Eli Rothberg had, as a child and like many other children, read comic books. He had wondered and marveled at how near fatal radioactive or chemical accidents had endowed mere mortals with superhuman, even sometimes deity like abilities.

Eli Rothberg, as a child, like many other children, grew up. And like many other children, his memories of reading comic books had faded and ebbed with his age. But oddly enough as his youth began to leave him and the duties and obligations of maturity had taken their toll on him, Eli had never completely forgotten those lazy afternoons, his collection of comics spread out around him and a friend. He and this friend would spend the whole day reading and discussing the comics, trying to reason and rationalize with as much philosophy and experience they had accrued in their ten years of life.

They would talk about which hero could beat the other, or how these two would, and should work together to beat a greater enemy. To them, these heroes were no more fictional then their parents. They were more like neighbors, whose homes happened to be within the pages of a comic book stacked in a pile in a corner of their respective closets.

Eli lost touch with the friend as time went on and as children tended to every now and again. But as the days passed and Eli's interests ran away from the mythical pages of costumed super mortals, he never truly left it. The stories that etched themselves in a special way within Eli's mind however, were the stories of deep space. Not necessarily deep space adventure (although he had liked those too), but the stories of the super creatures who, either by choice or by circumstance, travelled the vast reaches of space, alone or with help, it didn't matter. Eli would admit though, that in some of his lonelier times in school he would just imagine being alone in space, watching the planet down from on high like a potential Lord, apathetic of his possible fiefdom.

Eli's parents grew somewhat concerned about Eli's behavior, attempting to increase his social interactions with people of his own planet. He made a few friends here and there, but nothing substantial enough to keep him out of his own thoughts. Eli rarely showed any outward signs of aggression even when struck or bullied, so his parents were more or less content to leave Eli be and just pray that his blossoming would be of a later and grander kind.

But Eli did not really change; at least nothing noticeable until the cancer was diagnosed.

His parents wept as his friends raged. Eli though, was barely stirred. He simply latched on to the reasoning the doctor gave to the cancer and repeated it, practically as dogma.

'It's the result of faulty genetics, one in a million chance. Practically impossible really,'� the Doctor said, as Eli did his best to visualize him as a high priest about to sacrifice some unlucky virgin before the masked vigilante stepped in.

'My genes, they're screwed up? Is that it?'� Eli would ask the Doctor. His aged parents would do their best to mask their shock, try to look to Eli as they felt strong parents should. Whether or not Eli could see through the façade was irrelevant, he just had to know they were trying to lie to him.

'Of course not Mister Rothberg, you have nothing to be ashamed or sorry about- 'The Doctor said.

'Sorry?'� Eli questioned, wondering if through some action of his own he somehow brought on the genetic disorder. 'I don't think I said I was sor-'

'Oh Eli,'� Eli's mother would suddenly start crying, cutting him off. Momentarily perturbed at this, Eli, with a silent breath, watch his friends and family began to discuss and debate his future.

'The treatment will be quite intensive; I've gone through our options and found that chemo is the very least we can do,'� the Doctor said. Eli could practically predict, almost as a director of a play, how his family and loved ones would react. The patient could only drown out the noise around him by force of will.

'Who are these people?'� Eli felt the question deep in his thoughts. These were friends who would invite him to parties as an afterthought, relying on his occasional witticism to justify his being there; parents who disapproved of his attitude, his dress, his general state of motion whenever he was sleeping, apparently incorrectly. Eli wondered why they were there, why they were putting on such a show. And he was especially starting to wonder why the Doctor took such interest in the impossibility of his condition.

'The chances are that small, really they are!'� the Doctor would repeatedly say to any and all who would listen. That was the pattern every day Eli was in the hospital. Morning; he would be looked over for the day and served breakfast and told how rare his disorder was, afternoon; his parents would weep over him while wondering why he had yet to find a girl, let alone propose to her, evening; he would be told again the odds to the tenth of how much of a chance the disease had for being spotted let alone being diagnosed by the same Doctor, and finally to cap off the night a friend or two, from his job or otherwise, sometimes both, sometimes neither, would try to talk to him but usually end up just reading a magazine as Eli feigned sleep.

The Doctor, a frazzled haired man who reminded Eli of several mad scientist characters that sometimes confronted the hero from a top a massive space station in his comics, spoke to him in a tone reminiscent of his boss. Demanding but not offensive, reflective of Eli, the boss didn't ask much of Eli and in return he did little. Stamping papers, placing his signature here and there on this report and that, Eli would, at various times during the day, stare at the white pages that constituted his bread and butter and imagined the black numbers and letters in a giant swirl, spinning and twirling until finally the ebony tornado spilled into the gray skies of his mind, coloring the stars and creating tiers of galaxies in which his imagination could wander.

'Mister Rothberg, Mister Rothberg?'� murmured the morning Nurse. Eli was stirred from his stupor. Not asleep, he had been caught staring out his nearby hospital window, watching the sun slowly rise from the misty kingdom of pink and crimson skies around it.

'Y-yes?'� he responded, embarrassed and somehow feeling as if he had been intruded upon his own loneliness.

'It's time for you to see the Doctor,'�

'Doctor, which Doctor?'� Eli asked, any nervousness at being stirred from his stupor burned and buried by the apathy that came so naturally to him at this point in his life.

'Doctor Washington of course; your personal doctor,'� the Nurse said with the barest hints of a smile. Eli suspected that this blip of happiness came from her knowledge of her assumed authority over him, akin to a criminal over a victim, or a super villainess over her henchman.

Eli was carried and dropped into his wheel chair by the two orderlies, whose names he could never quite remember; in hi s mind he named them Rick and Trick. After this and a light breakfast of tang and day old hash, Eli was carted like extra groceries down the long hallway towards the Chemo Therapy treatment ward. Almost absently Eli would think to himself how similar it felt to be wheeled down this hall compared to his walking down the hall to his boss's office. It was a sense of expectation coupled with a light dread sprinkled with a faint pleasing numbness that permeated the entirety of Eli's activities.

'Good to see you up and about Mister Rothberg, are you scared?'� the frazzle haired Doctor Washington asked.

'I'm actually not that scare- '

'Don't be scared Mister Rothberg, this is a well tested well documented procedure that will really help with your disorder'�it has in a full ten percent of the recorded cases, let's see if we can kick that statistic up to eleven, huh?'� Doctor Washington said, idly thumbing his bald spot. Eli acknowledged him with a slight nod, carefully thankful in his mind that his hair had yet to thin and die with age.

And so the chemo therapy began, and the first thing Eli lost was his hair.

It had been painful but Eli didn't mind the aching so much as the level of noise he had to deal with, and was expected to generate. The people, his friends and family, cried harder and raged louder at what they perceived to be a sour predicament for their favorite little victim. For Eli, all he wanted to do was rest, to just be left alone, but this was not acceptable. The dying need an entourage otherwise what's the point?

That had been the first month; the chemo therapy was done every other day, and whatever bodily part or function that could fall off of Eli, did. He had become a husk, a man more closely related to a Mister Potato Head in appearance and ambition than any sort of vertical walking ape. And still; all Eli wanted to do was rest, be left alone, and possibly ask for some reading material to while away the hours. He had lately been yearning for the adventures of costumed super beings and deep space adventures, but knew that that would not be an age or situationally appropriate thing to do.

Eli had begun to first notice his own disappearance on a sunny Friday. One of those Fridays that as a child you would cherish as being so flirtingly close to summer as to make your weekends all the sweeter. Though he was no Doctor, Eli was sure something was a bit off when he noticed his foot had popped off of his ankle. 'Popped'� being used literally here as the sound quite literally drew Eli out of one of his staring stupors, after the fact, Eli looked out over the edge of his hospital bed and found staring back at him, one yellowish and bare foot. Opening his mouth for an utterance, Eli had no idea how to verbalize what had just happened. As it turns out he didn't really have to as one of the nurses chose that particular moment to give Eli his mail. One screaming fit and religion orientated crisis of identity later, the nurse reported to Doctor Washington.

'Amazing, do you understand just what this means Mister Rothberg? This is a new discovery, a brand new find, there's nothing like it in the rest of medical history!'� Doctor Washington proclaimed, practically jumping up and down right there on Eli's bed.

'It means I'm falling apart,'� Eli said to the Doctor.

'Yes, but think of all who will benefit from this,'� Doctor Washington said, yelling at the nurse to go do his job while he stood there proclaiming.

Eli didn't bother asking whether or not he would be included in that group; he just simply nodded as he felt the rest of his leg begin to loosen.

It was only a few days later that Eli's body began to stabilize. Having lost both of his legs and fifty percent of both of his arms, he was laying down, almost nearly content, as a nigh limbless vegetable in a hospital bed with a neck that was starting to feel less like bone and more like melted taffy.

He had to entertain conversations with his friends and family concerning his condition. Eli would tell them what the Doctor would tell him, minus of course, the significant enthusiasm. Having to repeat this story several times for the different shifts of people visiting him, Eli would try to extend the story with each telling, hoping against hope that the telling of the tale would exhaust the audience to the point of leaving Eli alone.

In his moments when he actually was alone, Eli would ponder why he desired the solitude so much. Because when he actually was alone he didn't feel any satisfaction, at least any noticeable amount that should have come from accomplishing some kind of goal; he was tired and couldn't sleep, hungry but he couldn't eat. All in all, he was content but dissatisfied.

And then the rest of his arms fell off.
It was an odd feeling, having a body that was slowly falling apart. Eli felt no pain though, whether it was because of the drugs in his veins or the thoughts in his head or some combination thereof, he was simply mildly inconvenienced that he now had to find new and interesting ways to relieve himself.

Now more or less a bony sack with a growth called a neck and a visage called a face, Eli now had to put up with the weeping and the wailing of his parents brought up to a whole new level. All the while Doctor Washington was in constant awe of his patient's condition, citing similar but vastly different cases as some kind of pretext, going into the weather and how even the energy levels of certain kinds of radiation in the air could have contributed to Eli's condition. Eli's friends kept trying to get angry, angry at what Eli had no idea, to try and get the Doctors and Surgeons to do something, anything to somehow 'fix' Eli.

'Mister Rothberg'�would you mind being documented?'� Doctor Washington asked. When Eli turned his head to acknowledge the Doctor, he continued. 'For research and development purposes Mister Rothberg, what's happening to you is amazing, simply wondrous!'� Eli would have been inclined to reply in some fashion but his middle finger had long been swept away and put in a plastic baggy by then. He gave his consent; again, he wasn't sure why exactly. Maybe the thought of being studied in some kind of curriculum, having students being forced to memorize aspects of him and his life gave him some kind of vindictive thrill. Eli had never cared much for formal education even if, or rather especially because he had had his fill of it. But even that reason felt hollow. He probably didn't feel like debating with Doctor Washington, wanting the reaches of solitude to be his.

Time went on; Eli Rothberg became a media frenzy, an Elephant Man for a whole new generation of cell phone cameras and Internet video sites. Various names and epithets were tossed around to describe him: Mister Potato Man, Puzzle Guy, The Fixit, none stuck for long as each reporter and each person wanted the rights to each name. Eli didn't care. He said nothing, made only the barest quotes for the papers and gave interviews that could barely qualify for the squirrel playing on water skies segment of the evening news.

Days turned to weeks turned to months turned to years. Eventually, as it does, the media frenzy died but, and this was a surprise to Eli, so did the interest of his friends and family. Slowly, slowly, they each 'moved on' learned to accept his condition as something dire and inevitable even if Eli felt it was neither. One by one they all made their tearful goodbyes accepting that Eli personified the English word goner and they could witness his further deterioration no longer. Eli wished them all a fond farewell, and asked only one thing in their parting. That any old comic books they had, and if possible any new subscriptions they or their kids didn't want, could be sent to him.

As a bodily stump with a head, Eli aged remarkably well. The nurses would comment that his face looked quite handsome. Eli would retort that without a job, without commitments or obligations, basically without a life, he was now free to concentrate on his looks. The nurses would laugh and so would Doctor Washington, even if what he was laughing at concerned numbers and odds rather than witty puns and turns of phrase.

'Mister Rothberg? It's time for your chemo,'� said the nurse.

'Ah, alright, just let me finish this page,'� Eli said. Doing just as he said and finishing the last of the brightly lit panels of the comic he was reading, Eli let his head shift and the comic fall off his chin.

'Good to see you good to see you Mister Rothberg,'� Doctor Washington said. At this point having become habit, Eli for the most part ignored Doctor Washington and just waited for the warmth and tingles of the time he had dubbed in his head as 'his time in the sun'�.

After chemo therapy, Eli would have his meals fed to him and at some point be bathed. Beyond that Eli would dive (only) head first into his ever growing comic book collection. Now, unfettered by social and professional obligations, Eli could fully integrate himself in the stories of creatures and beings usually far beyond the comprehensions of mere mortals. Tales of cosmic battles, deep space exploration, and good and evil deciding everything that mattered on a battlefield as far and wide as the imagination defined.

It was strange; Eli had decided on a fitting name for his super powered alter ego, named after the procedure that had given him 'strength'�, CT-Man, short for Chemo Therapy Man. What was strange about this was not the naming, but rather the fact that Eli Rothberg died during his chemo treatment when he decided on the name. Right at the very instant the treatment had begun as a matter of fact, almost as if something bigger and greater had been waiting for the conception of that one thought, it's creation a suitable trigger for the next stage of Eli Rothberg's existence.

The first rain of the season set the tone of the day the hospital staff had to fish Eli's body out of the chemo therapy chamber. Winter had come in a big way, yet the sorrow was only passing. The papers had written a short obituary concerning Eli Rothberg in their respective page thirty-two's, oddly enough a page or two away from the comics. No one noticed, no one minded.
CT-Man saw all of this. CT-Man witnessed the fishing out and eventual burial of the remains of Eli Rothberg. This creature, CT-Man, knew it had come from Eli Rothberg, and knew in some distant sense it, he, shared some aspects with him. But just as a twin can recognize and identify itself as inherently 'different' from its double, CT-Man could do the same.

For a time CT-Man existed as a jade cloud, invisible to all human eyes, seen as something passing to the most powerful of senses on the planet. A hint of green on the edges of the eye, an odd scent that didn't belong, and a general sense that something, be it a person or a situation felt out of place, or somehow wrong. During this time, CT-Man wandered, slowly solidifying and reconstituting its form as the days passed. CT-Man shifted from the hospital to the burial site of his 'carrier', it traversed the great plains of the world, saw creatures and events living men would slay themselves for.

Great deserts, great wars, lives lost, conceived, born, try once, try again. CT-Man witnessed it all, witnessed the land, the sky, the planet. It, 'he' finally decided on a gender identification, witnessed lives ended quickly in random back alleys. He saw lives ending slowly in lonely apartment buildings. People running, people stopping, hurricanes, floods, generations ended and begun again. CT-Man saw everything from the grandest speeches of countries about to war to random acts of lovemaking, be it in an office bathroom or in the bushes near a building.

Long after the last of Eli Rothberg's family and friends had expired, CT-Man went on, not mourning, not rejoicing, simply continuing.
CT-Man witnessed humanity. And he got bored, eventually. Sensing the inherent patterns of burgeoning history, he began to suspect that everything was going to repeat itself, in time, and that for him, it was like watching something akin to a video tape, in constant flux from scene A to scene B. It would just go on and on. CT-Man suspected that there was a third scene possible, a scene C, but for some reason it existed only out of reach of the people of the planet. Good or bad, it couldn't be known, and to CT-Man that served as cause enough to finally leave the planet.

'Strange,'� CT-Man thought to himself, how as Eli Rothberg the world felt so vast and unknowable, and now as this thing, this other, the world had become small and easily understood. 'How things change,'�

In the atmosphere above the Earth CT-Man chose a form closely resembling Mister Rothberg, save for the emerald sheen that now permeated his every bodily inch.

'I remember the hospital room, looking out that window, and wanting'�'� CT-Man said to the nothingness around him, in a voice supplied by something beyond vocal chords. 'Just wanting to be alone and how wanting that, as a person, was unnatural.'�

But now Eli Rothberg was gone. And in his stead, taking up his space as it were, the creature that bared his thoughts and impulses, was not human, he was now something else. And he had to dream up a whole new kind of natural and expected behavior, in solitude, alone and adrift as a creature of thoughts and inclinations, but not of passions and haste.

'I remember the comic books,'� CT-Man said, his emerald eyes shining without pupils. Even in his current state, CT-Man could not suppress something akin to a smirk, how the memory of something as trivial as a flimsy book of colorful pictures and bold text could strike such a chord within his being. Just then, CT-Man decided that in the vein of the literature he read in another life time, he needed an insignia. Taking a finger and gently tracing along the jade of where his chest conceptually might be, CT-Man carved out moderately sized letter s C and T, forever burning in the collective nothingness of the galaxy that for that one instant in time in the constant shifting and growing of the universe there existed a creature called CT-Man hanging, dangling above the Earth like a lone middleman to the planet below and the heavens above.

CT-Man let himself drift for a time, right on the cusp separating the atmosphere and the reaches of the dark cosmic skies. Up there, letting his mind wander, he was suddenly brought back to another time, another life, looking out a hospital window and contemplating the allure and rejection of the solitude he craved. The thoughts had only the barest wisps of emotion attached to them now; after all, that was a different person. And this loneliness, this abstract solitude more like, was now, for good or ill, something for all time.

With this thought in mind and a sense of complete autonomy CT-Man turned his thoughts to the rest of the universe. To travel, for lack of a better term, to see what else the endless depths and reaches of the stars could offer. And with that, CT-Man departed from the delicate blue marble hanging precariously in the black velvet of space.

Unsure at first, his humanoid shape not conducive to travelling in a vacuum, CT-Man slowly walked, then ran, and then finally flew through the nothingness that surrounded him. At first his speed was meaningless. But after a concentration of will and imagination, or the equivalents he now possessed, CT-Man soon travelled and danced with the shafts of light soaring their paths across the space ways. Not wanting to miss an opportunity CT-Man let his body be pulled by the slight force of the moon. Descending towards the gray pockmarked surface; all the while taking in the barren wastes around him, CT-Man landed softly near the outer ridges of one of the larger craters.

'There's no one here,'� CT-Man proclaimed, presumably to no one. Slowly gazing at the lunar expanse and at its horizon, something just then caught his eye. Shifting with a thought towards the eyesore, CT-Man, had he the capacity, would have been shocked to find the remains of a space suit.

'You're probably dead, aren't you?'� CT-Man said to the corpse.

'Those details are greatly exaggerated,'� sounded the body. After that, all was silent for a time, the surprise of the event causing the dead silence of space to take a greater precedent.

''�There's no air, no sound waves, and I have no ears'�you can't talk,'� CT-Man said.

'I apparently can talk, or maybe we're just both mutually delusional,'� the corpse replied, suddenly deciding to rise from the gray dust.

CT-Man felt a kindred sense with this creature, like him, he was once someone, something else, and had now moved on to a different stage of'�of'�whatever the train tracks they were currently on could be called. CT-Man found himself staring right into the gaping hole of the Astro-Corpses' space helmet and found an almost Shakespearean skull staring back at him. With a flourish, the former space man flipped his visor closed. Out of modesty? Shame? CT-Man couldn't read the corpse.

'You said 'mutually delusional', have you been dead up until me getting here?'�

'Dead'�I suppose so. All I can say for certain is that I've been excessively quiet for a long time. It's quite lonely and cold up here'� Astro-Corpse said.

'I see, would you like to accompany me?'�
'Where?'�
'Away from here most likely; I take it you're not busy,'�
'As a corpse, I've been freed up, thank you,'� And with that CT-Man and the Astro-Corpse jettisoned themselves from the surface of the moon.
'What's your name? Is it something to do with the color green, if it does then don't tell me'�'� Astro-Corpse asked and commented at the same time.
'You have no eyes, plus you're wearing a visor, oh never mind. I am CT-Man,'�
''CT-Man'?'�
'Yes,'�
'What does that mean?'�
'Chemo Therapy man,'�
'Chemo Therapy; what the hell kind of world do you come from?'�
'The same as you I imagine: Earth,'�
The pair continued to sail through space without a specific destination, making small talk that felt even more infinitesimal when measured not only against the grand massive emptiness of the space ways, but also when weighed down by the fact that neither of them should've been able to hear each other, let alone speak.

Time slowly melted into meaninglessness; the further the duo travelled from Milky Way, the more the Astro-Corpse began to decay and dissolve. Slowly the corpse became a gray and white cascading mist, breaking apart and being drawn into the presence around CT-Man.

As it all went on, CT-Man was left to reflect on all that had happened to him and realized that even though he had put such immeasurable space between where he started and where he began, all was the same. This creature that had been Eli Rothberg was still Eli Rothberg. He was still Jewish, still a man, and still imagining. All the colors cascading in the universe slowly began to spell out the thoughts cris-crossing in his head.

'Mister Rothberg, Mister Rothberg?'� asked the grand voice, seeming to reverberate from beyond the corners of the universe.

Eli Rothberg opened his eyes. The dots and streaks were still dancing in his vision when he noticed the array of Nurse's ringer around his peripheral vision. Among them was the perpetually frazzled Doctor Washington.

'That was some sleep you were in Mister Rothberg, are you okay?'� one of the Nurses's asked.
'You tell me, right?'� Eli said, already checking his watch to see if he was late for work again.

'Your check-up went fine Mister Rothberg, you're a perfectly fit and healthy young man,'� Doctor Washington said. Eli couldn't help but pick up on the boredom tracing the invisible lines in his voice.

'Oh, that ho-hum,'� Eli said as he straightened his jacket and tie. With a nod and a smile he set off down the hall towards the exit. Oddly, as he passed one of the old unused rooms, Eli couldn't get the sense of the color green out of his head.

'Oh Mister Rothberg?'� A Nurse called out.

'Yes?'�

'You forgot this,'�

Eli took the comic book and flipped a few pages as he headed for his car. With a sigh he tossed it into the passenger's seat, not because he thought it was childish, but rather, he hated that particular issue because of the hero's disappearance and renouncement of his title. The hero opted instead for a complete change in nature and responsibility, wanting solitude on his terms and in his way of thinking.



-2007

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