The Chemistry of Death

Chapter 18

Ziggy set the glass beaker on his kitchen stove and turned on the fan. When he’d done the remodel, he’d installed a stovetop fan that vented to the outside instead of filtering and recirculating the air back into the apartment. Expensive, but necessary for his purposes. And money was never an object. He had more than he could possibly spend.

He set up four Plexiglas panels around the stovetop and taped the edges together so they were airtight. Next, he ran a line of tape around the bottom to seal the panels to the countertop and another line around the top to seal the panels to the fan hood. The front panel had a round cutout big enough for him to insert one hand. It wasn’t a perfect smoke hood, but it was good enough.

He assembled the ingredients on his granite countertop before he put on his thick rubber gloves. Whistling, he measured the liquids with a graduated pipette and dropped them into the beaker on the back burner of his stove. He’d made this concoction many times before, and today he was making a double batch.

He loved chemistry. Everyone forgot that he’d majored in it in college. He’d been expected to major in math or biology or even ecology. Not something where he got his hands dirty, where he worked with substances that didn’t occur in nature, or at least not without human intervention.

Chemistry was alchemy, and alchemy required practice. He loved how he could combine two ingredients to produce a mixture much different than a sum of its parts. A harmless substance could turn into something deadly when mixed with the right partner; a deadly substance like sodium could be turned into something as harmless as table salt.

Chemistry governed the world. On a macro scale, chemistry could be used to pollute or clean the earth and water of the world. It could poison ecosystems, and it could save them. On a micro scale, every emotion anyone felt, every disease, and every thought started with a tiny chemical reaction. The man who controlled chemistry controlled the world.

For years he’d tinkered with this mixture, perfecting his designer drug in lab after lab. He’d come up with the idea for the drug during a summer internship. He’d scorned internships with large pharmaceutical companies and chosen instead to spend his time with a legendary chemist: Dr. Bilous. The man was responsible for creating more mind-altering substances than anyone on Earth. The internship wasn’t for college credit, but Ziggy learned far more in those three months than he ever did in the classroom.

Most of his mentor’s creations were eventually declared illegal, but the chemist experimented with them before they were. He wrote entire books about his homemade hallucinogens. The Drug Enforcement Agency sent agents to learn from him about the latest drugs on the street.

It had been a mind-blowing summer for Ziggy. He’d learned how the tiniest amount of certain chemical compounds could radically affect the brain. In the end the hallucinogens frightened him away.

Unlike some of the other acolytes, he hadn’t really been interested in expanding his own mind. He’d been more interested in changing the behavior of others. And he found chemicals for that, too.

He’d learned all he could in those few short months, then slaved away in the university lab after he went back to school that fall. After a bit of tweaking, he’d created a drug he’d named Algea after the Greek goddesses of sorrow and grief. The Greeks called them the bringers of weeping and tears.

Scientifically, he’d say the drug deepened the effects of depression, causing the subject to dwell on the saddest moments of her life. Since it also intensified existing guilt and remorse, the subject was caught in a loop of regret and despair. As an added benefit, the drug made most subjects docile and compliant. Algea was perfect.

It also caused a fear of light and intense agoraphobia. He didn’t know if those effects would wear off given enough time, and he didn’t care. The women he used it on weren’t alive long enough for it to matter. Once they recognized the despair underlying their lives, they couldn’t go on. He envied them the clarity they found, but he was too afraid to take the drug himself. He suspected he could make a fortune selling Algea, but he needed to keep the drug for himself.

The mixture started to boil, and he turned down the flame until it formed a thin blue ring. He loved cooking with gas. Gas gave him the precision needed for his hobby. He’d bought the best stove he could, ignoring the kitchen designer who’d gone on and on about the wonderful meals he’d be able to cook. He cooked all right, but never anything he’d eat.

He checked his watch. The mixture needed to simmer for thirty seconds, then to cool. He busied himself putting the stoppers back onto the tiny glass bottles that held his ingredients, wiping each bottle down carefully before returning it to the padded wooden box where his chemicals lived when not in use.

Soon only three empty vials were left, lined up parallel to the stove. They were tiny and would hold a milliliter of Algea — a single dose.

He drew out the stoppers and set them on the counter. Carefully, he filled a pipette from the beaker and moved those precious drops to an empty vial. The liquid was a translucent blue. It didn’t have much of a taste, or at least not enough that a woman would notice after a couple of drinks.

He inserted the tiny stoppers, then dropped one vial into his pants pocket. It felt warm against his thigh. The other vials went into the wooden box. Algea broke down quickly. If he didn’t use it within a week, he’d have to throw it away and make another batch.

While he disassembled his makeshift smoke hood and meticulously washed down the surfaces, he was conscious of the warm vial in his pocket. The vial touched his thigh when he bent his leg, swung away when he straightened it. This vial was special, because it wasn’t for one of his women.

It was for Joe Tesla.