Out Of The Frying Pan. . .

By m maldonado

The Chemist stared unemotionally at the vial before him, the multi-colored contents swirling and seething, streams of liquid somehow sliding up the sides before falling back at the top. It was fluid unlike the Chemist had ever created, and he had more experience in that than anyone else in his field. He was not simply an Expert, he was a Creative Genius.

The fluid slid up and crashed down, somehow aware that it had just reached the top. It was amazing stuff, the product of years of research, development, funding and—

—and failure. This new mixture was a total fluke, something made by accident, by mistake. The Chemist felt shame fill him; it hadn’t been any work of his at all. He’d just spilled a little something there, another thing here, and then let the resulting puddle sit, on a floor covered in trace amounts of spilled chemicals that no amount of cleanser could possible get rid of, overnight.

And then he’d found it, and realized what he’d done. Or rather, hadn’t done. He hadn’t bothered to clean up a mess, so now he was being punished with a chemical that had the most amazing effects, something so startlingly useful that he could find no use for it…

Still staring at the colors made randomly by the liquid’s tumultuous swirling, the Chemist strolled over to the long table behind him and thought.

This chemical, this accident, was a drug. It wasn’t addictive, at least not physically. The effects were such that, after only an hour of sobriety, the Chemist was debating, in a corner of his mind, whether to take another small sip. It did not make you hallucinate, did not hide pain under a numbing umbrella, did not cause any sort of loss of mental capacity or motor function, not even a smidgen. Taking it didn’t mean you took the risk of acquiring a blood disease, immunodeficiency or mental disorder. It was safe, in the terms of physical health, brain included.

What it did do, however, was let you see emotions. In colors.

The Chemist smiled slightly. It had taken him hours to reach that conclusion, and another three to get himself to accept it, while anger, fear and doubt floated around him in red, yellow and sickly green streamers. They hadn’t made accepting it any easier, surprisingly.

A bubble of the liquid drifted up from the vial and floated teasingly in front of the Chemist. Without thinking, he lunged, mouth open, and swallowed it.

The Chemist was instantly confronted with a wall of some purplish-greenish color that he didn’t recognize as having any sort of name. He decided it was the color for thoughtfulness and turned to the floor-to-ceiling window to his right.

The city below was filled with so many colors that they mixed and became brown. The Chemist could make out a speck of angry red or scared yellow here and there, and, just once, maybe a speck of innocent white, lost in a sea of dark intentions. He wondered sadly who the poor soul was and, out of curiosity, watched it move slowly through the muddy emotions. He grimaced as a hectic blob of Anger, Fear and blood-red Malevolence intersected the white and destroyed it.

The Chemist turned away from the window, eyes shut tight to block out the ribbons of orange-yellow Horror that were pouring out of him. He bit his lip until blood stained his chin, then dripped down to paint the front of his lab coat. He didn’t dare open his eyes, just in case…just in case…

One sip of the drug would last half an hour, he knew. The dog that he had first tested it on had stared at him relentlessly for thrice as long; the Chemist had felt watched by the stupid thing, until he had locked it in the closet and waited for it to start barking. It had survived, so he’d taken his sip…

And then he’d had lunch in the lab with a friend of his. The Chemist hadn’t mentioned the drug or the dog, but he had had to cut the meal short when he’d started to see the colors trailing off of his friend like infinite confetti, bright green and lavender, with hints of pale teal that seemed to diminish with every bite he’d taken. Hunger, clearly. He’d then been blinded by yellow tinted with green, which was Surprise, and rushed out of the room rambling on about needing new glasses…

The Chemist watched as more colors slid out of him like smoke, winding around and out of his peripheral vision. He saw a faint line of Anger grow before him, as the implications of the drug were fully realized, at least in his subconscious.

A disturbing scene ran through the Chemist’s imagination: People, being segregated, not only by skin tone, but by the colors coming out of them. People judging others at a glance, the government using it for character profiling or torture…a large enough dose would probably drive anyone mad in just an hour.

The Anger grew to fill the air in front of him as he strolled furiously over to the fireplace, clutching the vial like the rungs of Heaven’s ladder, the liquid never spilling despite being upside down. The Chemist stopped two yards from the roaring hearth, staring off into space, making a decision. Then, with a final glance at the liquid, which had gone red in his presence, he deep-sixed the vial. The sound of tinkling glass filled the room, echoed, and died.

The Chemist felt relief for a second—that’s how long the pink ribbon in front of him lasted—before a series of miniature explosions chipped brick in the fireplace, sending shards of stone flying. The Chemist watched as bright red smoke replaced the fire and flew up the chimney, strange sounds resonating through the chute. They sounded, to the Chemist, disarmingly like screams and violent bellows, fire, breaking glass, rampage—the sounds of death and destruction…

The smoke flew up and out of the Chemist’s lab, caught a ride on a breeze, and set down at a major intersection. In the Chemist’s eyes, it sank beneath the brown soup of feelings and disappeared.

Three seconds later a red dot appeared on the brown and began to spread like blood on cloth, until it completely replaced the brown.

The Chemist watched from his window, placed so the intersection was straight ahead of him, and waited with a heavy lump of dread in his soul for the drug’s effects to wear off so he could see what he’d done. He didn’t have long to wait.

The Chemist threw himself out the window.

For the next four years people talked with heavy hearts about the Chemical Riot that had claimed at least ten thousand confirmed souls in…where it happened is not important. That it happened at all is.

In the five days after the Chemist had unknowingly unleashed Rage into the air, every man, woman and, horribly, child who inhaled the dreadful gas became a monster, destroying life and property with all the ferocity of a starved, rabid wolf. The police could do nothing to subdue them, and many expired in the attempt. The army could do nothing. Tear gas and tranquilizers were useless. Animalistic bloodlust ruled, for five days and nights. One-fourth of the city was destroyed before a confined fire was set up, consuming at least four thousand infected people.

For years, the whole world wore a gas mask.

The building the Chemist’s lab was in was destroyed by the local high school’s graduating class, and burned to the ground on the second day. His body was mutilated long before that, by stray dogs.

The world changed after the Chemical Riot, but for better or worse has yet to be seen; the events in one reality never completely mirror that of another. You just have to wait for that crucial moment—

—when a Chemist makes a mistake.