The Incredible Hulk

One Bruce Banner ran through the streets of Porto Verde, Brazil, as if the devil himself were trying to catch up with him. For all he knew, the devil indeed was endeavoring to do precisely that. No harm in making that assumption: It kept him prepared for the day when that inevitably did happen. He was sprinting up the hill through the favela, a shantytown that was perched on hillsides on the outer edges of Porto Verde. There were any number of such ramshackle affairs in Brazil, consisting of mostly one-story buildings thrown together with everything from bricks to garbage, accompanied by the smells that one could naturally expect from such living conditions. Most of the homes were illegal in their construction, unlicensed, unsafe. But the authorities had no stomach for dealing with the favelas and typically chose to ignore them. The inhabitants, endeavoring to scratch out livings in the marketplace or beg money off whoever came near, were effectively nonpeople. That suited Banner just fine. Banner descended toward the chaos of houses and streets of the city, sprawled like a living organism, teeming with people. He checked something on his wrist. It was a pulse monitor, and it told him that his pulse was currently clocking in at ninety beats per minute. For someone running as hard as he had been, with sweat causing his shirt to cleave to his body like a second skin, that was low indeed. Anyone else working that hard would have been frustrated that his metabolism was responding so lethargically to the amount of effort he was expending. Banner could not have been happier. Banner slowed to a walk and made his way through the streets, as anonymous and nondescript as the slum around him. That likewise made him happy. He stopped at a market stall, a place that sold inexpensive bags at prices that exceeded their value. It was run by a man named Bezerra, a fast-talker who was always eager to earn a few reais whenever possible. One of his many means of doing so was providing a drop point for any packages that Banner needed sent to him. When Banner walked past him, Bezerra merely nodded to indicate that he had something for him. Banner pretended to study the assortment of bags Bezerra provided, and then Bezerra produced one from underneath the counter, a small backpack, and proceeded to extol the virtues of its fundamentally shoddy quality. Banner naturally didn't give a damn about the bag's quality, but merely what was inside it. Nevertheless he pretended to listen, nodded, then pulled out a handful of coinsten reais, the standard terms of their dealand handed them to Bezerra. Bezerra was wearing a floppy white hat and he tipped it to Banner in appreciation of their transaction. Banner felt the weight of the bag, indicating that it did indeed contain something, nodded silently in response, and went on his way. Banner's apartment building was a rough-and-tumble four-story affair, one of the few block apartment buildings in the tin-roof sprawl of the favela. He entered his shabby, run-down apartment, although it took a minute to navigate the lock that he had installed in the door. Most of the apartments didn't have locks, on the basis that most of the people living there didn't have anything worth stealing. Banner entered his apartment and slung the bag onto the pathetic excuse for a bed that served him as well as a pathetic excuse for a bed could be expected to. He awoke routinely with a backache, but was hardly in a position to call up a mattress store and have something nice and comfortable delivered. The only other things in the apartment were a tiny refrigerator in which he kept his meager food, a hot plate that was the only means he had of cooking anything, a small black-and-white television on the floor, and a desk that was held together with electrical tape. The desk was positioned in front of the one luxDavid, Peter is the author of 'The Incredible Hulk' with ISBN 9780345506993 and ISBN 0345506995.