The Substance

The experiment was over.

Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist lifted the lid of his tecto-molecular pressure casserole. An inch-deep fine white powder had formed at its bottom. He dipped a finger inside, took it to his mouth and licked it. A sweet taste went over his tongue, lingered, then disappeared. He grinned evilly.

The experiment had succeeded.

Now he had to find someone to try it. Who would be curious (and dumb) enough to try something he, the Mad Scientist, had prepared? The question was a difficult one, and Dr. Qworm realized that finding this someone would probably be even more difficult than the making of the substance itself...

"What are you cooking?"

cookie, the kind harlequin with supernatural mental powers, was peeking into Dr. Qworm's casserole. The Mad Scientist, lost in thought, hadn't heard cookie approaching (in Qworm's defense it must be said that the harlequin could just as well have teleported himself right there with his mental powers).

"Noth... Um, something very nice. Want to try it?" Dr. Qworm asked with hope and the nicest grin he could manage.

"How does it taste?" asked cookie.

"Sweet," assured Dr. Qworm.

"What does it do?" asked cookie.

Dr. Qworm didn't exactly know - that's why he needed someone to try it! Before, he had rats for his experiments, but this time it just wouldn't do (besides the fact that there were no rats in the Welgon Age anyway). He thought for a moment, and then said with his softest voice, "It makes you see things another way. It takes you to a higher level of consciousness!"

cookie sure didn't know what a higher level of consciousness was, but he was always eager to try new things. He grabbed a handful of the white powder...

"Don't!"

Sarkon the Prophet was striding up the hill - just in time for cookie, just too early for Dr. Qworm.

"Why is there always someone to spoil it?" Dr. Qworm gritted silently. cookie, surprised, let the powder flow from his hand back into the casserole.

"I have heard words from you I do not like," the Prophet boomed solemnly to the Mad Scientist. "What did you want to make poor cookie try?"

"Something none of us has ever tried," answered Dr. Qworm.

Sarkon sniffed at the white powder in the casserole with disgust. "What kind of substance is that?"

"We'll never know unless we try," said Dr. Qworm.

"Maybe it's dangerous," conjectured Sarkon.

"We'll never know unless we try," repeated Dr. Qworm, raising his eyes to the sky.

"Do we need that to exist? Why take a risk?" snorted Sarkon the Prophet.

"Because it'll make us feel better," retorted Dr. Qworm (he actually had no idea it would; it was just something he said because he wanted his substance to be tried out). "Life is experience. If we don't try it, we'll live a little less."

"If we do, we might quit living altogether," Sarkon countered sarcastically. But then, nobody except Dr. Qworm himself had ever died in the Welgon Age. Could the Mad Scientist be right for once? Puzzled, his faith shaken, the Prophet started thinking about it.

That was the time General Kwar the Dictator chose to appear on this side of the Welgon Age's hill too, and Dr. Qworm felt that maybe someone would take his side at last.

"Maybe you want to try this latest creation of mine," Qworm proposed to Kwar with a syrupy voice, putting a friendly hand on his shoulder.

Sarkon the Prophet didn't have any warning words this time. What could happen to General Kwar, the self-proclaimed Most Powerful Being in the Welgon Age, anyway? Meanwhile, cookie the harlequin was making circles with his finger in the substance.

General Kwar didn't say anything. He removed the Mad Scientist's hand from his shoulder, stared in his eyes, and burst out laughing in his face.

"What's that for?" asked a shaken Dr. Qworm when Kwar's laugh was over. cookie was smiling to Kwar, though.

"I guess you need an explanation," said Kwar at last, still chuckling. "It all goes back to my early childhood. It made me who I am." He took a deep breath. "I never tried anything like that. Never. I got my highs in another way: the deep incomparable joy of saying no to the people around me when I was proposed stuff I felt I wouldn't like there and then when I knew it wouldn't do me any good anyway - from cigarettes to alcohol to joints. The joy of feeling the pressure, of resisting it, of seeing one's own will prevailing against the group's, of bursting out laughing at their faces even and especially when they are your best friends - a spark of harlequin power that is an experience worth a thousandfold more than taking what they want to make you try!

"I never got as far as trying such products by myself, either, and it was more a question of listening to my body than a question of principles: whenever I was in the streets and forced to smell the smoke of cars and factories I asked myself, how degenerate must a brain become to actually make the body like to inhale that stuff? Same for alcohol, which I've tasted a very few times (I still wonder why I tried it more than once): whenever I took a sip, I felt like running to the toilet and spitting it out - the taste was simply awful. Sometimes I thought I must have really weird genes to dislike to such a point a substance others need so much. Sometimes also I believed the whole thing was but a vast, worldwide hypocrisy, in the sense that people say they like it when they first try it although it is completely untrue, that after a few more tries they become accustomed to it, until they finally truly like it and cannot go on without it any longer.

"And the biggest lie of all: that with certain substances, one can attain a 'higher level of consciousness'. Well, perhaps I haven't experienced it, but I've seen it with my eyes: such stuff reduces one to a brainless moron. An utter imbecile. A helpless dolt."

General Kwar pointed his huge finger at Qworm's scared nose. "A slave to substance? Other than air and food, not for me!"

"I can tell you what a 'higher level of consciousness' is, though, because I have experienced it indeed at least once or twice: crystal-clear awareness, razor-sharp understanding, keenest perception - that was my state of mind when I discovered the Great Stasis or the Center of the Universe, that is the state of mind I feel best with, and no lie in the world will make me believe there is a better one!"

With these last words thrown at Dr. Qworm, General Kwar turned on his heels, and walked away from the Welgon Age's hill.

"Funny that for once I'd agree with him," thought Sarkon the Prophet, seeing him disappear in the distance.

"It's sugar," said cookie the harlequin. He had eaten all of it.