Gene

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer

He was the result of a human experiment of gigantic proportions. Why had they done it? Because they could, the way their ancestors had once bred dogs into all shapes and sizes, these scientists of the new grand era tweaked and fiddled at the molecular level, splicing and manipulating genes to their satisfaction.

In a sort of sick and twisted pun they had named him “Gene” at birth. He now resented it with a passion. Their tampering, which had started over a hundred years ago, was the result of the now brooding solitary figured seated beneath the starry night sky, high on a grassy hill overlooking the town below.

He reflected over it all. His great grandparents had been chosen for their size. She had been over six feet and he nearly seven. They were one of dozens of freakishly large couples brought into the program from all around the world; brought in and “tampered” with, just so a handful of so-called brainiacs could sit around and titter like school boys as they watched their devilish experiment unfold.

But of that original group, nobody could argue that the first babies hadn’t been amazing. His own grandfather had been one of the biggest, over twenty pounds. The scientists studied them all as they developed throughout their childhoods. And the world applauded as that first generation quickly sprouted to unbelievable proportions.

Gene’s grandfather had smashed an age-old record as he surpassed nine feet tall at just fifteen. But he wasn’t finished there. He topped out at eleven-foot-six and, at his peak, weighed over nine hundred pounds. The growth accelerations were beyond any of the scientists’ wildest dreams. But did they hesitate in the name of safety or humanity? No of course they did not. They wanted to push this experiment as far as they could. And now they had succeeded in doing so.

The giant women from that first generation, who averaged seven-feet-six and about four hundred pounds apiece, the ones that could conceive anyway, (less than half could) still had many difficulties birthing the thirty-plus pound babies of the second generation.

Gene’s father was another record breaker. By the time of his death at forty-six he was a sixteen-foot-tall nineteen-hundred-pound wonder. He and his people were impressive to the rest of the world to say the least, but unfortunately they were not very long-lived. Suffering a massive heart attack at such a seemingly young age, he had still outlasted over half of his schoolmates.

But what had really killed the experiment in the end was that almost none of the second generation had been able to conceive. Gene was one of only three born. The other two had succumbed before reaching adulthood. At twenty-two, he was old, and the last of the failed third and final generation.

He sat there on the hill with his knees drawn up, the largest man to have ever lived. Gene the giant weighed nearly four thousand pounds and stood twenty-one feet and nine inches tall. He wore special clothes manufactured by the government, and lived in a converted airplane hanger. Gene had no one else he could relate to and was glad for it. He wished this desolate life upon no other person.

Then suddenly an old lingering chest pain flared up, and his pumpkin-sized heart convulsed once, and then stuttered out its final exhausted beat. He simply let go his knees and fell backward. And as a spreading warmth washed over him, he thumped down mightily onto the grassy meadow and looked up at the stars, happy at long last.