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ArtsThe Town VoiceTimeless 

Yet Another Superhero

Episode 1 Superfetus

 

By Arlon Staywell

Few people considered the hazards of using nuclear medicine to treat cancer and performing abortions in the same room.  Although sometimes effective in fighting cancer, radioactivity can have unpredictable results if not carefully contained and controlled.  Such is the premise of some classic science fiction.  Could it happen in real life though?

This particular story begins one day when a cover of the nuclear irradiation device for treating various cancers came loose and hazardous radiation reached a disposal unit where an aborted fetus had recently been discarded.  Later that night, after some eerie flashes of sparkling light, the "fetus" managed somehow to gain volition, crawl out of the disposal, out of the hospital and into the sea where it was raised by dolphins.  It quickly grew to enormous size.  At almost 20 feet tall "Superfetus" left his dolphin foster parents to seek large quantities of strained peas and carrots at a baby food processing facility.

Well schooled students might laugh and say that the term "fetus" is not accurate here.  Indeed there is no term yet for these unusual circumstances.  As Macbeth learned about Macduff in the famous play by Shakespeare, some circumstances escape terminology.  Details are not available here.  Perhaps it was less than a fetus before being irradiated.  Its parts might even have been, as is often the case with curettage, rendered asunder.  Perhaps it was more than a fetus after being irradiated.  Even the top scientists are not certain.

Later able to walk it or he donned a fake nose and sunglasses to disguise his extraordinarily youthful face and travel about town like any other more aged 30 foot tall human.  Of course Sergeant O'Leary knew it was no ordinary human.  No human is that tall for one thing.  Plus he had traced him from the baby food processing facility back to the ocean and back to the hospital.  He knew it was Superfetus.

Perhaps it was inevitable that Superfetus would one day go back to the hospital that had tried to destroy him.  At first his memories were very vague.  No strained peas, no strained carrots, no milk, just aching cold.  Then while staring at the disposal unit he realized what it was.  He remembered crawling out of it.  What dark purpose filled his mind at that point is difficult to say.  There were so many plans to make.

~~~==     A Week Later     ==~~~

Sergeant O'Leary sat down to a park bench as if to take a break from his morning jog.  Beside the bench, and too big for it, sat a 30 foot tall man wearing sunglasses and with a large, possibly fake, nose.

"Can you spin webs?," O'Leary asked the stranger.  "I mean like spider webs."

"What are you talking about?," replied the large stranger.  "I'm just a normal human being."

Then O'Leary noted, "Not many folks are 30 feet tall."

"Oh? Are there records?," the stranger retorted.

"The tallest human alive today is just a tad over eight feet tall. Several people are over seven and a half feet, but you are the first over nine feet as far as I know."

"There is a first time for everything? Perhaps?" the stranger asked wistfully.

"Perhaps," replied the sergeant then dropped the line of inquiry. "I'm Sergeant O'Leary, out for a morning jog," he was not completely forthright, but he did remember his manners enough to finally introduce himself.  As we know, he suspected the stranger was Superfetus, a creature accidentally irradiated with nuclear radioactivity while a fetus in a disposal unit at some hospital.  "I'm headed in the direction of the hospital, not stopping by, but would you be going that way?," O'Leary asked.

Superfetus told O'Leary that he was not going that way ... today.