graduated high school to qualify for ERC 4, but the requirements for ERC 4 are the same as ERC 3, meaning we hand ERC 4 certificates to all our ERC 3 students when they graduate.

 

ERC 4 superhumans are fully integrated within the superhero community. When they are called on by ARGO, the Statesmen, the police, or any number of other authorities, they are expected to act with just a moment’s notice. They are what ERC 3 students train to become. They guide, lead, and protect ERC 3 students in responding to emergencies. They are full-fledged superheroes and superheroines, there’s nothing junior about them.

 

People do not call ERC 3 students to respond to emergencies. That means they’re spared a very hard responsibility, and students that feel that transitioning to ERC 4 is no big deal need to have a wake-up call about the responsibilities they are about to shoulder.

 

Beyond ERC 4

 

Though going beyond ERC 4 is well beyond the scope of our school, but not beyond the scope of our students’ ambitions.

 

ERC 4 superhumans are considered superheroes, and the 16 ranks above them are still superheroes, just with more prestige, trust, and responsibilities.

 

At ERC 5, a superhero is a leader and organizer of a superteam. He is briefed every morning by various authorities depending on the scope and goals of his team and dispenses duties to ERC 4 superheroes. ARGO, the Warp and Weft Authorities, the Library, and Crime Web have a file on him.

 

At ERC 10, a superhero can go anywhere on Earth, no questions asked. He can go to any superhero base, any seat of government, anywhere. No place is barred to him. Even Earth State, notorious for its superhuman restrictions, will let him go where he will. Regardless of origins, he is not seen as a citizen or political entity. He is seen as being above the politics of Earth.

 

At ERC 15, a superhero can fly out to the Chromian sun-swallower parked around Epsilon Eridani and the Chromian “governor” of the Milky Way will roll out the red carpet to greet him as an equal. He is not seen as an Earthman. He is not seen as a subject. He is beyond that. He is a being of the cosmos known to the universal community.

 

At ERC 17, a superhero is known to the multiversal community and has participated in events that have shaped history on a cosmic scale. He is known to gods. He is known as a god to certain cultures. The archivists at the Last and First Library have spoken with him to clarify certain events. The Form Masters have assumed his form. He has been to the Eye of Light and Heart of Darkness. He has been through the looking glass and crossed the shifting sands. He has seen a unicorn, and it has seen him.

 

As has been mentioned before, those few with ERC 20 are invested with as much trust as a being can possibly be invested in. Because really, if you can’t trust Gold Star and Mary Marvel, who can you trust?

 

Ultimately, that’s what ERC is all about–trust, both in the character of a superhero and his competency. Nothing can be more empowering than trust, yet nothing can be more of a burden. In this way, trust is just another superpower, and was Martin’s not built to help students acquire and master superpowers?