Elixir
Page 1
ELIXIR
ELIXIR
James O. Sy, PhD
Professor of Chemistry
Pasadena City College
© 2018 James O. Sy, PhD
Elixir
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Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Scripture quotations marked NKJV are from the New King James Version®. © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked WNT are from the Weymouth New Testament. Public domain.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018947608
ISBN 978-1-595558176 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-595557698 (Hardbound)
ISBN 978-1-595557971 (eBook)
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Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.
This is a thrilling, highly entertaining science fiction novel. It is the first installment of a six-part sci-fi series.
Book One slowly unfolds the events that lead a college sophomore to discover the powers he possesses, powers that are not of this Earth. This first installment is replete with religious themes and teachings. It also narrates the protagonist’s first encounter with an extraterrestrial being, and how he stumbles upon a miracle cure—an elixir.
The protagonist’s father and missionary grandparents are used by the author to express his personal religious beliefs and convictions.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Sweet Baby Jake
Chapter 2: An Unnatural Superpower?
Chapter 3: The Distant Dad
Chapter 4: Surprise Waiting at the Door
Chapter 5: The Doting Mother, Mary
Chapter 6: Ancestry
Chapter 7: Genesis of a Mother Hen
Chapter 8: Migration to the Good Old USA
Chapter 9: Sullied Rose
Chapter 10: Unwedded Bliss
Chapter 11: The Long and Winding Road to Becoming a Nurse
Chapter 12: An Unexpected Arrival
Chapter 13: The Unopened Note
Chapter 14: BFF
Chapter 15: Hello and Good-bye
Chapter 16: Very Unpalatable Choices
Chapter 17: The Missionary Grandparents
Chapter 18: The Orphanage
Chapter 19: A Cruel Mistress
Chapter 20: The Dedicated Staff
Chapter 21: The Chicken Farm
Chapter 22: The Decision
Chapter 23: Dear Uncle Reggie
Chapter 24: Foundlings, Orphans, Runaways, Strays, and the “Rugby” Boys
Chapter 25: My Boot Camp
Chapter 26: Fun at the Chicken Farm
Chapter 27: The Bouncing Egg
Chapter 28: Freaky Chicks and Pullets
Chapter 29: JT, the Hybrid Alien
Chapter 30: The Encounter
Chapter 31: The Elixir
Chapter 32: The Gift
Chapter 33: Bad News Revealed
Chapter 34: Utter Craziness
Chapter 35: The Swap
Chapter 36: Elixir for Mommy Dearest
Chapter 37: Where Art Thy Sting?
Chapter 38: The Grand Vision
CHAPTER 1
SWEET BABY JAKE
The phone started blaring: “…Just the way you are…”
JT groggily reached out and tried to hit the snooze button, but his clumsy attempt to do so failed miserably. He knocked the phone down to the floor instead. The shattering of the glass cover of his phone simultaneously forced him to instantly wake up from a dazed stupor and caused him to let out a loud and annoyed yelp. “Darn it!”
He knew all too well that his mom, who had grudgingly paid $120 to replace the damaged window glass of his iPhone 8 just last week, would go ballistic with him. His relationship with his mom wasn’t all that smooth. Ever since his parents separated and his dad moved away, his mom centered her affection and focus on him. It was nice sometimes, but most of the time, he felt irritated by her overprotective and mother hen treatment of him.
He felt so suffocated that when he was given the choice to decide which school to enroll in, UC (University of California) Irvine or UC San Diego, it was a no-brainer to choose UCSD for his premed biology study. San Diego is two hours away from Glendale, where his mom lived, while Irvine is a shorter ride.
He felt that the distance was good enough of a physical barrier from the frequent, though well-intentioned, badgering of his mom.
Yet sometimes a monkey wrench gets thrown in, even in the best of plans. Mary, Jake’s mom, is a hospital nurse who worked on weekends. But because she missed her only son, she changed her work schedule so she could do the weekly weekend drive to San Diego to visit him.
Well, JT (as Jake’s dad fondly called him) knew deep in his heart that it was just his mom’s way of showing her care, her love, and her affection for him. But he got terribly embarrassed whenever his mom showed up for her weekly visit. Oh, he relished the delicious home-cooked meals that his mom would bring, but he got terribly mortified whenever Mary showed up at the apartment he shared with several other roommates. They started calling him “Sweet baby Jake” or “Sweetie.” He is two years younger than most of his roommates, having been academically accelerated by two grades by the principal of his high school. This was after his homeroom teacher found out that his bored and lackadaisical attitude was due to his having already learned the subject matter.
That was the advantage of having his dad living with them then, during his early formative years. His dad, Jerry, had a doctorate in biochemistry. He wanted Jake to excel in math and the sciences, just like him. So the young JT was forced to study and got tutored two hours every day.
The fact that he is two years younger than his roommates, coupled with his mom’s uninhibited, outward display of affections for her only son in front of his roommates, led to even more mockery and frequent derision. Trying to escape from all this mean-spirited taunting, he started hiding in the library on days when his mother would come over to visit. This deliberate avoidance—on top of the tedium of the long, four-hour round-trip drive between Glendale and San Diego—made Mary quit her weekly trips.
JT is two weeks away from the end of his second year at the university. It had not been an easy transition for him. He had been coasting along every step of the way in high school, exerting minimal effort and yet getting excellent grades—mainly due to his uncanny eidetic memory and not-too-normal ability to put in an all-nighter in terms of last-minute studying. His dad, although they only kept in contact occasionally, was quite upset by his bad habit of perpetual procrastinating. Jerry jokingly told him, “JT, if they award medals for being the supreme procrastinator, you will, hands down, be awarded the gold me
dal. You are the world’s number one expert on dillydallying, an unparalleled procrastinator.”
While trying very hard to shake off his still-drowsy and sedated-like condition, he slowly and droopily forced himself out of bed, fully aware that a quick jolt of energy was needed in order for him to turbo charge everything, if he wanted to have even an iota of a chance to arrive on time for his chemistry class. This wasn’t always the case. But his health had taken a nasty and infuriating turn for the worse ever since he suffered from a near-fatal bout of pneumonia, compounded by a severe case of bronchitis. That dreadful episode left him almost at death’s door. It had put him in a state of periodically lethargic and weakened condition, and it was recurring in increasing frequency lately.
However, he kept it to himself. For he knew quite well that sharing this information about his physical condition with his beloved mom would only trigger and bring forth her mother hen behavior. Dealing with her over-the-top doting wasn’t something he needed right now.
Although a great many of the UC professors didn’t mind an occasional tardiness, his asinine chemistry instructor salivated over the prospect of occasionally berating students who had the temerity of coming late to class.
Not wanting to be one of the poor souls who got subjected to a very unpleasant and very public tongue-lashing, he drew from his inner reserve of strength the requisite willpower to spring into an incredible, break-neck efficiency. He hurriedly washed his face with ice-cold water, trying to shake off any residual lethargic feeling from last night’s restless and fitful sleep. He didn’t even bother to brush or floss his teeth; rather, he took in a mouthful of Listerine, forcibly gargling away, in an effort to erase any vestiges of morning bad breath, while quickly exiting out of his apartment with his skateboard tucked under his left arm. He hastily hopped onto his skateboard and expertly navigated his way around a confusing multitude of students, who were trying to get to their own classes.
Just when he thought he was fortunate enough to get to his chemistry class on time, tragedy struck. He was blindsided by a novice skateboarder who sped with such reckless abandon, so much so that the collision occurred without even giving JT a millisecond of a chance to try to maneuver away to avoid the crash. The impact knocked him off his skateboard, hurling his board like a rudderless missile and disintegrating it upon impact with the side of the building.
While not initially noticing the large gash running along a portion of his lower left leg, he muttered angrily while picking up the remnants of his obliterated skateboard, “No more ‘made in China’ stuff for me.”
CHAPTER 2
AN UNNATURAL SUPERPOWER?
Finally, as he became aware of the large gash on his left leg, JT froze into a panic. Not because of the copious amount of blood steadily dripping from his lacerated flesh, nor due to anticipation of the much-needed but excruciatingly painful process of stitching up the tear, but rather, what really terrified him was the vivid mental picture of his mom’s reaction upon getting notified of this unfortunate incident.
He could visualize his mom quickly leaving the nurses’ station, only informing a coworker about his mishap but not even bothering to seek permission from her supervisor. He knew how many times his mom had gotten into big trouble and had been severely reprimanded for not following the standard procedure for these types of situations.
There were three instances that he could distinctly recall where Mary was warned about being pink-slipped because of her poor judgement or ill logic of hurriedly rushing over to be at her only son’s side whenever incidents, big or small, happened to her “baby” Jake. He considered her mom fortuitous in a way. But in reality, it was more due to the fact that all of her coworkers, supervisors, and patients loved the excellent care she provided, as well as her no-nonsense dedication to her craft, that she wasn’t terminated on the spot. Her bosses begrudgingly turned a blind eye to these instances of insubordination, for they grimaced at the alternative: spending copious amounts of time and utilizing oodles of precious resources training a greenhorn nurse to be his mom’s replacement.
So, he hastily took out his handkerchief and used it to wrap around the wound to stop the flow of that vital, shiny red fluid. He politely waved off gracious offers of help from the now growing number of curious students gathered around him, choosing instead to gingerly walk to the health clinic unassisted.
Upon reaching the clinic, he begged, coaxed, and cajoled Joan, a health clinic nurse, not to call or text his mom about the accident. Joan relented, familiar with Mary’s over-the-top tendencies in these types of situations. Springing to action, Joan gently cleaned the wound, injected some anesthetic, then delicately stitched up the tear, applied a smidgen of Neosporin, and finally used a sterile gauze and some tape to bandage the wound.
Jake, exhausted by the whole ordeal and already very late to class, decided to instead hobble his way to his place and just rest up. He spent a great amount of energy to half-drag and half-hobble his weakened body across the campus to get to his apartment. Even though the poorly-maintained place was but a stone’s throw away from the university, it still required Herculean effort on his part just to reach it. He attributed this to the lingering effects of the medical malady that he suffered almost three years ago, also to the fact that he had skipped his breakfast and the rawness of his newly stitched wound. It was a very painful task; he reacted by alternately shouting, screaming, cursing, and gritting his teeth throughout, since the numbing effects of the local anesthesia had started to wear off. He now felt sharp, intense pain from the wound, compounded by the soreness of his stiches. He was even in a much pitiful circumstance when he reached the elevator on the ground floor of his apartment. He stared incredulously at the crude, handwritten sign posted on one of the doors of the rickety elevator: OUT OF ORDER.
This string of unfortunate turn of events catapulted him to losing it. Using the only usable scrawny right leg, he took out his frustrations by kicking with such brute force the pair of newly installed elevator doors (the old ones were rusty). Much to his shock and horror, the kick turned those doors into a crumbled pile of twisted, useless pieces of metal.
“What the hell?” he blurted out, stunned.
CHAPTER 3
THE DISTANT DAD
This chapter is heavy on things related to the purpose of human existence.
Not wanting to get into a deeper heap of trouble, and trying hard not to attract any unwanted attention, he did his best to escape from the “crime scene” by doing a combination of semi-hopping and soft, tiptoeing motion.
Once he reached the foot of the stairs that led to his unit upstairs, he let out a deep sigh of relief. He began the long, arduous climb to his apartment on the third floor, doing it nonchalantly at first, but increasing his pace after he reached the second floor. He imagined that the door of his unit on the third floor beckoning him welcomingly, offering refuge from the unexplainable demolition he just performed on those brand-new elevator doors.
He isn’t a bad kid, knowing there isn’t a chance in hell that he would escape the responsibility, or even not owning up to the incident. Having learned from his dad’s strict, upright, God-fearing indoctrination of him, he realized that what he just did is tantamount to willful desecration. Although his relationship with his dad isn’t strained, it is, at best, cordial and distant.
Oh, he worshipped his dad. He knew that his old man is very intelligent, and a good person. Jerry has God-given talents, and an ability to express ideas and concepts into words and mental pictures that were easy to grasp. Jerry spent time as a college professor. He had the knack and the uncommon ability to teach and explain difficult and complex topics, making use of illustrations, analogies, and funny jokes to transform mind-taxing, thought-provoking abstract theories into something that students could easily comprehend.
His former students loved him because he created a very relaxed, inviting, entertaining, and conducive learning environment. He was an excellent wordsmith: weaving, polishing, and
hammering words into poetry and vivid mental images. He possessed the skillfulness of a stand-up comedian, transforming the boringness of a one-hour-and-a-half-long typical chemistry lecture into a highly entertaining, humorous, and laughter-filled learning experience. His classes were always oversubscribed, and it always irritated him that he couldn’t accommodate more students into his extremely popular, always-in-demand courses.
What got him into trouble sometimes was when he, on occasion, got offtrack while lecturing. It is in moments like these that landed him in hot water, because he was different in his thoughts and beliefs than ninety-nine percent of the people.
Take, for example, his spin on the common perception of Hell and Heaven. Many religions advocate the idea that Heaven is a place where good, God-fearing, Christ-centric people go after their temporal stay here on Earth ends, while Hell is a place reserved for bad people: the murderers, the rapists, the fake prophets and charlatans, the sexual predators/abusers, etc. But Jerry adhered to the idea that Heaven and Hell have more to do with existence vis-a-vis that of a supreme, Omnipotent Being (in the case of Christians, that powerful being is called God). Hell is existence without or away from God, while Heaven is when you are in harmony or having a God-centric existence. So, in this context, it is very possible that some people are already experiencing a Heaven-on-Earth type of existence.
JT’s relationship with his dad became distant, not due to the fact that Jerry moved away after he separated from Mary; not because of his mom’s constant attempts of putdowns or the highlighting of his father’s perceived shortcomings (related to her insecurities about losing out of Jake’s love and affection), either. It was definitely because Jerry was trying to tailor his young son’s life into something bordering on madness.
Jerry believed that every human is but a slave chained to financial bondage. We work long and hard hours just to earn money to meet our daily needs and sustenance. But because of the constant efforts, grind, struggles, and much energy expended to eke out a daily living, humans lose sight of their true purpose. And for those who are enlightened, they are mostly unwilling or unable to heed our noble calling because of financial predicament. For it would take a semblance of financial independence—without any worry about earning money to pay for food, shelter, gas, children’s tuition, medicine, and the like—for each one of us to get unshackled.