Dennis' interest increased, however. There were many illustrations, as he supposed there should be in a medical textbook, and some stuff that was pretty hard to take. He turned page after page. Saw a back and white picture of three women, faces covered, who had male genitalia. Or were they men who had female bodies? Hmm. Polydactyly: a hand depicted with an extra thumb. Kidney stones.

He flipped into the danger (or puke) zone. One chapter was based on cancers. An infected eye. A man's head bloated by tumorous growths. An ungodly picture of some kind of massive prostate cancer, displayed in all its glory on a man's genitals.

The more that Dennis flipped, the more he cringed. The prose he wrote turned neon in his brain. He couldn't put the book down, however; interest peaked, motor control overriden.

While the words became harder to read, the illustrations remained graphic and surprisingly… what was the word, colorful? Well-depicted? It did …seem like it served its purpose well — if you wanted to see a classic case of a staghorn calculus, you got it.

The images became too much for him. Growths, growths, growths. Sick people. Sick, sick, sick. Who were those people with the male genitals? Who had to live with that horrible prostate anomaly? The tumors and cysts were varied and diverse in size and shape. They began to look like creatures. That was it; the feeling that these people were caged inside an illustration, their illness borne for all to see. They couldn't escape from this kind of immortality, could they?

Imagine a man who had one of these horrible diseases illustrated. Then he becomes cured — but when he opens up the book, he sees the terrible ailment that had destroyed his life in all its glory. It was still alive. It stared him in the eye. The man-would he feel trapped? Like a part of him was caged? Like perhaps his illness was never really cured. IT'S THERE.

Dennis got a headache. The exercise turned a little sour.

---

It wasn't until the next day that he took a look at the newer edition. He had actually come in 10 minutes early, just to see how Pitchman would react. The ape sort of stared at him, became speechless and marched away in the haze of smoke.

He had regained some gag suppressant powers since he last looked at the books. Really, it was like a love-hate. He had written his little shtick, which engaged him, but the books were a little hard to swallow. The pictures were mostly grotesque, but Dennis was still interested in the whole idea.

He opened the newer edition.

Apparently, it hadn't been in that box for long, or it was just a fresher text of an older version. There was no date, but this clearly came several decades after the first one. Again, no cover illustrations. There were, however, many colorful pictures for him to look at. He tenuously flipped the pages.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the voice boomed.

Dennis fumbled the book and it fell off his desk. He looked up, completely shocked.

It was Rudy Pollack.

"Got ya there, Ender!" Rudy chuckled.

Dennis had had enough. For a joke, Pollack had sheared 10 years off his life.

He rose and grabbed the pudgier man by the shoulders.

"I am sick and tired of your garbage, Pollack! You think that was funny? Maybe I'll break your neck right now. That would be funny. Harry P. might even approve. He may even think he's living vicariously through me for once." Dennis stared directly at what seemed like a pitiful little man.

"…uh…look, uh…I'm sorry..." Rudy muttered, clearly distressed. "I didn't mean..."

"WHAT? WHAT didn't you mean? Go back to the goddam coffee pot with your buddy Davison. Jerk off for all I care. Get outta here!" He put Rudy down. The man scurried away, tail between his legs.

Dennis sat down. He shook his head vigorously.

"Freaking bast—, " he said aloud, "stupid mother—"

Dennis burst into laughter. What a show! Imagine, King Nerd, lowly data entry monkey with a flare for stealing old textbooks, mouthing off to Pollack like that!

"Maybe I was wrong about you, Ender. Now get back to work!" Pitchman had clearly heard the interaction.

The first sentence made Dennis smile to himself. Harry Pitchman was a slimy, yowling lowlife with a superiority complex. However, it was clear that he did, maybe a little, become impressed with the whole thing. Now get back to work was one of the nicer things he'd heard from him.

Ha, Dennis thought, I think I just won that dickhead's respect.

He smiled and picked up the textbook. Cracked it open with new vigor.

Wow. Dennis flipped through the pages. It was clearly a later edition of the same text. The pictures were of similar quality. This one, however, was in a less finished phase than the last one. Some of the illustrations were missing (holes in the text) and there were ink jottings beneath them, presumably indicating what would be there. He tried to make the writings out. Polydactyly. Metastatic Cancer/type? Goiter.

There was something odd here. He flipped through the pages again.

Firstly, every picture was different from its predecessor, as if with this new edition they needed new pictures of the diseases.

This would have not been particularly noteworthy without the following two observations: a) He had seen a picture of a polydactyl patient in the older issue and b) They didn't have a goiter picture ready? There must be old pictures of goiters. In fact, they would be harder to get today because of their lower incidence. Why not use a classic picture? As for the polydactylic hand, it seemed like a pretty perfect illustration in the 1976 edition; they couldn't have lost the picture, and why update it — a case of polydactyly then was the same now. Not only were they updating it, but the writings and holes implied that a picture was needed. Why not stick in the old one? There clearly are classic drawings that withstand the test of time. They even came from same company, same text¸ and yet they took the trouble to update pictures, even when unnecessary?

Well, this nerd was going to entertain any interest he bloody had, no matter how boring. Dennis decided that tomorrow he was going to visit the inner gears at Quinn Medical Accessories.