Brilliant spotlights illuminated the glittering stage. Eight men of physical perfection gleamed in the glaring radiance. Barely heard over the excited crowd, the announcer called poses, and each contestant struck long-practiced stances. Heads held high, sculpted, oiled muscles bulged and flexed to display lifetimes of conditioning: Front Lat Spread, Front Double Biceps, Side Chest, Rear Lat Spread, Rear Double Biceps, Side Triceps, Abdominal and Thigh, and of course, Most Muscular. The crowd cheered and applauded.
              Despite his shyness, Marcos forced a smile and tried to not blink as cameras flashed from every direction. Again he was the youngest; although he'd been a finalist twice before, each time he'd been voted off first. The contest was over, the judges tabulating the winner and runner-ups. Final performances were only to please the crowd, yet these were important. Bodybuilding was a subjective art and all impressions mattered. The judges hoped that their selections would be moved on to national competitions, and ultimately, Mr. Universe.
              Marcos struggled to keep smiling. Victories in local contests were required to win in higher levels. Odds against any bodybuilder winning the highest prize were astronomical, yet he was handsome; with enough attention, he might gain a foot inside the door of the motion picture industry. Marcos had spent ten months taking acting lessons at night. One way or another, he was sure to cash in ... unless he lost again.
              A beautiful, heavily-glittered assistant strutted onto stage, holding high eight golden envelopes, fanning them at the crowd. She was impressively muscled, sculpted to perfection, shown off by a bikini skimpier than the men's speedos. The MC accepted her golden envelopes and announced that the judges had made their decisions. He selected the first envelope and opened it. The men stopped posing; this was what they'd come for. Thirty one bodybuilders had started in this competition; only eight finalists remained.
              "Eighth place goes to ... Paulo Antunes," the MC announced, and the audience clapped.
              Paulo Antunes smiled as if happy. Marcos knew his grin was for show. He'd suffered Paulo's fate twice, and for the first time, Marcos' smile during the finals beamed.
              Name after name was called, none his. The audience applauded each finalist. Marcos began to hope ...
              Could he actually win ...?
              "And here we go, moving onward toward the top," the MC continued, and the crowd's volume dropped off, straining to hear. "Third place goes to ... Marcos Machado!"
              Marcos couldn't stop smiling. Third place wasn't bad; to think that he'd win the Goias Bodybuilding Championship was farfetched. The youngest competitors never won first place. Marcos stepped forward, accepted his printed, calligraphied scroll, in its glossy black frame, and the pretty girl in the bikini looped a shiny brass award medallion with a big number ‘3' over his neck. He smiled at her pretty face as the plastic medallion dropped to rest against his broad, gleaming chest.
              Third place ...!
              He was on his way ...!
              After the victor was announced, and the crowd finally slowed their applause, and the MC recited thanks and good night. All eight finalists waved at the crowd, then paraded back through the glittery curtain.
              Handshakes were shared and congratulations offered. Marcos was invited to join them for a celebratory dinner; bodybuilding was a fiercely competitive sport, yet most of the competitors were friendly. He was starving, yet Marcos couldn't afford to eat out. Only a few places catered to the needs of in-season diets ... and those restaurants were expensive.
              Off-season was the bulking phase, where bodybuilders ate high-calorie, protein-rich fares, and lifted weights to build as much muscle as possible. In-season was the cutting phase, where competitors starved to lose as much fat as possible, while exercising to maintain muscle mass.
              Declining invitations, Marcos showered, dressed, and walked to his old, rusty van. With a muttered prayer, he turned its key ... and held his breath until its coughing engine started. Then he motored toward home, chugging bottled water, desperate for solid food.
              As he reached the freeway entrance, Marcos' eyes widened. Two young hitchhikers were thumbing for a ride, and both were girls. Marcos glanced at his gas gauge, wondering if he had enough to stop. He decided that he didn't, yet these girls were way too pretty to abandon them to whatever maniac might spot them next. With a sigh, Marcos pulled over and stopped.
              Both girls hurried to open his passenger door.
              "Thanks!" one of them smiled, eyeing him appraisingly.
              "Where are you going?" Marcos asked.
              "Trindade," one said. "You ...?"
              "Goiania," Marcos frowned. "Hop in."
              "Opa!" the girl cheered, and she slid between the front seats into the back. Her friend got into the passenger seat, looking warily at him.
              Marcos gunned his engine and pulled back out onto the entrance lane as soon as her door was closed.
              "What's in Trindade?" Marcos asked as he merged into traffic.
              "We live there," the girl in the passenger seat sighed.
              "A friend dumped us in Brasilia," the girl in the back said. "We're trying to get home."
              "Drove off with her boyfriend," the girl in the passenger seat complained. "She was our ride ...!"
              "Good," Marcos said. "I was afraid I'd have to give you the lecture about how dangerous hitchhiking is."
              "We couldn't call our parents," the girl in the back said. "We don't want them knowing that we drove to Brasilia."
              Marcos frowned and glanced at his gas gauge again. He'd stashed the third-place gift card that he'd just won in his wallet, and he needed that money to fix his van. His clutch and starter were both about to die. The money he'd won probably wouldn't be enough to fix both, let alone the cost of extra gas. He couldn't afford to be generous.
              "I'll drive you to Trindade," Marcos sighed. "I don't want to spend days worrying that you didn't get home safely."
              Both girls thanked him profusely, and introduced themselves, and began talking about the shopping that they'd hoped to do in Brasilia, bad-mouthing their friend who'd ditched them. Both seemed impressed and delighted when Marcos showed them his new brass award medallion and calligraphied scroll for his 3rd place victory in the Goias Bodybuilding Championship. At their insistence, Marcos flexed his bicep to its fullest, and the girl in back asked if he had a girlfriend. Marcos blew off her query; these girls talked like they were still in high school. Marcos was over twenty and didn't want to risk being accused of chasing underage minors.
              Finally he left the freeway, drove them to an intersection a block away from one of their homes, and dropped them off where their parents wouldn't see. Both girls thanked him again and waved goodbye, smiling brightly. Marcos waved back, yet frowned at his dashboard, and drove straight toward the nearest gas station.
              The sun was setting as Marcos steered onto the worn dirt tracks his wheels had dug into Carlos' side yard. Carlos' pickup truck filled the driveway, so Marcos had to park in front of their crumbling woodshed, which was too stuffed with useless junk to store firewood.
              As he entered their tiny, dilapidated house, his older brother Carlos didn't even glance at him. Carlos lay stretched out on his living room couch, watching TV, a half-spilled bag of microwave popcorn on the coffee table beside four open beer bottles, three of which looked fully drained.
              "There he is ... Mr. Muscles!" Carlos sniggered as commercials started.
              "Third place," Marcos bragged, holding up his medal and certificate.
              "Big payoff ...?" Carlos asked.
              "Enough to buy parts to fix my van, I hope," Marcos said.
              Carlos laughed. "You should give up posing and box."
              "I'm not a boxer," Marcos said.
              "You will be tomorrow," Carlos laughed.
              "What ...?" Marcos asked.
              "Moving boxes," Carlos grinned. "Dad got the science contract."
              Marcos frowned at his jibe.
              "Moving a laboratory," Carlos snickered. "Wimpy geeks can't budge their microscopes."
              Marcos scowled, and entered their sad excuse for a kitchenette. He retrieved a Tupperware of his nutrient-dense recipe, half kale with ground liver, salmon, potatoes, and egg yolks, high in lutein, zeaxanthin, and antioxidants. He preferred his recipe with shellfish, but the last time that he went shopping, seafood was too expensive. Moving furniture didn't pay much, especially when working for his father. Grimacing, he slid his container into the microwave and started nuking.
              Marcos' next bodybuilding competition was in three weeks ... if he could get time off. Like his two brothers, Marcos worked for the family business. The Machado Family Movers, great service to transport your biggest jobs; usually they moved boxes, furniture, large families, and the elderly. Commercial jobs were their paydays. Their father must've worked hard to get this contract.
              When the microwave beeped, Marcos forced himself to eat slowly, to chew and digest each mouthful fully. Marcos hated carrying boxes for a living, yet it was the only job he had ... or was likely to get. In the Southern Hemisphere, the post-pandemic economy was still struggling, and in Brazil, unskilled labor worked cheaply.
              Bursts of fake gunfire and explosions from the TV died out, replaced by canned laughter. Carlos laughed along, yet appeared too drunk to appreciate anything, swept up in the flow of his mindless shows.
              Marcos shook his head. Carlos was living his dream, working just enough to afford beer and cable TV. Their younger brother, Jose, still lived with their parents, and only delighted in chasing pretty girls. He had a gift for schmoozing, which Marcos considered lies. Marcos was the middle son, the driven one; he wanted to be a somebody, to go as far in life as he could. Yet all trapped by poverty suffer its limits.
              Carlos thought that he should use his muscles to find a rich old widow, seduce her, and wait for her to die. Jose hated Marcos because his manly physique stole the attentions of the sluts Jose surrounded himself with. Marcos knew the girl he wanted, Francielle Andrade, the shy daughter of his father's business partner, who'd recently been sent away to a private college. They'd never solidified their friendship into anything deeper, yet hers was the face he dreamed of most nights.
              Marcos finished eating, and then balanced his Tupperware atop the high pile of dirty dishes waiting to be washed. It was Carlos' turn to clean. Marcos glanced at his drunken, worthless older brother, feeling nothing but disgust. He couldn't tell if Carlos was conscious or not.
              Carlos teased him about his dreams. They lived in a sprawling suburb of Goiania, the capital of Goias. Marcos envied his brothers' lazy lifestyles, able to eat anything they wanted, go anywhere they liked, and not care about anything beyond momentary pleasures. Marcos hated his restrictive diet, especially its limits on alcohol, and the endless hours his daily exercises consumed. He'd worked so hard and sacrificed so much; what if nothing ever came from it? What if he never got 'fame and fortune' ...?
              Marcos shook his head. Everyone who strives for anything big suffers doubts; those who give into fears fail miserably.
              Free-weights were waiting for him in the walk-in closet that Carlos had let him convert into a bedroom. He was still hungry, yet reached for his free weights and began his evening workout.
              Bodybuilding is the ultimate art. Sculptors use wood, stone, glass, or clay; bodybuilders mold themselves. His art was alive, constantly changing, sculpting the ultimate human body, from the shape that he was given into its finest possible form. Lifting weights, he felt their burn, starving fat cells to empower bulging biceps, triceps, pecks, and lats. Other artists bragged of cold, static treasures. Bodybuilders were living masterworks. Free-weights rose and fell as his artist's mind commanded, against his body's natural resistance. Each burn was a victory, driving toward his ultimate goal.

              The next day, everything in Marcos' life crashed into ruin. His van wouldn't start. He had to beg for a ride from Carlos, who was hung over, cranky, and whose competence behind the wheel was questionable at best. When they arrived onsite, his father was furious; Jose hadn't come home last night. They began working without him.
              Boxes were still being packed, so Marcos and Carlos were ordered to begin moving the furniture, tables, desks, and empty shelves. His father walked around with a clipboard, noting large machines that would have to be forklifted. This was a huge research laboratory, yet neither the busy scientists nor the armed soldiers scowling at them paid much attention to the movers.
              Jose arrived onsite over an hour late, and their father's shouts blamed all three of them, despite that Marcos and Carlos had arrived only a few minutes late. All three sons knew the pointlessness of arguing with their father.
              The scientists seemed frantic; most of their equipment was fragile, and had been haphazardly tossed into boxes. They'd been given little notice, a few days to vacate their government building, which had been reassigned to the Brazilian military. Several uniformed officers were standing around, disgruntled that the scientists hadn't already evacuated the premises, and getting in everyone's way.
              "Sir, these experiments are dangerously delicate!" one scientist argued.
              "Waste of resources ...," the officer sneered.
              "These machines can't be turned off, and should never be moved!" the scientist continued.
              "Move them ... or we throw them out!" barked the officer.
              Marcos carried two boxes out to their truck, chased by an exasperated woman scientist with a clipboard, still inventorying what the boxes contained. Highly displeased, she followed him closely, poking into each box and writing on their outsides. She looked nearly thirty, years older than him, and not unattractive. Her panic over each box made him feel guilty.
              "Slow down ... and be gentle!" the lady scientist scowled, marking something on her clipboard. "The future of physics lies in these boxes!"
              "Lady, I just move them," Marcos replied.
              "Did they tell you how dangerous our devices are?" she asked. "We could be killed!"
              "The militar hired us," Marcos said. "Tell them. We're contracted to finish this job today."
              He gently added her boxes to the stacks inside his truck, left her to poke through them, and went back for more.
              Suddenly his father's voice called. "Marcos, leave those boxes for Jose. We need your muscles."
              Marcos walked over to find seven men standing around a weird device of unquestioned complexity, taller and wider than the biggest home refrigerator. A thick, round bulge circled its center, exposing odd-shaped metal protuberances. Carlos had driven their forklift into place. Marcos had to tilt it so that they could get the steel forks under it.
              "This is madness!" one scientist insisted. "This device wasn't designed to be shut off! Its internal power system ...!"
              "Just get it out of here!" shouted the officer.
              "Sir, this detector took ten years to design and another four years to build," the scientist looked and sounded furious. "It accesses multi-dimensional planes on a microscopic level, and we're not even sure if it can be moved. Its weight is constantly changing; we're still not sure why, but that forklift may not be enough ...!"
              "No excuses!" the officer snarled. "Move it!"
              "Don't get your feet under it," the lady scientist warned, walking up behind Marcos.
              "Marcos, lift this end," his father directed. "Tilt it slowly."
              Marcos placed one foot between the steel forks and grabbed the large machine, feeling for the best handholds. Its curved metal surfaces felt strange to his touch, sticky, almost as if its metallic surface was grasping his skin. He pressed against it, surprised; it weighed more than all of his free weights combined. He might be able to tilt it; Marcos wasn't sure if everyone there combined could lift it.
              Suddenly it jerked, as if half its weight unexpectedly fell off. The whole machine felt inexplicably light, as if Marcos could simply lift and carry it to the truck. Without straining a single muscle, Marcos picked it up and set it onto both steel forks, solidly centered, as Carlos drove the forklift's arms under it.
              Marcos stepped back. His father shouted unneeded instructions; Carlos knew his job. The engine on the forklift strained, the front end tilted back, and the twin forks lifted. The strange device rose into the air, high enough to load onto their truck.
              "Be careful!" several scientists shouted.
              Suddenly a loud grinding strained the forklift. Carlos startled as his forward momentum abruptly failed. The forklift's engine gunned noisily. Loud creaks and snaps, not good for any machine, followed. Suddenly the massive forklift tilted forward, onto its front wheels. Incredibly, its heavy, solid rear wheels rose off the concrete floor.
              Several cried warnings, others screamed, and then the massive forklift flipped forward. The strange device crashed down ...
              The world changed. As the device hit the floor, brilliant flashes of every color blinded Marcos. A deafening silence wiped out all sound. He winced, then forced his eyes open. When he focused his eyes, Marcos saw a world that he couldn't recognize. Everyone was frozen, some in the act of running away, others with open mouths and terrified eyes. Yet none were moving. One scientist had tried to jump back; he hung motionless, suspended in midair, as if someone had pressed ‘pause' on the clock of the world.
              Marcos blinked, certain that he was hallucinating. Blurry, multiple images overlaid each person, as if a photo had been taken while the camera was sweeping sideways too fast, its shutter open too long. Faded duplicates of everyone stood apart, almost merged, as if each person was trying to run in multiple directions, and he was seeing every possible choice.
              Marcos lifted his hand. He saw, and felt, multiple images of his hand; some arrived to hover in front of his face seconds before his real hand did, and others trailed behind it like faded frames of old-styled movies.
              Absolute silence made Marcos think he'd gone deaf, and then crashes, screams, a loud buzz, and shouts rang in his ears a hundred times their normal volume. Marcos clapped his palms over his ears to drown the blare before he was permanently deafened.
              Strangely, the multi-colored lights from the falling machine beamed upon him. The weird science-device was frozen in time, like everything else, showing multiple before-and-after-images, its high bottom end still several centimeters from crashing onto the concrete floor. One edge of its upper frame had already broken a deep chunk out of the concrete floor, and opened a wide crack in its metallic exterior. The hole in its shell exposed complex interior circuitry. Multi-colored lights beamed out of the crack ... directly upon him.
              Marcos tried to move out of the bright rainbow, yet he suddenly felt immensely heavy, as if he weighed a thousand kilograms, and was pushing through thick mud. The air felt dense, too thick to push through, yet Marcos strained his bulging, highly-developed muscles to escape the weird, colored lights, fearful of what they might be doing to him.
              Suddenly he tripped sideways, released from the rainbow glow emanating from the broken device. The air grew thin again. Marcos overcompensated, toppled forward, and landed with a loud crash. The cement floor beneath him cracked as he fell onto it; concrete under him shattered into crushed, flying fragments.
              The mostly-fallen device fully dropped, with a deafening crash, and fractured apart. The loud buzzing ceased. The multi-colored lights vanished. Screams still blasted his ears, although somehow muted, as if underwater.
              Cries of horror echoed, and then loud shouts arose. Marcos looked up; everyone was staring at him, eyes bulging, aghast. Even his father looked speechless ... which Marcos had never before seen.
              "What is it ...?" Marcos asked. "Am I bleeding ...?"
              "What the hell ...?" the officer exclaimed.
              "Oh, prezado Jesus ...!" one of the scientists stammered.
              "Marcos, don't move," his father warned. "What ... what have you done ... to my son?"
              Marcos stared at them, confused.
              "I feel fine," Marcos said, shifting position. The shattered concrete floor beneath him grated as he moved.
              Marcos stood up, feeling strangely clumsy. All stared at him ... horrified mouths hanging open.
              "It's ... impossible ...!" the woman scientist slowly gasped.
              "What ...?" Marcos asked.
              "Don't ...!" one scientist warned as his father stepped forward. "Don't touch him! He looks like pure osmium! We don't know what effects ...!"
              "Marcos, don't move," a tall scientist ordered. "Don't breathe, don't even flinch. Just speak. Can you see us?"
              "Of course ...," Marcos said. "You sound funny; I think my ears are plugged."
              "Now, take a deep breath," the scientist instructed. "Do you feel anything ... different?"
              Distressed, Marcos inhaled a breath, then exhaled. "Nothing. Am I hurt ...? Is my face cut ...?"
              "Marcos, hold up your hands," his father said. "Look ... look at your hands."
              Marcos lifted his hands and saw ... not his hands. They were shaped exactly like his hands ... he flexed his fingers experimentally, and they moved as expected, yet they looked ... like everything else in the room, every color around him. Disoriented, not sure what he was seeing, Marcos realized that the skin of his hands was like ... curved mirrors; the colors he was seeing were ... reflections of everyone and everything around him.
              "What the ...?" Marcos demanded. "What's happened to me ...?"
              Marcos tried to wipe it off, assuming that he was covered in some smooth, reflective substance, yet he could feel his hands on his shiny skin; living flesh like silvery mirrors.
              "Hey ...!" Marcos objected.
              "Don't worry," one of the many scientists said. "We can fix this."
              "How ...?" another scientist asked.
              "I don't know!" the first scientist shouted. "But we must study what's happened to him!"
              "Happened ...?" Marcos demanded, staring at the horrified expressions on those wearing lab coats.
              "Look what he did to the floor!" the military officer exclaimed. "He's a weapon! Can you do it again?"
              "He's not a weapon!" the woman scientist argued.
              "Marcos, how do you feel?" his father asked, and he reached out a trembling hand.
              Marcos held still and let his father touch his hand. Hesitantly the dark-tan skin of his father's fingers felt his mirror-finish, then grasped his hand.
              "He feels cold ... hard, like a statue," his father said.
              Marcos stared at their joined hands.
              "Father, I see your hand holding mine," Marcos said, "but ... I ... I can't feel your hand."
              "Neuropathy ...?" the woman scientist asked.
              Marcos had no idea what ‘Neuropathy' meant. His father visibly squeezed his hand, staring at Marcos' face for some reaction.
              "Nothing," Marcos shrugged.
              His father's other hand slapped Marcos' fingers, yet elicited no response. His third strike looked hard; his father's knuckles rapped his silvery-mirror flesh, then recoiled. His father shook his aged hand as if its impact had injured him.
              "I ... think I felt that ... almost," Marcos said.
              "Wait ...!" said the officer, and he stepped forward. He pounded his fist against Marcos' arm. "Can you feel that?"
              Marcos shook his head.
              The officer drew his pistol and hammered its barrel against Marcos' flesh.
              "Don't break him!" a scientist shouted.
              "I felt that ... barely," Marcos said.
              "Seal this building!" the officer ordered. "Sergeant, call the base; I want every available soldado here now! This building is locked down; no one goes in or out. This is a militar priority!"
              "Now, wait a minute ...!" one scientist protested.
              "This man is militar property ...!" the officer insisted.
              "You can't take my son!" his father shouted.
              The officer turned his gun to point at Marcos' father.
              Marcos moved instinctively; he grabbed the officer's arm and yanked it up, away from his father.
              The gun discharged into the ceiling. Its blast made several scientists cry out. The officer was jerked off his feet and flung into the air. He screamed in pain as Marcos dropped him; the officer crashed to the floor with an anguished cry.
              "I'm sorry ...!" Marcos apologized.
              Two scientists knelt to examine the officer.
              "Broken," one scientist said, and he looked from his patient to Marcos' surprised expression. "I'm not a medical doctor, but I'd say ... fractured ulna ... and possibly radius."
              "I didn't mean to ...!" Marcos protested.
              "Calm down!" the woman scientist ordered, and she stepped forward. The officer's gun was laying where he'd dropped it; she picked it up and held it out to Marcos. "Take this. See if you can ... bend its barrel."
              "Are you kidding ...?" Marcos asked.
              "Humor me," the woman scientist said.
              Marcos shrugged, took the pistol from her, and grabbed its barrel. Flexing his muscles, he squeezed with all his strength ...
              The steel barrel of the pistol bent and cracked ... as if blackened 416R stainless steel was cheap, hollow plastic.
              "Unbelievable!" she exclaimed. "Dr. Moreno ... was right!"
              "Who's Dr. Moreno ...?" Marcos asked.
              "An unappreciated genius," she said. "He was killed during a protest against political corruption. Our government considered his ideas ... radical."
              "What's wrong with me ...?" Marcos asked.
              "First, we need to hear from you," she said. "To treat you, we need you to describe what you felt in the instant of that blinding flash."
              "What blinding flash ...?" Marcos asked.
              "Didn't you see that bright light?" she asked.
              "I saw lights beaming from the machine ... I was in it quite a while," Marcos said. "It looked ... all different colors, like a rainbow. And all of you looked ... frozen."
              "Differential time perception; he saw the light's spectrum," the tall scientist said.
              "Don't confuse him," the woman scientist said. "Your name is Marcos, isn't it? Marcos, tell us everything."
              "The forklift flipped," Marcos said, looking over to where Carlos was standing beside the ruined forklift, laying on its side. "Lights of every color blinded me. Then ... you all stopped moving, but you were ... fuzzy, like separate frames of movie film. At first, everything was quiet, and then louder than a death-metal concert; I squeezed my ears ... was almost deafened. You still sound like you're underwater. I tried to move, but ... it was like the colored lights were trapping me. When I finally pulled free, everything flipped back to normal."
              "Did you see ... multiple frames of yourself?" she asked.
              "Yes," Marcos said. "What does it mean?"
              "Proof of the omniverse ...!" the other scientist exclaimed.
              The woman scientist frowned at him, then turned back to Marcos.
              "Marcos, I'm going to touch you ... is that okay?" she asked.
              Marcos nodded, and she reached out a finger and touched his silvery arm below the edge of his equally-transformed t-shirt; her hand reflected upon his bulging bicep. She fingered the edge of his short sleeve, as silvery as he, and twisted a fold as if testing it. Then she reached up to his face and seemed to pluck something from his cheek. She examined it.
              "A rock chip," she said, holding it out. "Non-metallic."
              "How ...?" the scientist asked.
              She reached into her hair and pulled out a small, plastic hair pin. She pressed it against Marcos' chest. It stuck to his t-shirt.
              "Magnetism ...?" the other scientist asked.
              "No," she looked astounded. "Gravity."
              "Gravity ...?" another scientist asked.
              "Physical density ... he's a multi-dimensional man ... merged into one ... so dense that he projects his own gravitational field."
              Marcos recoiled, yet she reached out and took his arm.
              "Please, Marcos, you've got to hear me out," she pleaded. "This wasn't our idea, and we'll do all we can to help you. Stay calm, and I'll explain what I think happened in plain, simple terms."
              Marcos nodded.
              "There are several scientific theories that, in other, alternate universes, anything that can happen, does. In this universe, you walk down the street and turn left; in some other universe, you walk down the street and turn right. Our machine was designed to detect those dimensions, those alternate timelines, at a microscopic level. The accident seems to have placed you in a ... multi-dimensional state, where you could see those multiple timelines, and you were a part of them, you ... and all the other ... alternate ‘you's. Somehow, multiple versions of you ... merged. That's why you're so shiny; you're so dense that light bounces back. We see reflections of our photons, not variations of your natural color."
              "Can you ... fix me?" Marcos asked.
              "I don't know," she said. "It may wear off. We need to find a way to undo it. To do that, we need to study you ... figure out exactly what happened."
              "He's militar property ...!" the officer shouted, still kneeling and grasping his broken arm.
              The woman scientist reached out and took the bent, broken pistol fragments from Marcos' hands, and then held them out to the officer.
              "Here," she said. "Arrest him ... if you can."
              The officer took the fragments of his gun in his one good hand, examining them as if testing to see if their damage was real.
              She turned to Marcos' father.
              "Mr. Machado, I'm sorry to have troubled you, but we need our things back," she said. "If you could have your sons return our boxes and things ...? You will be paid."
              "But ... Marcos ...?" he stammered.
              "We'll do all we can," she promised, and she glanced at Carlos. "Young man, are you hurt?"
              "Me ...?" Carlos asked, glancing at the overturned forklift. "No ... I don't think so."
              "Let's see what else Marcos can do," she said. "Marcos, pick up that forklift ... and stand it back up."
              "That weighs a metric ton ...!" Carlos argued.
              "Marcos looks pretty strong," she said. "Alone, he might have trouble lifting it, but Marcos isn't alone. He's got many, perhaps a dozen copies of himself ... inside one body. A dozen Marcos' could lift that forklift."
              Marcos glanced at his father, who nodded. Marcos walked; he felt strange, as if he ... were floating, yet heavy at the same time. He reached the fallen forklift, grabbed it by its protective safety cage, and lifted it with ease.
              Carlos jumped back as Marcos gently lowered the heavy forklift back onto all four wheels.
              "Thank you, Marcos," she said. "Now, come look at this. This steel fork arm is bent. Can you straighten it?"
              Marcos looked at it: two centimeters of solid steel. He couldn't possibly bend it, yet he grabbed both ends and tried. However, after several moments of grunting and straining, nothing happened.
              "That's fine, Marcos," she said. "Don't hurt yourself. If you had bent it, we'd just have to find something stronger, something you couldn't bend, to test what your limits are."
              She looked at the broken fragments of their fallen multi-dimensional detector, then turned to another scientist.
              "Lucas, we need to collect these pieces, rebuild right away," she said.
              "We'll never rebuild in time," Lucas said. "He won't live ..."
              "What ...?" Marcos shouted.
              "If he's multi-dense, how can he breathe?" Lucas asked. "Will he be able to eat ... or drink ...?"
              "He seems to be breathing fine," she said. "He's not changed, just ... molecularly packed. He merged with exact replicas of himself. Now pick up those pieces ... carefully. We'll need them."
              She turned to face his family.
              "Mr. Machado, we're going to have to keep your son here ... for his sake ... until we can discover what happened ... and hopefully reverse these effects," she said. "You can visit him anytime you want ... even stay overnight, if you can."
              "I give the orders here!" the wounded officer snapped.
              "I'm giving the orders ...!" she snapped back at the officer. "And you will obey my orders, or my next test will be to see how high Marcos can throw you."
              The officer scowled and looked at his few subordinates, none of whom looked brave or eager to challenge Marcos' new form. The officer struggled to his feet, cradling his broken arm, and stormed off, deeper into the building.
              "Marcos, let's begin properly," she said. "I'm Dr. Fernanda Maria Figueiredo, but you can just call me Dr. Fernanda. I'm going to help you all I can. I appreciate your cooperation ... no one is going to force you ...," she glanced at the soldiers, "... well, no scientist is going to force you ... to do anything."
              "I'll do whatever it takes," Marcos said. "I've got a competition in three weeks ..."
              "Bodybuilding ...?" Dr. Fernanda asked, and he nodded. "We'll do our best. Will you let us try?"
              Marcos looked at his shiny hands again, and shrugged; what else could he do ...? He knew nothing about real science. Helpless, he scowled harshly.
              After everything else in his life that had gone wrong, why did this have to happen ...?