The Chemist

He believed in the physical, the microscopic. He allowed for theory only in an empirical, mathematical sense. He kept a clean, oderly laboratory. He sterilized his instruments. He wore surgical gloves and goggles and a respirator.

His experiment succeeded to a degree he'd not expected. History provided evidence of possesion of entire villages. Demons turned people into manic savages, committing attrocious acts of depravity. Documented visions of hell conjured gutteral fear upon retelling. The voracity and reputation of the chronicles made him think.

Then, just a few short miles away, an outbreak of just such a hysteria caught his attention. Investigators discovered it was ergot poisoning. Many chemists suspected ergot poisoning as the root of the old tales of villages turning mad overnight. Now, he had a parallel case to study not far from his laboratory.

The sources described the intense distress and disturbing behavior of the town. The doctors tested the bread supply. They found the suspicious mold and it oozed ergot. He aquired a sample. He worked for days and some nights, probing the chemical. He tested and retested, using his clever chemistry to tease out the secrets and found several promising compounds.

Some scientists refused to believe that a simple compound could alter cognition in a radical fashion. He knew otherwise. Any student of Freud knew the power of simple plant chemistry to alter mood and behavior. The effects could be drastic.

One morning, while working in his usual careful way, he isolated one promising ergoline and began the synthesis of a new compound from it. He'd performed this procedure a few times before, but he wished to test it further. He knew the powerful nature of the new chemical. Unsure of the propper dosage, he placed a conservative amount in a pipette and proceded to allow drops to fall into various liquids for a diluted solution.

The morning went queer in less than an hour. The insight hit him. The compound could pass through the surgical gloves, through the pores on the skin and into the blood stream. He slowed his breathing. His heart pounded. He took a piece of white paper and calculated the milligrams per kilogram in his body. Even if he exaggerated the possible amount absorbed, it looked miniscule, immeasurable almost. Such a profound effect from such a small dose seemed idiotic.

Time slowed and his surroundings became menacing. He recognized the symptoms. Ergot poisoning. The hallucinations started. He stopped breathing. He forced a bit of logic through the mental noise. Two things came to him.

He'd isolated and synthesized a non-toxic compound.

The strength of this compound exceeded statistical measure.

As the gap from normalcy widened, he loudly pronounced himself unfit to remain in his laboratory, went out to his bike, and rode the twenty minutes to his home, determined to lie down until it had passed.

That twenty minutes stretched and distorted beyond explanation. Some time later, he would try to document it, he thought as he passed a world of fractal shapes and colors. Even then, he laughed, knowing he would never get the explanation quite right.