Editors Note: The authors commits what may be technically considered one or more crimes in this story.  Because the statute of limitations has yet to expire, a small identifying detail has been slightly modified to preserve the author’s already-small chance of spending time in federal prison.

I am Batman.         

It was 11:30 PM on a Friday night in 2005, and I had just seen Batman Begins.  But I wasn’t at a bar, drunkenly babbling about the movie, or even home in bed, dreaming about it.  I was at work, in my laboratory, waiting for some nucleic acids to filter through a gelatinous material that would allow me to separate the tiny bit of DNA I had spent all day isolating.  The machine’s readout informed me I would be here another two hours.  It hummed over the faint background rumble of freezers and incubators, the only sounds in the otherwise silent building.

The lab was on the third floor of a building that overlooked the sprawling village that housed foreign and married students.  It was sleepy and dark at this time of night.  People were either out having fun or getting some rest.  I rubbed my forehead, trying to force out the stress headache that had clung to the insides of my temples for the past two days.  In the parking lot below me, a pair of headlights cut a swath through the dark.  It was a compact white sedan, and while I couldn’t read the letters on the side, but I recognized university parking services when I saw it.  Sure enough, the driver’s side door swung open and a portly man holding a computerized ticket machine struggled out.  He made a beeline for the only car in the otherwise-deserted lot, read the license plate, and punched something into the computer.  After a pause, he lumbered back to his car and fiddled through the trunk, eventually retrieving a heavy-looking object he placed by the parked car’s rear wheel.  It was a boot, and he was now attaching it to the car.

Witnessing the booting triggered my realization: I was Batman.  How could I not have seen it sooner?  Batman was a scientist.  I was a scientist.  Batman worked late at night.  I worked late at night.  Batman was a millionaire playboy.  I was… OK, I was a less attractive, less successful version of Batman.

While Batman was a scientist, he used his skills to fight injustice.  At this moment, I realized I was witnessing just that.  The man was screwing over some poor guy or girl who was busting their ass at midnight on a Friday and didn’t want to walk a half-mile through pitch-blackness to the only parking lot on campus scientists could afford.  Research at the university brought in $125 million each year.  Parking brought in, what, a couple hundred thousand?  This was the tail wagging the dog.  Perhaps it was the headache, the indignation, or the accumulated fatigue of the week, but in that moment I decided I was going to do something about this.  I was Batman.  Batman fought injustice.  So too would I.

I spun on my heel, away from the window and toward our lab’s stash of tools, where I selected a hacksaw, a hammer, and a screwdriver.  I was heading out the door before I realized I was planning something of dubious legality.  I decided I needed to protect my identity.  You would be amazed how difficult a disguise is to find when you really need one.  The closest thing I could find to a mask was a Starbucks coffee sleeve, which I decircularized and added eyeholes to before connecting it in the back with a rubber band.  Crude but effective.  I also snared a pair of latex gloves, so as not to leave forensic evidence.

I hadn’t thought about what I would do if I ran into someone in the elevator or in the parking lot while armed with a saw and wearing a mask that appeared fashioned by an 8-year-old, but both were deserted.  I crept alongside the car and knelt by the boot.  It looked formidable- solid steel covered with chipped yellow paint.  The weak link appeared to be a thick steel bolt on the axis of the device.  I took one more glance around and got to work, fully intending to saw the boot off and deposit it on the doorstep of University PD.

I had barely scored the metal when a shrill voice interrupted me.  “What the hell are you doing?  Get away from my car!”  The indignant, irritated voice belonged to an indignant, irritated female who had emerged from one of the adjacent buildings.  She was a short, mousy girl who I recognized as a senior graduate student.

Though completely surprised, I regrouped when I realized we were on the same team.  “I’m doing you a favor,” I said in a harsh voice I’d disguised to resemble the Dark Knight’s.  I turned, raising my tiny hacksaw so she could see what I was doing.

This did not go over as well as I had hoped.  Later, as I hid from the police, it occurred to me that she might not have seen the boot on her car.  My fake Batman voice didn’t help either.  Whereas I was going for a refined “gentleman prowler” effect, what came out was “armed robber with a penchant for rape.”  My choice of words might have been better also.  Only later, when I was a senior graduate student myself, did I realize how one might interpret the phrase “doing you a favor” as “put you out of your misery.”  To be fair to her, the implication of threat did jive fairly well with my masked, gloved, and heavily armed appearance.

The girl rummaged urgently through her purse, never taking her eyes off me.  She pulled out what appeared to be a can of pepper spray and - more alarmingly - a cell phone.  I rose, spreading my arms akimbo to show I meant her no harm.  My sudden motion elicited an earsplitting scream as she began dialing.  I doubted she was making brunch reservations.  Survival instincts kicked in, flushing away the inherent nobility of what I was doing.  I fled into the woods and remained there until the police left.  The booted car was gone when I returned, and I suspected they had let the owner slide out of sympathy for her ordeal.  It was 2 AM before I slunk back into the lab.  My experiment had run too long; my DNA was ruined.

The next Monday, I came in as usual and was taking the elevator when I noticed a new flier posted between advertisements for upcoming speakers.  It was dominated by a police artist sketch of a man in a cardboard mask who bore an eerie similarity to me.  “Be On the Lookout,” the heading proclaimed.  Though there well may have been another impromptu vigilante roaming the medical center that night, it appeared I was now a person of interest to the authorities.  Entering my lab, I half expected the police to be there, waiting for me.  When they weren’t, I collapsed into my chair and re-evaluated my life.