Short Story: Alchemy and Expectations

Winston lipped his parched lips, and wiped some sweat off his brow. He was beginning to fall asleep with his eyes opened. After all, he had barely slept all week. "No time," he had thought "This is too important."

He began to crank the machine, trying desperately to get just one light to prove his efforts were not in vain. He kept doing it, with his tears mixing in with his sweat. All that was missing was blood, and Churchill would be proud at the dedication he showed for his country. Try as he might, he feared it would be useless. It would mean that the past 15 years would've been completely useless.

Just as Winston was getting desperate, his eyes suddenly got the kind of glint usually saved for mad men and sellers of fine jewelry. He had realised what he had done wrong. It was so simple! The mercury wiring was incompatible with the heats created, and had melted. He would need a more thermally stable metal.

It took maddeningly long for him to find an alternative, but at long last, he had managed. The pure aluminum was obtained through less than legal ways, which added all the more to Winston's drive. He would see himself succeed, or he would die by his hands. The distillation process was near-complete, missing only the base onto which the distillation would happen. That was easy enough to find, any old DVD did the trick. He was pleased at the ease with what this happened. For once, things were going his way, the easy way. "One less crime that will detract from my triumph," Winston thought "or condemnation" he added with an air of depression. It was all up in God's hands by now, he figured, whether he was worthy of praise or hatred and scorn. His actions, though for the scientific advances, bordered on the occult, in nature and theory.

He brushed aside these thoughts, and waited for the thunderstorm that was slated for tonight. Not for any particular reason, he just enjoyed the mood it set. After all, if you break the laws of reality, you should probably do so with as much style as possible. As lightning struck, he started to crank the handle of the device. He kept on doing it, long after his strength had left him. Finally, as he was preparing for the failure that would prove him wrong, one of the lights light up. Then the second, and the third. He yelled out something unseemly in triumph, but immediately regretted doing so. It was time for him to lay out the disc under the dropping goblets of pure gold. Distilled divinity. Jehovah truly had shone to him, despite his... unseemly actions towards some misguided sheep to get his materials. He would see the true nature of the universe, finally. The first man to do so. Suddenly he began to realise the near insane amounts of... well, everything. Not a single person would deny the true prophet anything they owned. Unscrupulous and unchaste thoughts began to enter his mind, and he dismissed this train of thought.

Slowly, after the distillation was complete, the DVD loaded with God's teachings, gift, location, porn, any, or all of them, really, Winston put the disc into his cheap DVD player. No crimes would be committed in the name of advancement of both religion and science. The message was in video form, which Winston was glad for. The movie gad not reached 5 minutes when Winston started to weep. Silently, he went to his drawer, and pulled something out it. He spat once upon an image of Jesus, and pulled the trigger. There was no way to interpret the videos contents without the implications being too much for any man, let alone one who had wasted his life.


Epilogue

Hours later, as the police arrived to find out the source of the gunshot that had been reported to them, they found Winston's headless corpse flying on the carpet, with blood still pooling. They assumed it was a just a suicide by a depressed, shunned recluse. What they didn't understand was why the small TV was frozen on a single frame of Epic Movie.