With each passing day, Lukas could feel his muscles growing tighter, like coiled snakes. But not actually like snakes, because they weren’t moving on their own. “Muscles don’t move on their own,” Lukas said to himself. “Or do they?” They didn’t. It was like he had dead snakes in his arms.
The stones were heavy, but, after a week in the mines, Lukas could lift one without breaking a sweat. Then, after two weeks, he could lift two stones without breaking a sweat. This continued at a rate of one additional stone per week until he never sweated again, except sometimes for aesthetic reasons.
His muscles rippled across his back. It didn’t feel weird, like a spasm. It felt like a normal thing. This is what muscles are supposed to do, Lukas thought. They ripple.
Lukas was strong. So strong that he could have moved a printer from the front door to the office without dropping it and needing to order a new printer online.
Lukas had abs now. He could feel each one protruding from his stomach, like a big, flat stomach toe. He wiggled his smallest ab with pleasure.
The more he worked, the more his arms and legs burned. But then, eventually, the burning stopped, because he had basically levelled up. Or maybe the burning continued, but being strong makes you less vulnerable to pain, so it just didn’t bother him that much? No one could know for sure.
Mining was hard work. But, as he toiled away, Lukas could feel his growth hormones activating, stimulating the uptake and incorporation of amino acids into protein, which synthesized into cells, causing hypertrophy. Mmm, he thought. Hypertrophy.
Lukas heard a young woman screaming from the top of a tower. He knew that, no matter how difficult it was, he had to save her. He raced up the stairs. It turned out to be no problem at all, because he was so physically fit—in fact, he enjoyed it. “Wow,” the damsel said as Lukas entered her chambers. “Did you just walk up all those stairs? You don’t even seem winded.” “Yes,” Lukas replied. “I did.” She put her small hand on one of his enormous, bulging quadriceps. “You know there’s an elevator, right?” Lukas continued not to be in any type of physical distress. “Don’t care,” he said, his lungs functioning.
Lukas started to feel like maybe he was getting too strong. People were looking at him strangely. “I should tone my muscles down,” he said to himself, chucking a boulder over his head with his dead-snake arms. “Whatever that means.”
Lukas was so strong that he could have punched his dumb editor who kept telling him that his descriptions of human physiology were weird and wrong. But he didn’t, because he was the bigger man, literally as well as figuratively. “So what if you do CrossFit, David?” Lukas said, all his muscles rippling normally at the same time. “I do MinesFit.” He resolved to think of a better insult later.
Lukas could feel his brain cells begin to deteriorate. “It’s just as I always suspected,” he said to himself. “There’s a negative correlation between physical strength and brain strength. I was right to remain weak for as long as I did.” His mind slipped further. “I hope there’s someone out there who has retained enough intelligence to tell my story,” he whispered.
