Peter Cawdron - Feedback

Jason wondered if this was how the media twisted people’s words? Record enough footage and you’re bound to catch a smirk here, a poorly chosen phrase there. String them together and you can make any story you want. Take a couple of hours of footage and splice it down to a minute or two, and you can make someone out to be anything you want, monster or hero.

“It’s OK,” Stegmeyer said, apparently reading his thoughts. “You can trust us. We’re all here to help.”

Jason nodded in reply. Against his better judgement, he wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, but he wasn’t sure quite what was expected of him.

“What can you tell me about the alien craft?” she asked.

Jason looked at Lily.

Lachlan spoke, saying, “His memory is hazy.”

“Let the man speak,” Stegmeyer replied gently. “We need to get as much of this as possible from him, in his words.”

Jason was acutely aware of the video camera focusing on him.

“I… ah,” he began. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is all new to me.”

Stegmeyer looked over her shoulder at Lachlan as he got out of the front seat and moved back into the RV.

“His memory is incomplete,” the professor said. “Given time, he’ll remember the details.”

“You told me he would remember by now.”

“Look,” Jason offered. “Maybe there’s been some kind of mistake.”

Lachlan ignored him, speaking to Stegmeyer as he said, “Even without the spacecraft, we still have him. Jason carries the proof of his origin in his body.”

Jason was horrified by what he heard. He leaned back in the chair, pushing himself into the cushion. Lily must have felt his muscles stiffen. She rested her hand on his knee, and whispered, “It’s going to be all right.”

Lachlan crouched down beside Stegmeyer, looking Jason in the eye.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” he said. “But your body is remarkable. You’re a miracle of biology.”

“Me?” Jason replied. “But I have Cander’s Syndrome. A genetic defect that causes blood anemia.”

“There’s no such thing,” Lachlan said smiling. “They made that up as an excuse to keep you under close medical supervision. Your medication is nothing more than sugar pills. Oh, occasionally they’ll slip something in there to make you feel sick and get you back in for MRI and blood tests, but it’s all just a cover.”

“It’s true,” Lily added. “They even faked the PubMed papers on Cander’s, faked the research results and peer reviews, all so they could get a credible entry in Wikipedia in case you ever looked it up.”

“But why?” Jason asked.

Lachlan opened his folder and tossed a couple of scan results on the table.

“Your heart is the size of a newborn infant’s, and yet it pumps almost four thousand gallons a day, well over a million gallons a year. That’s twice the volume of an olympic sprinter.”

“No,” Jason said, shaking his head, looking at a chest scan showing a tiny heart. “I have a weak heart. I have annual ECG scans.”

“You see the results they want you to see,” Lachlan continued. “The average lung capacity of an adult male is just under two gallons, yours is over three. Your kidneys, liver and spleen are all enlarged. They’re roughly the same size as someone that’s twice your weight. What’s more, your elastic muscle strength and peak force strength are off the charts. Your muscle tissue is denser and heavier than anything we’ve ever observed.”

Jason laughed, saying, “This is absurd! Next you’re going to tell me, Jor-El’s my father and I’ve got to steer clear of Kryptonite.”

“Not quite,” Lachlan replied, smiling. “But close.”

“Perhaps a demonstration would help.” Lachlan turned to the FBI agent, saying, “Agent Bellum, you look buff. How much can you bench press?”

“I’ll warm up with two hundred pounds and work up to three fifty, maybe four hundred on a good day.”

“Would you mind demonstrating your strength by arm wrestling Jason?”

“What?” Jason asked, watching as Agent Bellum removed his jacket. He was a huge man with a barrel chest and muscles like an ox. Agent Bellum grinned, rolling up his sleeve and revealing the thick muscles of his forearm. His biceps were hidden by his business shirt, but only just. There wasn’t a lot of extra room in those sleeves.

Jason looked to Lachlan for an explanation.

“Did you ever wonder why you were discouraged from sports? You were a natural. The problem was, you were too natural. You’d outrun your classmates and wonder why they were out of breath when they caught up to you, right?”

“I was never any good at sports,” Jason replied. “Sports made me sick.”

“Not quite,” Lachlan said. “Your meds made you sick. Your handlers would see you starting to assert yourself physically and they would switch your meds to make it unpleasant for you. Think about it. All those times you felt sick, it was never on the same day. It was always the next day, wasn’t it?”

Jason nodded as Lachlan continued.

“You’d kick a football half the length of a field without really trying. The people assigned to you did all they could to steer you away from anything physical, but they couldn’t stop you from throwing a basketball the length of a court in the fourth grade for an impossible three-pointer!”

Jason smiled at that. He remembered that day well. He remembered the awe and amazement he got from the other kids in the gym, and he remembered being sick for almost a week afterwards. Had he been punished? Was that it? Could anyone be that cruel to a child?

Agent Bellum knelt down, resting his elbow on the coffee table. He flexed his fingers, smiling at Jason.

“Go on,” Lily said, encouraging him.

Jason felt stupid.

He wasn’t going to roll up his sleeve. His arms were embarrassingly thin compared to Bellum’s.

Agent Bellum had to be in his late twenties, early thirties. He was in his physical prime. His arm was massive compared to Jason’s. There was a compression bandage just visible beneath Jason’s shirt. His fingers touched at the bandage beneath the cotton.

“It won’t matter,” Lachlan said confidently, observing Jason’s reluctance. “You won’t break a sweat.”

Getting down on one knee, Jason offered his hand. He rested his elbow on the table across from Bellum.

The FBI Agent grinned. He’d clearly done this before. From the way he positioned his hand, arching his wrist over Jason’s, it was obvious he knew what he was doing. He was relishing this.

Jason felt his hand swallowed up by Bellum’s paw.

“OK,” Lachlan said. “Ready?”

Jason felt the big man beginning to apply pressure, trying to force Jason’s hand backwards onto the table.

“Go!” Lachlan cried.

Bellum surged, applying a massive wave of strength that took Jason by surprise, bending his hand back to within an inch or so of the stained wooden veneer.

Bellum leaned over the coffee table. The veins in his neck bulged and his face started turning red. Jason’s forearm was trembling under the strain, but he found he could hold onto those last few inches. The bigger man shifted his weight, trying to get more leverage, but to Jason’s surprise, the added pressure didn’t bother him. He had plenty of strength in reserve. It was quite fascinating to observe, he thought, mentally detaching himself from the action. Across from him was this huge man on the verge of pinning his arm to the table, but only if Jason let him. Here was an FBI agent struggling with someone half his size.

Jason looked over at Lachlan and Stegmeyer. Lachlan looked relaxed, as though he had no doubts about what would happen next, whereas Stegmeyer looked nervous. She didn’t want Jason to lose, much to his surprise. The contrast in their visages was stark. Stegmeyer never expected him to win.