Mark Kowalski jogged down the highway away from his house, headed for his favorite alone-time contemplation place: a grassy meadow overlooking the Deschutes River. It was summer, dry and 74 degrees Fahrenheit, and all the plants around him were busily having sex. He could smell the pollen in the air as he ran.
Alone-time was very important to Mark, a serious introvert whose mental energy reserves were quickly depleted by having to interact with other people – especially female people. He knew that being this way didn't bode well for him in any future career, since extroverts seemed to rule the world. He didn't know what he was going to do when he finished high school but he was certain that it wouldn't involve sales, marketing, journalism, politics, or any other career where the need to constantly deal with actual human beings was an imperative.
Mark was neither popular nor unpopular at school. He was the guy that was always kind of there in the background. Not athletic enough for team sports, not smart enough to be a standout nerd, not handsome enough or dangerous enough to be a ladies' man. He did have friends: his best buddy was probably Skane, a second-string linebacker on the high school football team. Skane's influence kept most of the bullies off of Mark's back, for which he was grateful. For whatever reason, Skane insisted on calling him "Marky-Mark" which, after an Internet search, Mark understood to be a reference to Mark Wahlberg's early career in rap and modeling. Marky-Mark had gone on to bigger and better things: fame and fortune as an actor. Mark Kowalski, however, recognized the irony in the nickname, given his skinny body and his difficulty in dealing with others.
When Mark would hang out at football practice, one of Skane's coaches insisted on calling him "Mr. Kowalski". After more Internet research, Mark hoped that the coach meant Clint Eastwood's character in "Gran Torino". Because that would be cool. But one day the coach told him that Mr. Kowalski was a character in a 60's show called "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea". Kind of a red-shirt character, he'd said. Mark never bothered to try and stream the show to find out what kind of character Mr. Kowalski was.
He passed the end of River Woods Drive, his quitting point, and knew that he had run about 4 miles. His doctor had told him that running was good for him, so he did it. He picked his way carefully across the old lava bed until he reached the spot where he could cross the Arnold Canal, then made his way through the trees to the grassy area where he could watch the water while listening to Lava Island Falls. He'd never seen anyone here, no matter the time of day. He reached into his small backpack, pulled out the large beach towel, and spread it carefully on the ground. He shucked off his running clothes and was about to take a quick, cooling dip in the river when his throat closed up.
Mark forced himself to try and breathe slowly and calmly as he rummaged in the backpack for his inhaler. His asthma was always worse in the spring and summer. He squeezed down on the little bottle and felt the healing mist enter his mouth. But when he tried to inhale it, he discovered that his lungs were too constricted to take much in. He could barely catch any breath at all.
"Fuck!" he wheezed. "Fucking asthma!" That sent him into a paroxysm of coughing, which was hell when he could barely inhale. He started to see spots before him, little stars of light, and he realized that he was about to pass out.
"I'm going to die here," he thought. "Just four miles from home. Mom won't know for a long time and when she finds me she'll..."
Shit, he was naked. He couldn't die naked. He reached for his shorts but before he could pull them on, the world went dark.
************
Marky-Mark Kowalski woke up. It took a while to realize where he was, and then a little while longer to remember how he'd gotten there. He rolled over and reached for his inhaler before he realized that he was already breathing normally. More than normally: he was able to take huge, deep breaths. The scent of the pine trees and brush around him were intoxicating. A bright humid ozone scent overlaid it all, and he understood that he was smelling the river. He rolled over on the towel to push himself up and caught sight of his own arm. It was huge. Huge with muscle. He looked down at his body. His chest, what he could see of it, was reminiscent of Schwarzenegger. His abs were flat and hard.
He stood up – easily, like an uncoiling spring. He could tell that he was taller, but not by how much. He looked down at his cock. Shit, still the same old cock. If you pass out and dream that you've woken up as Captain America, shouldn't your cock be huge?
"It will grow soon."
Mark spun around. The woman was watching him with a merry look on her face.
"I was strategic in my approach. The physical infirmities first, then the brain, then the musculature." She consulted the small tablet in her hand. "Now the sexual functions."
Mark looked down. He both felt and saw his cock lengthen and thicken. His balls became larger. His pubic hair disappeared. He looked like a porn star.
"I've never understood why your species has retained its superfluous hair," the woman said as Mark felt the hair under his arms disappear as well.
"Not from my head!" he cried, knowing it was a dream but not wanting to be dream-bald.
Her laugh was like the waterfall that he'd listened to since he'd begun running here: soft, merry, gentle.
"No," she said. "The hair on your head is attractive. I understand this." She looked him up and down.
"Turn around," she said. He did. And after a while she said, "I did good. This is the correct way to say this, yes?"
Mark, who had been shy and modest all his life, turned back around with his hands covering his erection.
"Why are you holding yourself?" she said.
"I'm not holding myself. I'm covering myself."
"Why?"
"For modesty's sake."
Her laugh once again moved him with its beauty.
"Modesty? You have nothing to hide from me. There is nothing that you possibly can hide from me. I am on you and in you, every part of you. Still... move your hands, because I like to look upon you with my senses."
Mark considered his options. He was either unconscious, or he really was Captain America standing in front of Captain America's creator. He dropped his hands.
"Nice," she said. Then she sat down on the towel.
"You probably have questions."
Mark laughed out loud. He couldn't help it.
"A couple," he said. "The first one, you can't answer."
"Please, I will answer any question you have."
"You can't answer it," Mark said, "because it's an existential question and no doubt has a self-referential answer. It's a logic problem."
The woman looked at him. She was stunning, he thought. White-blonde hair, beautiful face, big blue eyes, huge curves and hard nipples hugged by a tight silver jumpsuit. Not the kind of girl he was used to running into in Bend, Oregon.
"You are attempting to determine whether you are still unconscious or you are conscious and experiencing bodily changes that have no discernable proximate cause. Yes?"
"Yes."
"Let me ask you a question, Mark: before now, could you have asked the question that you just asked of me? Could you even have parsed it?"
Mark thought. Existential. Self-referential.
"No," he said.
"If you were unconscious, could you dream such a question?"
"No."
"I have increased your processing power, which was held back by a little biochemical problem. This explains why your cognitive abilities now allow you to make such an inquiry. Your IQ, as it is measured here, is now approximately 240."
Mark thought about that, and random things that he had read over time flashed across his mind.
240.
"I'm a genius now?"
"Among your people, yes."
Mark thought hard about various shit, trying to solve physics problems and prove mathematical theorems. All to no avail.
"You lack only the information that your mind has to process before you can make such deductive and intuitive leaps, Mark." She twirled her hair as she watched him. He guessed that she could tell what he was thinking by his outward appearance: his furrowed brow and genius-like contemplation.
"No, actually, I read your thoughts," she said. "I'm inside you. I'm in your mind, and in your body. Or, parts of me are."
"You're not from around here," Mark said.
The laugh.
"Good deduction. But actually, I kind of am from around here," she said. "I've been here for hundreds of solar years. Waiting. Waiting for you."
Mark stood up and walked towards the river.
"I needed someone I could fully mold, Mark. Someone who, no offense, was starting as a less than perfect physical and mental example of the human species – someone who would consider the changes I was making in his body as a gift."
"You could have asked," Mark said. As he flexed his muscles he recognized the truth in her words but he felt that some show of truculence was required, if only to put her in her place.
"You were dying, Mark. Already unconscious when I got to you. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to change you fast enough to prevent hypoxia."
There's that, Mark thought. He remembered blacking out after trying the useless inhaler.
Two little girls rounded the bend of the canal and headed their way. Mark again tried to cover his genitals.
"They will neither see us nor hear us, Mark," the woman said. And it was true: the girls walked right by Mark's naked body without even glancing at him.
"How did you do that?"
"I will teach you."
