The day I discovered Alchemy wasn't a Gimmick

Warning: Somewhat vague reference to waterboarding near the end

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It’s an old thing. Brown, leather bound, nothing embossed into the cover; it resembles a boring little journal.

I was told by my mother of its status; a family relic. Something passed down through generations and generations. The date was never written anywhere in it, so all are unsure of where, exactly, in the family line this book spawned in. One thing is for certain; it dates back to a time where alchemy was heralded as the answer to all problems.

The way to let the poor stand on even ground with the rich, or the way to let empires get much, much more absurdly rich.

The way to find all the answers to anything and everything, perhaps.

Today, it’s really only passed down as tradition; something like a historical record, proof our family existed. None of them are ‘quite so gullible’ as to believe any of these scribbles and notes are truth. Just magical nonsense.

I didn’t quite believe it either. It’s just a gimmick. Something populations a millennia ago speculated to exist, but proved wrong by hard science in the modern ages.

That is what I told myself, until I woke up one night, and I could swear it was glowing a faint red.

I stared at it, to see if I’m just simply in this little world my brain has concocted for the purpose of nightly respite. But it didn’t stop, all up until I scrambled out of bed and groggily rushed to the desk on which it rests. Then, it was dark again.

I must have imagined it. Maybe my body was now blocking the lights coming through my window, the one conveniently placed where it would shine down onto the journal. So many trucks pass there, sometimes random people will go through the street with the brightest lights in the world in their hands.

I yawned. I should be going back to sleep, this is idiotic. But the curiosity of truly turning those pages and finding all there is to find took hold of me. So I sat down, flicked the light open, and carefully started looking through it.

The pages were old and fading. So fragile, they would almost crumble to dust under my fingers. This was a relic meant to be passed down, not to be burnt in a campfire. So I took a spare turquoise journal from my desk drawers, one I originally purposed for a diary. I told myself, I’m simply making a copy so I can pass both down without the risk of the unique copy destroying itself in its age. But, I knew I wanted to believe in the magic, with all the comics and stories speaking of alchemy as a major plot device. My biggest inspirations for writing in turn when I was but a young child.

So I began; writing down what’s visible, filling in the gaps with educated guesses, reproducing the graphs of ‘transmutation circles’ and other elemental ideas onto the page. Starting with no real, or rather, likely false knowledge, ending with understanding of a world view ages past.

Then, weeks later, after all the transcribing was done, I decided to go through the motions of one of the rituals inscribed in the journal.

On paper, I drew a circle with a drafting compass I had for the purpose of my career as a graphic designer. Adding in the use of rulers and protractors, I drew the center diamond, the two triangles with lines going through both sitting on opposite sides and facing opposite directions, the curved lines linking the vertical ends of the diamond to the center of the closest sides of the triangles, and adding on the sides not taken up by the triangles two of the same symbol for the Gemini zodiac sign.

I really only reproduced this ritual as an art project, and to engage in my childish feeling of engaging with magic somehow, even through the barrier separating the real and the fictional. I placed the journal within the circle, and wished I had another one of the same journal to place next to it and pretend I had duplicated it. But I continued engaging in my fantasy, and started doing the movements apparently necessary for the ritual to work. Which it never would.

I put my hands on both sides of the circle horizontally, and dragged my left one up the circumference, and the right one down it at the same time, perfectly timed, albeit slow. Then, the hands both arrived at the opposite starting point, so then I slid outward with both, albeit rather clumsily.

And I rapidly pulled back as it lit up light brown.

I felt like I was going to pass out. From disbelief? Excitement? Maybe fear. Outright distress at being proven wrong. The paper beneath the copied notebook warped, the wood of the desk destined itself to a new fate, and there it was. A second, perfect clone of the copied notebook, resting on top of its sibling.

I slid down the side of my bed frame, blinking a couple times. No use asking myself if I was in a dream; the layout of my room, of my house, I remembered it just right. This is real. It doesn’t feel like it.

I got up, albeit still crouched, and cautiously made my way to my mangled desk, light brown sparks still flickering around. I picked up the two journals. Same texture. Same color, albeit maybe the copy is a little... grayer. I looked through it. Everything is the same.

I tapped on the destroyed wood on my left. I could find nothing, so I looked away from the notebooks, and saw my phone was conspicuously missing. Maybe it dropped onto the floor.

I looked. No phone.

Maybe I left it on the dinner table.

As it turned out, the transmutation circle --- which, apparently, is a real thing one can draw and make function --- gobbled up my phone in its search for suitable materials. Gobbled up the sim card too. At this point, I’m feeling a little crazy.

With no way to call my mother to attempt to regain sanity, and not really wanting to wait so long for a new phone and phone plan to be delivered, I went and got a dumb phone with a prepaid phone number. I would of course later order a proper modern device after doing some research on my computer and signal the need for a new sim card from my provider. For now, though, maybe it turned out not so bad. I had been wanting to try out a dumb phone, having been born in the early 2000s and having not had the opportunity to experience that era when it was happening.

It was time to rebuild a contact list. I started with my friends; I could simply tell them through Messenger that I dropped my phone while taking a picture of an ‘awesome seagull over the river under the bridge’, and that because of my trademarked clumsiness, I dropped my phone there into the water. It’s not like they could tell I’m lying; text has no tone or body language, after all.

The trickier part was my mother. She doesn’t have Messenger, or any social media at all, surprisingly. I would have to tell her outright, with voice, inflection and all, that I lost my phone. And I’m bad at lying verbally.

The dial tone vibrated through my skull as I waited for her to pick up. It went on, and on, and on...

I sighed from relief. Maybe I will not have to confront this mess just yet! Maybe I could just call in sick and sit at my computer desk downstairs and play video games--

“Hello?”

My dreams were shattered.

“Hum... Hi mom....”

“Honey?” There was silence as she presumably checked her phone again, wanting to see what phone number was on there. “Is this a... ‘deepfake’?”

Good to see my mom was keeping up with the technology literacy lessons I was giving her.

I laughed nervously, rubbing my neck for some sort of comfort. “No, I... legitimately lost my phone, and sim card with it, and I’m using a prepaid phone plan for the time being.”

“How did you even lose your phone? You never leave your house!”

That changed in the last few months, but okay.

“I... dropped it.”

“Dropped it?”

“In the toilet.”

The silence lasted long enough for my skin to conjure a mutation known as actual iron bullet sweat drops.

“You’re lying.”

I am so bad at confrontation, I just admitted outright, “Yeah.”

I then launched myself into a retelling of what happened, silently pleading for a sanity check. Which never really arrived as my mom ended up hanging up on me all of a sudden.

I pulled the phone away from my ear, seeing that the call was indeed marked as having ended.

Leaning back in my computer chair, I stared at the ceiling. I wondered how she had reacted, visually. How she felt about this crazy story. I guessed I would not know.

Days later, I would end up on the news for trying to show my friends at a local park what happened. Trying is not to be emphasized here, seeing as it was successful.

I had used another transmutation circle this time around; circle, two squares with their corners going through the sides of one another, with three triangles within, two on the outside of this triangle chain facing outward, the one in the middle facing downward, the last two struck through by a line. I had been experimenting a little bit with dirt and clay I dug up from a nearby stream, trying to make structures with the transmutation circles. I learned a little bit about intent, but it wasn’t enough to make anything perfect, so I stuck to cubes of dirt.

Having drawn the transmutation circle in the grass, pulling out sections, I didn’t need any additional materials. I slid both my hands from the bottom of the circle to the top, following the circumference, in front of my bemused and tolerating friends. Then I slid my hands sharply down through the circle, thinking of a big cube, and dark turquoise sparks came alive.

I could see my friends freaking out, focused not on me but on the ground warping around us, coming together to form a cube more or less like the one I imagined, taller than us when sitting.

The thing is, I had not planned for the energy discharge. It was extremely eye-catching, prompting people to pull out their phones and film all of us during the transmutation, and some select angles out of the few posted online went viral, with the multiple angles and consistent images throughout proving it was not AI-generated seeing as AI could not yet achieve this level of consistency. Unfortunately.

In hindsight, I may be a little bit stupid.

I stare in horror at the TV showing some of the footage, and discussions sparking around how it could’ve been made. People even went to that specific spot we were in to see if any machinery had happened. “No, just weird marks,” they’d say.

I will not ever be able to get out of my house and show my face ever again. Some online extremists on both sides talked about the possibility of me being either a bio-weapon or about to be turned into one.

The doorbell rings. I pull the curtains aside from the window to see who it is.

Two amateur-looking reporters, with a third lagging behind on the stairs.

Hell no.

They know I saw them. They saw me. Their muffled speech comes through, “We’re just curious!”

Internet sleuths are way too good at doxxing people.

I have no idea what I should be doing next. There are people outside my door, more might come, they saw my face, they know it is in fact my address, and...

What if the government really does decide to make me into a bio-weapon?

What if they use my ancestors’ research to create super-soldiers?

Did I actually doom this world?

Forcing myself to take deep breaths, I took a mental step back from the situation.

OK. They will see me if I go out the side door. They will see me if I go through the small backyard and then through the fence, which is on the same side as the side door.

Instead, I should just confront them.

Pushing all of my anxiety behind me, I go back up to the door, behind which there are now 9 amateur reporters all crammed onto the porch, waiting to hear my statement.

And a statement they will have.

I open the door.

I almost forget what my plan is when they all start shouting and bombarding me at the exact same time. My mind blanks temporarily, until I finally come back to myself.

And I say,

“I was just using YouTube tutorials to do fancy tricks, that’s all.”

I wake up in the middle of the night again, with knocking at my door.

That’s weird.

A few weeks ago, I had taken upon me the responsibility to hide both the relic and the copies in a wall behind one of my shelves. My obsession with crime and investigatory shows told me, better make it super clean after, and everywhere at that, because they’ll surely use the dust pattern to figure out something’s off.

Good thing I did that because opening the door, I am greeted by the sight of two stereotypical ‘CIA’-type agents. I think I might have crapped my pants right then and there.

“Ma’am, you’ll have to come with us.”

I don’t have time to refuse as they grab me and drag me out of my house.

I wake once more in a barren room, with metal walls and table and chairs. Pretty much interrogation style. I wish I could say I’m in a normal chair. I’m not. I’m laying down on my back on this metal thing. The chairs are for other people, it seems.

A man comes in, with a notepad, sits down next to the table, right in front of me. “We’d like to know more about your... ‘power’.”

Wow, straight to business.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do. We recently detected a blast of energy.”

“I don’t. Know. What you’re talking about.”

“Ma’am. You will tell us the guidelines.”

“There are no guidelines. This is fake.”

“No. There are. Tell us.”

This continued on like that. I refused again and again for days, being given minimal food, but enough water to stay alive. I could feel myself getting weaker. I might even be persuaded, at one point, to give out all the answers.

I reminded myself, every time, that these are obviously not good guys. If I give them the answers, I’m dooming the world.

And so it went on and on, until the setup suddenly changed and they threw cloth over my face.

I yelled to know what they were doing.

It was then that I learned what it was like to be shakily terrified of water.

The months following that, I would break down, over and over.

Today, I weakly look up at the door opening, letting a man in. He shows me the three journals.

I stare in disbelief. But I realize it was unlikely, to begin with, that I would ever be able to fool people with an insane toolkit.

And I realize, that’s it. It’s the end. They don’t need me anymore.