Knowledge Queen at Your Service

This is kind of embarrassing, but I'll do it anyway. John Scalzi's Weekend Assignment is as follows:

Weekend Assignment #16: Create a brand-new Superhero secret identity for yourself, based on your personality and proclivities -- and make sure to list at least one "super power" that relates to a special talent you have. Now, to be clear, this "super power" shouldn't actually be a super power, like the ability to fly or shoot lasers from your eyes (unless you can actually do that). No, we're just talking about naming a "talent" you have, in superhero terms. So, for example, if you're really good at finding bargains, you could say you have Super Shopping Senses -- "Oooh! My shopping sense is tingling! Something in this aisle is on sale!!!!" Like that.

Meet Knowledge Queen., who has the ability to absorb large amounts of information as easily as Rogue absorbs other people's super powers (okay, with maybe a bit more work than that), and to disseminate the resulting knowlege to anyone in range, whether they want it or not.

The information-gathering phase can be visual (words in books or online, or possibly television, not so much Real Life) or auditory (radio, tv, by phone or in person). The transmission phase of  Knowledge Queen's use of her powers can be divided into four different modes:

1. DataBurst - short bursts of (semi-relevant) information are inserted into conversations without warning--even if Knowledge Queen wasn't a participant in the conversation until that moment.

2. UoP FeedBack - arcane concepts are absorbed from textbooks and lectures, and fed back to the instructor or other students, either orally or in 350 to 700 written words (more likely 700-plus).

3. Controlled Synthesis - the subject matter (say, the Don Bellisario Laws of Quantum Leaping, or hints about the Doctor's hidden past at the time of Rassilon) is observed, analyzed, mixed with subjective content and synthesized into new knowledge, and fed back in written form.

4. Random Synthesis - random bits of information are synthesized into rambling journal entries or a succession of IMs, or (occasionally) in person.

As with Green Lantern and the color yellow, there are limitations.  It has to be information that Knowledge Queen is either interested in or actively studying, and the knowledge is more likely to be conceptual than trivial or fact-oriented.  If you want to know who Luke Skywalker's aunt was, ask someone else. But if you want proof that Sam Beckett's whole body leaps, an explanation of accrual-based accounting, a story about what it was like to live in Manlius, NY in the 1970s, or instruction about the difference between "its" and "it's," Knowledge Queen is your best bet.

Warning: may contain peanuts (or whole elephants) of off-topic material.

Extra Credit: Oh, all right, fine: If you could have one genuine, honest-to-goodness super power, what one would you want and why?

That's easy. Time travel, preferably without the use of a machine. I'd pop back to last night and get a good night's sleep while simultaneously blogging in a second room and editing the second novel in a third room.  (Hmm.  I'm going to need a bigger house, with better air conditioning!) Yes, I'd be dead in ten to fifteen years (thirty to forty-five subjective years), but I'd be incredibly productive until then.  Plus I could do all that Beatles recording, shopping in the 1960s and so on that I wrote about before, accumulate money for myself, St. Michael's and the Sam Beckett Foundation, and not have to hold down a steady job.  Sounds like a good deal to me, especially if John (Blocher, not Scalzi) gets to time travel, too.

Incidentally, John, a.k.a. Line-Man, claims to have the mutant power to make any line he's standing in move more slowly than any other line.  When John is in line, someone up ahead wants to write a two-party check, has a declined credit card, needs to complain to a manager, claims to have returned the video no matter what the computer says, or has an item with a missing bar code.  Alternatively, the clerk is new, in training or incompetent, or it's time for a shift change. Not a very useful power, I grant you, but he believes it's true.  I say it's selective attention, a concept Knowledge Queen will be happy to explain on request.

Karen