The prison inmates, as well as his fellow guards, soon realize that Gargantua is nothing less than a superhero. To their dismay, because he's strict, exacting, goes absolutely by the book, allowing no exceptions, no compromises, and knows the Law verbatum. If physically challenged, he proves to be prodigiously strong, fast, skilled at combat, and totally fearless. No one has a chance against him. Both cons and guards live in dread of his perfectionism, fantasizing that Gargantua must be some kind of robot, or android. He simply can't be human.

However, Gargantua is winning respect as well as enemies. His firm but fair lawkeeping has saved lives, his consistantly legal yet non- judgemental attitude can be counted upon by those who do obey the law. He wins a few grateful supporters.

He also wins the interest of a pretty young black woman outside the prison. Rosie Fine is attracted to his physical manliness and sees him as the noble superhero he is. But Gargantua is aloof and incapable of reciprocation. There seems to be no provision for friendship or affection in his personality, a tragic flaw.

The the Governor finally reveals that Gargantua is actually an "AET: an "Amplified Enforcement Type". Once a normal man, Gargantua has been synthetically improved to superhuman standards, his previous personality and memories erased and reprogrammed to make him into a pefect enforcement agent--prison guard, cop, soldier, whatever the government wants him to be. Gargantua is in fact the very first experimental AET, and is now being tested in the field.

But then the cons learn that Gargantua had himself been a convict on Death Row, supposedly executed, who is instead now being used as a guard. This puts both cons and guards in uproar--the cons fear that they too will be converted into mindless minions of the state, and the guards worry that they will all be replaced by perfect superguards.

The cons hold a meeting, but no one knows how to discredit the Gargantua experiment so that AETs do not go into production. Until old Pop Elwin insists that he knows of ONE MAN who can stop Gargantua: The TATTOO MASTER.

Beneath the prison, below the cellar, where the elevator shaft goes deeper down than it should, there is a secret and forgotten prison cell. The Tattoo Master has been down there for over 30 years, without food or human company, powered by his own magical tattoos. That cell does not contain him, it keeps the world out. He is a wizard who works magic via symbolic tattoos.

Old Pop gets a corrupt guard to take him down to find the Tattoo Master and recuit him in their common war against Gargantua. But although the Tattoo Master is uninterested in doing the biddings of either cons or guards, he IS interested in the "one pure being" he has been psychically observing in the prison above him: the pure and perfect Officer Gargantua. He will test him, magic against science. Pop is instructed to get Gargantua to come down to the secret cell.

Upon their meeting the Tattoo Master deftly manages to tattoo Gargantua's forearm, which causes the superhuman AET to remember his original self-- the evil and perverse John Burden. He collapses at the horror of that realization. As Burden, he flees from the prison.

Once outside, he tries to behave as the psychopathic criminal John Burden, but cannot break Gargantua's programming. Nor can he simply leave the prison permanently because his life as an AET is dependant upon high-tech maintenance, he'll die without specific AET drugs and vitamins. He goes back to the prison, pretending to still be Gargantua.

But now he is a bad guard, dangerous, evil. The cons are at his mercy, the other guards don't suspect a thing. But old Pop has discovered who Gargantua really is, and when the cons find out that John Burden was a baby-raper, they decide to take him out, one way or another. As if they could, he's a monster, but they riot anyway.

Burden goes too far, and when he violates AET programming, Gargantua's personality moves in and rips the tattoo off his own arm with his teeth, freeing himself from the spell of the magical tattoo, and therefore John Burden's evil ways. He is Gargantua once again, who then effectively deals with the rioting convicts.

However, the Tattoo Master has just begun to test the AET's mettle. He summons a demon to possess a convict, who transforms into a shadowy monster to challenge the AET. Big fight scene on the tiers of the cell block, two superhuman beings having it out, one cruel and ruthless, the other constrained by law and programming. Gargantua can only win by killing the convict who hosts the demon, but that he may not do...

Well, Gargantua does win anyway, of course, in every way--even the girl. Gotta have that Hollywood Happy Ending, right?

3R