“I like managing the plant’s ventilation system, but I’m always getting zapped by luminous beams of radiation that give me superpowers,” Platte explained, letting loose small bolts of lightning from his fingertips as he mimicked being speared by a luminous beam. “It’s just kind of routine now. I get called to check a breaker panel, and when I’m in the room, a green glowing bar of enriched uranium hits me in the head. Before you know it, I can telepathically communicate with dolphins.”

“It’s a little embarrassing to unexpectedly get irradiated, and everyone can see your skeleton like an X-ray — then afterward you glow in the dark,” Platte continued, emitting small orbs of light from his ears and nostrils. “But my coworkers don’t mind, and I just keep chugging along. Sometimes literally, because a recent burst of gamma radiation turned some of my sinuses into parts of a locomotive steam engine.”

At press time, Platte was leaving work early to visit a friend who researches venomous mutant ape-tiger chimeras.