Post 3 - BioHero

Anesthetic

Giles had always been an empathetic child. His parents, noticing his helpfulness, were proud beyond belief. Whenever people were in trouble, their little boy would rush to them and resolve it. They had been unsure about exactly how to properly parent, as Giles was their first child, but they knew they had done something right with him.

Well, until the fish.

"Mommy, he's hurting!" whined Giles, pulling at her sweater in the direction of the small tank. She wanted to dissuade his silly ideas about the fish without sounding too dismissive or discouraging his helpful attitude, but playing along became harder the more he got worked up about the stupid fish.

"For the fifth time, Giles, he's a fish. He'll be okay."

"But you said feeding him would help but it didn't! Timmy needs a pet doctor."

As she imagined a good parent would, she funneled all her confusion and frustration at his nonsense into one heavy sigh. "Okay Giles. We'll take Timmy to the vet. But when - er, if - he turns out to be okay, you go back to finishing your homework. Got it?"

"Okay!"

-

-

Little Timmy was not okay. 

Giles stared at the fish tank. Colorful pebbles he had collected in the past few months adorned the floor, where bright green reeds sprouted to the tank's ceiling. He knew they were fake - unlike the pained expression on Little Timmy's fishy face. His mouth flopped open in a sad "o" shape, slowly closing and opening again and again.

The pet doctor said he was fine, and Mommy was quick to agree with him. She didn't like it when he talked back to the pet doctor, but he knew they were wrong! Timmy was in pain, and Giles could feel it. None of the grown ups understood him when he told them that he could. They just smiled, nodded, and ignored him. They couldn't feel Timmy's pain. 

Giles watched the little guppy as he swam in small circles around the perimeter of the tank. It was easy to help people when they were hurt; he could feel where they were in pain and call for help. But Giles didn't know how to help a fish. 

The pain grew more intense throughout the night. Timmy, too weak to swim, lay pitifully on his favorite rock, and Giles no longer wanted to help the fish. He just wanted the pain to end - for both Timmy and himself. Although it felt like his insides were deteriorating, Giles focused on the pain. He tried to recall how Timmy had felt earlier, relishing the sweet memories of normalcy. Not being in pain had never felt so good. 

Suddenly, Timmy jolted off the rock, swimming past a curled reed leaf and gobbling a waterlogged food flake on the floor. Giles clutched his stomach, amazed that the pain had disappeared so quickly. Well, it hadn't completely disappeared. If he focused, he could still feel a small knot of pain deep in his gut, but compared to the pain a couple seconds ago that forced him to curl into a ball, he felt invincible. Clearly, Timmy did too, as the little fish flexed his fins, collecting the long saturated fish food around the tank.

-

My birthday is on November 21, giving me the topics of the Parietal Lobe and Substance P. Giles' correlating ability allows him to sense pain because the parietal lobe processes many of our senses. He can also diminish or amplify existing pain in both others and himself because he can control levels of Substance P, which is a neurotransmitter that can cause the feeling of pain. In his origin story, Giles turned down the levels of pain in his pet guppy, Timmy, thereby turning down his own perception of the fish's pain. Timmy died later that night, however, because Giles can't actually heal wounds; he can only decrease (or increase) suffering. However, since he perceives the pain of others, if Giles increases a person's amount of Substance P, he will feel the corresponding pain. Due to this complication, he prefers to diminish suffering as much as possible, earning him the hero name Anesthetic.