Spoiler! :
Defiance to Oblivion
Sometimes it’s sort of hard to lie. For me, anyhow. So I kind of tell the truth halfway.
Like a couple weeks ago when I told my mom I wanted to get a part-time job somewhere and help make money for us. She let me. I know she sees me out there with the best of them, bagging at Trader Joes or filling gas tanks. She let me as long as it wouldn’t make me skip school.
I wasn’t lying. I sure wasn’t telling the truth, but I wasn’t lying. The closest I get to ‘work’ is a back table at Ogre’s, a Mountain Dew and half-finished burrito in front of me, and a notebook in my lap covered with scribbles that don’t even look like words. If anybody read my notes over my shoulder, no way would they make heads or tails of them, which is what I’m trying to do when a dude I’ve never seen before sits down across from me. Got an Ipod and looks my age, so he must go to my school. He’s also got a Triple-Queso Taco Grande that damn near covers his half of the table.
He tells me to call him Monk and then takes a bite, looking my notes over. “Script them yourself?”
“Yeah. Pain in the ass.”
He swallows. “That’s why I only get cracks.”
“Cracks are tight, but I learn a lot from modding them myself. It’s more reliable, too.”
“Modding’s the shit. What’s it of?”
Don’t want to tell him at first, but he gets it out of me. “Old-school. Lead to gold.”
He asks me to show what I’ve got so far. I reach over and pluck a wad out of the napkin holder. Touch two fingers to my forehead and make a circle on the paper, then an upside-down cross. It’s like a blood-rush through me and I drop it on top of my notes. Two stacks of green fifties.
“Shit,” I groan. Call me a perfectionist, but I hate excess. It’s like taking more than you need, being wasteful. I usually work out the theory tight so I get it on the first try.
Monk nods. “It’s the surface area. With different forms of things that are in essentials the same, the quantity depends on how the volume and density differ between the forms,” he takes a napkin and folds it in half, about the shape and size of a bill. “This would make it tighter.”
It makes sense to me. “Hey, nice…I usually worry too much about the chemical transmutation,” I say. I make a note that nobody will understand but me and Monk, naturally. The code, or law, of existence is a language of its own.
The general theory of alchemy is that all metals, from their primitive stage as minerals and trace components, to actual refined ore, seek perfection in the form of gold. Gold, though—you know what I mean. They liked it a lot back in the twenties and all but who cares? Fundamentally, gold is just one step on the way to perfection, which is infinite and complete energy the use of which does not create waste. If you look at this pyramid, raw minerals need to be changed by high-energy means to turn useful, and every step along the way they need to be refined—but each step uses less energy for the refinement, and takes more unnecessary components out of the ore, than before. Therefore it’s only logical that the top ‘perfection’ would be something that can no longer be refined, and can no longer produce waste materials, and has no particles it does not need.
As for how all this has to do with money—wait. Look in your wallet and take out a bill. It’s paper, right? You don’t feel any metal. But then there’s the ink. Which contains trace elements of aluminum, methane, and iron. I won’t bore you with every detail of its composition, but when you consider a napkin—or any industrial paper—it’s been pressed, wrung, drained, and cut by stainless steel all the way. This leaves nearly undetectable traces in the paper, but they are there, stored in its chemical memory. My formula harnesses the traces in both ink and paper and melds it into a different form, in the same way as they used to with gold and lead.
I remember the first time I tried that. Got the script out of the ugliest section of Copley Square Library, the basement where they arrange the old stuff just by numbers because you can’t even read the author’s name on the cover. It was the middle of class and I went and clogged my pencil. I was halfway through my paper, so I got bottom marks.
F is for Flamel.
There’re four of us now. Anthony—can’t get his driver’s permit back till eighteen, the fool—Monk, me, and Jackie, a guy so dumb he went and had a diamond set into his left front tooth just to have a sparkling smile. 200 carats, he’ll tell you; genuine Tanzanian, dug out by slaves, came with its own oyster shell. I’ve never told him they only go up to 89 carats, and I never will. As for Anthony, I met him on Xbox Live, and he flames me for not eating burgers.
Monk’s got a wireless network in his building that beats the crap out of the DSL I have in the library, so he usually gets the latest codes to us by downloading and email. I’m the scripter, and Anthony is the one who checks it over. He can make my scripts perfect, man—but he doesn’t give a shit about his actual schoolwork, a bit worse than me. And Jackie we keep around for comedy relief, I guess.
Usually Monk and I don’t have a lot of time for big things on school days. I script and he searches for cracks, and I don’t know what the hell Anthony and twinkle-tooth do after school—probably play Halo or something. But on the weekend, which starts Friday night, who knows what’ll happen. We meet somewhere and go chillin’, but it usually ends up weird.
Monk is a transfer student, so I’m the only one who has to half-lie.
I always kind of wonder why no one notices us. Four guys in a Korean dive on Washington St. being loud, with one smirking 200 carats to every waitress that comes by. And Anthony’s Friday suit is a full set of bling; chains, rings, sunglasses, fluffy cape, earrings and all. Monk’s nursing his Ipod with three empty noodle bowls in front of him, stacked up. He’s still hungry.
“It was sweet, man, WTF you talkin’ about,” says Jackie.
“It sucked. Now he won’t let me drive anyone’s.”
It’s a funny story. When Anthony’s papa finally let him borrow the car, he and Sparkly decided to celebrate by getting wasted. Then they started cruising around and Anthony let Jackie take the wheel for a bit, on Back Bay where there are less cops. So he almost ran over some chick with a violin.
Jackie was still sober enough to be a gentleman—Anthony was real smashed, though, for letting him drive—and when he opened to door to apologize, that girl damn near broke every bone he had between his nose and chin. It turned out that she was Shodan in Karate.
“Translation: kick-ass,” says Anthony.
“No. It means third-degree black belt,” I say.
Jackie grins. “She was hot.”
“You were plastered. She could be a warhorse and you’d see a pony.”
“No, she…was…hot. My brother says women only hit you when they really have the hots for your ass.”
“Yeah, yeah. And you almost kill them because you want their ass, too?”
Jackie looks confused, unsure, his George-Bush-in-slow-motion expression that you have to crack up at. Anthony grins at me. “Your pickup, Nicky.”
I’ve been practicing the theory, but most of the time, whenever it’s my turn to take the tab I screw up. I can’t see where I go wrong. Anthony perfected my formula a week ago, saying it’s probably subconscious, linked to the fact that I really want more money than I need, just like every human being on the planet. Stop kidding yourself, he says.
I want to make tens and it comes fifties. The table’s a minefield of plates, noodle bowls stacked three deep in front of Monk, cans of Coke and a sushi platter. Jackie’s picking his teeth with a silver needle. My fingers make the motion, and this time the rush is much stronger. Like a huge, invisible something bashing through me and coming out my hands as I modify the elements of the world.
“Shit, Nicky,” says Anthony. Monk pauses 50 Cent to look up at me. I’m sweating. Jackie’s smile is so wide he could swallow a slice of watermelon.
Thousand dollar bills, scattered in a pile in the space I’ve cleared on the table.
“Damn it,” I say, panting a little. It was too much. I’ve never felt like that before, and I hope the guys don’t notice it. I’m scared. Thousands are too much, way out of the spectrum. I can’t give my mom the extra. It’s more than my dad makes.
She’d ask me what job I had, and I couldn’t half-lie to that. My mom is smart.
“Look,” Monk says. “No worries. We’ll give it away. There’s this guy in the park—“
“There’s always a guy in the park, man. One that plays the guitar with a broken leg, and those idiots who sleep in the subway, knowing some people are sissy enough to give them money to do nothing,” says Anthony, tidying up the bills.
“Let’s buy a car,” Jackie says. “A BMW—“
“You think they won’t notice us drivin’ round in a BMW?”
Monk says, “Nicolas, it’s yours, you should decide what to—“
“He’ll just fucking donate it to Unicef or some crap—“
I don’t know what I’m thinking. Money for nothing. Money is nothing to any of us. We don’t even need work or school or college. But I’m the only one who’s actually doing this for a reason. It’s not money.
Alchemy is taking creation into your own hands. It’s going against God, something humans always wanted to do. But I don’t believe it.
If there is a god, he’s either a really dumb one or a really mean one. He made humans the top of the food chain, they say, so they could dominate everything, screw up the ecosystem, get greedy and kill each other, and then sit on this planet like it's a sinking ship. Then he seemed to have second thoughts and told them to listen to him, saying he’ll take them to hell if they don’t. Well, big surprise, all of us are going to hell the way I see it, whether we believe in him or not, whether we’re saints or sinners. I got into this because alchemy can rebuild something that we destroyed a long time ago.
“Paris,” I say suddenly.
Anthony stares at me. I know he’s wondering if there are chicks in Paris or not. Monk stares, too. Jackie bangs his fist on the table. “They fucken speak French there!”
“Monk’s got the Gift of Tongues downloading at home,” I say. “Is it off NetPro?”
“No. That shit gave me a weird virus. Atomic. It’ll be done now.”
“Seriously?” Anthony says.
“It has a reversal code, too,” Monk says. “I saw on the forums. It’s a really good update.”
But I know Anthony will leave it on till he’s aced every foreign-language class life can throw at him.
Friday night, two hours later, I buy some animal crackers and lemonade at Logan since they don’t serve meals in the air anymore. I don’t mind. When we flew to Tokyo it was Japan Air, and I got sick off the yakitori they served. I signed up for Japanese after that, so I would know when something means chicken.
It’s too full to get first-class on short notice, but we don’t have much with us as we push down the plane’s aisle. Monk’s duffel bag goes over his head, filled with the rest of my cash, and is snapped in the compartment. Jackie gets the window seat, and I’m next to him. Anthony brought his PSP along, and Monk won’t get bored between that and Scrubs on the air TV. He’s eating airport pizza because I told him about the bread in France.
The sky’s so dark out the window, but smoky. The smoke is orange-black, and brown on the bottom. Though it’s a weekend, and we’re going on vacation (my half-lie for tonight is ‘staying with friends’) my notes are in my pocket, and soon as the rush of take-off is over I open my fold-out-table and get back to them.
“Fuck you workin’ so hard for?” Jackie says in Korean, his tooth twinkling. Up close, the sparkle looks fake. I’d bet the shirt off my back he got sweatshop plastic drilled in there when he was drunk. Like I can’t tell what a real diamond looks like.
“It’s real,” he says, like he’s reading my mind, “That chick. Hit me so hard she left a chip of her ring in there, and I can’t get it out.”
“So she was married.”
He’s confused immediately. “No…wait…she, she…”
“Maybe she’s just engaged,” calls Anthony, “You just have to wait till she gets a divorce.”
“Fuck!”
What am I working so hard for? Even when we leave Boston, those funny orange clouds don’t go away for a while. They’re over every city. If I script 24/7, maybe I can change something about this place before it’s too late. Maybe the traces of methane gas in carbon dioxide can be changed into that perfect spot at the top, the limitless, waste-free energy. Maybe the lead residue that goes into acid rain that falls into rivers and kills fish can be changed back to its mineral roots and go back to the flow of life.
Maybe I’m shooting too high. But I can’t help it. No matter who we are, we’re going to hell unless we do something.
It’s funny, nobody thinks about sins when they speak about them. Traditionally the Seven Deadly Sins are Pride, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Avarice, and Sloth.
Now pride, I think, shouldn’t be one at all. Like my mom isn’t a sinner when she says she’s proud of my A-pluses in Chemistry, Biology, and Physics. Or like I was proud because I could teach my niece how to skateboard. If you aren’t a little proud of something, you’ll have low self-esteem, right?
I don’t know about wrath, like if it’s being angry for a good reason or just going crazy and killing people. Gluttony; I look at Monk, looking starved now that he’s eaten the last olive and pepperoni. Avarice and sloth; Anthony, who’ll admit that we have money for nothing and yet never give anyone a cent.
I think I’d add one in place of pride. Ignorance. Like everyone I know.
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