Die! Detective! Die!

Dilton Everyman the Fourth loved to make the little joke every time he met someone who knew that he was a fourth due to his four parents. Always his first and the last attempt at a joke before he usually killed a criminal in a different way each time.

Two fathers and two mothers, all together in a fluid relationship but still happily married to one another. Each to their own.

His last name was less of a joke to him as he was a genetically engineered superhuman as the story went. His four parents were key researchers on various human enhancement and improvement projects, all designed to bring around the age of the next generation of humans, transhuman or posthuman.

They had carefully harvested DNA samples from all different races and creeds that made up the great society that was the USA through experimenting and database collection. All involved gave their full consent with the thought of being a part of this great journey that would end up creating a representation of all things America, even the stuff before the settlers arrived.

Not an entirely sane plan, and the four had effectively stolen a large number of next-generation technology, military secrets, and records of previous failed experiments to make the project successful. Then the four highly educated and extremely intelligent scientists decided to throw their DNA into the mix rather than trying it out the old-fashioned way.

Adoption.

The result was a single viable clone which possessed abilities beyond both humans with a fair few animal traits mixed in, one of the first sentences that he spoke when fully grown after a year or two of accelerated growth was that he wanted to fight crime.

When you get four different people and two of them happen to like crime shows and alternately the other two like their superhero comics it would perhaps come as no surprise that they had generated a superhuman that wanted to truly fight crime. But they didn’t want to risk him being hurt badly in a confrontation with criminals. Being a superhuman entity didn’t translate into invulnerability and the power of flight no matter what the stories say.

Instead, they decided to train him in the ways of criminal investigation, partially through academic theory and also through tv shows. Scientists, right? Damn, sorry, I’m getting involved in the story and this isn’t about me. At least not this part. I’ll take my leave now and get back to this genetic freak.

The genius genetically mixed and not all brain-damaged in any way shape or form Superdetectives was to become a walking, talking investigation scene machine. He was able to walk up to any single crime scene and simply process the entire area just by walking there.

With added snake genes he could taste the air, and bloodhound genetics would enable him to smell trails that would have already gone cold and his eyes. Well, his eyes had a really good mixture of genetics that would defy any existing technology. Yes, you could always call in a team of a hundred experts and try to get similar results but within the time frames that any crime scene deteriorated it would be an impossibility.

He was known as a worker of miracles, a genius super detective who could not only process a scene but would also have the full working knowledge of current legal law and the physical strength and ability to arrest criminals when they fought back against him. The guy would single-handedly track down drug labs across entire states, smashing any opposition that gone in his way.

He could pick up cars and throw them when you got him into a bad enough mood and his skin was near bulletproof. The best part of it was the guy had almost no ego, so for him, the entire case was about finding the perpetrators of the crime and not being a glory hound.

The media, people and presidents all loved the actions of this guy, the one-man fighting machine who analysed crime, followed the letter of the law, and caught criminals red-handed while dismantling operations.

The truth of the matter was that Dilton was simply a human-made public relations machine, produced by a society dominated by military funding and the need for new faces. His actions made him a beloved representative of the people who were scared of crime affecting their own lives and neighbourhoods.

The entire population of the United States was closely watching him, opinions were divided as usual between those who supported him, those who hated him and the rest of the usual junk.

All mindless chatter designed to keep people from thinking seriously about why on earth so much money had been dumped into a real-life superhuman. If Dilton was so amazing anyway, why didn’t they just mass clone the guy and use him in one of their many wars both private and public?