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Shady Transaction
Give me a moment, trying to find my words.
Been a long night.
It all began 17 years ago, 2238. Seems like a lifetime ago. ELKON they called it. Promised it would replace the need for food. Just one little pill. Invention of the century. Food shortages were as common as polluted air back then.
So, eh, sorry, I’m a little out of breath.
Yeah, in the beginning.
For a while, everything was great. No more need for food, who could be against that? Seems like the greatest invention of all time, doesn’t it? That’s what we thought. Took two years. Hallucinations, it happens you know. Nobody suspected it with ELKON. But when the looney bins started filling up…
And there were other side effects too. Memory loss, convulsions. Some just went plain old crazy. Going back to eating food though, no way. Food production was way down, but even then, people wouldn’t have traded their daily dose for gold if you asked them to.
Always told them not to touch it. To stay away from that poison. They would listen, couldn’t really. Called me crazy, a lunatic. Well, this crazy lunatic just managed to buy one of the last pure doses of ELKON. Gonna save all of humanity! Or maybe I’ll feed it to my cat. Who knows… I’m crazy, right?
I thought it was just an over-powered weight-loss pill. I was wrong. It is that, yes, but it's so much more.
It not only puts your metabolism into hyper drive, it also gives you extreme amounts of energy. That's what I thought, at least, when I started using it. I was so filled with energy every day that I couldn't believe how much weight I had already lost: over 245 Lbs! I became an advocate and marketer of the stuff, spending as much as I was earning just to keep my supplies in order and to keep myself up with my own supplies.
The problem, though, was that people became quickly addicted to the pills and would do just about anything to get them. Now people were all over the place, and nobody seems able to focus, except for the few strange people that stay away from it.
Those, we call Slow-Mos. Or, at least, we used to.
Now, though, I can already feel it kicking in again.
I feel the pace quicken. I feel my heart pound. I feel the jolts of adrenaline. I feel. I feel. I feel.
So much just wanting to pop out. I need to do something with it. I know, I don't like the way that guy...
I kicked him in the stomach. He was a Slow-Mo. I kept on kicking him. My foot buried deep in his abdomen. I cried. I couldn't stop. The man was just grunting now. The energy slowly seeped out of my system and I could breathe again.
I looked down and closed my eyes, suppressing more tears. This last pill. If I took it, I'm sure I'll die... just like the hundreds of others that had already kicked it. Was I the last one alive? I don't know, but I know what I'm going to do with this pill now.
Well, they call me crazy.
If the world is insane... you know the rest.
ELKON isn't what you think. It's not a nutritional pill. It's not a hunger inhibitor. It literally changes your body chemistry so that you absorb calories and nutrition from everything you touch. You need fiber? Remember that time you washed your Hummer? Remember that towel? It's a little smaller now. You need vitamin C? The "citrus smell" had just enough to keep you from getting scurvy.
But humans can't handle that. They handle starvation better than they handle not NEEDING to eat. So the pills started changing, inducing hunger that wasn't necessary. You'd walk by a cafeteria full of people eating cardboard. Children ate rocks and dirt. And I...
Not yet.
My one dose. I found it mixed in with expired acetaminophen. I almost popped it in my mouth.
But I didn't. It sits in a ring case, like some fantasy engagement ring. Maybe I'll marry scientific progress and we'll have beautiful, needless children. We'll bicker some, but he'll always be right. Because he's got science on his side.
Today, I walked down the street, eyes peeled for things that are actually edible. I picked some dandelions and lambsquarter. The irony is, there's plenty of food for me now. No one's growing food on purpose anymore, but the rock eaters aren't even bothering to eat eat what's edible.
I hustled back home, clutching my vegetables. I needed to find something for the cat.