Sam nods. Her mother takes her hand, presses it to her lips, and tells her to eat a second helping of rice.
That night, Sam lies in bed and stares at the crack on the ceiling. She thinks again about her mother’s reaction to the two men in the restaurant, fantasizes over how the fork had become a spoon. Maybe her mother had seen it happen too. Was that why she’d seemed frightened?
Alchemy is the science of changing something into something more desirable.
But what does that even mean? Whatisalchemy? What is more desirable? Sam struggles to understand the concept, because she has never imagined more for her life, has never thought to want anything different. Still, the phrase sticks with her, the words gradually bending her mind, as words tend to do.
She recalls the regret in her mother’s eyes, how exhausted she always looks at the restaurant. Perhaps it would be more desirable, Sam supposes, if her mother didn’t have to work so hard. If they had more money, so that they could paint over the star-shaped crack in the ceiling. Maybe new curtains would be better than old bedsheets stitched with hand-sewn flowers. Maybe they could use a bigger apartment, without bars on their door. And then she starts thinking that maybe it would be more desirable to have a better stuffed animal than Rabbit, and to have nicer toys than her plastic horses, and to read books that are new and aren’t missing their covers, and to wear clothes that aren’t made by her mother from old fabrics. Maybe it would be nice if she could be noticed more, if she could look as rich and elegant and important as those men in the restaurant. Maybe she could be a better child, one that her mother deserves.
More desirable. For the first time in her life, Sam wonders if there can be alternatives, if there is something better out there than what she currentlyhas, if there can be a greater version of herself than what she currently is. For the first time in her life, she feels a curious pang for something she can’t quite describe. A growing tide of want, a yearning for something bigger, grander. A win. Making it. The ambition formore.
Everything can be more beautiful. And because it has the potential to be more beautiful later, everything suddenly feels less beautiful now.
80 percent of the universe is made up of dark matter, a substance we cannot see, detect, or affect. Yet we know that it’s there in the way it influences everything from the rotation of our galaxies to the formation of stars. So it goes with the soul. We can scientifically measure all the substance of a human body, but what gives it life? What animates us, adds that glint in our eyes? Alchemy, therefore, is a branch in the study of dark matter and, by extension, merely one path on the road of science as it strives to unravel the mysteries of all life.
The Substance of Nothing
by Dr. Peter Lawrence Taylor, Ph.D., 1987
