Thomas P Hanna

Rent a Hard-body Thomas P Hanna

Publisher Marketing: Bodybuilder Max Engler joins inventor Oscar Digitarius to develop a business in which clients pay to use a special high-tech system involving earplugs to tune into and share a hard-body like Engler's actual sensations during his gym workouts. The pair soon find that the system in fact gives the operator some control over the hard-body's actions - with some clients able to make him do what he definitely doesn't want to. As he refines the system, the inventor builds in a way for the hard-body to reverse things and take control of the client's actions in order to protect himself. They also learn that the one being operated can reproduce even complicated learned and polished motor skill sequences of the operator without practice while they are connected by the earplug system - and repeat those moves later from memory in much the same form. Engler finds himself in trouble with the local Mob who demand he pay his cousin's gambling debts. The new business and Engler's romance are complicated even more when the mobsters suspect he might have seen a murder and "just in case" must be permanently silenced. But not before they test whether by renting him through his business they can use his brawn to intimidate people they want to have that effect on without doing it themselves. This ultimately leads to a climax in a warehouse where Engler and several allies use the earplug devices to share one another's special skills - including skateboarding, some gymnastic, moves and the Argentine Tango - against the marauding mobsters.