At seven feet tall and a thousand pounds, entrances to most dwellings are a problem for Hulk, with the notable exception of bay doors. He makes the effort when the mood strikes him, stooping, bending, contorting, shimmying. With his umbrella policy patience isn’t necessarily required of him as long as he can live with the escalating premium. What impatience looks like: steel or wood doors torn from their hinges, tossed aside like sheets of cardboard, plowed-through door frames, shoulder-contoured sections of missing wall, scattered glass.
Hulk isn’t happy with his bank when they EFT funds from his account to cover damages from a previous visit. For how much they assess his account for he’s paid up for future demolition. He doesn’t find out until he’s at the branch ordering more checks and withdrawing some spending money. With his bratwurst fingers he and cards aren’t simpatico. The teller nervously rifling her keyboard as he waits on her, mad plastic scramble, pause, mad plastic scramble, circular mouse glide, mouse click, mouse glide, mouse click, mad plastic scramble, mouse glide, mouse click, mouse click, mouse click, mad plastic scramble, mouse glide, mouse click. He’s huge, and gruff, none of the usual spry quips or weather-related banter, Hulk an economist of the language.
In fairness the bank could have notified him. It would have seemed less like they were helping themselves to his funds, as if as stewards of his money the bank is entitled to some of it, or any of it, at their discretion. He has enough of it that they can’t resist, without offering him the opportunity to compare repair estimates.
“Hey Dave, the Hulk’s out here and he’d like a word with you.”
Dave the Branch Manager smiling absurdly, at how emaciated, how atrophied he is by comparison, as he introduces himself to Hulk. Dave apologizing, Hulk absolutely should have been notified, that was an oversight by the bank, Dave politely denying Hulk’s request to transfer the funds back to his account, theoretically, numbers electronically transferred out, numbers transferred back in with a little tenkey action and a couple of mouse clicks.
“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t do that. Even if I wanted to it’s not my call.”
The words hang there echoless and still. People are tuning in, anxious to see how Hulk will react, but he doesn’t, instead lumbering back toward the entrance. Dave following hesitantly, wondering if Hulk is leaving, wishing it would be that easy when it never is. Hulk pauses at the entrance, surveying the fresh damage, more damage he’ll be EFTed for, a twisted metal doorframe, shards of broken glass, Hulk pointing out that there is no structural damage to the wall, at least not yet. Though he refers to himself in the third person and speaks monosyllabically, eschewing adjectives or prepositions, disdaining conjunctions, he has Dr. Banner’s nuclear physicist brain.
If this isn’t enough to sway Dave, Hulk gives him something else to consider.
“Hulk could make big stink.”
Sure, he can. Hulk the celebrity, a case to be made for the too-small twin doors as discriminatory toward people of stature. There has to be an attorney out there ready to take up the cause, soliciting other Americans of stature to join a class action suit with Hulk as high-profile fellow plaintiff.
Hulk isn’t just another customer, Hulk is one the bank’s highest net-worth depositors, with his paid appearances at poker runs and ultimate fights and MMA main events, tractor pulls, endorsements, royalties from sales of Hulk-trademarked paraphernalia like beach towels, Christmas cards with Hulk depicted in Santa regalia, Hasbro Marvel the Incredible Hulk Talking Smash Bash Fists™, Hulk hands beer and soda koozies.
“Like I said, not my call, but let me see what I can do.”
Dave knows if he promises to see what he can do he’s committed to doing something as far as the customer is concerned, and it gets worse if he sees what he can do and it turns out he can’t do anything. Consulting his boss Lisa the District Manager seems prudent, Lisa as cover, let Lisa make the call, but then he picks up the phone and knows what call she’ll make, and who she’ll let deliver the bad news.
Out in the lobby, on opposing sides of a desk too out in the open, the branch mortgage specialist attempting to close a loan, the customer sitting back, arms folded.
“If you can’t tell me what the work gap fee is for, forget it. Seems kind of outrageous that you don’t even know what you’re charging me for?”
“I understand, sir, I wish I could tell you. Our underwriters set up the closing costs.”
“You represent the bank and the bank decides what the closing costs are, so the way I see it, you’re the bank.”
“We’re talking about a hundred and twenty-five dollars.”
They’re both looking down at a long list of closing costs and avoiding eye contact, the branch mortgage specialist pointing to the hundred twenty-five with his bank-logo pen.
“If you think that’s an insignificant amount, then waive it.”
“I meant in relation to what you’ll save in interest with the lower rate we’re, I’m, offering you, or…”
Waiting on Dave with nothing better to do, Hulk wanders over and stands facing them. The negotiation pauses, both men turning to him, looking up at him from their sitting positions. Ordinarily they might wonder if they can help him, implying that he’s inserting himself into their private business. It’s the ever-loving Hulk, and Jesus he’s big.
Dave knows Lisa the DM will say, “DO NOT put the funds back in his account.” Hulk could react one of several ways and none of them good. Taking out the entire wall around the entranceway, charges of discrimination/negative media attention, taking his high net worth to a competitor, tanking the branch’s P & L and costing everyone their bonus, his included. If they don’t let him go for this happening on his watch. Always that threat, the unspoken possibility force-placing any directive no matter how poorly conceived. Or for failing to meet assigned quotas for opening new checking or savings accounts or CD’s, more every month, more this month than last, more next month than this.
“From now on, Dr. Ban…Hulk…I’d ask you to please approach at the drive-thru window rather than coming inside, that way we can avoid this situation,” his voice tailing away. Telling Hulk to do anything is absurd. Hulk ignores him, waiting on the teller to print a slip showing the credit back to his account, the teller fat-fingering the keyboard, oops, backspace, retype, “here you are sir,” the receipt little in his hand.
Hulk ambles back through the open entranceway, squeezing daylight into corners as he passes through, ducking slightly, out into the parking lot and into a deep knee bend, disappearing into the air like he’s falling up. Inadvertently crumpling a section of parking lot where he pushes off, depressing the pavement and leaving a pothole that would bend any axle or snap any CV joint, ruin any expensive rim, flatten a tire, initiate a small claims action if not immediately repaired.
Dave sighing as he surveys the damage, wondering what he’ll put for his reason for leaving this position on the application for his next one. They always want to know.
***
As much as he does it, it never gets old, launching himself, quickly being somewhere else from where he just was, sometimes as far as a zip code away. In much the same way as firing a bullet up into the sky, knowing the bullet will land, but where? As inconsequential as where the bullet might land, where Hulk might land surely isn’t. At half a ton, anywhere Hulk lands leaves a mark. Dr. Banner calculates Hulk’s velocity at over a thousand pounds freefalling from an estimated height of three thousand feet, and the PSI when he lands is off the charts, registering at the lowest end of a base-10 logarithmic scale.
Hulk knows where the parks are or open spaces in the suburbs and outlying areas, cabbage fields, manicured lawns surrounding office buildings, golf courses, and he catapults himself to these places, best estimate. To minimize the potential damage, because wherever he lands is wherever he lands, no amount of flailing mid-air will change that.
When he lands on soft ground, he leaves footwells like tree stumps ripped from the earth, more than once on a golf course. The grounds crews opting to create bunkers wherever the Hulk may have landed, digging out the impacted grounds and filling in the excavated area with fine-grain sand. Quite the spectacle for golfers, green speck in the sky growing quickly in size, landing with enough impact to deliver a tremor throughout most of the eighteen-hole course, leaves trembling like astonished murmurs, water hazards rippling like visible echoes from his abrupt arrival.
He lands in an outlying area near the freeway and runs south on the freeway into the downtown area, crumpling the freeway like a mishandled bag of chips spilled in his wake. It takes forever to fix the freeway, an important artery to the downtown business district, traffic snarls at all hours and particularly suffocating during rush hour.
Freakin’ Hulk.
***
Sports talkers fixated on Hulk for a time, which is to say he became their obsession, which is to say from early in the morning to late into the evening, Hulk’s prospects as a professional football player were conjectured, kneaded, pulverized, tenderized, beating the proverbial dead horse with nary a whinny, reconvening the following day. To intrigued and fascinated conjecturers the subject of Hulk ranging from “good stuff” to “great stuff,” “compelling stuff,” “outstanding stuff,” even “amazing stuff,” any kind of stuff putting a capper on the segment before going to commercial. Once Hulk became part of the daily sports lexicon, he was hard to quit, a nagging, ringing addiction, Hulk the equivalent of two or three packs of cigarettes a day, the subject of Hulk chain-smoked from before sunup to past sundown on sports talk media.
A rumor began, likely started by a producer of one of these sports talk programs, out of fresh material, in the dead zone following the previous scandal, nothing probative on the horizon, middle of the baseball season, past the conclusions of the NBA and NHL seasons and NFL draft. Everyone in agreement Hulk would make an amazing football player, the conjecture centering on where Hulk would play. Quarterback was out of the question, or was it? He might have a cannon for an arm, and he could nullify any team’s pass rush. Imagine, you might not even need blockers with Hulk at QB, line up with a center and nine receivers. Why not Hulk as fullback while you’re at it, who couldn’t he block? Opening holes for the team’s tailback to run through, but then why not give Hulk the rock and let him run over anyone foolish enough to get in his way? Or Hulk on defense, how about at nose tackle? Forget about running the football against any defense with Hulk anchoring the nose. And how much salary would he command? Imagine the signing bonus. The guaranteed money would make Croesus blush.
Turn on ESPN and it was all Hulk all the time. It got so sports bars began sponsoring drinking games, turn on ESPN and drink whenever they say Hulk, beers served with shot glasses for these occasions, Hulk to thank for brisk bar sales. Hulk also to thank for a summer spike in OWIs.
And how it snowballed from there. Someone in player personnel from one team assuming these sports talkers had gotten the rumor from someone in player personnel from another team, possibly a division rival. The focus turned to which team would take the plunge, NFL insiders probing the front offices of various teams and the Las Vegas Raiders were the consensus best fit. They had ample room under the salary cap, a relatively new media market for the NFL, gambling mecca, holes along their defensive front, no running game to speak of, question marks at quarterback. The rumor propagating like snails in a fish tank, after the requisite no comment from the Raider’s coach, owner and front office, from the general manager and director of pro player personnel on down to the PR flaks. Nobody confirming or denying the rumor, by not denying it confirming it in the minds of many.
Until early on in training camp, a late July morning, the Raiders arranging a scrimmage to see exactly what Hulk could do, how he’d fit in, a closed scrimmage with no media until the Raiders could get a handle on what they were dealing with.
Hulk lined up at nose tackle, Hulk the only player on the field not in helmet and pads. Hulk shirtless and barefoot in stretch pants past the knee like culottes from a big-and-tall men’s store, Hulk like a big green cartoon in the middle of the defensive front. A large man playing with puffy children. Hulk in a three-point stance, the quarterback barking signals, the ball snapped, the center surging into Hulk as though to move him off the line of scrimmage.
With his large hand Hulk grabbing a handful of the center’s jersey and front of his pads, pivoting on his back foot as he tossed the center effortlessly behind him, the 300-pound center a human missile fired diagonally across the field, crashing into several tubs of Gatorade, an explosion, a tsunami of red Gatorade.
A few holy shits, a Jesus, several players doubled over, gasping, unable to inhale from laughing so hard. They would recall the sound of the big center projectile whistling by, speculating that if he hadn’t been obstructed, he might have broken the sound barrier. Said one player: “From when he turned and flung him aside, when Hulk released the guy from his hand to when the guy slammed into the Gatorade seemed like it was instantaneous. And we’re talking about a distance of 30 to 40 yards and a 300-pound offensive lineman.”
Before he could say it was fun while it lasted it was over, Hulk’s professional football career relegated to a single play in a training camp scrimmage. The NFL needed a legitimate reason why Hulk couldn’t play other than he was too powerful, gamma radiation quickly added to the league’s list of banned substances.
***
There are practicalities he has to consider as Dr. Banner for when he’s Hulk. There’s a flip side to being seven feet tall and weighing half a ton, able to propel himself several miles from a deep knee bend, capable of benching a hundred tons or holding his breath for twelve hours. His motor skills are elephantine, his fingers half as wide as a normal fist, his touch roughshod on anything the least bit frangible. Touch screens aren’t an option.
Dr. Banner designs a voice-activated device for Hulk, where sending a text or responding to a text, or calling anyone or answering a call, is accomplished with a simple, monosyllabic voice command. A speaker-dependent system is what he needs for Hulk, and he needs the local system identification number (SID) from American Cellular to patch into their frequencies with Hulk’s customized device.
Calling technical support, and no one on the front lines knows the SID number, or what a SID number is. Brad (third transfer) is upbeat and seems confident of being able to assist, then puts Dr. Banner on a ‘brief hold.’ Eventually a woman picks up the call, no-nonsense, aggressively questioning him about why he wants the SID number. He can sense her sorting the information he provides to her into buckets of corporate dictum. His explanation isn’t expected, and she doesn’t have a counter argument. She’s been confronted with the unanticipated, something off-script. She becomes less aggressive but steadfastly she’s sorry, they just can’t give out that information.
Anyone at the mobile telephone switching office (MTSO) knows the SID number. The MTSO outposts are operated by switching equipment, circuitry and electricity, with a skeleton crew ensuring everything functions within optimal parameters. Dr. Banner downloads a grid map (he has level 3 security clearances), narrowing down where the MTSO might be based on concentrations of power annotated in red on the grid map. After some twilight reconnaissance by Hulk, he locates the MTSO within a high degree of certainty, an unmarked, newer brick office building with swamp-water tinted windows, within ideal range of a cell tower.
He arrives at the MTSO and circles the building. There isn’t a public entrance. No one in sight behind the tinted windows, some tinted glass doorways on either side of the building off the parking lots, but no way in without a coded card. Or if you’re Hulk, splashing through the outer glass doors, mangling the inner door. Surveying his surroundings he sees no one, only passageways banked by rows of servers and ports and cables and blinking green and red lights.
He turns sideways to move laterally down the nearest passage. He comes to the end of one and hears soft voices, following the sound of them, maneuvering to his left and down the next passageway and the talking has ceased, in a room walled by more servers and no windows, three people turned to him in muted astonishment. Hulk sidles into the room and squares up.
“Hulk need SID number. Or Hulk will smash.”
Not much they can do but give him what he’s after. The MTSO is the nerve center of the cell phone delivery system of this particular hexagonal cell in the honeycomb.
The voice user interface of Hulk’s new device recognizes only Hulk’s voice if Hulk is in a crowd of people, or otherwise surrounded by ancillary noises, the voice user interface ignoring everything except Hulk’s voice. Dr. Banner tweaks the auditory capability of the device so as to have the hearing of an owl.
When his next bill comes a $165 custom equipment surcharge has been added. He calls the 800 number on his bill to question the charge and he’s greeted with “message MD22, welcome to American Cellular. The number you have called is no longer in service. If you feel this message is in error, please contact American Cellular, message MD22.” Um, okay. Sur, doesn’t that mean “on” in French? Is the use of surcharge meant to imply that a custom equipment surcharge is something less substantial than a custom equipment charge?
He doesn’t want an explanation as much as justification, or to hear what the official explanation might be. Presumably he wouldn’t be the first person to ask about surcharges, and there’ll be a scripted response. He could start with tech support. Maybe Brad can help.
***
Regarding his reflection in the mirror, his face sleep-bloated, hair pushed from both sides of his head toward the center and pointed upward like a buzz saw, an inexplicable vertical crease beneath his left cheekbone. It’s first thing in the morning lucidity, unadulterated logic of a refreshed mind, reset-button clarity before the gradual obfuscation, the cognitive erosion of another day.
Hummingbirds are not indigenous to these climes. Their migratory patterns are relatively provincial and they prefer humid subtropical. Not that seeing a hummingbird here is out of the question. It’s the height of summer. Seeing four of them hovering around a red maple tree is strange, nothing flowering there, no nectar to drink. If they were availing themselves of a flower bed, they would be less conspicuous. They look enough like hummingbirds, though their bills are too short and their movements not fluid and herky-jerky.
Dr. Banner downloading the grid map to get the SID number would have garnered notice, a red flag, Hulk capable of breathtaking devastation, whatever his motives might be. The appearance of these hummingbirds is no coincidence. He wonders what they know about what he knows about drones. If they’re insightful, they’ll assume correctly that the answer is plenty, but then they have four hummingbird drones hovering around a red maple and not flowers, betraying their level of competence. He’s aware everything he does is under surveillance and has been, from the days of windowless vans and thumbnail-sized microphones in the receiver of his handset to now, his online activity monitored in and around the various methods of encryption he employs. Something about the drones pisses him off. Maybe it’s the unwarranted suspicion, or that they think he won’t know what they’re doing.
Jade and Daley Hueman are bitmap images watching from behind a window screen, seeing Hulk backpedaling, lurching, dancing to some fractured beat, swatting at, what, huge flies? Giant mosquitoes?
“What on God’s green earth is he doing?”
“What are those?”
“Birds? Hummingbirds looks like.”
“Why is he attacking them?”
“Maybe they’re attacking him.”
“Where’s my camera?”
Hulk wonders why the hummingbird drones don’t fly away under duress. Maybe the protocol for recalling the drones or overriding a command is more bureaucratic than it needs to be, or the program’s too nascent for contingencies. Maybe no one has attacked these drones before so there’s no precedence. It’s an algorithm missing from the program, making these drones better able to think on their feet. Not that they aren’t quick, impressively so. They dodge his slaps deftly, but they don’t fly away; they dart around him like giant bees, but they don’t attack. They’re half ingenious, prototypes, first or second generation. It takes longer than it should. Hulk feels like he’s waving at holograms. The first one rent into semi-intact pieces, the next one ricocheting off his open hand and slamming into the wall of his apartment building, embedded in the aluminum siding. He catches one flush, looks it directly in its peephole, “film this,” crushing it into bits, its guts exploding like pulp from overripe fruit.
***
A summer rainstorm is moving out of the vicinity, the sun breaking back in, illuminating the perfectly curved southern leg of a rainbow, a thick, bright rainbow-colored section bridging precipitous cloud cover and tree line. For another person the rainbow would be epiphany, spiritual rather than meteorological phenomenon, God’s magnificent paintbrush, etc. To him the rainbow is sunlight refracted through water droplets, secondary colors and hues variations of primary colors, manifestations of the base principle, subroutines of the routine.
Wet Hulk soaring upward, a jet stream of spray trailing behind him as he begins to descend past the minor axis. Where H is the apex of the half-ellipse at the height of his leap, descending gradually at first, factoring his propulsion and trajectory, when he arrives at I beyond the rainbow, the steep plunge back to earth, the rainbow a shimmering wall of primary colors until he’s passing through it and absent of color inside the wall of rain. Rain, the X variable, slowing Hulk imperceptibly, weighing him down by parts per billion or micrograms per liter, so where he’s estimating he’ll land isn’t where he does by less than a tenth of a mile, destroying someone’s driveway.
***
A summer evening, still light out, as he pulls in another impromptu garage party going on, if two people, an old boom box and four beach chairs can constitute a party. Only Jade and Daley Hueman and two empty beach chairs, each with a brown beer bottle on the ground beside them. He isn’t all the way out of his car and two children say hi as he’s extricating himself. He says nothing in return, not sure if he’s who they’re addressing. They’re watching him, grinning, one of the little boys with his fingers in his mouth.
Jade and Daley stand when they see him.
“Hi Dr. Banner!”
He waves and they’re fast approaching. He could keep going, they would get the message even before he’s by them, but he slows instead, incapable of such brusqueness, whereas his alter ego would have no problem with it. He isn’t well-suited to apartment living. The communality, the cheap trim and fixtures, entry notices, the property management company forever issuing these, installing energy-efficient bulbs, pest control, assessing the functionality of the smoke detectors, always another reason to enter his dwelling. He’s received enough entry notices that he’s not sure whether to feel violated or promiscuous. Time for him to buy a place, maybe an abandoned store or business he could refurbish, something with a bay door.
Daley’s bursting with something, moving in front of Jade before she can get her hug.
“Did you read it yet?” He turns to Jade, gesturing to Dr. Banner, “the perfect guy to ask,” turning back to Dr. Banner, “who knows more about radiation than this guy?” Grinning, Daley has no lips, teeth that jut and buggy eyes with dark circles like he’s a raging insomniac.
It turns out to be the annual Consumer Confidence Report from the Swollen Meadows Water Trust. Confidence, trust, what any citizen would want in his or her water supply. They’re inside Daley Hueman’s apartment, Daley inviting him to sit down on his black leather sofa, brandishing a beer and the Consumer Confidence Report, the beer as compensation for his expertise. Dr. Banner accepts his consultation fee and sets it on the coffee table, a varnished tree stump under a pane of heavy glass.
He isn’t reading for long when Daley taps the report excitedly from over his shoulder, “arsenic, are you kidding me? Really? There’s arsenic in my drinking water? Every morning when I take a shower, I’m washing myself with arsenic?”
“It says here there are three particles per billion, or in this case micrograms per liter, which is below the maximum permissible contaminant level of ten, which meets federal requirements for safe drinking water.”
“I know Doc, with all respect I can read. But come on. How do they know how much arsenic a person can tolerate? How do they determine what the federal requirements are? Do they have laboratories where they test this on people? A bunch of broke college kids getting paid to ingest arsenic? Come on. They don’t know. How can they?”
Dr. Banner’s smile is ironic, Dr. Banner/Hulk as vindicator of government standards and policies, in the uncustomary position of defending what he’s normally in opposition to or skeptical of. He’s as close as Daley Hueman will get to an expert on the matter, and as far as Daley can tell the difference between him and an EPA scientist is bleary at best, a bleary gestalt of scientific experts withholding information.
“I don’t know a ton about inorganic contaminants.”
“Yeah Daley,” from Jade, “cut the guy some slack.”
“Okay, turn the page.” When Dr. Banner does, “you know something about this,” pause, “radioactive contaminants.” Daley pauses again, waiting for Dr. Banner to get up to speed.
“What does that mean, ‘Gross Alpha, Excl. R & U’?”
“Gross Alpha emitters, emitters of radionuclides.”
Since this tells Daley nothing he tacks to a new heading.
“If I’m reading this right, Doc, the maximum contaminant level is 15 and we’re at 7.5. That sucks. And this is complete BS right here,” he reaches over Dr. Banner again, tapping with emphasis the far right of the table in the report, “Typical Source of Contaminant: Erosion of natural deposits. Huh?”
Dr. Banner, government apologist, smiling broadly by now. Daley may take the smile for condescension.
“Under normal conditions, a large percentage of the radiation you’re exposed to is naturally occurring. Radon gas for example.”
“Okay, then explain R. and U. The one below says Incl. R. and U., which I interpret to mean including R. and U., whatever R. and U. is.”
“Radium and Uranium.”
“Under maximum contaminant level for this it says N/A. N/A, really? Does this mean they don’t know what the maximum contaminant level is? Or there isn’t one?”
“That’s a question for whoever wrote the Consumer Confidence Report, and since no one signed it and it’s not attributed to anyone, I couldn’t tell you who that is. I can tell you that minimal levels of radium in drinking water haven’t been proven to be a health risk.”
“Let me ask you this then, Doc. Let’s say there are large amounts of radium in the drinking water. How would that affect me?”
“Primary bone cancer.”
“Great. So how do they know these unspecified levels don’t cause primary bone cancer? These apartment complexes are transient places. We’ll all move on sooner or later, to bigger and better things, scattered to the wind, except Jade, who’ll live here forever.”
Jade laughs hoarsely.
“Are they going to keep track of us? See which of us develops bone cancer?”
“A little radiation might do you some good, Daley,” from Jade, “look how it’s worked out for Dr. Banner.”
***
PlayStation© updating its Hulk video game, Hulk Force. Various control buttons manipulating PlayStation Hulk into approximating his real-life leaps, punch with his right hand, with his left, kick, run, lift things with both arms, catch an imaginary missile, throw an imaginary missile, head-butt. They’re able to digitally recreate these actions by affixing numerous motion sensors to Hulk’s body, Hulk aping these various actions in the foreground of a green screen. Hulk runs through the aping with expediency, a little too expedient, impatient from standing still as the production assistants attach all the motion sensors to him. He throws a punch, hops straight up in the air about twenty feet, landing with a heavy thud that creates a spider web of cracks in the concrete floor, throws a forearm shiver. When they ask him to repeat these actions he grunts and walks off, pulling free of the sensors like walking though cobwebs in a musty basement. As he’s walking out the studio bay doors, “did we get enough footage?”
“Barely.”
“Should be able to make a go of it, boss.”
His opponent at the highest level in the new Hulk video game is the Kraken. Defeat the Kraken, conquer the level. There is no real-life Kraken for him to oppose, only the multi-tentacled monstrosity forever reaching into his pockets known as modern capitalism.
PlayStation© sends him a complimentary copy of Hulk Force and it sits on a shelf, until an idle Sunday, on a whim Dr. Banner buys a PlayStation and tries it out. It takes time to get comfortable with the controls, to know what each button does and to use it instinctually. When he gets to this point, he realizes seven hours have elapsed. He finds himself knowing what real Hulk would do in each situation, a blip of a realization, Hulk’s natural instincts not translating to the game at all. PlayStation Hulk has restrictions. Or more accurately, the game has semi-complex patterns accounting for how PlayStation Hulk can react.
His favorite level is level three, PlayStation Hulk under attack by MQ-1 Predator Drones. Initially they attack one at a time and are easily repelled, PlayStation Hulk catching a Hellfire missile and sending it back from whence it came, Dr. Banner deriving a certain satisfaction imagining he’s costing the Department of Defense $4 million per drone destroyed. The initial ease of the level is designed to draw him in, to keep him from being discouraged too quickly. Past a certain point Predator Drones attack en masse and are difficult to fend off.
The game doesn’t think, though it’s designed well enough that it seems like it does. The game’s programmers have developed sophisticated patterns of attack and counterattack. There are only two options for success as predetermined by the programmers. As long as he keeps playing, he’ll figure out the pattern. It’s what he does.
***
Dr. Banner is aware he’s a whale to his fanged prick of a business manager, H. H will never have a higher net worth client, and he lives more extravagantly than Dr. Banner, Dr. Banner wondering if he’s paying H too much, half-jokingly, passive-aggressively. H understands, respects, even admires passive-aggressiveness. H is worth it, H with his PhD in the petty and underhanded things people will do to get at Dr. Banner’s various holdings.
Dr. Banner sits across a desk from H as H is talking with an attorney representing the center Hulk dispatched at the Raiders scrimmage, the center in traction for three weeks, with a dislocated hip forced to sit out the entire season.
“Not our concern,” H says into the phone, glancing confidently at Dr. Banner. “Football players get hurt…you should anticipate that…with more guaranteed money…if I was a player I would never hire you or your firm.”
Pause, as the attorney on the other end of the line rebuts.
“Did you read the waiver? The Raiders signed it…again, not our problem…the waiver is ironclad,” pause, H listening, “go ahead, the firm that drew up that document will shred you.”
H grabs a piece of paper from his desk and slides it into a crosscut shredder behind him, holding the phone to the humming grind.
“Like that.”
It was smart, the waiver, the Raiders waiving any recourse against the Hulk or Dr. Banner, waiving recourse on behalf of the organization and any of its employees. H thinks of everything. He might be a rabid attack dog, but he’s Dr. Banner’s rabid attack dog and it’s Dr. Banner’s yard he’s protecting. Dr. Banner privately wishes people like H weren’t necessary, but they are, unfortunately.
“Not our problem,” pause, H listening, “iron clad, my man. It makes no difference if he didn’t sign it, the Raiders did and he’s an employee of the Las Vegas Raiders football organization,” pause, H listening, “then sue the Raiders if you want but this is our last conversation on the matter.”
H hangs up, happy with himself, cocky. Dr. Banner knows this is a prelude to something else, a performance meant to impress or distract, or to lessen the impact of not-so-great news to follow. H could have handled this without Dr. Banner’s involvement. Normally he would have.
“We won’t be hearing from them again.”
“What else is there?”
“Just this. I’m not sure what this is. What are they talking about?”
H tosses an opened envelope on the desk in front of Dr. Banner, from the United States Department of Defense, swallowing hard.
“Chamomile tea?”
There is always the risk of a Hulk tirade if something angers Dr. Banner. A Hulk tirade means H’s expensive office accoutrements are at risk. No doubt they’re insured.
Dr. Banner reads the information and smiles, and he can sense H smiling too, relieved and leaning back in his chair. Dr. Banner says nothing, only smiling, H, not sure what to make of the smile, commenting cavalierly, “that’s a lot of money,” easy for him to say. Dr. Banner could still get angry. Smiles can be hostile.
An invoice for $485,365 addressed to Dr. Bruce Banner from the U.S. Department of Defense, for the destruction of four Nano-Hummingbird Spy Drones, payable upon receipt of the invoice. Failure to remit payment immediately can result in IRS liens on property or other of his financial holdings.
He could complain about the selective memory. When he’d been on contract with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a consultant came his exposure to drone technology, his input into the creation of harvester drones with the ability to detect airborne radiation, used to inspect nuclear facilities for fallout. The harvester drones could see and hear and go places people couldn’t or shouldn’t, but what the harvester drones couldn’t do was detect anything. Dr. Banner’s contribution was the equivalent of developing an olfactory sense in these harvester drones, converting them into mechanized bloodhounds hot on the scent of airborne radiation.
He didn’t collaborate to make money. He collaborated, performing his duties to the utmost of his capabilities, for the protection of humankind. He’d rather have left it at that. Someone is selling the harvester drones to someone else and turning a profit. The regulatory commission may have, and probably has, mandated that any sanctioned nuclear facility must use these harvester drones, so someone is profiting from this idea, an idea that wouldn’t have been possible if not for Dr. Banner’s collaboration.
He could tell H about the harvester drones. H would want to sue for patent infringement or royalties, or both. He’s not sure he’s up to that fight at the moment, the entanglement of it, bureaucratic tedium that will result in meeting in the middle somewhere. The back and forth, posturing, the bluster, where the middle is and whose side the middle is closer to. That’s what they’re counting on, that he doesn’t want the fight. What they’re not counting on is H, his well-compensated Rottweiler.
***
When the non-dairy creamer plant explodes in the Valley Hulk is quickly on scene, walking through a crowd of onlookers on the outskirts, the crowd parting to let him through, comments at his back as he passes:
“I guess it’s time to start drinking my coffee black.”
“I’d say. Imagine what that stuff does to your innards.”
“Look, there’s Hulk.”
“What’s he think he’s gonna do?”
The Valley is a bad place for this explosion and resulting fire, other industrial facilities in proximity, and a developer’s idea of tony, assisted-living apartments that have to be evacuated, a resident expiring from the commotion.
To any of the firefighters or first responders on the scene, no amount of damage from a miscalculated leap can overshadow what they see this day, and they’ll tell anyone who’ll listen. No one sees what the Hulk does beyond the first responders, and the things he does are what make him the ever-loving Hulk. Things he does and does gruffly, that no one else can do, never responding to praise or thanks with anything more than a harrumph, his gruffness taken for modesty, part of the Big Lug mystique.
He controls the fire as it tears across a dry plain of neck-high weeds toward an acetylene production facility, this done by hopping around the front perimeter of the fire and blowing it to a standstill, Hulk able to generate 30-40 MPH gusts of breath, holding up the blaze as firefighters attack it from both flanks until it’s subdued.
He lifts a collapsed cinderblock wall, still relatively intact, a wall only a crane could lift, beneath which are several people badly injured though still alive, Hulk carrying each of them to safety. He works through the rubble, casting aside blocks and girders and other decimated sections of the plant until he finds each of the fourteen people killed in the explosion, carrying out their corpses, holding the corpses limply in his arms, almost reverently, carrying them out one at a time.
The shame of it is no one gets pictures or footage. Of Hulk facing down the angry blaze, hopping frenetically from spot to spot wherever the fire attempts further incursions across the field of weeds. Of Hulk lifting the huge wall, maneuvering beneath it, balancing it on his hands, walking with it until he’s clear of the site, negotiating the imbalance of rubble from the decimated plant, uneven mounds of cinder blocks and steel girders with the huge wall aloft, tossing it out of the way. Of sooty Hulk carrying out the injured, of Hulk carrying the corpses, of Hulk going back into the mess time after time until no one alive or dead is left behind. The firefighters and first responders have their stories, and great stories they are. How legends are made.
For the media, the Hulk angle doesn’t have legs. It’s the patchwork, decades-old plant standards, regulations of volatile chemicals that don’t stack up against those of other industrialized nations, lax inspections, damning testimony in a Senate chamber about how this could have happened in the first place.