"The initial problems we were having can all be explained by dirty firmware"

"Firmware? He's a human being, mate, not a bloody-"

"Listen to what I'm saying not the words I'm using. I'm telling you there was a problem with something like software loaded on his brain."

"I'm doing my best to keep an open mind."

"That's more like it, OK, so you know how Yoda said Luke was too old-"

"I'm doing my extra best to keep an open mind." Garry managed through gritted teeth, these fucking lab techs were all nerds and this one was the worst with that stupid goddamned grin.

"Fair enough, alright, hasn't it ever bothered you that superhero movies are shit?"

"Yes." Garry was forced to admit.

"Because these guys get their new powers and can instantly use them, I think the best example for today is to think about the fantastic four movie on the bridge."

"When Jessica..."

"Alba?"

"Whatever, Jessica Rabbit gets naked and goes invisible?" Garry queried, his hands found their way to his pockets and he was slowly hunching forward, as if bracing himself against the approaching wave of nerd talk.

"Right, that's the scene, so you've got Jessica Rabbit and a guy who was just barely turned into a rock monster"

"because of the space radiation?"

"whatever, what I'm saying is he had no concept of what being a rock monster was, he had no experience, he'd been training his body and mind symbiotically his entire life to live as meat, but suddenly he's rock."

"Well, not suddenly, there was spaceshi-"

"shut the fuck up for a second, the point is, what does this guy with a human brain do when a firetruck is piling at him way too goddamned fast?"

"We've reached the end of my fantastic four knowledge." Garry snapped, who did this flunky think he was to tell his boss to shut the fuck up?

"that's fair, but hear me out. He totally lowers his shoulder and checks this truck, now how the fuck would he be able to balance that weight, to tip those forces and make sure he struck that thing exactly correctly? How does he stop himself from shitting pebbles and jumping out of the way, the exact way his instinct would demand?"

"It's a fucking movie-"

"But you see the problem! We put Steven in that thing and unlocked the GFA-6Y-69A compound to see if it would work and it-"

"it failed miserably, he's in a coma."

"but what if it didn't fail?"

The blank look was more than enough to inform Aaron that he had stretched his patient's patience a little too much.

"Watch this." He said, smiling.

Reaching into the lunchbox on his lab table, Aaron removed a silvery pop can and cracked it open. He'd grabbed it quickly and a little foam had escaped. balancing it in a curiously inept throwing motion, he chucked the can toward the darkened corner of the lab. Garry watched it spin in a lazy flat arc, foaming brown liquid spreading into an expanding halo of mess that would have to be cleaned up very soon. A hideously high-speed noise assaulted his ears. He processed a blurry image of brown and then blinked hard trying to calculate how a can of diet coke came to be sitting completely still on the counter foaming like a science fair volcano without another drop of liquid in sight.

As his eyes adjusted he saw it, a small brown-grey sloth sitting on the floor watching the can foam and making a softly repeating grunting sound. Garry became vaguely aware of his lab tech holding him upright by the arm, it took him a moment to collect his own knees and stand again.

"That's what I meant overclocked" Aaron said behind an audible grin.

"overclocked?"

"basically,see the serum simply-"

"without authorization?" Garry barked, The small grey brown blur was suddenly gone and he lowered his tone considerably "What the hell do you mean you 'overclocked a sloth?'"

"pretty cool, huh?"

"That was?" Garry peered around the lab, looking for the test subject.

"Yeah, that was wolverine."

"I thought you said she was a slo-"

"See I have another theory about this, since they have such long razor sharp claws I think that they never got the shortcutting we did, we're all soft and squishy and we don't have to be as careful around ourselves or our young, they have to pay distinct attention to everything they do, all day long. Deliberate."

"Wait, that really was the fucking ..."

Aaron nodded solemnly, a smile cracking his barely washed features. "That's what I mean by dirty firmware, full of shortcuts, we tried to fix it by addressing the compound, but the compound is perfect."

When Garry wouldn't respond, Aaron continued, but more slowly this time, a man who has already won the attention of his target may take his time to make his point clearly, and without concern for interruption.

"It's essentially a primate species, right, just those super claws, little wolverine running around with the adamantium out 24/7, poor little lady has to really watch her shit, all day, and now, she watches it a little faster."

Aaron walked slowly toward the darkened corner of the lab

"She's still the same sweetie at heart, she still likes those banana chips and she still likes to be left alone and in the dark, but she's been ramped up."

He peered cautiously around a desk and then spoke in the lowest register he could muster.

"There she is, sleeping again. Her normal waking day now runs anywhere between 20 and 30 minutes."

Garry peered around the desk at the most ordinary looking sloth in the history of the world curled up on what looked like a cat bed.

"it hasn't even-" he began before being shushed by Aaron's frantic gesturing

"lower register, she hears pretty low anyway but if you keep it down in the bass while she sleeps I think it sounds like the ocean, anyway it won't wake her."

"Alright." Garry grumbled, feeling especially foolish. "I don't get it."

Aaron smiled and passed him the lightly shaken, but almost full can of diet coke that looked like it had been buffed with steel wool, light scratches covered the aluminum surface and it was still cold and angrily fizzing, Garry hefted it, roughly gauging that it was nearly completely full, aside from the foam that had almost ceased. For a moment he stared at it, his mind chewing on the impossibility of its weight given the sheer amount of liquid he's watched fly out of the can into thin air.

"She thinks that's hilarious."

"She, what? she does?" Garry asked, passing the can back.

"That's right man. She told me."

"Garry had bumped into the rack behind him before he realized he was backing away." She told me. She told me. The words kept ringing in his ears. He looked up at a grinning lab tech sipping diet coke and the words fell from his mouth before he realized it was probably a bad idea to admit to noticing, "You're talking awfully fast Aaron."

which was met by nothing but that stupid grin.