The Alchemist’s Art
I sat again in the indigo armchair facing a fractional view of the sunny garden. Light banking off the flower beds washed the air with transparent hues.
The tea, pale gold, filled my sinuses, its sweetness very like anise. Cybilla called it “ancient lotus” tea and explained that it originated in Viet Nam’s Thai Nguyan province, where a thousand lotus flowers went into the natural scenting of one kilo.
I felt quiet again inside. The luminous room and the fragrant tea seemed to cancel the brutality that had broken my life.
“I’m not sure what’s happening—or what I’m doing here.” I addressed the woven threads of 22 carat gold on my thumb. “My dissonance—it’s gone. But if I remove this ring…”
“Doctor Prosper, you’re here because you have freed the light inside you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Understanding is optional.” She leveled an ardent stare. “The light you freed illuminates the entire universe. Even the shadows.” Her voice shrank almost to a whisper. “The shadows conspired, and you have been sent here.”
My attention deepened. “By your deceased great-aunt.”
“You suspect some kind of trickery.” Cybilla sipped her ancient lotus tea. Her brash eyes slimmed. “And wonder if I’m delusional.”
“Actually, what I’m wondering is how you hypnotized me so swiftly—and profoundly.” I looked in vain for her theatrical features to affirm or deny. “My brain injury makes me highly suggestible. I’m sure of that. You began by inducing a surreal hallucination. You made me feel that I had ‘levitated’—a trance effect meant to shake me up, to snap me out of my depressive syndrome. And that shock—or perhaps another suggestion following the shock—restored the clarity I had lost in Afghanistan.”
“I’m not a hypnotist.”
“What are you then?” I leaned forward aggressively. Clarity hammered down all the details around me. “I feel like myself once more. Really myself. How can this be?”
“I’m an alchemist.” She took another sip, and her eyebrows lifted critically as she reconsidered. “Perhaps that’s misleading. Most people think alchemy is protoscience. Antiquated and misguided.”
I wondered if I was still in a hypnotic trance and her banter was setting me up for the next suggestion. I took a slow breath and, with a long exhale, relished the ease that had settled over me. It felt real enough. “So—what then is alchemy?”
“Chrysopoeia, alkahest formations, and the recovery of the lapis.” She smiled warmly, assuring me that this woolliness suggested a happy fate for her. “I’ll explain all that in time. And you’ll come to understand how this ring you’re wearing, this alchemic gold, binds your body and soul together. Not with hypnosis. Or magic. Alchemy is esoteric science.”
“Science?” My eyes pinched with doubt—even as I marveled at my renewed clarity. Obviously, I had misdiagnosed my symptoms. My nervous system was not impaired. My mind was. Three days in a coma had diminished my mental defenses, and the horrors I had witnessed in battle and suppressed afterward had simply overwhelmed me upon waking.
Somehow, this mentalist had gentled those horrors. “Your science stabilized me. In some mysterious way, it works. This method, whatever it is, has the potential to lift misery from a lot of people.”
“Doctor, not all knowledge should be shared.” Her stressed stare reached into me for agreement. “What we know decides how we see the world. And that, in turn, decides the world we see.”
Was this some kind of mesmeric psychobabble? I welded my stare to hers. “What world do you see?”
“A world where you work with me.”
That sat me deeper into the upholstery. The abrupt way she had shifted the conversation convinced me she was working some kind of mind game.
I paused for another slow, deep breath. Outrage at her secrecy competed with awe at finding myself whole, and I asked quietly, deflecting the absurdity of her proposal, “Why does an alchemist need a medical doctor? A wizard would be more helpful.”
“My work is physically dangerous. And wizards are no use setting bones, chelating poisons, or staunching and stitching wounds.”
“You’re serious?”
“Your reference is compelling.” She put her teacup down on the ebony side table and perched herself at the very edge of her chair. “I don’t expect you to accept the reality of the Pardes. Or that my deceased great-aunt sent you here. Not yet. You’re still wondering if your present sanity will last. So long as you wear that ring, what you call ‘dissonance’ cannot touch you.”
“But how is this possible?”
“Gnostech. The ring, it’s gnostic technology. I forged it myself in the alchemy lab out back. The conductive materials use the electroweak field of the body within the electromagnetic frequencies of the environment to shift your attention among the Many Worlds.”
She met my pout with a woeful look. “Understanding isn’t important. Acceptance is.” Crossing her arms and twisting deeper into her seat, she told me, “You should check your military records. Things will have changed now that you’re wearing alchemic gold.”
From among her ruffles and scarves, she produced a smartphone and opened the screen to a browser. “Here. Sign into your VAC account.”
Mystified, I pulled up the website for Veterans Affairs Canada and entered my data. A moment later, I scowled with disbelief.
My service account had changed. The active-duty file indicated that I had sustained superficial injuries in a vehicle accident while on a medical mission at Panjwaii on the date I remembered—but all records of my coma and three-month rehabilitation had vanished.
the Freezine of
Fantasy and Science
Fantasy and Science
Fiction
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