Viktor Reis.

The faster-than-light sequencer began to shake, rattle, and slide across the floor as the doctor looked on impassively. Perhaps a little less than impassively; Viktor was bored, let's be honest. All sequencing, no fun. Where's the fun in just combining, deconstructing, and then recombining cosmically enhanced DNA recently discovered on the moon's surface? Now, if he were doing all of the above on the secret government-staffed Moon Base over on the Dark Side, then maybe this would be cool. It would have a better view at least; being 200 yards below the Earth's surface in a titanium-enhanced bunker makes Vic a dull boy.

The sequencer gave a final yelp of impertinence and was silent. Vic walked over, opened the top hatch and suddenly he exploded.

What he didn't realize at first was, yes, he had in fact exploded physically, but his consciousness had just reached the fourth plane of cosmic awareness. It had been the exposure to the DNA in a close-quarters environment for the past year-and-a-half; if anyone had known it would have produced these results, maybe he would have taken that trip to the moon. Rather now he was suspended in a state of bloody separation, the lower half of his body still planted on both feet, his upper half a good three feet above and cocked at a ninety degree angle, his intestines doing a crazy loop-de-loop in the middle of the air and a thousand and one particles of plasma dancing in the air, literally dancing, like some crazy cha-cha from that horrible Robin Williams movie, Flubber. That's exactly what Vic thought: My blood has turned to Flubber. Then, within seconds, his torso hit the floor and the lower half of his body fell over as well. What was kind of strange was that his intestines still hung in the air, dangled by some cosmic invisible wire, as did his blood.

Vic looked up at his entrails. "Get back here," he said, rather absent-mindedly. Part of him thought of this as a dream. Yeah, it would have been nice.

But the amazing thing was that his blood and other things responded to what he said: like a crazy flesh-measuring tape, his lower intestine zzzzzipped back into his torso, pulling taut and slamming the two pieces of his body back together into a whole. There wasn't even a scarring line to show where he'd separated before: he was absolutely whole again. The floating plasma disintegrated into a million microparticles and entered his bloodstream through his pores. Viktor got up without a scratch nor a clue and looked at the sequencer. The top hatch was still open, and inside a multi-colored sine wave was shining not quite unlike an aurora borealis.
"Cool beans," Vic said. He reached inside, not thinking at all yet (he'd only just been exploded, you see; it affects the mind a bit), and was sucked through the sequencer into an alternate reality deep inside the alien DNA.

He surfaced just before lunch. He did not file the incident in his report. In fact, he never filed another report again; somehow he mysteriously vanished from the bunker. Security tapes still show no exit. Except that if you turn around sometimes, like right now, you'll see Viktor eating a hot dog. He really likes hot dogs, which makes being cosmically-enhanced really cool: you think HOT DOG and there you go. A hot dog.

Right now he's thinking STOP READING.



copyright Christopher K. Burch, 2007