Acid Man
by Steve Goble 

 

 

 

Part of him wanted to just let the goddamned asteroid obliterate Earth.

No one back there cared about him, or even knew he was drifting through space on an intercept course. Back there, he was an urban legend, nothing but myth. A scientist turned into a living, bright-red chemical stew? Comic book stuff.

Ooze, the newspapers called him. The Red Blob, newscasters said, casting him in with Sasquatch and Nessie. Acid Man.

 His attempts to communicate his remaining humanity had been futile; he could not speak without lungs and larynx. He could mimic human form, but people simply screamed and fled the crimson apparition. He tried mounting a brief Web campaign, but no one believed he was really Ooze. Cameras lied, special effects were blamed. All he got was more tabloid headlines, more late-night jokes.

In the end, he found it simplest to just dissipate into a scarlet mist and hide in shadows and sewers, observing the world but not truly living in it.

And now he was going to save it.

The massive chunk of frozen rock sped toward Earth. Politicians back there spoke boldly of rockets and missiles, but anyone with sense could see that was just talk.  There was nothing anyone could do, and the thing was going to hit and everything would end. Period.

Unless Ooze could get to the thing in time. He had departed months ago, forming himself into a sail, riding the solar wind. He had no need of air or food, and he could generate his own heat. For awhile, he'd even enjoyed the quiet ride, making his plan, grappling with the logistics and timing of it.

He would drape himself over the asteroid, seep deep into its crannies, melt the ice that held it together. He would turn the giant into as many smaller meteors as he could, in hopes that some pieces would miss Earth, while others would burn up in the atmosphere. The entire mass, striking air at once, would create a nearly nuclear impact. No matter what he did, smaller masses would slice through the sky and hit the planet – but humanity would survive those.

Maybe. Probably.

His course fully formed, now he had time to think of little but this fool's errand. He'd figured out how he would do it – but not why.

He could turn aside, and doom the humanity that had rejected him. He could just drift in space, no more alone here than he was on Earth. No one would miss him, and those he would miss did not recognize him as the man they once knew. He had lost them already.

He watched the approaching yellow dot grow brighter and brighter, and deep inside he knew he would continue. He would wrestle with the hurtling behemoth, melt it, boil it. His own being would dissolve, as his living acid corroded the metal and bubbled the ice. He did not expect to survive. 

He could not cry, but he wanted to. But eventually, anger and self-pity evaporated as resolve grew. This course was the only one he could possibly take, and he knew he would see it through.

Because he was human, damn it.