Angle: Chemistry

"I still can not believe that we are doing this.", said Sandra.

Even though it was 8:00 on a Saturday morning, when nobody on campus could possibly have been awake to see her, and even though she was walking into the Chemistry building with an armload of notebooks and supplies, my friend Sandra was impeccably dressed, as prim and proper as ever, her crisp white jacket contrasting sharply with her ebony skin.

I, however, did not look nearly as dignified. This was partly because I was carefully guiding a hand truck loaded with three crates of eggs, but mostly because I was wearing my shabby old work clothes.

I shrugged, and replied, "Hey, the Cafeteria Committee needed a way to get rid of these eggs, and we needed a Chemistry project."

"Surely there must be something we can do that does not involve a discredited medieval superstition."

"But that's the thing. As far as I can tell, it never actually has been discredited. Nobody has ever, in a controlled setting, followed Geber's alchemical recipes that call for distilling liquids seven hundred times. The equipment of the middle ages could never handle that type of stress, and by the time we developed equipment that could, nobody believed in alchemy anymore."

"So we go to all this trouble to prove something that we already know."

"The only other alternative is to do one of those stupid 'Learning Experiments' in our textbook. Everybody in our class will rehashing old stuff to get to a foregone conclusion. But we are doing something unique. Dr. Higgins will reward us for that."

Sandra sighed. "I know. I already agreed to this. You do not have to convince me again."

"But you need to convince yourself a little more."

Sandra did not reply to this, but I knew that I was right. I didn't press the issue; like any good friend I know when to be quiet. I said nothing else until we arrived in the Chemistry 110 lab.

"Well, here we are. Let's get started."

"How long is this going to take, anyway?"

I grinned. "The recipe calls for a week of solid work."

"A week? Now you stop right there, Jose Suarez. You may have that much time to waste, but I am a busy person and I cannot..."

I laughed. "Calm down. I was just teasing you. This will not take a week. We have a lot of tools and equipment that they never thought about. I can use the pumps and tubing and pipetting robots to automate just about everything. Once I get the process set up, we can get it going and just sit around watching it for about twelve hours."

I spent the rest of the morning tinkering and muttering and probing and measuring and consulting notes and manuals in an attempt to get everything going right. Sandra logged all of this activity meticulously in a new lab notebook with her clear crisp handwriting, stopping only when I asked her to hold or fetch something.

By lunchtime, a huge complicated tangle of glassware and heaters and distilling columns and tubing and equipment and wires and trays had grown to cover two whole lab benches. Finally, I was able to take a deep breath and announce, "Everything runs fine with the test solution. Now we can start cracking the eggs and feeding them in."

"I think," said Sandra, "that we should eat something first."

"Hmm, good idea."

After we both finished our packed lunches of granola bars and yogurt, we started the experiment. It was mainly tedium, as we cracked over two thousand eggs and poured the white and yolk into the intake hopper of my contraption. Occasionally, however, I would have to jump into action when a machine stopped running or a fitting came loose.

By suppertime, all of the eggs had been cracked and fed in, and the process was running smoothly. Sandra went out to eat supper, while I stayed to keep watch over the process. I said that I was not hungry, but she brought me back a sandwich anyway. I realized that I was indeed hungry, and accepted the sandwich gratefully and chowed down.

Sandra spent the evening copying and formatting the lab notes and preparing the report. I managed the machines and took readings of the color, temperature, and viscosity of the fluid running through the process.

At 10:00, Sandra went outside to the deserted lobby to lie down on one of the couches. She told me that she only wanted to lie down for a few minutes, but when she did not come back I figured that she had fallen asleep.

Around 2:00, she came back into the lab. "Hey, sleepyhead. You're just in time. It's starting the last distillation cycle. I was just about to go and wake you up."

"Did I miss anything?"

"Nope. Did I miss anything?"

Sandra stood silently for a few seconds, and then said, "It is odd that you should say that. I had a very vivid dream about angels. They were calling me, telling me to take a feather that was floating in front of me."

"Cool." I smiled. "Must be the magic of the eggs."

"Stop it. It is just a result of all of this crazy work. Now, when can we see the final distillate?"

I pointed to an enclosed ice bath. One tube led into it. "The final product is collecting in a flask in there. If Bernard Trevisan is right, then the flask will be full of pneuma, the pure breath of life."

I grinned, and shrugged. "But I expect to see a big nasty mess of fat and protein."

The final electronic timer beeped. "That's the controller telling us the cycle is finished. Do you want to open the lid?"

Sandra calmly walked over to the ice bath and removed the lid, then gasped in astonishment as she lifted out the flask.

It was glowing with a yellow-white light.

We stared at the flask for a time that could have been seconds or hours. Sandra and I both looked deeply into the flask. I and saw strange and beautiful things, and I assume she did too. A multitude of captivating shapes swirled slowly, as if a thousand angels had decided to pack themselves into the one-liter flask and dance a ballet.

And then, before I could do anything, my friend Sandra brought the flask up to her lips, tilted it back, and drank the whole thing.

Sandra herself began to glow with the radiance of an angel. Wings of light sprouted from her back. Then she drifted up, straight through the ceiling, as if it did not exist, leaving me in the chemistry lab.

I knew that my life would never be the same.