New Story: A Burdened Hand Is Worth Two Kicks In The Tush

[tekuno]

Since there was a positive response to my other story, I thought I'd try finishing up something else I already had partially done. The result is sort of mixed; I know that not everyone likes macro stories, so I undid the macro part towards the end. But in order to do that I had to repurpose a character, and then I added another one, and another, and another, and then I had to change the details around again, and although it now has a nice happy ending it's a lot less purely about the muscle growth than it used to be. It actually -- gasp! -- is concerned with the plot. I ended up having a lot of fun with the ending, corny as it is. And writing the accented dialog; I was always a fan of Robert Aspirin's characters Guido and Nunzio from the Myth, Inc. series, and they had more influence on Ralph than I should probably admit.

Technically, this story is more "realistic" than the other one, in that there are no absolute violations of physics. Instead it is merely wildly improbable to the point of just being effectively impossible. (No, metabolisms do not work like that. But the mass and chemical energy isn't being wished out of thin air, at least.)

Actually, as with the other story, this was originally based on a sequence of pencil sketches. (Which is why it had a macro ending. If you're going to draw a muscle growth sequence, it's more fun to go macro than to just draw a guy remaining normal height and proportions, but just getting a bit more muscular.) The removal of the macro-ness took out a lot of the "adult"-ish stuff. But this let me leave the main character's sexual orientation unstated, so those of you with definite preferences can mentally fill in the blanks however you like.

Someday, I'll have to try redrawing some of these drawings in a medium that would actually let me show the pictures as well. There aren't a lot of stories with purpose-drawn illustrations out there. (Sedan Elgar Jr. uses morphs sometimes, and O'Melliskos draws mostly single illustrations for some stories, and there may be others I don't know about. But not nearly enough in my opinion.) But all my existing artwork of this kind is pencil sketches on notebook paper, so it just does not scan well.

Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys it.

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A Burdened Hand Is Worth Two Kicks In The Tush

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From: Ryan Smith
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Interested in a photo shoot?

> your brother. If you would be interested in letting us feature you
> in a photo shoot, I think we can offer you the same terms he gets.
> (As you may know, he gets our top rate, being a former champion.)
> I can promise you that if we published an interview with you, it
> would put all the rumors to rest.

Dear sir:

You have a lot of nerve.

First you publish photos of me in one of my brother's photo
spreads without asking my permission or getting any sort of legal
release on my behalf.

Then you actually run letters wondering out loud if the reason I
don't compete in bodybuilding events is because I couldn't pass
the drug tests. (Seriously, I'm a biologist. Those drug tests
your organization uses are a joke. If I was on steroids, which I
am not, you still wouldn't be able to catch me using those
methods.)

And then, to top it off, you use the slander in those idiot letters
to try to pressure me into letting you take, and publish, even more
pictures.

The only reason I'm not suing you for defamation is that I am not,
in fact, a professional bodybuilder or athlete of any kind, so I
don't care if people think I'm on steroids. There would be no
damages, because my earnings have nothing to do with the opinions
the apparent pinheads who read your magazine at all.

My body, whether you and your moronic readership believes it, is
purely the result of freakish genetics. I refuse to compete in
bodybuilding competitions because it would be unfair to the
majority of contestants, who actually put in a lot of work just
to get into the contest. The only workouts I do are jogging and
bike-riding for cardiovascular fitness; I haven't deliberately
lifted a weight since high school, and I didn't enjoy it then. I
take great pride in the fact that I work in a field where my
unusual body is, if anything, a hindrance, and any rewards I get
are for achievements for which I had to genuinely work.

And before you try to refer to your ridiculous compensation
scheme, the sum you mention is actually smaller than the royalties
I receive in a given month for my contributions to educational
literature. You don't impress me one little bit.

In short, get lost before I sic a lawyer on you.

--
Ryan Smith
Professor of Micro- and Extremophile Biology
Ecalpon University

-------------

Well, really. I hate it when people assume I'm a bodybuilder. Like I wrote to that jackass at the magazine, it's unfair to people who actually put in a lot of work to compete. I know my brother Alex has similar advantages, if not to the same extent, and he won all kinds of competitions, but even though he's family and I love him, I have to admit that he's basically a jerk. And besides, he actually DID do a lot of work; it's not his fault that his genetics are better than other people's. For a while, he was doing the full series of professional-level gym workouts AND working two jobs.

It's not surprising that my brothers and I have good genetics. Dad and Mom are both pretty amazing.

Dad is nearly 80 now, and he still has 21-inch arms and regularly places in marathons. Until he was 71, he was the state arm-wrestling champion (although that was because Alex moved out of state and my other brother and I don't compete). If you've heard urban legends about a mechanic who drags damaged cars back to his garage by hand instead of using a tow truck, that's based on my Dad. (To be fair, he says he only did it a few times, and not at all since he reached 60.)

And Mom? Well, I think it says everything you need to know about Mom's general toughness and strength that the year AFTER she hit menopause, she took up ice hockey, and was so good that for a couple of years she was actually a substitute on a pro team. I used to worry about that, but she stopped playing hockey when she discovered how much she likes dirt bike racing.

Which is a little disconcerting when you consider that her other hobbies are crochet and bird-watching. I think she deliberately chose the crochet as a form of psychological warfare, to make people underestimate her. I know that she really only won that last race because the last guy she passed did a double-take at her pink helmet-cozy and hit a tree root. The YouTube video went viral, poor guy. All's fair in love and dirt bikes, I guess.

My parents must have been one hell of a scary couple when they were younger, come to think of it. If, in addition to being completely insane, they weren't some of the nicest people I've ever met, they would probably be locked up somewhere.

I was a late baby. Although my parents never say so out loud, I think they hadn't planned on having any more kids after my brothers. Otherwise, it's a little hard to explain why the younger of the two of them, Bill, was 17 when I was born.

All through my childhood, I was the largest kid of my age that anyone knew. I was always the tallest, always the heaviest, and always the strongest, although being the strongest six-year-old isn't a big achievement.

I was the despair of my gym teachers. All of them were under pressure by the local kiddie sports associations to get kids to join, but I really wasn't interested. I think having Alex around kind of turned me off to sports completely, because he was, once again, a jerk. Early on, I came to associate uniforms and trophies and athletics with this guy who never hesitated to cheat me out of things, or to settle arguments physically. If Bill hadn't been around too I think my childhood would have really sucked.

If I made my gym teachers unhappy, at least my other teachers were pleased. Despite being really big, I was a very good student. I was usually friends with just about everyone, and Dad says that more than one teacher said classes with me in them were unusually harmonious, because nobody wanted to risk retaliation from me for hitting a friend.

(In fact, I think my older teachers, the ones who remembered Alex from 20 years earlier, were surprised and relieved. Apparently he was something of a bully and tended to disrupt class. Bill was big, too, but apparently he was unexceptional either way, so they didn't have any reason to look forward to me.)

Anyway, things started to get weird when I hit puberty. When I entered 7th grade, for the first time in my life, I wasn't the tallest kid in the class. I was still the heaviest and the strongest, but the margins had slimmed down and I wasn't the clear winner unless you actually measured carefully. Mostly, that was just a relief -- no more pestering about football or wrestling! -- but then the hunger hit.

In my memory, it seems like it hit suddenly, in one hour during an afternoon in the fall. I don't remember a word my teachers or my friends said that afternoon, at all, just a desperate feeling of needing food. My family says I'm wrong, though -- Dad says I had been eating more than usual for several weeks before the day when I came home and basically ate everyone's dinner right after school. He hadn't expected to have to order pizza that night, but it wasn't a total surprise either. I was embarrassed about it for weeks -- I was a pretty self-conscious adolescent. Mom used to joke that she was glad Dad did all the cooking, because she wouldn't have been strong enough to lift all the food I was eating. I started taking three times as much food to school so I could snack between classes.

For the next two years, I grew like a weed. In 8th grade and onward I was once again the tallest kid in the class, and still the strongest and the heaviest, but now I really stood out. We had those mandatory fitness tests, and I was always scoring three times as high as everyone else. (Just for example, I could beat the number of pull-ups the next-best scorer could do -- but I could do them one-handed.)

My academic performance suffered a little. I was always so hungry that it was hard to concentrate in class. But around the end of my sophomore year in high school I finally stopped growing so fast that I was constantly ravenous, and so my grades picked up in time for college.

That was when I really started to think about things being unfair. There were a few kids in my classes who just consistently "got it", no matter what the subject was, and apparently didn't have to study at all. The way they handled their academics was like someone juggling five balls with one hand, while looking the other way. They were doing all kinds of fun and interesting stuff outside of school. I, on the other hand, had to spend at least 5 hours each week reviewing my notes -- over and above doing homework -- or else my grades suffered. That doesn't sound like much, but adults forget how little control children have over their own lives. Five hours of extra work each week seriously ate into my free time, and given that my parents were both out almost all the time (Dad was always occupied at the garage, Mom had a continuous stretch of hockey and dirt bike competitions), I had to do a lot of chores around the house, too.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, so to speak, physically I was doing really well. Since getting over chicken pox in first grade, I hadn't been sick for a single day. In my junior year, I was the envy of every jock in the school, 6' 8" and nearly 270 pounds of muscle. (I actually grew another inch or two over the next year, but compared to the earlier prolonged growth spurt it was practically unnoticeable.) In the mandatory measurements in gym class, I broke the high school records for the bench press and squat -- the former dating from Alex, the latter from Bill -- and once again had sports teams begging me to join. (As if I had the time!)

I dated around a bit and did all the obligatory social stuff as far as I was able. I think Alex and Bill teamed up to try to keep me "safe"; looking back, it's a little suspicious how often one or the other of them just happened to be around when I would bring a date home, or would just happen to be driving by a concert or movie or whatever just as I came out, and offer me a ride home. This, if I had known it, was a dangerous precedent. But I didn't know. It was just annoying, and not very effective. Bill, delegated by Dad, gave me "the talk" and a box of condoms, but with his usual cluelessness, managed to do it about a month before the anniversary of when I lost my virginity -- another story for another time.

Bill and Alex were still living with Mom and Dad, I should mention. We had a very big house, and with Mom and Dad gone a lot of the time it wasn't as odd or as awkward as you might think.

After high school, Bill had gotten a technical certification and then joined Dad at the garage, so it was convenient for him to live at home. (Dad's business was booming. Apart from being so strong that he could easily manipulate by hand parts which other mechanics could only handle with tools, he was just a damn good mechanic. Everyone in town still swears by him, no chain ever managed to get a foothold in the area, and even the dealers barely get anyone coming in for repairs. So there was plenty of opportunity for Bill to join in.)

Alex, on the other hand, was well-established in his bodybuilding career by the time I reached high school. He was a pro during my entire time in junior high and high school. The local bodybuilder-style gym took him on as a partner for the publicity, and much to their surprise -- and, I think, to the surprise of everyone who knew him -- he took the job seriously. Between travelling to events and his never-ending quest to improve and expand the gym, he was glad not to have to move out and have to do all his own housework. He even managed to start showing a little concern for other people's health, which seems to be genuine even if it does center around selling gym memberships.

It was the late spring of my senior year of high school when Bill and Alex went too far. Mom and Dad had been planning for years to go on a big trip, and they decided that the time was ripe. They apologized for having to miss my graduation -- which, I admit, made me sad, but I had been invited to three other people's graduation parties so I wasn't going to be spending time with the family that day anyway. Typically for them, their trip was to backpack across Europe -- and Asia. They flew to Paris and JOGGED most of the way to Hong Kong, carrying between the two of them almost 250 pounds of camping equipment, cameras, and assorted gear. (Did I mention that my parents must have been scary when they were younger?) Thanks to a series of geopolitical coincidences, for the first time in decades it was actually possible for someone to do that without being nabbed as a spy within minutes if they took a wrong turn and crossed a national border. Rather than put it off, and maybe miss the opportunity, they were going to go right away.

This left me in an odd position. In the fall, I was headed off to college on a full-ride academic scholarship in biology. It's funny what decides your career. I would have been an engineer, or maybe a computer science major, but when I visited the school there had been a big football game the day before, and the engineering school representative mistook me for a team member and deliberately left me out of the group. I sat in the student union reading "The Lives of a Cell" to pass the time, and a passing biology professor asked me how I liked the book. After we talked for a while he invited me to tour his department, and I ended up getting a scholarship there. If the tour had been scheduled any other week, I would probably be a computer geek in Silicon Valley.

In the meantime, I was at the mercy of my brothers, not that they were threatening me or anything. I had been planning to go back to my previous summer job at the local movie theater. The manager really liked me, because people had a tendency to be a lot politer to the employees when I was around and in the same uniform -- obnoxious people trying to argue with a clerk would try to stand up to argue with me, and then realize they were ALREADY standing, I was just that much bigger than them. It was easy work, compared with helping out at the garage, and although it didn't pay very well, I didn't need the money that much.

It was only after the fact, when Mom and Dad got home, that I found out about the discussion Bill and Alex had the day after Mom and Dad took a cab to the airport. I can't vouch for the exact words, but they did it in the gym Alex had gradually installed in the basement (until eventually it took up nearly the whole thing, leaving only the furnace and laundry machines as family territory) and it must have gone something like this:

"Bill, we have to do something about Ryan."

"What, is he in trouble?"

"No, but he's wasting his life!"

"Alex, Ryan has a full-ride academic scholarship and a more active social life than either of us ever had. How is that a waste?"

"Look at us in that mirror. What do you see?"

"I see us, and a lot of weights. Why?"

"Here..."

"Hey!"

"Okay, now that we both have our shirts off, look in that mirror and flex."

"Okay, now I see us flexing. You're bigger than me by a couple of inches in most measurements. What does that have to do with Ryan?"

"Bill, are you stupid? We are fucking studs. I have, officially and by at least three quarters of an inch, the biggest arms of any heavyweight professional bodybuilder in the world. You only work out twice a week --"

"In the gym. You KNOW I do a lot of heavy lifting in the garage."

"Yeah, yeah. You only work out twice a week, but you could walk onto the stage in most competitions and at least not place last. Half the time I look at the guy who wins second place after me and he'd lose to you. We are just incredible, huge guys."

"Yeah, and so is Ryan. Or have you forgotten that he's taller than you are and weighs the same as your contest weight, idiot? The other day I saw him walking back to his room from the shower, and I'd swear he's got to be heavier than that."

"Ryan doesn't work out."

"I know. You told me to come down here to make sure he wouldn't overhear us."

"Think about it, you numbskull. Ryan doesn't work out, and he's about as big as I am. Think what he could be if we got him to start lifting!"

"Huh. That really hadn't occurred to me."

"Seriously? The kid's been getting offers from every sports coach in the city for the last four years, and you never thought it was a shame he didn't take them up?"

"Well, he's happy the way he is. Why push him?"

"That's what Mom and Dad always say. Listen, you're only young once. Right now, the kid is filled with hormones and his body is ready to put on muscle. If he waits until he's done with college, he won't get anything like the same results. So what we're going to do, now that Mom and Dad are off pestering the French, is force him to start some really serious physical exercise."

"How? It's not like we can strap down and make him do shoulder presses. Last time I tried to wrestle him, he overpowered me, and I bet he could do the same to you, what with his height advantage."

"No, listen, I've got it all figured out. Here's the plan..."

The next morning, as I got ready for one of my last days of high school, Bill knocked on my door, with a deep frown on his face.

"Ryan? Can I talk to you a minute?"

"What is it?"

"I'm afraid I have some really bad news. It's about Mom and Dad--"

"What? Did their plane crash or something? Are they okay?"

"As far as I know, they're just fine. You know they won't be in touch for at least a couple of weeks. But there was a little problem with, with the money."

"Huh?"

"They were going to leave us their ATM card, plus a few hundred dollars for emergencies, and it looks like... they forgot. They left us without any money at all."

"What? Well, that's okay. The garage is where the money comes from anyway. And you were going to keep it going while they were away, anyway."

"I can't touch the business account, not for withdrawals. My name isn't on the account. And there isn't that much cash around right now -- maybe enough for a week of groceries, if we cleaned out the register, and then I wouldn't be able to make change any more. Almost everyone pays by check, and there's no way for me to hold back any of that when I do a deposit. I wasn't even going to get a paycheck while Mom and Dad were gone, because I was just supposed to use the ATM card."

"Couldn't you, you know, ask customers to make the check out to you, and reimburse Mom and Dad out of your salary once they get back?"

"That's a form of fraud. We could get in very serious trouble. I did that a few years ago when Mom and Dad went off with Alex for his fourth championship, and we got investigated. Even Dad couldn't get any of the money from the bank until it was over."

"Well, what about Alex? He's a partner in that gym, and I know he just got paid a bundle from that protein endorsement deal."

"He says he's very sorry, but he's been putting all his money into the latest round of gym improvements, and until the gym makes the money back in membership fees he won't get it back. He says he can give us all the nutrition supplements and health food we can eat, though."

"Well, at least that's something. Isn't everything on automatic payments these days?"

"Weren't you paying attention last week? Dad says he can't stand those things. He says last time he let the bank auto-deduct for the mortgage, they took three monthly payments the first month and two the second, and he's not going to fight them again. It's all by mail."

"Uh... I don't think I'm going to be making enough at the theater to pay for the mortgage and utilities. Not even if I ask for more hours than I worked last year. What are we going to do?"

"Well..." Bill looked a little embarrassed, and gave a nervous cough. "Alex says he can call in a favor."

"Great! Who's he getting a loan from?"

"That... that's the problem. It's not a loan."

"Huh? What, is he going to offer free gym memberships to the bank or something?"

"No, no. You remember how Alex's gym was renovated a few years back?"

"Do I? He wouldn't shut up about it for months. We had to go tour it twice once it was done."

"Right. Well, the construction company that did the renovations is kind of swamped with business this summer, and they have some really harsh deadlines. They really need extra workers to pick up the slack. Since Alex gave them a lot of publicity for the job they did on the gym, they agreed to pay his representative overtime rates in exchange for 10 hour night shifts, 5 times a week. Now, I'm busy at the garage..."

"I don't like where this is going."

"...and Alex is busy with the improvements at the gym. So, I was hoping that you, my dear little brother, would be willing to take this job."

"Aw, come on. No! This is my last summer to hang around with my friends!"

"Ryan, if you don't do this, we're probably going to lose the house. Are you willing to face Mom and Dad when they get back, and tell them they no longer own a house because you wanted to bum around this summer? I didn't think so. You're going to take that job. You start the Monday after the graduation ceremony."

"Aw, shit."

"We'll find a way to make it up to you later. I promise!"

With the day, and the summer, effectively spoiled, the remaining days of school weren't much fun. Everyone kept making the same joke: "well, hey, look at the bright side, 10 hours a day of construction work will make you big and strong!" Dur hur hur. Just what I wanted to hear. Go die in a fire.

On the fatal evening, I showed up at a deserted half-block construction lot, off on the outskirts of town. At one end was a trailer, with lights on inside. The center had been dug out, obviously to put in the foundation and basement for the new building. It was all so exactly what I had pictured that I had the distinct feeling I had just walked into a cartoon set in a construction site. The feeling was not at all dispelled when, in answer to my knock, the door was opened by Henna Rabraba Generic Construction Site Boss #2. Complete with stubble, facial scars, giant pot belly, enormous hairy eyebrows, cigar stub, yellow hard hat, suspenders, and stained wife beater. The guy was shorter than me, but huge -- between his big muscles and his enormous gut, he was seriously imposing. You could tell, just by looking, that his name was Ralph and he spoke with a thick Brooklyn-ish accent you would never actually encounter anywhere in the real world. Ralph also smelled a little bad, like he needed a shower. But there was something funny about that, something not quite right... oh, well, no time to think about it.

"Uh, hello, I'm Ryan, I was supposed to work here starting tonight?"

"Oh, yeah. Da bodybuilda's brudda. Yeh. Okay, I'm yer boss fer dis job. Youse can calls me Ralph--"

"I knew it!"

"Wat was dat?"

"Oh, nothing. Sorry. Please go on."

"Okay, den. Youse can call me Ralph, and I am youse boss. Dis site is where da company is goin' ta builds a ten-story office suite, wit' da first two stories bein' premisses fer Pursue Nashional Bank's new main branch fer dis area. Durin' da day, da main team will be handlin' mosta da akchul buildin'. Yer job is mostly gunna be to prepare da materials so dat the nex' day dey can gets right to work. Does I makes myself clear?"

"Yes, of course."

"Okay, den. Tonight, we gives youse a hard hat, which youse will always wear on the job site unless youse wants to be fined and fired and maybe kilt by a fallin' brick if youse is not lucky, and den you gets to join da wunnerful an' rewardin' woild of movin' sacks a' concrete."

He handed me a yellow hard hat similar to his own, and pointed with his glowing cigar stub.

"Dis way, kid. You sees dem pallets ova dere?"

"Yes?"

"You is goin' to take de sacks offa dose pallets, and moves dem ova dere, next to da mixa. Youse will stack da extra sacks behind da mixa, leavin' a suitable gap of at least two yards between da stack and da mixa. If youse starts now, I figga youse should be able ta gets thru all da pallets by da end of yer shift. I will leave it to youse to arrange when youse will take breaks. Do not ovawoik youse self, because youse is alreddy gettin' a special dealie on pay and da bosses will be really upset if anyt'ing goes wrong wit' yer employment. I will be in da traila if youse needs advice or a friendly chitchat. Da toilets is ova dere in da corner of da worksite. When youse is done wit' da shift, I will comes out and inspect to makes sure you has actually dones da woik, and den by special arrangement wit' da main office I gives you yer day's pay, minus da propa wit'holdin's to make it kosha wit' da gov'ment, in cash. You is all good now?"

"Uh, I think so. Where can I find a wheelbarrow?"

"Sorry, kid. Da main construction team is at anudda site durin' da evenin's, t'anks ta uppa management bein' a buncha wankas who ovacommitted da company, and dey has all da tools wit' dem. Wen I sez you is goin' ta move da bags a' concrete, I means you is goin' ta pick dem up and carry dem across da worksite. Big strong kid like you, shouldn't be such a big deal, am I right? Anyways, da bosses ain't so good wit' economics. Instead of payin' youse fer mebbe t'ree hours of rollin' a nice new wheelbarra filled wit' stuff, dey would radda pay youse fer ten hours of carryin' dat same stuff by hand. Ova a couple a' weeks, mebba dey lose a buncha money, but dey don't care because dey din't have to buy no extra wheelbarra. You an' I would do it da udda way, but den, youse an' I is SMART." He shook his head, and retreated into the trailer. At the door, he paused and looked back. "Oh, say, kid, startin' tomorrow, youse may want to wear sometin' more practical fer da nachure a' da task. Mebbe a t-shirt an' shorts. It may seems just a little cool tonight, but once youse is movin' around a bit, youse is goin' to find dat you is overheated wit' long sleeves. If youse finds dat you needs water, dere is a big coola ova on da udda side of da traila."

Well, that could have been worse. My boss was clearly not normal in the accepted sense of the word, but he seemed to be a fairly nice guy who didn't want me to get hurt. He even had a sense of humor; I could hear him from inside the trailer, lightly singing to himself: "...falls MAINS-ly on da PLAIN... heh heh heh". The work was mindless, even actively stupid, but not hard to grasp. And it was a case of work or face the consequences. Nothing for it but to get to work.

Bags of concrete, I have since discovered, come in several sizes. Your local hardware store or homeowner center will probably sell you a 20-pound bag if you like, or 50-pound sacks if you are doing a larger project. These sacks, however, were industrial ones, 120 pounds apiece. Moving them, one by one, across the worksite was like the revenge of all the workouts I had ever shirked.

120 pounds is not, strictly speaking, a lot of weight for an athlete. Divide it between your two arms, and it's like a pair of 60-pound weights -- heavy for the out-of-shape, but nowhere near the kind of weight that a real athlete can manage. I've seen Alex do curls with 100 pounds in each hand without having to break a sweat. Heck, I had lifted Alex's 100-pound dumbbells out of the way of the laundry a few times, and they weren't anything I couldn't handle.

But on the other hand, athletes don't KEEP lifting those weights. They do a few sets, then move to another exercise. In an hour-long gym workout, chances are that they are actively supporting weight for maybe 20 minutes. I was hauling sack after sack of concrete without much of a break in between them, and since I was moving more slowly while carrying the sacks, I was spending a majority of that time holding up that weight. For hour after hour after hour.

For a while, I passed the time by reflecting how much stronger construction workers must be than average people. Even Ralph -- who I noticed was keeping an eye on me occasionally out the trailer window as I wandered back and forth across the lot -- must be a regular powerhouse. I was, after all, the strongest guy at my high school, and it didn't take long before I was tired. Then I occupied my mind by experimenting with different grips and lifts to see which one would cause my arms, back, and legs to burn the least. Then I stopped thinking and just moved sacks. My mind melted away under the relentless onslaught of heavy lumps wrapped in canvas.

"Ryan! Hey, Ryan! How are you doing? Got time for a break?"

Hearing someone call my name snapped me out of my concrete-moving trance. I looked around, and saw Alex standing off to one side, waving. His car was parked somewhat carelessly behind him.

"Come on over, Ry, I brought you a snack. How's it going?"

The snack, as it turned out, was what Alex euphemistically called "health food". If you go to a "health food store", or buy "health food" from most consumer gyms, you get fruit, vegetables, vitamins, fiber, maybe a protein shake. Alex had a different perspective: to Alex the professional bodybuilder and gym owner, "health food" meant "a bodybuilder's bulking diet". Most of the time, I managed to avoid letting Alex prepare meals for me; his cooking was doubtlessly nutritious and well-balanced and great for building large muscles, but his idea of flavoring was "add a sprinkle of dried parsley". I'm pretty sure that years of artificially-chocolate-flavored protein powder had destroyed some critical part of his sense of taste. Nevertheless, rather to my surprise I was ravenous. I wolfed down a couple of chicken-breast sandwiches, and swilled down a large covered cup of some kind of thickish liquid which seemed to involve eggs.

"I thought I'd stop by on my way home after the gym closed. You look like you're getting a workout tonight. How's it going?"

"Gluh. Ick. What was in that drink? Don't tell me, I don't want to know. Right. What time is it? Ah. Well, I've been here for five hours, moving bags of concrete off pallets at one end of the lot and and building that stack over there at the other end. I think I've moved about 300, but I lost count. They just kind of melt into each other after a while."

"Wow, harsh. Sorry you're having to do so much for the common good. How much more do you have to do tonight?"

"Well, let's see. The shift is ten hours, so if they estimated right, I ought to have finished about half of it. Trying to keep track of how much is left is a recipe for frustration, though, so I haven't looked. Whoa! I'm almost done!"

"That's my brother for you. Want to call it quits for the night?"

"No, I'm being paid extra to be here; I don't want Ralph to report that I walked off the job site halfway through the shift."

"Ralph?"

"He's my boss. If he comes out, you'll see him. He really IS named Ralph, but there's just no way he could be named anything else. He's like a caricature of a construction worker, brought to life. He was looking out the window when I knocked off, but I don't see him now. Maybe if I--"

"Ah, hmmmm. Well, don't strain yourself, kiddo. Remember you're going to be back here tomorrow night, too, and the rest of the week."

"Don't remind me. If I don't fall over dead when I get home, I think I'm going to be taking aspirin by the fistful tomorrow."

"Hey, hey, Ry, don't sell yourself short! Your older brother is here to help you. When you get home, wake me up and I'll give you a deep massage. You'll be fine."

"Huh?"

"Seriously, champ, you forget I'm a gym owner and a pro bodybuilder. I know all the fitness tricks, and I have a massage certification. How do you think bodybuilders manage to do all those workouts without getting addicted to painkillers or going insane? A good massage after a workout helps a whole lot to chase away soreness the next day. And make sure to keep hydrated. It may not be hot out, but you're sweating like crazy."

"Don't worry, I'll be fine, Alex. And don't forget: you got me into this mess."

"Right, right. Well, I'll see you in a few hours. Take care. Maybe you should sit for a while and get your energy back before you get back to work. That snack was intended to give you some quick energy, but 'quick' isn't 'instantaneous', you know. So long."

I sat for about another ten minutes, and then got back to work. I hate to admit it, but the break really helped; the sacks were still heavy and an unending source of tedium, but it was only another 90 minutes before I finished them all.

I knocked at the door of the trailer. "Ralph, I'm done!"

"What, already?" the door opened, and Ralph stepped out, minus his cigar stub. "Well, will youse look at dat! Here an' I was tinkin' youse would take all night. Lemme just step ova dere an' inspects, but I been watchin' youse off an' on, an' it looks all okay to me."

"Is there anything else for me to do tonight?"

"No, kid, dat's all dey wants fer tonight."

"So, do I go home now?"

"I don't tink dat dat would be a good idea. Youse neva know when da bosses might stop by fer a spot check, and if dey finds dat youse is gone, dey might not be best pleased. But youse can spend da rest of da shift in da trailer, sittin' down, if dat appeals to youse."

That certainly beat sitting out in the increasingly cold air, wearing sweaty clothing. After a quick inspection, Ralph nodded towards the trailer, and we went inside.

I'm not sure what I expected the inside of a construction-site trailer to look like. This one was filled with an endless supply of binders and booklets with titles like "Plumbing Code Errata and Amendments v II" and "RubbleMaker(TM) Jackhammer Safety Manual". There were actually some blueprints, although they weren't actually blue. (Actually, that was a little reassuring. This whole place was, otherwise, a little too much like a cartoon. I was starting to expect an anthropomorphic mouse to come out from behind a corner and throw a brick at my head.) A table along one wall supported a row of odd-looking devices, and next to the window there was a stack of folding chairs, one of which was unfolded next to a pile of books and yet another one of those odd devices. Obviously, this had been Ralph's spot while I was spending six and a half hours to do a job that a pallet jack could approximate in about 20 minutes.

The next three hours were mostly an awkward silence. Ralph sat and worked with the odd-looking device -- which turned out to be a special hard-cased laptop PC for the construction trade -- and worked his way through a few sections from the stack of books. I fiddled with my cell phone, and wished I had brought a book, myself. A little bell from the laptop signalled that the shift was over, and Ralph counted out my pay into a paper envelope, put the leftover cash in an industrial-strength strongbox built into the trailer, and locked up behind us.

When I got home, Alex was actually already awake. He gave me a thorough rubdown on my arms and legs and back, any muscle which he thought I might have used. He also gave me some more food, which I managed to eat in spite of the taste. Then I went to bed and had about nine hours of oblivion.

Thus ended the first evening of my summer job from hell.

The next day, Alex was hanging around the house when I got up. I have to admit, either he was right about the massage, or for whatever reason I just wasn't going to be sore from all that lifting and carrying the night before. There was some soreness, but not that biting, horrible kind most people complain about after an unaccustomed workout. Next to him on the floor was a folded-up heavy blanket.

"What's that? Am I going to have to sleep on the floor now? Geez, if I had known how hard it was to be the primary breadwinner in the house, I would have been giving Dad more respect all these years."

"I'm going to pretend that that pathetic attempt at humor was actually 'thank you, my wonderful and considerate brother Alex, for making sure I didn't wake up as a seven-foot-tall cramp this morning'. Listen, champ, I was watching you yesterday before I called out, and I think I can give you a little more help."

"Yeah? Good. I'll take anything I can get."

"Well, listen, I think you'd be able to manage those sacks a lot better if you lifted them like THIS."

The previous night, I had tried about a hundred different ways of lifting the sacks. Naturally, what Alex was showing me was method number one hundred and one -- the one I never guessed.

"That's really kind of a weird stance."

"It's a little something I came up with for helping out the powerlifters at my gym cope with funny-shaped weights. Why don't you try it?"

After a couple of tries, Alex admitted that I was probably doing it right.

"Well, that's about it. I'm going to be doing the night shift at the gym again tonight, so I'll stop by again."

"Really, Alex, you don't have to do that."

"Don't sweat it, champ, you're doing the entire family a huge favor. The least we can do is make sure you're okay."

Over the next week, I moved concrete. Again and again. In ever-increasing quantities. Each day there were more pallets to be unloaded than there had been the previous day. The foundations of the building took shape, which was satisfying. Infuriatingly, after a couple of days the mixer was moved to the other side of the site -- and the pallets were delivered to exactly the spot where I had been stacking them before. What was the point of me having to move the damned things if they could be left there in the first place?! But then, after that first night I wasn't just stacking them in one spot, Ralph had me leaving them in carefully marked spots around the site.

Still, there were compensations.

The pay for this apparent makework was excellent. At the end of the first week, I was nearly ready for the first mortgage payment.

Also, Ralph started to open up a little. That stack of books next to his chair, it turned out, was actually a bunch of textbooks. Ralph was not content to be a cartoon character, and was training to be some kind of high-level architect and engineer. He also seemed to be giving up on smoking; I never saw another cigar after that first night. Good for Ralph!

Furthermore, Ralph was a surprisingly intelligent guy in other ways as well. From his accent and general cartoonish demeanor, there was no exterior clue that Ralph thought about anything deeper than what he was going to eat for dinner, but he was actually a more cultured guy than most of my high school teachers. It was both amusing and entertaining to hear him declaim, in his unbelievably thick accent, about "de changes in human poisepshun of da historical recoid what was caused by da invenchun of photogr'phy, and how dis was illustrated by da rise of da Impreshunists, and how dis in toin led to da whole revolushun in da role of paintin' and da erts in general, givin' rise ta 'anti-art' groups suchlike as Dadaism". (Okay, he never actually said that specific sentence, but he could and did talk for hours on the intertwined history of art and technology, and it would not have been out of place. Ralph had hidden depths.)

Of course, I was only able to talk to Ralph after I finished my work. The first couple of days, I begged Ralph to ask the owners on my behalf to buy another wheelbarrow, or at least let me bring one in at my own expense.

"No, kid. Da bosses does not wants to spend dere money to lighten da load of some kinda special guest worker who ain't stickin' around afta da end of da summa. From dere poispective, dey alreddy HAS da right numba of wheelbarras, an' dey don' want to hafta hev anudda one to stow aftawads. An' dey is not goin' to want youse to bring in extra tools to da jobsite. Youse see dat shelf by da door? Da one wit' all da big blue bindas? Well, dose is da specificashuns fer da tools and processus fer construcshun woik as mandated by da state. We is alreddy skatin' on thin ice, having an unmatriculated type like youse around playin' wit' da materials. If dey was to find out youse was also bringin' in yer own amachoor flipsy-doodle tools, mebbe breakin' insurance regs and settin' dem up fer a lawsuit, youse would be out of a job faster dan youse could imagine. Dis is not like an office in some skyscrapa somewheres; dey pushes youse to da sidewalk, and bam! youse is not on da jobsite anymore, and has offishully lefts da premises. Besides, what do youse want wit' a fiddly little t'ing like a wheelbarra? I t'ought youse was doing real good wit'out any mechanical assistances."

It was true. That grip Alex showed me worked wonders. The second day I was on the site, I finished in only four and a half hours. And the massages were helping, too. From the third day onward, I wasn't sore at all.

There was something else, though, too. By the third day, I was finding the sacks easy to handle, regardless. By the fourth, I was actually carrying TWO sacks at a time, one under each arm. It seemed to burn a lot more calories -- I was wolfing down the nasty snacks Alex was bringing me, and all his horrible cooking at home -- but by the end of the week there was so much concrete to be moved that if I hadn't been carrying a stack of three on some trips I would have been working all 10 hours without a break, and might not even have finished then.

Ralph was sympathetic. "Youse is a real wunda kid, all rights. Dey is gettin' dere money's wort' outta youse, and den some. Say, kid, I was just noticin', you seems to be a bit bigga dan youse was at da udda end a' da week. Or is I just imaginin' t'ings?"

THAT gave me pause. Working nights, sleeping through the morning every day, and resting up during the afternoons, I hadn't been seeing my friends at all, who might have noticed if I was growing. And I was too tired most of the time at home to really pay any attention to myself. If I was getting bigger in response to all this work, it wouldn't be surprising. No wonder Ralph seemed to be a little smaller than before! When I took my pay envelope from Ralph that night, I hurried home to look in the mirror and step on the scales.

After Alex's massage -- he insisted on doing it, even though I would have happily skipped it that time -- both the mirror and the scale confirmed what Ralph had said. I was visibly bulking up in the arms, back, and legs, and I had put on a whole 25 pounds. Damn Alex and his damn protein and his stupid favors and all that damn concrete.

I was, as usual, too tired to lie awake fretting. But I woke up in the morning ready to give Alex a piece of my mind.

As it turned out, though, my mind would have to remain completely in my own possession until Monday. Not only was there a note on the kitchen counter explaining that Alex was away for a fitness equipment manufacturers' trade conference for the weekend, but within minutes of reaching the kitchen the phone rang, and I was invited out to the movies, with dinner afterwards, with a group of friends. After all my griping about not being able to see them that summer, I could hardly turn down such a convenient offer.

My friends did indeed notice some changes. "Jeeesus, Ryan, what the fuck do they have you doing at work, chugging growth hormone?" "Ryan, you're the only guy I know who outgrows their shirts within a week of graduation. This fit you perfectly last time I saw you!" "Hey, Ry, are you finally hitting the gym? I thought you didn't want to bulk up any more." Fortunately, they got over it fairly quickly, aside from a little ribbing at dinner about how much food I was ordering, and the movie -- "Parry Hotter and the Unnecessarily Drawn-Out Series", in 48 fps 3-D -- was actually very interesting, and took my mind off my troubles.

Sunday went by a little too fast. I did laundry, caught up with my e-mail, and finished all the little chores which had built up during the week. Bill, at this time, was deeply into a relationship with the woman he eventually married, and was out with her pretty much every minute he wasn't at work -- I can't clearly remember seeing him for more than minutes at a time for the rest of the month. Probably the fact that Alex was providing all the food in the house had something to do with it. All too soon, I was off to the jobsite.

Ralph was waiting for me. Somehow, he seemed to be a little less pathetically cartoon-like today. Maybe talking with him, and doing so much obviously-bottom-of-the-totem-pole work, had allowed me to see him with more sympathy.

"Oh, hey, kid. Congratulashuns on youse graduashuns--"

"Well, thanks, but actually that was a couple of weeks ago."

"I means from concrete movin'. Now dat da crew has filt up da foundashun of da buildin', dey is goin' ta needs more an' different buildin' materials. So today, you gets to learn a brand new job skill. Instead a' movin' sacks a' concrete, you is goin' ta move bricks! So like I sez, congrats!"

"Oh, come on."

"Nope, on da level. Dat does not mean you is not going ta move more concrete at some point, edducashun bein' a progressive process, but fer tomorra's festivities, da boys needs you to sets dem up wit' bricks, not concrete. Da bricks is startin' ova dere--" He pointed, kind of pointlessly, at an enormous truckload of bricks "--an' needs to be delivered all da ways around da site, in bunches like dis one." He pointed at a box-shaped stack of bricks, containing something along the lines of 60 individual bricks.

"Youse does not needs ta stacks da bricks in dis precise formulamatation, but dey needs to be in neat, small, scattered stacks for da bricklayin' to go smoothly tomorra. Howeva, da bosses is not totally wit'out sense in dis matter, and has realized dat youse cans hardly move dese bricks one ats a time."

"Don't tell me we finally have a wheelbarrow!"

"Youse is truly fixated on dat wheeliebarra. Stop wit' dat. Our bosses, in dere infinite wisdom, has allocated all dere wheelbarras to da udda job site. You gets no such t'ings as wheelbarras on dis job. No, you gets to refine youse skills wit' what, in da highly technical jargon a' da business, we calls a 'hod'. Dat is dis t'ing ova here."

You probably do not -- as I did not at that time -- know what a 'hod' is, even though chances are fairly good that you have seen one before. A hod is one of those v-shaped platforms which construction workers use to carry smallish loads of bricks. Look around online and you can find some good images, if you haven't seen one before.

"Uh... okay."

"Now, da loadin' of da hod can be as simples or as complex as youse wants to make it. Dis hod, bein' a fiddly little t'ing, in accordance wit' state reg'lations, can only be loaded wit' 8 bricks at a time, right?"

Ralph had 8 bricks on the hod in a surprisingly short time.

"Dis is what youse might call da basic load. But da trick wit' da hod is dat it can akchully carry more dan dis wit' a little careful stackin'. Watch."

With some deft movements, Ralph increased the stack to 12 bricks. After a pause to make sure I really understood what he had done, he made some more changes, and the stack rose to 16, and then 20.

"As you cans see, da hod can carry as many bricks as youse can manage to lift at once. Da one issue is, whens once youse has da stack higher dan da sides of da hod, you has to balance it while youse is loadin' and den when liftin', walkin', puttin' back down, and unloadin'. Dis is not da trivial issue dat youse may be expectin'. For dis reason, I once again reitermatate: youse will be addin' to your job skills by doin' dis particular activity. Da bosses is expectin' a certain numba of broken bricks, but be careful dat youse do not get too gratuitous wit' your experimentin'. Is dere any questions?"

It wasn't long before I found out just how right Ralph had been. Lifting a loaded hod, and carrying it, and putting it back down without tilting it, wasn't really all THAT difficult, but it was a completely different kind of motion from carrying sacks of concrete. Rather than brute force, carrying a highly-stacked hod required constant small adjustments in posture. And the more bricks added, the more strength was also required just to lift the thing in the first place.

When Alex made his appearance, I had by trial and error decided that 24 bricks was about the right amount for me to carry, and was making steady progress. I had small stacks of bricks distributed around about 3/5 of the foundation of the building at regular intervals. The little muscles on the sides of my torso were really getting a workout keeping my load upright, but in a way it was almost like a game. (Maybe a very tedious, repetitive game, but how many games can you name where you get paid to play?)

Alex was very interested in this new activity. As before, he had a lot of high-nutrition low-flavor disgusting munchies to share with me. Despite my resolution to stay away from anything Alex might feed me on the basis of keeping myself trim, I was just too hungry after all that strain to leave it all alone.

Also as before, he had some comments on how to make the work easier. He suggested a number of different postures, and said I ought to try using different ones in turn. It would, he said, keep me from putting too much strain on any one muscle group. And then he was off.

Over the course of the week, I continued to move bricks, as the sides of the building rose. I also, as promised, went back to shifting sacks of concrete, a task which I greeted as an old friend. Much to my surprise, I was now carrying four sacks at a time, without any more difficulty than I had had the first week. Ralph was amused, and told me the owners were secretly hoping I would consider a career in construction.

Ralph was a constant reminder of my increasing muscle mass. When I had first showed up on the job, he was a grotesque balloon of a man, like a cartoon. The bigger I got, the less massive Ralph seemed to be, and the more like a normal person. (Well, okay, make some allowances for the fact that every guy in my family is massive. Still, my perception of Ralph was gradually ceasing to be so enormous.)

I was keeping track, now, and my body was packing on muscle absurdly fast. I was trapped; I had no choice but to complete the work each day, but the amount of labor involved was constantly increasing. Meanwhile, the one evening when I managed to avoid Alex's huge doses of protein at dinner and his on-site "snack", I nearly passed out from hunger and then came home and binged on all the "health food" in the fridge anyway. I managed to put on another 35 pounds in the second week. My arms were now, without question, contest quality. My lat spread -- I tried it out in the mirror -- was wider than Bill's, the last time I saw him try it. My neck was starting to thicken even more, my pecs were stretching my shirts to the breaking point... I suppose if I had been anyone else, I would have been glad.

On the third week, Ralph was once again outside. Unusually, though, he put on some work gloves and prepared to join me.

"Welcome back to da never-endin' pleasha cruise dat is construction woik, kid. Tonight, you is goin' to be usin' youse brick-stackin' an' concrete-movin' skills, but before dat, da both a' us is goin to be movin' some goidas."

"Goidas?"

"Yeh. Goidas. Dem eye-ron t'ings dey use fer de frame of da buildin'. Extruded t'rough a hole in da shape of a capital letta 'I'. Or at leasts, dats how I t'ink dey makes 'em. Youse and me, we is more on da consumin' end of dis process, right? Whateva. Da importants t'ing is, we is goin' to be takin' dat load of dem--" another fairly useless gesture; it's as hard to mistake a stack of girders for anything else as it is to overlook a truckload of bricks "-- an' movin' dem into position to wheres da crew can use dem. Now, even though youse seems to be a wonderkidder, dese t'ings is HEAVY. If da bosses was not into dis whole 'human bein's laborin' instead of machines' kick, dey would be strickly a t'ing for machines to move. Dis is not a t'ing for you to try on youse own, dat just is not a fair t'ing. So I is going to help you wit' dese, insteads of my usual duties."

Moving girders was hard work. I hadn't had such an intense workout since the first day. I quickly adopted Ralph's handling methods, which seemed to be highly efficient, but even then girders are, as Ralph said, HEAVY. I was impressed that Ralph was close to matching my strength -- keep in mind that I was now an amazing 60 pounds of muscle heavier than I had been when I was the strongest guy in my high school -- but pretty quickly, he was pale and shaky and out of breath. Nevertheless, he stuck it out until every one of the girders was where Ralph said the crew would want them the next day. We both fell down, exhausted, at the end. After all that work, it was kind of pathetic to see Ralph on the ground breathing hard. He seemed to be much smaller, not Ralph-like at all.

Alex chose that moment to arrive. Ralph panted out a greeting.

"Hello, Mista Smit'. Fancy meetin' youse here."

"Hello, uh, Ralph."

"Alex, you know Ralph?"

"Yeah, uh, when I set this job up, he was there with the owners. Ralph, are you okay?"

"Yeh, Mista Smit', I'll be fine in just a minnit. I was just helpin' out a bit, an' it was a bit much on tops of everyt'ing else."

"Are you supposed to be helping out? I'm pretty sure... your boss didn't want you to get in the way."

"Eh, Mista Smit', da woik oida fer tonight sez young mista Ryan here was s'posta move goidas. Dat, by way of my t'inkin', just ain't fair on da poor kid. Dere's one of 'em right dere. Youse sees what youse can do wit' it wit'out any helps."

Alex went over and inspected it, and took a good grip. He was able to lift the thing, but even as he got it off the ground, it was clear that lifting was the limit of what Alex could manage unassisted. Moving it around was beyond him.

"Wow, I see what you mean. That's a lot heavier than I expected. Still, I'm not sure that... the owners want you out helping. You're only being paid to supervise, you know. And what with all the jobs your company has going on, it would be bad if anything happened to you, right?"

"Mista' Smit', I gots all my adult lifetime of experience wit' dis stuffs. I knows when I has had enough betta dan youse, an' da ownas ain't me so dey dunno my limits. But springin' dis on youse youngling little brudda ova dere, dat ain't a right t'ing ta do. I don't care if he's some kinda wonder boy, dere is gotta be limits."

"Well, when you put it that way--"

"And I do, Mista' Smit'. You know dis whole deal is makin' me feel bad, I said I didn' like havin' dis poor kid here all on his lonesome right from day one. I know what da boss says, and if he asks youse, youse can tell him from me dat dis whole t'ing is bad enough by itself, I ain't lettin' Supaboy ova here bust himself up ova dis crap. Gots it?" Outrage was doing Ralph a lot of good. He was sitting up, no shakes at all, even if he still didn't seem to have the gravitas of a man his size.

"Okay, okay. At least let me give you a little snack."

I was kind of puzzled here. Neither Ralph nor Alex had mentioned knowing each other, and there was clearly something going on that neither one of them was mentioning here. I also hadn't been aware that Ralph had been opposed to this whole job. A fact to file away and think about.

Alex had a bumper crop of his horrible food with him, more than enough for Ralph to join in. I expected to have to apologize for my brother's cooking, but Ralph ate it all as though he were used to such horrors. Alex seemed a little hesitant to leave, but Ralph assured him that the hard part was over for the night, and I was just going to be moving concrete and bricks from then on, and Alex left with only one more backwards glance.

The rest of the evening was terribly wearing. Even with the food and the break, moving those girders was exhausting. It was interesting how light the concrete and bricks seemed afterwards, but after such a grueling workout it was hard to keep going. Ralph staggered back into the trailer, and seemed to be in rough shape when I came in to collect the night's pay.

When I got home, Alex was waiting as usual. I once again felt like asking him questions, but his mind didn't seem to be on his usual tasks. He gave me a fast but very thorough massage, told me there was more food in the fridge if I wanted it, practically pushed me off to the bathroom for a shower, and left. As I stood under the hot water, I heard him drive off into the night.

I slept ten hours and woke up feeling more sore than I had in years. Alex was not around for me to question, so I wolfed down the food he had left for me, and spent the afternoon basically sitting around in a stupor. In the bathroom I noticed, automatically, that my reflection looked bigger again, but I really didn't have the energy to think about it, and if I was putting on weight again, I didn't want to know.

When I showed up at work again, Ralph was once again prepared to help out.

"Bad news, Ryan-kid, dey is still givin' us goidas to move. I is feelin' a bit betta dan I was yestaday, so wit' a little luck dis evenin's leibas will go wit'out so much carryin' on, okay?"

It was true; Ralph did seem to have a lot more energy today. And after spending the whole afternoon resting up, with Ralph's extra energy to support me, I wasn't as tired afterwards either. In fact, I was nearly done moving the day's concrete when Alex showed up.

"Hey, champ, how are you holding up? Still moving girders?"

"Okay, and yes. Ralph helped out again, but he seems to have held up a little better under the strain."

"Ah, well, that's good to hear. I have a sandwich here for him. Maybe I'll just go have a talk with him before I go."

Whatever Alex and Ralph talked about, it seemed to unnerve Alex. He drove off in a hurry, without another word to me. When I finished up and came in to while away the rest of the shift, Ralph was complacent and in an expansive mood. Once again, I was struck by how un-Ralph-like he seemed to be. Instead of a cartoon, it was like meeting the person the cartoon was based on.

The workload that week increased, but -- why skirt the issue? -- I was getting so strong that it was hardly fazing me. On Thursday, Ralph and I started having to raise the girders up using block-and-tackle arrangements after hauling them into place, and even that didn't wear me out. On Friday, although I didn't let Ralph know, I found that I WAS able to carry girders all by myself.

But by my Friday shift that wasn't so much of a surprise. When I worked up the courage to check my weight on Thursday, I found that I had gained another 35 pounds in the last four days. My reflection in the mirror was awe-inspiring. And for once I had the energy to take it lightly; my only reaction was to think "poor Alex, I'm definitely bigger than he ever was, and he can't catch up." Maybe that's why, once again, Ralph seemed to have shrunk. But I was too busy burning through the night's idiot movements and consuming the huge meal -- hardly a snack any more -- which Alex almost wordlessly brought over to worry about Ralph. (Eight sacks of concrete at a time, which was the limit to how many I could grip, and 60 bricks on each trip.) On Saturday, I found that I had actually put on yet another 12 pounds since Thursday.

Alex managed to find yet another event to attend that weekend -- ever since his mystery conversation with Ralph it was clear that he was nervous about something, and didn't want to talk to me about my job -- and I spent the weekend playing video games with my friends and -- to my friends' astonishment -- devouring whole pizzas. On a bet, we found that I was able to lift the front end of a van belonging to one of my friends off the ground with one hand, which impressed everyone. In all, a good weekend.

The next week felt like a repeat of the first, in a way, minus the first-day shyness. The workload increased, but I kept getting stronger and Ralph once again seemed to have gained more energy.

On Tuesday, I had to go out and buy more clothing, since I was now so large that none of my existing clothes would fit without tearing. There wasn't much that even the big-and-tall store could sell me, but I found enough to get me through Mom and Dad's vacation, with any luck. My massive chest, broad shoulders, and gigantically thick arms were serious problems for the sales staff, and if it hadn't been shorts weather I might have had problems with my lower half too. As it was, they only really had to worry about my enormous glutes, and there are so many fat men getting clothing at those shops that fitting my lower half was simple.

On Wednesday, behind Ralph's back, out of curiosity I found that I could curl two girders at a time, if I tied them up with steel cable first. I'm not sure what the world strength records were, but I think there's a chance that that was around the time when I shattered them. According to my measurements that night, I was now a full 160 pounds heavier than I had been when I graduated. I was having a little trouble fitting into chairs and cars and my own bed, but at this point I was resigned. And it beat having the opposite problem.

On Thursday, I found that I could actually push whole pallets of concrete around the job site, all at once. It was slow, but somewhat faster than carrying the bags back and forth.

By Friday, there was really no way to ignore the fact that Alex was seriously worried about something. He was also obviously getting afraid of me. I had put on another 40 pounds in a mere two days, so that was understandable -- I was now so unbelievably muscular that strangers were stopping and staring... from a block away. After I came home from the week's final shift, Alex practically ran out the door. There was no note, but he called Bill's cell phone and said he was negotiating a contract with vending machine supply companies out on the coast, and not to expect him back that weekend.

I spent another weekend astonishing my friends and just, you know, generally hanging out -- we made one of those YouTube videos where there's a fake instant-muscle supplement, where the "before" guy switches places with a bigger guy for the "after". I was, obviously, the "after", but I think it would have been funnier to do it the other way around and make a fake commercial for the world's first muscle-destroying supplement. But it was so nice to hang around with normal people, without having to carry anything, that I didn't object.

It also didn't hurt that I had an opportunity to use some of the last of that box of condoms Bill gave me. Pretty much everyone who so much as showed any interest in me in high school was into muscle or size, so even though I had broken up with my S.O. by mutual agreement in light of impending college, we still found time to get together. (The hard part was being gentle enough not to cause any pain -- when you're routinely carrying around something like ten times your partner's weight for hours at a time, you have to be careful not to use your full strength on them in almost any motion.)

The rest days seemed to let my body complete the incredible growth which had been initiated during the week. I ate all the food Alex had brought home during the week, and even then I was still hungry enough to devour vast quantities of much tastier dishes when I was with my friends. On Monday afternoon, when I got up and weighed myself, I found that I was almost exactly double my graduation weight. Every inch of my body was so obviously powerful that there was no point in pretending I was even in the same league as my brothers any more. My traps reached practically up to my ears, my shoulders were so broad I couldn't even see both of them in the bathroom mirror at the same time any more, my biceps and triceps were like melons inserted under the skin, while my forearms were starting to look more like hams than body parts. My chest had become so thick that I couldn't see own nipples without the mirror; the striations had become as deep as most bodybuilders' cleavage, while the gap between my pecs was now so deep that I was able to crush a can of soda between them. A FULL can.

My legs were likewise enormous, and screamed "power". I find leg muscles kind of boring -- that part of Alex's competitions was always the most tedious -- but looking at my thighs there was no doubt in my mind that they were the most powerful ones on the planet. My calves had likewise become enormous; they were bigger than Alex's upper arms, I noticed with amusement. But the most astonishing thing was my ass. The curves of my glutes were amazing, even I was captivated by them in the mirror for a full minute.

My tread was so heavy that I sounded like I was a monster. In fact, I WAS a monster, so maybe a better metaphor would be to say that I sounded as though I were some kind of machine, heavy and implacable, thumping its way through a human landscape. Even the clothing which I had purchased the previous Tuesday didn't really fit, but with careful work and Bill's somewhat shocked assistance, I managed to put together an outfit which didn't so much "fit" as "cover" me.

There was, however, a surprise waiting for me at the job site. Two surprises. Three. A bunch. I guess it depends on how you count them.

First off, Ralph was... thin! He was still a big and imposing guy, thanks to his muscles, but no longer a weather balloon wearing a construction worker costume. It finally clicked; I hadn't been looming increasingly over Ralph this whole time, he had been losing weight! Well, once again, good for Ralph!

"Hello, Ryan, welcome back to dis little corna a' paradise what we calls da job site. I gots all kindsa news ta tells you. First off, yer laid off effective immediate-likes."

"What?!"

"Well, Docta Banna, youse may not have noticed it, but we has actually finished da damn buildin'." It was true; the structure was complete. Someone -- a lot of someones -- had put in a busy weekend. "Dere ain't no point in youse hangin' around when dere ain't no woik to be done, right? Normally, we use machines to do all the stuff you been doin', but you been goin' so fast, an' workin' at night when we don' usually get nuttin' done, and layin' stuff out wit' so much precision wheres it was all convenient-like, like what a machine can't really do, dat everyt'ing went about t'ree times as fast as usual. As a result a' dis situation, youse has worked youse self out of a job."

"Oh, no! I only took this job because we were desperate for money!"

"Dat ain'ts such a problem as you may have been believin'. Da secon' item on da agenda fer dis little meetin' is a consolation prize fer bein' such a good contestant here on 'Truth or Constructaquences', namely called a 'bonus for rapid completion', and comin' to abouts t'ree quarters a' what you woulda made if you had been here anudda two months, such bein' a part a' yer orig'nal agreement wit' management."

"Oh, thank god!"

"Ha! I ain't done yets, kiddo. Fer reasons which I will henceforwardlike explamicate, and also because dey was mean enough bastards not gives you a wheelbarra whens I asked dem, and also because dey was givin' us all dem goidas to fiddle wit', an' da fac' dat you bein' Cap'n Super-Guy has been da key to dem finishin' up dis stoopid job all quick-like, I has prevailed upon our bosses to gives youse an extra bonus, which effectively brings youse total up by a factor a' two. Dis still ain't fair, 'cause our friendly bosses is pocketin' a much larger sum t'anks to all our hard work, but it beats a kick in da pants, I do believe. Does dat seem agreeable-like?"

"Ralph, that makes my day. Hell, that makes my whole summer!"

"Well, den, I am very happy dat you has been well an' truly served by dis company, and will be partin' company wit' management wit' no hard feelin's. Please return yer tray to da upright position, and t'ank youse fer flyin' Construction Night Shift Airlines. Enjoys youse time off, and don't spend alls a' dat paycheck in one place. But I gots some udda news, which youse may or may not find quite so delectable and gladsome."

"I think I can handle it."

"I t'ink, kid, dat you has noticed dat while you has been turnin' into Arnie Schwarzenegga's younga and larja brudda, I has been gettin' a bit nippier in da waistline department, right?"

"Yes, I picked up on that."

"Well, dis is all a part of da original bargain. Youse has been led up da garden path, for which to play wit' da fairies at da bottom."

"What do you mean by that?"

"It would be an easier kinda t'ing to show youse dan to describe. And so--"

With that, Ralph reached up, and wiped off his face.

Well, not really. He wasn't one of those horror novel creatures with no features. But the scars and scratches and stubble and the big hairy eyebrows all came away, leaving a face which looked to be about my own age.

"I'm not really named Ralph. I'm really Joseph, you can call me Joey." The no-longer-Ralph pulled off his grimy undershirt, and wiped the rest of the disguise off his face. Then he took my unprotesting hand and shook it. "Joey Smith. I'm actually your third cousin; your father's father's uncle is my great-grandfather." He threw the shirt in a nearby trashcan, pulled a clean shirt on a hanger out of the trailer, and pulled it on, in the process revealing a faint but respectable set of developed abs.

Joey was a very different proposition from Ralph. For a start, I could see the family resemblance right away. Joey was almost a younger look-alike for Bill. For another, now that the fat was gone, it was clear that Joey had the Smith family build, which is to say he could walk onto the stage at a bodybuilding contest and probably place.

"My parents are the owners of this company. I've been doing construction work unofficially since I was about 13. My Dad decided that he wanted his son to be an architect, to keep more of the paying work in the family, so he pushed me hard to get my grades up and get into a good school. But I tend to eat in reaction to stress, and he was nagging me like you wouldn't believe, so I put on a whole bunch of weight. First I had to drop out of the drama club because I got too fat to play the role they cast for me, and in the end it got so bad I had to take six months off from school, and missed applying to college. (Serves Dad right.)

"That was when your brother showed up and offered to make a deal with Dad. In exchange for being my personal trainer during the day until the end of the summer or until I took the weight off, Dad would put you through a lot of rigorous exercise. Since I had to be there for the discussion, and it sounded like my own situation, I asked why you needed exercise, and your brother said he wanted you to reach your body's potential, but you didn't want to do it."

"What?!"

"It's all true. He said he would find a way to blackmail you into taking a job with us, and asked to keep it all a secret from you. Dad agreed, because he was so upset about how much weight I had put on, and forced me into it. In order to keep the secret to as few people as possible, they decided that I would have to take over as your manager, but I was really supposed to use the time to study and fill out college applications for winter admissions."

"That BASTARD! What the fuck does he think gives him the right to--"

"Let me finish. To keep you from noticing that I was obviously your relative, Dad and I came up with the whole 'Ralph' idea. It was over the top and cartoony, but that actually worked in our favor -- since Ralph was just a cartoon character brought to life, it kept you from doubting any part of it which might have seemed off, since there was such a cloud of Ralph-ness. The only part which didn't work was the cigar. Dad thought a Ralph would smoke cheap smelly cigars, and I tried it that first night, but I couldn't take it and gave up."

"Ha! I remember now that I thought it was funny that you had a smelly cigar, but you didn't smell like smoke! But everything else was all so exactly as I expected that I didn't follow up!"

"Right. Well, at first we were just giving you makework. You were absolutely right about moving the concrete around. I think the first day, they actually had to put it all back at the other end in order to move some equipment through. But you got so strong so fast that Dad decided to experiment with having you distribute the bricks in advance, too, since having the workers move them around eats up productive time. And they had you putting the concrete in places which were actually USEFUL by that time, so instead of the company putting up with you, you were actually helping them out.

"Meanwhile, every afternoon I was working out like crazy under Alex's supervision. It's a good thing I was supposed to be Ralph around you, because I was working out until about an hour and a half before you showed up, and then jogging over without taking a shower. There was just enough time to cool off and put on the disguise each day. Without the 'Ralph is a slob' cover, it would have been hard to explain the smell from all the sweat; real construction workers aren't exactly daisies, but they get that way AFTER their shifts, not beforehand.

"Well, as it turns out, my body seems to have a gift for burning off fat that's almost as remarkable as the one you have for putting on muscle. Between me getting thin -- which would end the agreement -- and the construction job going so quickly -- which would make it hard to keep my parents involved -- things were moving a lot more quickly than Alex had planned.

"You may not be aware of this, Ryan, but Alex has signed on for a cruise starting about a week before this building was supposed to be completed. He was hoping to force you to bulk up, and then run out just before you would find out what he had done.

"At the same time, though, he was so impressed by your results that he started yelling at my Dad to step up the amount you were lifting on the job. There aren't a lot of things an untrained person can be allowed to touch on a job site, and Alex was turning out to be more trouble than he was worth, so Dad sent over the girders, hoping you would give up or even hurt yourself. I didn't know about it until I showed up that night, so even though I tried to help out, I was already all tired out from my workout during the afternoon with Alex. If I hadn't been doing construction work for years, I would probably have been injured myself; you were strong enough to make up for the lack of experience. But Alex was so worried about my condition that he came over to my house that night after you came home and spent about an hour on massage and stretches, so in the end I pulled through. After that, I was able to compensate by doing less arm and back exercise during the day so that I had more energy when I showed up. And the workouts were making me stronger, too, which helped.

"During this last week, though, you've been growing at an absolutely ridiculous rate, and it has become clear that the agreement would be officially over within a few days no matter what. Alex is caught; he's terrified of what you're going to do to him for manipulating you, but he has to keep pushing you or else the whole thing has been a waste. As it happens, I convinced Dad not to tell him that the building was finished, so he'll probably show up in a few hours.

"That's about it, I think. Oh, except that your brother is the worst goddamn cook I've ever met. I've been eating meals he provided for the last month, and I think I'll throw up if I have to swallow another bite. Now, what do you have to say?"

"Dammit, I can't believe this! That goddamn jerk! When I get to college, no professor is going to take me seriously! Is there still a dumpster here? We can use it to dispose of the body after I rip his fucking head off!"

"No, no, Ryan. I think we can do a lot better than that. And besides, he did help me out, even if he's a manipulative jerk. I've been considering this for the last week, once I finished up all the college applications. Listen, I've got it all figured out. Here's the plan..."

When Alex showed up with the evening's "snacks", he found the area deserted and the trailer empty. After peeking through the windows to make sure we weren't inside, he walked back to his car. As he reached for the ignition, Joey rose up from the back seat and hit him over the head carefully but firmly with a rubber mallet.

The next thing Alex was aware of was that his arms were in a funny position. As the pain receded and he awoke fully, he realized that he was chained to a chair in his office at the gym. And stripped to his underwear. From outside came lots of metallic sounds -- clangs and clunks, and the occasional splash. After about an hour, the door opened and I strolled in.

"Hello, you fucking asshole!" I roared at him. "It's payback time!"

"P-payback? Payback for what?"

"Does THIS look familiar?" Dad's ATM card had been in his wallet, of course. "What the fuck, Alex? You screwed up my summer for no fucking reason, and made me into this! I ought to use these muscles to crush you into paste! You're lucky there's someone you didn't cheat this time around, and he talked me into doing things differently. Come on in, Joey."

"Hi there, Mister Smith. Oh, and Alex, too. You're our next contestant here on 'Truth AND Consequences'. Didn't see you over your brother. Isn't he looking good? I'd say he's about twice your off-season size right now, but he's all cut. And he's taller than you, and Mom says he's a lot better looking, too. Too bad; looks like you just did yourself out of the rest of your career if he decides to compete."

"Wait, I never hurt you!"

"That's right, Mister Alex. You didn't hurt me, you helped me take off all that fat. So I returned the favor and convinced Ryan, here, not to hurt you."

"Oh, thank god. But why am I all tied up, then?"

"Care to tell the bastard what he's won, Ryan?"

"Well, Alex, Joey thought it would be fitting if the two of us showed off all the skills and strength we both gained over the last month. So we carried your car into your gym--" Alex turned white. "--and threw it in your pool--" Alex turned red. "--after we took it to pieces." Alex turned purple. "Oh, don't worry. We put the pieces into waterproof wrapping. The pool will be fine. Bill agreed as his punishment for not telling me what you were doing that he would gather all the pieces and put it back together again. He's getting as good as Dad, so maybe it will actually run better after he's done. But he says it will take at least a month."

"Aw, Ryan, that doesn't sound like you're punishing Alex at ALL. Are you sure that's all we did?"

"Oh, thanks for reminding me, Joey. After we finished with your car, the two of us decided to practice our tool-using skills, the ones we picked up by working in construction, on your exercise equipment. I'd say you have about a ten-thousand-piece erector set out there. Entertainment for hours!"

"Something like that, Ryan. It was a lot of effort, so I hope he appreciates all the work. And, Alex, just to show his appreciation for the strength you got him to develop, Ryan here bent all the plates from the machines and the weightroom into decorative shapes. They won't stack on each other any more, but I'm sure your clients will appreciate the improved aesthetics."

"Oooo, Joey, it looks like the contestant has passed out again. Perhaps we should release those bindings now."

"So sad. What a dumbass to believe we had enough time to do all that. There, now he's loose."

"Well, we DID do the car part. I distinctly remember that you helped me take it apart."

"Yes, Ryan, but that was after you tore up the new bench press machine by his office door and bent the pieces until they wouldn't fit back together."

"Which I see you have arranged into a remarkably realistic sculpture of a man with his head up his own ass. Which, I further note, you have clothed in the contestant's clothing, including his name badge, and welded to the floor."

"Just a demonstration of my family's amazingly varied and useful talents, Ryan."

"Let's go get some real food, Joey. After all this shithead's cooking I've been eating lately, I could go for a stack of burgers, or a large pizza."

"Sounds good."

"Joey?"

"Yes?"

"Can I have permission to give him a kick? Not enough to break anything, I promise. Just bruise him up a little. I want to be able to say I kicked his ass for what he did to me."

"Dat, in fact, sounds entirely undastandamable, and I t'ink dat I will get in line to produce just such a desirable outcoming myself."

That was pretty much the end of that episode. Mom and Dad called us from Istanbul a week later; at first I was surprised they had only gotten that far in a month, but Dad explained they had made a loop into Africa to visit a customer's relatives in Kenya. By mutual agreement, Bill, Alex, and I didn't tell them about the whole thing until they came home about a month later.

Joey and I became and remained best friends. With his usual forethought, Joey had foreseen such a possibility, and had applied to the same university I was attending, to which he was admitted. He got all the certifications his father had demanded, but -- unsurprisingly -- when he took over the company on his father's retirement, he no longer had time to design buildings.

As for me, I had an unsuspected problem. As it turns out, the freakish genetics which allowed me to become so absurdly muscular also prevented me from losing any of that extra muscle. As I mentioned earlier, it's been something of a hindrance in my career. Even though it keeps my students nice and respectful, my colleagues are a bit dismissive of me because of my physique. If they aren't commenting on how ironic it is that such a huge guy studies small things, they're telling me I should generate high-pressure environments to study by squeezing things with my hands. (I tried that, actually. Didn't work.) So I've just had to work that much harder.

It really does seem unfair.

[arpeejay]

Lurv it!

xoxo

Richard

[cutlerfan]

It was great story but it sounded pretty convenient that his parents had forgotten to leave their ATM card. I know it was fiction but Bill and especially Alex got off far too easily! Ryan was taken advantage of by his brothers and they should have punished more fiercely! How could he ever trust them again? The ends never justify the means. Sorry to rant..I have a douchebag for a brother in real life! It was a great story; well written with good descriptions! Again, sorry for ranting.

[Mdlftr]

I jus' wants to say dat I jus' luv dis story and if Ralph has any mur openins in de job site, I wud be verra intereeested in helpin' out round de place!
I dink da dis aw-ter has great skill and shud go far!

Mdlftr
(who worked construction in the summers in college and met a few Ralphs in his day --- except they were called "Georgie" and "Ritchie" and had vocabulary consisting of mostly 4-letter woids! And huyge fats guts like beachballs! Ugly beach balls!)

[tekuno]

Originally Posted by cutlerfan

It was great story but it sounded pretty convenient that his parents had forgotten to leave their ATM card. I know it was fiction but Bill and especially Alex got off far too easily! Ryan was taken advantage of by his brothers and they should have punished more fiercely! How could he ever trust them again? The ends never justify the means. Sorry to rant..I have a douchebag for a brother in real life! It was a great story; well written with good descriptions! Again, sorry for ranting.

I'll let Ralph answer this one, because he's so much fun to write:

Youse has hit da nail right on da head, mista. Da weakes' part a' da rearranged story was dat in da new, less-erotic, non-macro voision, dere hadda be a justifimication what for to let Alex make wit' da manipulatin'. I cames up wit' a list a' simple-like objections dat a bright boy like Ryan might think up, contrived a buncha crummy-but-a-inexperienced-teenaga-might-believe-in-'em responses, an' hoped dat b'tween poor li'l Ryan bein' all tuckered out what wit' all his hard work, an' not knowin' what da rules for t'ings like mortgages would work like, mebbe da gap was no too great for which to make wit' da enjoyin' of da story.

Orig'nally, da whole t'ing was s'posedta be voluntary. Construction was da fam'ly bus'ness, Ryan was dere for to learn da trade ova his summa vacations afta graduatin' from high schools so as to join in, he got all explosicated into a buildin'-sized macro hulk-like guy by havin' ta lift not just da cement sacks but da construction vehicles an' t'ings of suchlike nature, an' onlies at da end was it revealed unto da viewa dat da olda bruddas was likewise such types, altho' Ryan was always da bigges' one in da end, an was implied to be gonna dominate his bruddas. (An Alex was always gonna be put out by dat.) No Ralph, no Mom and Dad, an' no snackin' between shifts because eatin' is not an act which I finds erotic enough to make with da drawin'. Lotsa clothes-rippin', and, not to put too fine a poin' onnit, da pikchas had much more detailin' on Ryan's man-type equipment dan you would eva guess from dis here retellin', an he shows some appreciations of dis undeniable fac' toward da end, when once he is as bigs as some a' da buildin's he is woikin' on. Even in da' early panels a' da story, when Ryan was still all teeny-tiny normal-like, he was drawn in completely, an' da akchul job site an' backgrounds was only barely dere. (Afters all, when I is drawin' da story, I knows what da settin' is, so why waste my times drawin' in da parts I ain't gonna be lookin' at?) (I also don' usually bodda wit' chest hair. My drawin's have BIG pecs, an' it's a waste a' time ta scritch it all in, panel afta panel. So unless it's a main part a' da idea, my drawin's is usually drawn like dey is shaved bodybuilda-like.)

Dis story comes to be based on da fac' dat one partic'lar panel, which was early-like enough dat Ryan was still not entirely outsides a' da realm a' human size, tho' he's clearly headed dat way, was far an' away da bes' a da lot. We gots dis massive, tall young guy, wearin' nuttin' but a bandanna, a stretched-out-like pair a' undies, an' a little smile wit' da kinda confidentials dat for which male models is paid big bucks, facin' outta da page. He's carryin' t'ree sacks a' concrete under one massive arm, an' da udda one is supportin' a barely-sketched-in cylander-like t'ing which I seems ta recall was gonna bes a cement mixa, except dat I couldn' be bodda'd ta fills in da details. Da guy has biceps bigga dan his head, an' pecs which rival dose aforesomenchuned saks in being big an' pillowy, an' is prolly jus' a little bit broader between dems shouldas an talla dan a real poison could eva get, but so what. He is, you gots to unnerstan', already a big, big boy at dis point. Sometin' about da way dis panel is drawn, though it is just a simple woik in pencil, rings alls a' my bells, but I cans not draw t'ings wit' dat partic'lar quality at wills, an' so da resta da sequence is -- tho' it ain't so bad dat I ams plannin' ta t'row it ins da gobbich, I ain't sayin' dat -- not so good. I gots betta ones elsewhere, except for dat one panel.

Mebbe if youse were to ask polite-like, I could make some space in my busy skejule an tries to scanulamatate it in an gives youse all a linkie.

Den again, dat sequence was a redrawin' of an olda ones dat I did much earlia, where a big construction guy grows sometin' sim'lar. Diffren' focus, an' more a da cocky forcible-like attitude in da foist one. Takin' da two as a whole, I t'inks da foist one is more sexy-likes, but as I say dat one panel in da secon' in sometin' speshuls ta me.

As for Alex not gettin' punished enough, he gots a last-minnit reprieve from my conscience. To destroy his gym an' leave him lyin' in shock-like in da rubble would be all grins an' giggles, so I t'reatened to do just dat, but den I t'ought about it. Alex is only a partner, not da owna outright. If da gym is destroyed, Alex is not goin' ta be left holdin' alla dat bag, an' we has no notice a' da attitudinous a' da udda partner. An' allsa dem folksies wit' memmerships in da gym, it's not nice to hand dem alls da wet an' smelly papa bag a' someone else's punichment, right? So afta Alex does us alls a fava by passin' out froms da shock, I had da nice young muscle stud boys -- an' you has no idea how hard it was not to just make Ryan gay an' turn musclestud Ryan an' somewhat smalla but still a giant block of hotness Joey into college roomies an' lovers -- clue us in on da fac' dat Alex is not so deep in da brown an' smelly as mebbe he deserves. Da fac' dat Ryan is now capable of rippin' his head off wit' one han' and pushin' it up wherefore da sun does not shine, and not so much as breakin' a sweat-like, will presumesably keep him in line.

(An besides, even if Ryan was not to know, he did US a big soivice. Wit'out Alex bein' such a mis'rable sneak, Ryan does not becomes da big an' sexy lug dat we was all waitin' for to read about. An' even his motivationals for bein' slimy an' manipulative-like was sortsa kind deep downs, even if he was too absorbed in his own self to realize dat not everyone wants da same t'ings he does, or cans eat da nasty-tastin' protein-y foods wit'out bein' put out. So we shoulds not be too harsh on da guy.)

(Plus, I t'ink I mades it clear dat Ryan, tho' he may be a giant sexy behemoth, is da kinda nice guy what wouldn' hurts a fly. Mebbe he is pissed off beyond all description, but dat's still woikin' agains' da instinks of a guy what regular-like goes da extra mile for uddas.)

Incident'ly, I just been doin' my e-mailies, an I'm findin' dat it is akchully hard to shut off da Ralph dialection. I almos' tol' my own fadda, what is picky about dis sorts a' t'ing an' axed me about whedda I needed to do some grocery shoppin', dat "I is been layin' in some nice fresh fruitsies lately, so prolly dere is no need to run out, but thanks for askin'". It's da powa a' da medium, my friends.

[2bored]

Really, this is quite wonderful. Thank you.

[tekuno]

Originally Posted by 2bored

Really, this is quite wonderful. Thank you.

Ralph bids me to add:

Awright, youse jokas, writin' up dese two stories has taken up a lots of my time recently, an' so it is wit' great sorrow dat I tells you dere will be no mores for a while, prolly untils da ends a' da month at least, unless I has a big chunk a' unexpectid spare times.

Dis, howeva, is not da end, so do not make wit' da greivin' an' sorrow. Now dat I has discovert dat peoples akchully likes ta read all my blabberin', I has several udda drawin's which could usedfully be toined inta dis kinda t'ing.

In fac', I has awreddy picked out da nex' item on da menu, an' started plannin' out in my head-like how ta presen' it in text: we gots a tale of mildly taboo-breakin' sex (I leaves it ta you to guess which one, altho' I freely admits dat dis partic'lar one ain't so bad dat it ain't happened in real life in public) which will once again feacha da physic'ly impossible an' sciencey-fictional -- tho' not perhaps in da usual sense -- settin's. Dis nex' one is not gonna be G-rated at all -- youse will unnerstan' when I sez dat da drawin's from which I is pullin' da inspiration has six straight panels a' da main characters bonin' each udda, an' dat's just da foist page -- an' it will once again piss off da scientific-like minded, but once again, it ain't strickly a macro endin', just a "really really really big" endin', so I'm hopin' peoples will be kind. Da voice of Ralph, which is fun ta write but prolly not so funs ta read, will not be makin' anudda appearance. Mebbe eva. So youse who is rollin' yer eyes at da way I has been writin' dese responses can breathe a little sigh a' relief.

Da title ta watch for will be "Footnotes From The Unauthorized Version".

[iceman75]

I really liked reading this story, first of all, Ralph was pretty funny, reminds me of that WHOOOAAAAS! guy from Futurama. Second of all, what really hooked me on the story was the description of the boy's parents, dad 80 years old with muscles bigger than most guys 1/4 his age, probably able to outlift them too. Mom, an extreme sports star when most women are sitting home watching soap operas while knitting, she's out there racing and winning motor cross races against much younger boys and men. (She does knit too, but that sort of takes a back seat to her wild side.) And third, I loved how quick Ryan was able to build all that muscle up, doubling his bodyweight in a manner of months, who knows how many times he multiplied his already prodigious strength? Just a cool story, tekuno, really enjoyed myself reading it and I will be waiting for more!

[tekuno]

Dammit, I just realized that I missed a perfect spot to have Joey say to Alex "and you would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for us meddling kids".

Tsk. Talk about missed opportunities.

[tekuno]

I gave up trying to get to sleep (curse you, persistent insomnia!), and spent some time scanning and uploading images. If you're really interested in seeing the drawing of Ryan I was talking about earlier, go see the thread at http://musclegrowth.org/forum/showthread.php?t=38095

(Since the original sequence was very different from the eventual story, there's only one. But you can see four of Mike from my other story.)

[cutlerfan]

I can see why you didn't have Ryan destroy Alex's gym. You are sooo right that he did US a service! Keep posting more stories!

[michaelv2]

And props for a creatively punning title.

[tekuno]

Originally Posted by cutlerfan

keep posting more stories!

Oh, I will, provided I don't drop dead from lack of sleep. (I finally dropped off, and after 4 hours my eyes popped open and I was wide awake again, not even close to being able to sleep again. This on top of about 3 nights of more or less the same thing. I have already passed the "feeling like I'm on drugs" point; this really, really sucks.)

On the other hand, it means I have made some progress on Footnotes From The Unauthorized Version (see the illustrations thread I linked to above for a few comments on what to expect -- it's definitely fun to write this stuff!), and while I was lying there trying to get back to sleep I came up with a completely new concept, not fully based on any existing illustrations at all, although I think I have some which would fit with a few tweaks, which will probably follow it.

(Largely, I confess, because I realized that all three of my stories were comedies based around late-teenaged guys. You may have noticed that Ryan, Mike, and Mr. Unnamed Narrator are all very definitely 18, and the heroes in Footnotes From The Unauthorized Version will begin the escapades which will make them of interest to us at 17, although they spend a couple of years treading water after the initial plunge. Muscle growth just seems more natural to me starting at that age, and it underlines the growth if the subject would usually not have had enough time to get big. Plus it's easier to force characters into making life-changing decisions if they don't have as much experience with the way the world works. And as for the tone, it's difficult to make a character who is getting all hormone-charged and super-masculine realistically take on a mood other than either energetic and cocky and upbeat or angry and arrogant and destructive, and although I like to think about macro rampages, I really don't like to think about people getting injured or dying, so even Ryan, who has a lot to annoy him, turned out pretty mellow. Mysterious Projected Story #2 has the working title "Recovery of Lost Time", and I'm hoping I can sit on my sense of humor long enough to make it a little wistful and sad, although it will have a happy ending if nothing changes too much by the time I get it down on paper. Er, electrons.)

[tekuno]

Originally Posted by michaelv2

And props for a creatively punning title.

I thought it was kind of silly, actually, but since I wrote the whole story without even considering a title, and something like "Construction Muscle" seemed to be a little misleading as to tone, I fell back on a joke.

[nnnrg]

OK, this is really pretty hilarious. I laughed several times, and that's pretty good in a muscle growth story.

Yeah, it seemed contrived but, again, they lied and he was a kid.

On the other hand, I want his genetics. DAMN. The man has no myostatin AND he has a good structural basis on top of it.