Human Alchemy

My friend always loved animals more than people. Even as a child she was a misanthropist, spending all of her time with insects, fish and other pets. As a teenager she obsessed over books on ornithology, ichthyology and entomology, fostering a prodigious understanding of everything that crawled, flapped and swam. Her studies were so determined that by the time her school years were at an end she had already been noticed by academic circles.

Her most peculiar interest was the absurd and presumed impossible theory known only as Human Alchemy, a theory of evolution hidden in the margins of already controversial textbooks. She claimed that one day she would work out the secret of turning animals into humans, and that only then would she be surrounded by people that truly understood her.

And yet I was somehow even more solitary as a youth than her, born with a chronic genetic condition that made me smaller than most, and gave me weak nerves. I only liked the company of my friend and did not even share her interest in God’s creatures, despising when her cats were in the same room as us. It might not seem like the two of us were a good match, but we could give each other comfort without speaking a word. I wouldn’t have gone anywhere in life if that diligent young woman hadn’t carried me along, and she needed me so dearly that she was known to panic to the point of hyperventilation when I was not with her.

It’s funny when you look back on your life and things seem so obvious. The difficulties that once defeated you become so trivial as you grow, but at the time you swim in circles and bounce off of invisible walls.

After school, my friend was accepted into the greatest zoological university in the nation. I wasn’t accepted there nor anywhere, but she would sneak me into the lectures just to keep her company. When she graduated with innumerable accolades, she exploded with ideas of what we could achieve with our ‘combined minds’. But time was already running out. I had already lived several years past the average life expectancy attached to my condition and was rapidly deteriorating. I was lethargic, my skin was growing pale, and I found it a struggle to eat. My friend was scared for me, but it motivated her to finally tackle that mystery that no one had yet been able to solve: the first ever successful case of Human Alchemy. Maybe she believed that if she could transform all the genes of an animal into those of a human, she could easily transform the genes that were killing me into healthy ones too.

After cashing in her stellar reputation, she was granted sole access to a university laboratory. Day and night she ordered in enormous pipes, cables and antennae and welded them together, creating a monstrous kind of machine. In her desperate haste to save me she was willing to combine dangerous forms of radiation and chemistry like no one had before. Whatever this machine was going to do, it was going to be spectacular.

Three months later there was a major breakthrough. Placing an ant underneath the silver metal cone of her machine and standing behind a glass window, my friend pulled down a lever, and the cone zapped the ant with an enormous dose of targeted radiation. After a flash of white fire, the room was left full of fog.

When the haze finally died down, there was no longer any ant under the machine. Instead, a black and shiny woodlouse rolled around in its place. My friend was ecstatic, rushing into the chamber and picking up the bug. As she stared, it rolled up into a ball in the palm of her hand. It did not seem confused at all, but acted as if it had always been a woodlouse.

Over the next few days my friend expanded upon the machine with even larger pipes and valves. Then, after placing the same woodlouse back underneath the silver metal cone, she pulled the lever back up, and with another flash the woodlouse was an ant once more.

She was enthralled with the success, and eager to try the real thing, especially since I had grown much sicker. My skin was almost grey, and I could barely move at all. Whether right or wrong, she was determined to create a human being out of an animal.

On the final day, as I lay completely motionless, she fine-tuned the machine, turning dials and charging batteries. When it was finally ready, she placed one of her pet goldfish under the machine, returned to the controls, and pulled down the lever for the final experiment.

---

I remember finding myself lying down with my face on the floor, disorientated, and unsure of who I was. My memories slowly came back, but fuzzy and out of sequence. I remembered the machine and the experiments, and I began to worry that something had gone wrong.

As I sat up, clutching my head, my friend’s face appeared poking over me. She had her mouth covered as if suppressing a gasp, and her eyes were wide. I tried to speak, finding it surprisingly difficult. My jaw was incredibly stiff, and I worried that it had been dislocated.

“Did it w-w-work?” I finally managed to splutter out.

My friend continued to stare down silently. I could hear rapid breathing, and soon I noticed that her whole body had begun to tremble. It reminded me of when she used to panic as a child.

I looked around the room to see what had happened. Large piles of glass were scattered around the laboratory, and so were a few broken pipes. There was no sign of a fish, nor of any larger animal or extra human being. The machine seemed to have failed, exploded, knocked me unconscious and presumably destroyed any evidence of the tiny goldfish that had been placed underneath.

I carefully stood up, hoping to help my friend, when she responded by gasping and taking a quick step back. I squinted at her and she glared back. She reached forward in a very hesitant manner, her fingers curling back as she brushed my shoulder as if she was testing an electric fence. Confused, I went to grab her hand and she snatched it away.

“Something w-went wrong,” I said. “Something went wrong with the m-machine, didn’t it?”

My friend still couldn’t speak. She was still unable to compose her breaths. It was beginning to worry me. I was still unsure about what exactly had happened with the experiment.

Then, a preposterous theory entered my mind.

 What if the machine hadn’t broken in that explosion? What if it had succeeded? What if a goldfish had indeed been turned into a human being?

As I asked myself these questions, my friend, still hyperventilating, let out a quick gasp and dropped to one knee. I recalled the ant, and how quickly it had begun behaving like a normal woodlouse. Was my friend truly having a panic attack? Or were these the actions of an aquatic animal struggling to breathe in its new human body?

Surely my memories of my friend had been real, but perhaps the explosion had concussed me so bad that I forgot what she truly was. Could she have, in fact, been a pet goldfish of mine all along, one that upon being subjected to my machine’s radiation had metamorphosed into a human being?

As I looked down at my friend, she collapsed to the ground and began shaking. Were these the insane attempts of a fish-turned-human to swim on land? I couldn’t bear the sight of it. It seemed unnatural to see her struggling to move in this body.

I noticed that we were both still next to the silver metal cone responsible for blasting out the radiation. I had to take the chance. I turned around and looked for the controls. After I spotted them, I tried to run, but my legs wobbled beneath me. I only needed to take three steps across the room and yet I almost tripped on the way over. I waved my clumsiness off as the consequences of concussion.

“Wait!” said my friend between gasps as I reached the controls. I was shocked to hear her speak. Clearly, she was becoming more and more human by the second, and the longer I waited, the harder it would be to reverse the transformation. I grabbed a hold of the lever.

“I’m sorry,” I said, turning to the woman. “I should never have played God. You’re a fish, and you should never have been anything more.”

I pulled the lever back up. And just as I did, my friend yelled out a final plea.

---

There was another hot, white flash and I found myself on the ground, concussed once again. The machine had completely given out; the pipes and antennae were scattered so violently there was no longer any indication of its original position. And, lying on the floor, tiny, orange and flopping around, was my lifelong friend. 

I began to cry. Even though I had done what I could to restore the rightful order of things, I felt as if I had killed a woman, a loving and caring woman. 

I recalled the final words she had said before the machine had reversed her. They had been strange words, but what was to be expected from a fish turned into a woman? 

“Don’t pull the lever,” she had said. “Don’t pull the lever, Goldie.”