Arbiter's Word (Alchemist's Fire Book 1)

by Ogden Fairfax

  “You're one of those weird doomsday preppers, aren't you?” he asked. I smiled back and let out a little laugh.

  “Ha, no, I'm just one of those coupon weirdos instead.” I held up my phone, a digital coupon for the brand of rice I had grabbed on screen. “Five percent off.” I said triumphantly.

  “The heck are you going to do with four hundred pounds of rice?” he asked.

  “Eat some of it. Probably donate to some shelters.” I said, shrugging. “I hear the soup kitchen is always looking for dry goods with a long shelf life.”

  The middle-aged man behind the register smiled in approval. “You're a nice young man. Bless your kindness.” He pulled the scanner gun off the counter and scanned the top bag on the pile before just multiplying the amount by the number of bags I had. I'd been ready to lift each and every bag up for him to scan, but was relieved I wasn't going to need an ice pack for my spine later. A minute later, I was driving home in a car full of enough rice to keep those three little cereal elves at work till they died of exhaustion.

  7

  By the time I'd gotten all the rice in my apartment, I was giddy with excitement. However, I knew I needed to be careful with what I was about to do so I didn't knock myself out again. I set the first of the twenty bags in my kitchen, letting the rest loaf about in my living room. Then, I pulled out my phone and did some quick math. With a bit of research, I found the density of dry rice and compared it to the density of gold. When I plugged in the numbers, my calculator told me that gold was a bit more than sixteen times as dense as dry rice. I double and triple-checked my math, and started to get ready for a small test run. If what Grace and I thought about how the tablet worked was correct, I could convert a little over a pound of rice into an ounce of gold. And, since I'd read somewhere that most smartphones ave tiny trace amounts of gold in them, the tablet should already know how to convert the energy it gave me into gold.

  My main worry was that if I tried to do a whole bag at once, I'd probably pass out again and wake up with a pissed-off Grace standing over me. But if I did small amounts over a longer period of time, I should be fine. Or so I hoped.

  Based on the current energy level I could feel, I had enough energy to do some basic conjuring if I needed a container. I touched the tablet and said

  “A glass cup big enough to fit sixteen and a half ounce of dry rice.” I had no idea if it would work, since the only objects I'd conjured out of glass were bits smaller than the bottles and jars I'd put in before. I was happy to see a cylindrical glass appear from the tablet, resting gently in the impression in the center.

  Using a scoop from a kitchen drawer, I scooped dry rice from the first bag and poured it into the glass until it was full. Before I turned the glass of rice into air, I had another idea. Grace and I hadn't tried turning anything into just the energy, we'd only turned it into air, which kept making that hissing noise and knocking tiny bits of plaster off my ceiling. I hoped grace would forgive me for experimenting without her, but I needed to find out if I could skip the middle-man of converting air into gold, especially since I didn't want to risk suffocating if I was planning on doing this a lot.

  I moved the glass of rice out of the impression and grabbed a grain of rice that had fallen out onto the table. I placed the grain into the impression, touched the tablet and said “tablet energy.” Nothing happened. I thought that maybe it wasn't the right term, and used my phone to look up words related to the conversion of matter. I avoided terms like “fusion” or “fission” or stuff related to nuclear energy, since I was pretty sure even if it worked I'd just be blasting radiation everywhere. Grace and I agreed that was the absolute last thing anyone wanted. After trying multiple terms, like “transmutation energy” and “alchemical power” and even “the force” I was still stuck. Then, I found a word I'd never seen before, and hadn't popped up on the different thesaurus websites I'd tried earlier.

  Apparently, when ancient scientists were attempting to practice alchemy, they believed that there was an energy of transformation that could be derived from liquid mercury. The energy itself was named after the Arabic word for that substance, and it was called “Azoth.” Deciding it was as good a term as any of the others I'd tried, I put my hand back on the tablet and prepared for disappointment.

  “Azoth.” I whispered, and jumped when I felt a sensation like my arm falling asleep. There was a flash of light like always, but no rush of air. I looked at the tablet and the grain of rice was gone. That was progress, I supposed.

  Wary of the tingling sensation in my arm, I tried duplicating the process with a few more grains of rice. Once again, a flash of light, and tingling running up my arm, but a small handful of rice was no different from a single grain, and I could feel the dizzy energy of the tablet building. Except this time, since I wasn't converting matter into air, the energy felt sharper, more clearly detectable.

  Unsure if I was about to knock myself out again, I walked the tablet and the glass full of rice over to my coffee table, I set the glass on the tablet and sat myself on my couch in a way so that if I passed out, I wouldn't fall and hurt myself. Gingerly touching the tablet, I readied myself for what I knew was next.

  As soon as the word Azoth left my mouth, the glass was gone, and I noticed that even the flash of light was less intense. Maybe it was a form of bleed-off energy from the conversion process, and converting to energy instead of matter was more or less efficient. I had no idea and no way to measure whatever energy Azoth and the light was, but I could tell that I had absorbed the energy from the glass and the rice just like the last time, I felt the drunkenness crawl into my head, and waited a moment to see if it took me down. When I was still conscious after a few minutes, I turned my attention back to the tablet. If this worked, my money problems were just about over.

  “An ounce of gold.” I said, closing my eyes and bracing for the headache I figured was coming. There was the usual flash, but the headache was still very mild. I opened my eyes again to see a tiny little bar of gold that looked like something out of a “Fort Knox Security Guard Barbie” set. I smiled at my prize and looked at the clock. It was only ten AM and I'd just earned more money in my living room than I earned at my job in a week. At about a thousand dollars an ounce, the bags of rice in my living room would be almost half a million dollars.

  After making another beer with some of my leftover energy, I conjured another glass and set out to work. “Let's go turn grains into gold.” I said to myself.

  8

  By the time I was finished transmuting the bags of rice into gold nuggets, it was well into the afternoon. I'd managed to speed things up by marking the glass container I was using to turn the rice into energy with a permanent marker and titling it “the rice glass.” Every syllable saved was a second I got back to breathe and recover from the headache that slowly grew over the course of the day. At some point I realized that either my math was very slightly off when it came to transmuting this stuff, or the very act of turning matter into energy or vice versa cost a bit of my bodily energy. It was as if doing this over and over again was an exercise, and I was slowly reaching the aching end of a long and tiring workout.

  But I'd manage to do it, taking a few minutes in between each bag of grain to rest my head, get some water, and after enough glasses of water, take bathroom breaks. I took a few seconds to figure out if my energy level, or I guess, Azoth meter was sitting pretty high or low. I decided I wouldn't be able to tell with my head hurting the way it was, so I figured I'd revisit my messy living room after a short nap. Taking care to scoop all my little gold bricks into one of the thick rice bags, I stuffed the bag under my bed and set my phone alarm for dinnertime. I was wary of having slept through all of Sunday, and wanted to see if I could prevent that from happening again.

  I woke up not to the sound of my alarm, but to Grace's ringtone. It was Flight of the Valkyries Rolling over to my other side, seeing that it was 4:43pm. I reached over and grabbed my phone and answered.

  “
Hello?” I managed to force the part of my brain in charge of speech to wake up enough to get the words out. I was at least awake enough to remember that part of our time working together on Saturday was about how to be careful when discussing the tablet or what I could do with it.

  “Did you sleep all day today too?” Grace asked. She sounded a bit pissed off.

  “No, I woke up for work this morning. Got fired, got some groceries, came home, did some stuff and took a nap.” I stifled another yawn that tried to roll out of my mouth like a bowling ball made of fatigue.

  “Nothing dangerous I hope.” she said. I wondered what to say. Would she be pissed that I did so much by myself today? Or would she be more upset if I tried to hide it from her because I thought she'd be mad? I figured it was best to come clean, but maybe downplay things a bit.

  “Nothing we hadn't already covered Saturday night. Basic stuff, slightly larger scale since I had the time. I was going to sleep until six but I'm fine with the nap I got.” I heard her sigh on the other end so I quickly added “How was your final exam?”

  “It was fine. Don't change the subject. Are you sure you're okay?”

  “A little sleepy, slight headache, same as before. I think it's kind of like a workout. Mental exercise.” I almost continued and said that it was almost fun, but I knew that would just upset her more. “Why don't you come over and I can show you my work. Maybe with takeout?”

  “Alright, I suppose. I'm in town now, do you want anything?” I could almost hear her brain changing gears. It was hard for her to be mad when she was task-focused.

  “If you're sick of pickle pizza, how about that Thai food place by the strip mall?” It wasn't her favorite place, but I knew she liked it well enough. I didn't want to suggest her favorite place ever since she might think I was trying to butter her up.

  “I'll be there in an hour. We'll talk then.”

  “The door's unlocked. Bye, Grace.”

  Once the call was over, I sat up and looked around my room. Leaning over my bedside, I checked and found the bag of gold was still there. Satisfied, I stood and stretched, gauging the level of my post-transmutation headache. It was only a two out of ten, where the one in the hospital had been more like a six. In other words, I was good enough to do some chores after another dose of generic pain relievers from my medicine cabinet. I started with tidying up my place, and briefly stopped to consider whether I should transmute the trash into energy or to toss it in the dumpster. I decided that the only thing I should get rid of was the bags the rice had come in. As I bent to pick up the first bag, I remembered that I had said I was going to donate much of it to a shelter. Guilt started to weigh in as I recognized my selfishness. I'd just spent the day essentially printing money and completely forgotten about the proud smile the cashier guy had given me when I told him my plans.

  I resolved to keep my promise, though I knew it was easier to buy the rice with the money I made off the gold than it was to transmute it back into rice again. One by one, I took each of the plastic rice bags and watched as it turned into a bit of Azoth on the tablet at my command. Afterward I continued to tidy up my place. By the time I was expecting Grace to knock on my door, my place looked about as good as it could be in an hour.

  I opened the door to see Grace holding a bag full of takeout containers and an expression that immediately let me know I was on trial. She wore her puffy red winter jacket over a Green Bay turtleneck sweater and a pair of sturdy-looking jeans. Without a word, she stepped inside, wet winter boots squeaking on the clean kitchen floor, and I shut the door behind her. She looked around my slightly-less-messy living room and let out a suspicious “Hmm.”

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “You cleaned up.”

  “I did.”

  “That means you're feeling guilty.”

  “Not about using the tablet today.” I said. “I was careful. Grace, I promise, we'll get to it once we've eaten, but right now I'm too hungry to argue right now. Please, make yourself at home.”

  “Fine,” she said, letting out a bit of tension from her posture.

  We ate in silence for a good half hour, and I wasn't sure if it was comfortable silence or not. Once we were done, and the leftovers were in the fridge, I drank some more water and cleared my throat.

  “Okay, so, here's how my day went.” I started.

  9

  “Let me get this straight. You bought four hundred pounds of rice, and turned it into twenty-five pounds of gold in an afternoon. Because you got fired.” Grace and I sat on my couch, the plastic bag of gold on my coffee table in front of both of us.

  “Well, I got the idea after I got fired, but I'm pretty sure I might have done this at a later date and then been able to quit my job.” I said. Grace massaged her eyes with her thumb and forefinger for a few seconds before responding.

  “What do you plan on doing with it?” she asked.

  “Well, it's dense, so it's a good compact matter I can use for other stuff, and it's valuable, so I could sell an ounce here or there for expenses.”

  “And how are you going to explain the income?” she asked. “When it comes to tax season, and there's no record of you getting paid, inheriting, winning, or even buying enough old circuit boards and cell phones to get this much gold?

  “I hadn't thought of that. I just figured I'd get a regular job for my day-to-day stuff, and sell an ounce of gold once in a while to put into savings or invest or something. Once I have enough put away, I can retire at age thirty.” I said.

  “That's...actually not a terrible plan,” she admitted, “but we should still make plans to make sure you don't wind up getting robbed or killed over your shiny Lego collection.”

  I felt my brows furrow as I took in her meaning. Taxes were one thing, but making sure Uncle Sam got his due was only one small part of keeping my secret safe. I took a while to think about what my options were. I was about to ask Grace how often she thought it would be safe to make more gold when she let out a belch that would have earned the respect of any bachelor.

  “Ugh, sorry,” she said. “Anyway, I think you should either sell a little gold at a time, or find a jeweler who is willing to take it all at once.” I watched as a grin spread across her face. “I kinda wish I could be there to see you drop a literal sack of gold on the counter.”

  “Yeah, I bet it'll be really interesting.” I said. “I suppose with my beard and my usual clothes outside of work, most people don't think I'm anyone with money. On Saturday, I was at the gem shop and...” my words trailed off as I remembered the girl behind the counter and how she assumed I'd be more interested in the cheap tiny stones. I looked at Grace. “What if I started my own jewelry company?” I said. “I could sell enough gold to buy some of the gems and stuff from the gem shop, and since they're tiny and lighter than gold, I could make a lot of it pretty easily.”

  Grace's mouth pulled to the side as she considered my idea. “Maybe, but jewelry is kind of a niche market, and I don't think you want to mess with the big corporations that control the sale of most diamonds.”

  “So what if I go a different route,” I said, “and shoot for industrial gems, like diamond-tipped tools and gems for lasers.”

  “It's still a bit iffy,” she said, “once you get a company up and running, you have to keep running it. Do you want to be hunched over that thing for eight hours a day to make dentist drills?”

  “Okay, I see your point. I still think I should buy some gems from the gem shop, Glass is one thing, but we weren't able to turn that grilling charcoal into a diamond. Honestly, I did the math on my phone for kicks, and if I do the grains-to-gold thing once a week at the same rate as today, I'll make--”

  “Chance,” Grace interrupted me. “Can I say something?”

  “Uh, sure,” I said, letting go of my previous train of thought.

  “Is it bad if I kind of don't want you to be a billionaire?” she said.

  “Why, because you think I'll get famous and get myself kil
led?” I joked.

  “No. Well, yes.” She said, smiling slightly. “But also, if you get rich and that becomes public knowledge, it changes people.”

  “I don't think that'll happen to me,” I said.

  “But it could happen to anyone. Think of it this way. Say you're a billionaire, and even gotten good at spotting when to say no to a dumb business deal or investment opportunity. Say literally anyone who knows your name meets you in person, like when a celebrity goes to get coffee.” she said. “That person is more likely to do or say whatever you want to hear to make you like them, even if they know there's no chance of you sharing your wealth with them. The chance at being your friend gives you power over them. It's not money I think will change you, Chance. It's that power. It's an over-used quote but power corrupts people. Even good people. It happens to really smart people. I even think it could happen to me if that were my life. I don't want that to happen to you.”

  “I see what you mean.” I said. “That sounds entirely possible. I'm willing to admit I'm not even half as smart as you, so yeah, ritzy life isn't a good idea. But I'm not aiming for gazillionaire, Grace. I'm aiming for a life where I just don't have to worry about money because once or twice a month I go buy sand bags at the hardware store. Besides, I'll have you with me to tell me if I'm being an idiot like always.” She grinned at that.

  “But the other thing is, since you have this gift, Chance, you almost have to use it to do something good. I know you. Sure, I'm talented in school, but you actually give a shit about other people. I bet you even felt guilty about using up so much rice and that's why you said sandbags just now instead of some other staple food.”