Prehistoric

[6 word request: Scientist Tests De-evolution ray on Rivals]

Silas gasped as his elbow bumped his coffee off the table, but the splash of iced java on the sidewalk never happened. Both the liquid and the styrofoam cup froze in midair as if time had stopped. Melvin had snatched them with his psychokinetic abilities without even twitching. The cup rose up to gently land on the table as the coffee and ice gently settled back inside.

“And that,” Silas said, shaking his head, “is exactly what I’m talking about.”

Melvin raised an eyebrow. “Silas, your complaints about our relationship are… certainly valid. I know I haven’t been that available lately. But I can’t help the accident that happened to me--that changed me! These abilities,” he said, twiddling his fingers as his own teacup floated in the air, then settled back on the table, “are part of who I am now. Like it or not, if you want to be with me, you have to accept them as well.”

Silas sighed. “What bothers me most is the ease with which you use your powers. You went from shocked to, ‘I have super powers,’ pretty damned easily. And now you’re putting on that damned costume… stopping crimes! It’s a lot for me to process, but apparently to you it’s no big deal.”

A woman elbowed the coffee shop door open balancing three tiers of stacked coffee carriers with a bag of baked goods in each hand. She paused as a latte on the top row wobbled, but then regained her balance and started down the sidewalk with an unsteady gait. Melvin tried to ignore the woman, to focus on his lover’s anguished face, but Silas saw Melvin’s momentary glance.

“What?” Melvin asked as Silas sighed.

“You can’t focus at all anymore, can you?” Silas said. He slurped some iced coffee through his straw.

“Whoa--oh no!” cried the woman as she stumbled. The stack of coffees tilted slowly as she tried to recover. It took several seconds for it all to come crashing down over the sidewalk. She slipped as hot coffee splattered around her. The baked goods squashed beneath her.

Silas scooted his chair back. “I think I have to go now.”

“What?” Melvin said. “You wanted me to focus, I was focused! On you!”

“You let that happen,” Silas said. “Why?”

Melvin leapt up and grabbed Silas shoulder gently. “Look, I could have stopped you with my mind if I wanted, but I didn’t, right? You don’t like me using these powers,” he said, focusing on the soft orange glow emanating from his fingers, “then I won’t.” The light snuffed out immediately. “Just normal Melvin. If that’s what you want--”

“I don’t know how I botched this so badly,” Silas said. “But the thing is not that I’m for or against you using these powers… it’s that I don’t know who you are anymore. And things weren’t great with us before, so having this new wrinkle in the mix… I need time. Alone.”

Silas gave Melvin--his lover of two years--a gentle hug, patting him on the shoulder, before hurrying over to the woman to help her up.

Melvin just stared into his coffee.

**

Despite the lab being silent, all lights other than the one on his desk out, Melvin had no idea what time it was or how long he’d been working. He was so involved in doublechecking his latest calculations that he didn’t even realize someone was standing next to him.

Desmond, Melvin’s old college roommate, eyed him suspiciously with his arms crossed. “I could smell you from several feet away,” Desmond said, his lips pursed. “Exactly how long has it been since you showered?”

Melvin shook his head. “Jeez, I dunno… What day is it?” He glanced around, tapping the touch screen panel on his desk. His eyes went wide when he realized he’d been working on his project for four days straight. He tried to remember the last time he’d eaten.

“Now I don’t feel so bad that I didn’t hurry over,” Desmond said, grabbing the tablet from Melvin’s hand. He chuckled as he scanned Melvin’s work. “What… the fuck… is this?” he asked.

Melvin took a deep breath. “Remember that accident I was involved in three months ago?”

The mirth drained from Desmond’s weathered face again. “How could I forget? You tried to open a quantum doorway with some SERIOUSLY questionable theories driving your project. Half of our industry thinks you’re a genius, the other half thinks you’re absolutely insane.”

“And what do you think?” Melvin asked. “I know we work for competing labs now, but… I need your support now more than anything.”

Desmond shrugged. “I think you’re both, old friend. And the fact that you didn’t kill yourself should have been a wake-up call to you to stay a bit more grounded with your research, but… if what I’m reading here is correct…”

“I opened the doorway,” Melvin said hastily. He sniffed the coffee cup next to his computer; stale, but good enough. He took a swig and wiped some sweat from his brow. “Opened it up wide. The data I gathered was… mind-blowing… but I can’t share it with anyone because of what happened to me.”

Desmond set the tablet back down. “Can I change my answer? I think you’re just crazy now. And I now regret coming to see you.” He started to walk away, but an invisible force held him in place. “What the--” Desmond suddenly floated into the air and turned around to face Desmond before being placed gently on the ground.

“I did that,” Melvin said. “I can move things with my mind, see in the dark… sometimes I can touch objects and see into their past… and their futures! But it’s too much. What I need, Desmond, is to be rid of all of this. And I have some theories as to how I could drain the extradimensional energy from my cells…”

“...and you need the world’s premier molecular biologist to prevent you from melting into a braindead puddle when you do so.”

Melvin’s anguished face was a silent plea to his friend. Desmond nodded. “If we go now--and I mean right this second--to my lab, we may be able to do this without gathering any attention from my colleagues or the media.”

Melvin hastily pulled off his lab coat. “I’ll fill you in on the rest on the way!”

**

Desmond’s eyes traced Melvin’s shirtless body as he waited for the results on Melvin’s blood sample analysis. They were well into their 40s now, but Melvin was still built the same as when they’d been barely out of college. “It seems insane you’d want to be rid of these… well, no other word for it: gifts.”

Melvin stared at his hands, his lips quivering. “It’s too much,” he explained. “Too many unknowns. I’m out of my depths.”

“Honestly? I’d love to study you myself for awhile,” Desmond said. “We’d both go down in history for that. I mean this discovery could jumpstart the next great age of science…” He stared down at the data pouring across his tablet. “Well, there’s no genetic decay since your exposure,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “Insane. I’d expected this to have been caused by a mutation of sorts, but it’s almost as if the energy you absorbed is just… nestled into your body. Enhancing it from within without damaging your cells.”

“Exactly as I’d thought,” Melvin said. “So that means it should be easily removable, right?”

“Easily isn’t the correct word,” Desmond said as he gestured to a cylindrical tube in the center of the sterile white laboratory. “But possible.”

“How long are we talking?” Melvin asked.

“You’re very lucky,” Desmond said. “Not only have you already done most of the work for me, but I’m in the middle of a pretty groundbreaking project myself… not ‘predicting the future with a touch’ groundbreaking, mind you, but…” He coughed before asking Melvin to strip down.

“What’s your project?” Melvin said as he undid his belt and let his pants slide down his muscular legs.

“I’ve discovered a way,” Desmond began as he tapped the console connected to the cylinder, “to release stored cellular potential, literally tapping into ages old genetics still coded into your DNA…” The door on the cylinder popped open. Desmond gestured to Melvin to enter. He tried not to study Melvin’s ripped nude body as he confidently crossed the room. “I’ll explain it all to you when this is over.”

“Thank you so much,” Melvin said, embracing Desmond with his muscular arms. Desmond went rigid at first, then allowed himself to hug back. With Melvin inside, Desmond sealed the cylinder again.

“So first, what we’re going to do...” Desmond said as he tapped the console. The cylinder suddenly lit up, whirring to life. “...is shock your system by recreating the quantum incident on a smaller scale. Then, when your cells are still pliable, we’re going to leech all of that energy out of you…” As he said this, purple light filled the cylinder. Melvin’s fit body went rigid as he was subsumed in the glow. The light filtered through tubes at the base of the cylinder, gathering in a glass orb across the room. “And of course I’m going to save that energy for myself,” he said, licking his lips as he watched Melvin’s nude body pour with sweat. He collapsed to his knees in the cylinder--but the machine hadn’t quieted yet.

“And since your body is in a more pliable state, I think I’ll just show you exactly what it is I’ve been working on all this time,” Desmond said. Melvin couldn’t hear him. The soliloquy was for his own benefit. He loaded up a project matrix he’d spent the past two years perfecting and laughed heartily as he activated it. “Let me show you exactly what it is I’ve been working on, old friend.”

Blue light filled the cylinder and, despite the fact that the cylinder was soundproof, Melvin appeared to be screaming. “You see,” Desmond said as he watched his muscular rival pound desperately against the solid walls, “this is a real, ‘two birds, one stone,’ scenario. I get a live test subject, and I get to continue your research without you getting in the way.”

The light faded and the cylinder door popped open. Periwinkle clouds poured out of it. Desmond’s eyes went wide as the man within struggled to force his way through the door, now so wide he had to turn sideways.

Melvin’s body was now bloated with muscle, his beautiful face now blocky with a thick jaw and a bulbous forehead. His whole body was coated with coarse hair. While he seemed to have gotten several feet taller, all of the growth was in his torso; his heavy upper body had caused him to lean forward, supporting himself on his fists. What ambled around Desmond’s lab now seemed like an ape with just a hint of human features to it.

The big beast, bulging with muscles and a big floppy cock slapping between his stumpy thighs, stared around confused.

“I think a quick cognitive test is in order,” Desmond said, delighted at the simian brute. “Melvin?”

“Ook!” Melvin grunted, scratching his head with one hand, then his hairy, bulging chest with the other.

“Do you understand me, Melvin?”

The brute stared around the lab as if seeing it for the first time. Then he shuffled forward on his fists before grabbing Desmond by the leg and hoisting him into the air.

“Dammit! Melvin, put me down!” Desmond demanded, but Melvin pulled Desmond close to his apeish face and lapped at it with an enormous, mottled tongue before dropping him to the ground.

“OOK!” Melvin grunted, pounding on his enormous pectoral muscles as his upper lip curled. He turned, distracted by something in the lab (probably a glint of light reflecting off something shiny). He got halfway across the room before grabbing his dick and rubbing it furiously with both hands. A large gob of drool dangled from his wide jaw as his eyes rolled back into his head. Melvin grunted like a beast as he jerked his dick, now the size of an arm.

“You always did have a bigger dick,” Desmond said, loading up a tranquilizer gun. He fired it into Melvin’s back. The behemoth spun around angrily, so Desmond fired a couple more. It wasn’t until the fourth struck him that Melvin slowed, his body going limp. He grunted and ground his hips as he fell forward, still gently humping the floor even though he was asleep.

“Look at that! Not a sign of that beautiful face or that brilliant mind,” Desmond said as he inspected his former college roommate. “And look how big those muscles got! So impressive. Now, what should I do with you?” He glanced over at the cylinder, still powered up. “I could send you through the cylinder again, make you into something smaller and more docile--or maybe crank it up all the way and leave you a clump of mold…”

He strode across the lab and pulled open a locker, returning to the now-snoring monster who had once been his rival, begging for help. He fitted the big beast with an electrified collar, clamping some bands around his thick arms and legs as well. “Or, perhaps I could train you? It would be nice to have some prehistoric muscle around, especially once I expose myself to that quantum energy. I can’t wait to see what amazing powers it gives me…”