Whatever Happened to Bionic Boy?

Earworms:
-The Last Winged Unicorn by Rhapsody of Fire

After watching a Discovery channel program about people with superhuman abilities (active body temperature regulation and the ability to paint in perspective and color despite being blind from birth, to name a couple), and I talked to mom and grandma about it over breakfast.

This conversation reminded them of a certain phenomenon who was popular during the time of Ferdinand Marcos: The adolescent psychic known as Bionic Boy.

According to Grandma, Bionic Boy had the ability to read minds and predict the future. He also had telekinesis and remote viewing abilities. Whenever he used these powers, people around him would hear a metallic clicking noise beaming out of his skull. While many of these are typical enough for supposed psychics, grandma said he also had an additional ability: he could cause your brain to see him as something else. For example, he could imitate the appearance of an image of Christ.

I searched the Net and even the Oracle of Knowledge (Wikipedia) to no avail. There is very little on the Great Online about this enigma. All I found was [this short story] that tells us some details about his life. The rest is a what-if, a guess as to what became of Bionic Boy.

Anyway, it’s said that Bionic Boy was adopted by the Marcoses because he was able to successfully predict that a plane that Bong-bong Marcos’s friends were going to take. The President, fearing for his son’s life, pulled him off the trip before they took off. The plane crashed, killing all on board. Marcos then offered to adopt Bionic Boy.

Eventually, Bionic Boy predicted the downfall of the Marcos regime. The President didn’t like this, and Bionic Boy was banished, told to disappear.

Of course, these details were only taken from the story above, and it’s difficult to tell what actually happened in history. I’m only repeating what I heard from grandma, so I don’t really have any firsthand information. Bionic Boy did disappear, and the records of him were erased. Not only is his true name unknown, I also don’t have any information as to what year he was born. Now if he was a teenager in the early 70s, that would put him in his late 40s today. And we have no idea who he is.

I wonder what it feels like to disappear from history.  I also wonder what became of this guy. Is he still alive? I guess we can only speculate. Unless we really embark on an extensive search for him, I don’t think we’ll ever find him. I don’t think he wants to be found, anyway.

The Truth is Out There,
Your Black Lion

~ by J. R. R. Flores on December 12, 2007.