The Astonishing Alchemist - vol. 01

Dr. Langford Thomason, Ph.D., has heard a lot of weird things in his life. There was his grad school buddy's roommate who, after doing a line of shots and who knows what else, asked the waitress for a pitcher of whatever fluorescent-colored concoction he'd just tossed back, and then proceeded to reenact important scenes from a movie script that apparently only existed in his head. That was weird, but easy enough to explain. This? This is just plain weird.

He does have a knowledge that approaches encyclopedic of science fiction films and literature, though, and he's quickly able to switch gears to play along.

"Nobody said I wasn't a guide," he says and gestures at his costume. "Do I look like I'm just your average guy in a suit? I just haven't been here before. To Uranus or his," he says, pointing at the kid who made the initial joke. "I can talk to your familiars 'cause I've got one of my own, you see. You wanna tell me the steps that came before? Maybe we can figure out the next step together."

Astral plane or ethereal plane. These kids said the guys in the suits called this place I am one of those names. Maybe the Neptonian Sphere, but I think that was a joke.

The Uranus joke gets a good laugh out of everyone, but the group still remains somewhat skeptical. You notice them exchanging strangely long and intense looks at each other.

"It sounds like people are mixing terms they don’t fully understand over there, boss. Your encyclopedias only briefly touched on esoteric subjects like the astral plane; probably because it is such nonsense. Although maybe I should rethink that in light of the present situation. Anyways, some early philosophers talked about an ethereal realm between the Heavens and the Earth. This realm included all the stars and planets. What we think of today as the orbits of the planets around the sun were sometimes referred to as the celestial spheres. Each planet having its own plane, or spherical path. These discussions did not include Neptune and Uranus, however. Those planets weren’t discovered until the 18th century, by which time talk of celestial spheres had long since stopped. It sounds to me like these people are either appropriating terms for their own use or are misguided in their understanding-- Wait. I’m being told to tell you to flap your arms like a chicken and cluck exactly 7 times. That make any sense to you?"

All five children are now staring expectantly at you. It is beyond creepy.

Total sense, if you can believe that. They think I'm some sort of guide because I can communicate with their 'familiars', which clearly are the dogs. Think you can learn anything from your canine compatriots while I get these kids to trust me?

"Seriously? You don't believe me, so you're going to have your familiars test me out?" replies the Alchemist. "I'm hurt. I mean, hurt right here."

He taps his chest over his heart a couple of times.

"I mean, I could flap my arms like a chicken and cluck seven times if you really want me to, but I ask you, is this really the basis for a healthy relationship built on trust and understanding? I mean, while we're at it, why don't we all do the chicken dance as a team-building exercise?"

The mask, of course, covers his face but it's impossible to mistake the gleeful tone in his voice.

"I’ll see what I can dig up, boss. Good luck."

The kids break out into snickers, or at least struggle to hide smiles at your comments. All accept one who remains stone faced serious. She takes a step forward and the other children cut it out. "It wasn’t an exercise in trust for our benefit." She raises a hand and points behind you.

You turn and come face to face with a 7 foot tall snarling monster...chicken. It lets loose a mighty roar of a cluck. The air and spit from its throat washes of you. Nausea apparently is still quite possible in the astral plane. Its beak stretches impossibly wide as the beast prepares to swallow you whole. Right up until it vanishes into a puff of smoke and the children completely lose it laughing.

The one who tried to trick you with the chicken illusion steps forward again and reaches out a hand for a shake. "I’m Echo." One by one she points down the line and introduces the other children. "India, Charlie, Juliet, and Romeo." Everyone waves.

The children then launch into an overview of what led them to this point. It is incredibly disjointed, as the kids constantly interrupt and correct each other. It is fascinating to see the miniature 3D constructs they bring into being to support their story visually though.

From what you can gather, they are all neighborhood kids who one by one ended up at this house after chasing their dogs who seemed drawn to the area. They were each approached and told about the video game arcade and the secret passage that could be used to access it. They started hanging out in there every day, trying to beat each other’s score in all of these super cool games they have never seen anywhere else.

They believe Folstad is a video game developer. He introduced them to what he described as the future of games and has had them test out several new technologies. The headsets allowed them to enter the Cool Place and have actual conversations with their dogs in English. After a few weeks of this, they found they could keep talking to them even when they weren’t in the game.

That is when Folstad sat them down and told them about the astral plane. The children veer off in arguments about what The Cool Place is again and it takes a while to get them back on track. When they do, they tell you that they met a guide in the game who helped them develop the skill to enter the Cool Place without the aid of the headset. They assume you are here to teach them another new skill.

"Okay, so you can make illusions. Nice chicken, by the way. Gotta say, I've never been nearly eaten by a seven-foot tall chicken with breath that'd knock out an elephant with a sinus infection," says the Alchemist after he regains his bearings and considers what they've been telling him.

"So before I know what I'm going to teach you, I gotta know what else you can do. Obviously, you can create images and objects. Can you... let's see..." He claps his hands together. "Here's something. Can you change yourselves?"

He takes a deep breath and visualizes the effects of his elasticity mutagen. It's not difficult for him: it's one of the reasons he's always been good at creating molecules ever since he was an undergrad. He can picture the reactions and the structures combining, changing and affecting each other, visualizing the products and the mechanisms as though they were projected directly over his vision. As he focuses on the outcomes, he reaches out his hand, pouring focus and belief into stretching out to reach behind Echo's ear and produce a shiny gold coin with an image of himself and the words "In the Alchemist We Trust" circling the image around the edge of the coin.

He flips the coin in the air for Juliet to catch. The tails side has two bubbling test tubes crossing in an X pattern.

Their faces light up at the sight of your trick. Impressive in its own right; you get the impression that none of them had ever even thought of using their abilities to do something like that before. For the next ten minutes everyone tries their best to mimic what you have done. It takes a while before anyone shows any real results.

They have no trouble duplicating the coin. It is clear that external creations are a very easy feat for them. Changing their own structure appears to be a much more difficult task. Eventually they do manage it though.

Echo is first. She realized quickly that she cannot yet duplicate your stretching ability. She goes for something more simply and changes the color of her hair to neon green. Juliet is next. She takes the coin you gave her and closes her palm over it. She shuts her eyes and when she opens them, the coin is gone but the symbol showing two test tubes is etched into her skin like a tattoo. She turns her hand over and proudly shows off the other side which matches the other side of the coin.

Before long, each of them have managed to manifest minor changes to their forms. India gives herself glowing red eyes. Charlie grows webbing between his fingers and toes and comments about how he is going to kill it at the swim meet next weekend. Romeo gives himself fangs and grows his fingernails into long sharp claws. He chases the other kids around the room.

Each success, no matter how small, brings a delighted laugh from the Alchemist. "Very nice! You all are quick studies. You'll have me beat in no time."

That's when something Charlie said rises to the top of his thoughts. "So... wait a minute. You're going to kill it at the swim meet next weekend?" he says, head tilting a little in curiosity. "Are you telling me you can translate things from here, from the Cool Place, back to the Not-So-Cool Place?"

Most of the kids are still playing around with their ability to change their forms and don’t respond to your question. Charlie gives you a ‘duh’ expression. "That’s the whole point, right? Learn how to do it here and in time practice makes perfect. Eventually we can do it out there too. I can’t believe they’ve been holding out on us being able to do this cool stuff though," he says while waving his webbed fingers.

"Boss. Something isn’t right with these dogs," Rocky interrupts. "I can’t quite put my paw on it. They seem... empty. Does that make sense? They look like dogs. They smell like dogs. They... It's like they have no personalities, boss. I don’t think they like me." The worry in his ‘voice’ is clear.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves too quickly, here," says Lang. Whatever he was going to say next is interrupted by Rocky's message.

It's starting to make sense. Hold on, buddy, let me see if I can do something from my end.

"Hey, about the dogs. You know, I've got a dog I can speak with too, and he's a little worried that yours don't like him very much. Could you do me a favor and see if you can get them to back down? Then I've got a couple other questions for you, and maybe we can teach each other a few more cool tricks."

The joyous expressions on their faces vanish instantaneously. Everyone stops what they were doing. They give each other a few silent looks before looking back to you one last time. Then they are gone. No puff of smoke. No theatrics. There one second and gone the next.

‘Boss! Whatever you did, please undo it!’ Rocky’s panicked voice comes through.

For a minute, Rocky doesn’t respond to any messages you send. You look around the room but nothing has changed except for the sudden disappearance of the children. You head into the hallway while trying to think of a way to escape the Cool Place and help Rocky. That is when he reaches back out.

‘I don’t know what you did, but it worked, boss! They were chasing me across the neighborhood and then suddenly, poof, they were gone. It was like magic. What is going on over there?’

Before Rocky finishes his message you get a pretty good idea of where the dogs went. The sudden appearance of growling behind you is unsettling to say the least.

"That wasn’t very nice of you," the chorus of all the children speaking as one sounds out from all around you in a deafening volume. "Trying to trick us. Make us think you are a friend. They warned us about people like you."

This is followed by even more growling dogs as a trio walks out of the arcade with their teeth bared in a snarl. The sound of the other two dogs growling behind you only grows louder.

This place is suddenly no longer cool. Not cool at all.

"Do I get a chance to explain? Plead my case?" he calls out, turning so he can keep an eye on the dogs approaching from both directions. He moves slowly toward the other doorway, to the empty room he went into earlier. If everything goes very far south, at least he can try and set up a bottleneck.

"I never tried to trick you. I taught you the trick, remember? If I wasn't a friend, would I have just given that trick away without demanding some sort of payment up front? Juliet, etching that image of the coin into your hand, that was amazing. Think of what you could do to camouflage yourself. Charlie, think of the swim meet. Who's trying to tell you I'm not your friend? Why are they doing it? Because they're wrong. Think hard about it. Come to your own conclusions."

You hear indistinct whispers. It is as if the children are right next to you speaking quietly to one another but you cannot actually make out what they are saying. The dogs gather at the doorway and continue to snarl and growl, but they stop their advance. The whispering stops and one by one the dogs ‘pop’ out of existence; leaving you along inside the not so Cool Place.

The telepathic chorus returns. "We are undecided. Divided. Unsure. Further proof of your... friendship, and your abilities is needed. Indeed. You did not harm us. We will not harm you. We will not help you either. If you are a guide, you should have no trouble finding your way out."

The unified voices fade away and you are left alone inside the Cool Place.

"Well. At least I don't have to punch any dogs, real or virtual. That wouldn't be any good at all."

The Alchemist takes a moment to look around, gauging his surroundings. It all looks roughly the same as the little bit of the compound he'd seen in the... what should he call it? The Not-So-Cool Place had a nice ring, but there are some cool things about it. Rocky. Alicia.

Wait a minute...

First he tries Rocky.

What's going on here? Well, let's see. The kids were here. And now they're not. Also, I taught them how to change shape in this weirdo virtual space. But apparently, get this: what they do here, they can also manifest outside the virtual space. So in hindsight, maybe I should've gotten a little clearer read on their allegiances first. That'll go on the to-do list all right, he says as he walks farther down the hall into space he hadn't explored yet. What else? Right! So when I asked them to ask their dogs -- they call them familiars -- to leave you alone, I'm guessing that's when things went sideways here. The kids disappeared, then the dogs showed up and looked like they were about to attack.

He reviews the rest of the conversation, and finishes by saying, So now I have to prove that I'm a 'guide' and find my way out of the Cool Place as they call it. Or apparently I won't be their friend. And they're the best lead we've had yet on Folstad, so I'd hate to get on their bad side, at least not yet. Still, I want to poke around a little more and see if I find anything else interesting.

He pauses, then adds, What's going on out there?

While he waits for Rocky's response, he tries contacting Alicia subvocally.

Alicia? Any chance you can hear me?

He stops walking, closes his eyes and tries to focus, fixing an image in his head of Alicia sitting in the van watching his words pop up on her monitors and replying, just as she had when he was outside the compound's walls.

‘Well things have been mostly calm since you got the dogs off my tail,’ Rocky calls back. ‘I circled back to the house and the guards are on alert. They know something is up but don’t seem to understand what. I haven’t heard any chatter about finding you downstairs, so at least we got that much going for us, boss.’

As Rocky talks you continue down the hallway and pass another room with an open doorway. It looks identical to the last two rooms with the glass walls covering TV monitors. You keep moving forward but can’t shake the feeling that you saw something out of the corner of your eye inside the room. When you turn to look again, it is gone. It is hard to say exactly what it was you think you saw. It was roughly the size of a basketball. White and round with some color throughout, but mostly darkness found in a spot in the middle. Kind of like an eyeball...

Alicia doesn’t respond when you call out. You stop outside the doorway and mentally recall the image of Alicia in the van. Even with your eyes closed you can detect the change in light before you. When you open them, the walls of the room display the inside of the van.

You watch as Alicia reads your message on the monitor and gleefully reacts. She calms herself down with some focused breathing and types out a message back to you. "I was starting to get worried. Been radio silent with you two for way too long!"

The Alchemist starts puzzling over the thing he can't quite get a good look at when the screens in the room comes to life. "Whoa. That's so cool!"

Okay, stay tuned. I think I just got in touch with Alicia from inside this whatever-it-is-I'm in...

"Yeah, so... some unexpected goings-on..."

Lang gives Alicia a quick recap of recent events. "It's all a little bit weird. I'm not sure if I need to be in one of these rooms to talk to you or not. I'll try it again when I leave, but for now, you have any news? You're still undetected, I hope?"

Now that the initial excitement over contacting Alicia is past, Lang tries to concentrate on getting a good look at the spherical object. As he constructs a mental image of what little of it he saw, he realizes how much it really does look like an eyeball.

Nuts. I bet it's the kids keeping tabs on me, and I just gave them another reason to maybe not trust me...

"Hold that thought, Leesh. I'll be back in touch when I can."

He continues trying to conjure the strange object, keeping his eyes open but not looking directly into the room. Hopefully, it comes back and he'll focus on trying to keep it from disappearing when he looks directly at it.

Alicia first looks thrilled when she reads your message. Then she leans back in her chair and starts to ponder over something before responding. You’ve seen this look many times before and know you have a minute to think about the eye, or whatever it was that you saw, before she collects her thoughts.

When you step out of the room, Alicia fades. She doesn’t vanish completely. He is like a ghosted image. Translucent enough that other images can appear. And appear they do.

You are never able to get a good look at it. You spot them from your peripherals but if you try to look straight at it, they vanish. Sometimes you get a glimpse of more than one of them in separate directions at once. Nothing you do manages to keep them present when you try to look right at them though.

Alicia starts typing and you step back into the room to see her response. "That doesn’t make any sense. This is a ‘quiet neighborhood.’ I don’t understand exactly how it is legal, but the homeowners association has a strict no pets and no children rule. All of these homes are owned by singles or couples without children. It's written in bold in the bylaws."

Alicia goes rummaging around some nearby files to find a copy as she starts to fade from view. Within a few seconds she is completely gone and you are left alone in the dark room.

One by one, eyes begin to appear on the screen. Finally they are in full view. Dozens of them. They are watching you.

"I remember you," a disembodied, but familiar voice rings out. The voice of Anton Folstad.

"I'm not surprised," the Alchemist replies lightly. "I'm awfully memorable. That and I keep showing up, so you know... hard to forget."

He takes care to keep his eyes on his surroundings, half-expecting Folstad to be able to manifest things in this space just as the kids did. Although it does bring to mind an idea, that kids' minds are more malleable and open to new experiences. To-do list: think about that idea a little more when not confronted with the Big Bad Guy.

"So, Folstad. You been kidnapping kids to turn them into mental masters? Giving them, what, fake dogs to keep tabs on them, telling them they're actual animals? I mean, that's pretty slimy, even for someone like you. Leave dogs out of it, huh? Well, kids too. In fact, tell you what... why don't you and I have a little sit-down, just the two of us? You can tell me all about your evil plan, and I'll put a stop to it, save everyone a lot of pain and effort."

As he speaks, he begins developing the idea of blurring himself to make it harder to pinpoint his location and hardening his skin to make any necessary fisticuffs (what do you call it when it's a kick and not a punch? footicuffs? to-do list...) that much more effective.

"You have quite the imagination there. Perhaps I should offer you a spot at my writer’s table?" The smell of a warm sea breeze reaches your nostrils. You cannot help but look around for the source. Before you know it, you are standing on a tropical beach. Sunlight reflects off of perfect white sand. The ocean waves lightly crash against the shore just 10 feet away. The basement is gone. You are on a small island in paradise.

Folstad sits at a table under an umbrella. He is wearing a Hawaiian shirt and swim trunks.

You can feel the sand give way under your feet with each step. You know it isn’t real but it feels so perfect. A masterful replication of the real experience. "You wanted to talk? I hope you don’t mind me going ahead and picking the location. Now where are you getting these preposterous ideas about kidnapped children and fake dogs? Let’s straighten this out now before you go tarnishing my reputation."

The Alchemist looks around casually, nodding. "Impressive. I can almost smell the rotten seaweed." He turns to look at Folstad. "Oh! No, that must be coming from somewhere else."

With a moment's concentration, the Alchemist's costume changes to a set of neon-bright flowery swim trunks and a tank top, though he keeps the hooded cape and the mask. "You'll understand, I hope. Secret identities and all," he says as he sits down at the table. "Anyway... you start. Tell me who the kids are. I know they're not from this neighborhood, because you and your snooty neighbors don't allow kids. So they had to come from somewhere."

He thinks on it some more and conjures up some sort of fruity beach drink on the table, complete with bright umbrella. "Hm. My bad. Hard to drink through the mask, you know." He pushes it across to Folstad. "You go ahead though."

Anton leans back in his chair, very impressed with your quick mastery of using your mind to create objects here. He accepts your offer of a drink and takes a sip. "Very fine work. If I had met you sooner then I might not have had to make a deal with the proverbial devil."

Folstad works his toes through the sand as he delays explaining that thought any further. For a minute, you are just two gentlemen relaxing on the beach. It is actually a pretty comforting moment.

"I’m afraid I do not know who the children are or where they came from. At least in the sense of where they belong. Who their families are. I didn’t want to involve children in this project but my collaborators said they would be able to adapt and develop far faster than adults. Not a day goes by that I don’t regret getting into bed with Lloyd Laboratories." He spits upon the sand at the mention of the company’s name.