I’ve taken to setting up a crystal of bewllan in my research lab. The intensity of these new Prophecy pills is so high that I cannot imagine anyone with a normal amount of bewl in their body ever finishing a vision without being extricated of every last drop. Even then, the images would last nary a second.

-From Professor Shokolov’s Journal, 6th Entry

“How?” Nook asked. AxEl knew what he suggested seemed almost… insane. But how else would he explain what he saw?

“Nook, you and I know the basics of how every Bullet works. We studied it. But this?” he waved a hand backwards in the direction of the mushrooms, “This is nothing like we were taught.”

“Did you…” Nook let the question hang in the air.

“Yeah, I took one,” AxEl answered. Nook looked stunned for a moment before resuming his line of questioning.

“Maybe you just thought it did something different. Maybe it works differently for other people! What even happened when you… took it?” Nook asked. The man looked as excited as AxEl had a few moments ago.

AxEl paused before answering. “The future,” he replied. Nook’s eyes grew wider and he rushed towards AxEl, shaking him madly. “Are you serious! Maybe it was just a hallucination? Did you see this conversation?” he asked rapidly. AxEl brushed aside his arms, then stood beside another table.

“I saw a bit of it. You coming down and helping me up.”

“What did it look like? Your eyes were closed, so it couldn’t have been seeing through those,” Nook said.

“Like, like images floating by of what’s about to happen. I think I saw things from even further away too. It was amazing,” AxEl told his friend.

Nook showed a reverence to the plants now that he knew their purpose. Where Nook saw the future of technology, AxEl though of something a bit more personal. “We should do something with this, Nook.”

“Like what?” he asked AxEl.

“Use it. Think about how many lotteries we could win, how many tests we could predict. There would never be a day we’d be unprepared for!” AxEl explained.

“Or we could report it and be known as the first people to discover a new Magic Bullet?” Nook suggested.

“That’d be a lie. This Shokolov guy must have already known a bit about it. Why he didn’t release it to the public, I don’t know. But we can’t do that.” AxEl knew in his heart that the main reason was him not wanting anyone else to take what he thought of as his treasure.

He wanted them, all of them, for himself. “And…if we report it, we’d never get to use it ourselves. They’d be under more restrictions than other Magic Bullets, even,” he said.

“But AxEl, what about disasters, attacks, accidents. Don’t you think we could help a lot if we tell the world about these?” Nook asked.

“And what of the criminals who’d get their hands on them, Nook? We’d just be adding more chaos to the world. We need to keep this secret. Okay?” AxEl said, putting a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“Yeah. And it’s getting late.”

AxEl glanced at his phone and realized how long the both of them had spent in the house. His mother would have his head for this if he didn’t return by the end of the night. He’d almost forgotten about his sickness, even, but felt the effects returning once he put it at the front of his mind.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“You’re right. But,” He took one last look at the place around him, “Let’s come back here tomorrow.”

“Agreed. Want to head out together?” Nook asked.

“Not supposed to be outside today, even, so I’ll sneak back into the house myself.”

“Take care, then, AxEl,” Nook said as he bid him farewell.

****

AxEl stayed under the covers of his bed until his mother came back home. She greeted him lovingly and talked with him about his day, something he’d sadly become accustomed to lying about.

“Well, the cold seems to be dying down. Give it another day and you can get back to classes, okay?” FenEl consoled him.

“Sure mom, thanks.”

She kissed him on the forehead, something he hated. For crying out loud, he was a teenager! What kind of mother treated her almost adult son like a child? He pouted like a child. Then, when he knew for sure that she had gone to sleep for the night, he tossed aside his blanket and opened the window to his room.

He’d devised a simple and safe path from his room down to the front of the house. Months of sneaking out had honed his instincts such that he slid down the pipe with ease onto the grass and started walking towards Professor Shokolov’s house.

There were too many things in there that he needed to do. Waiting for tomorrow was impossible considering how much the pill had renewed his resolve.

He arrived at the house at the dead of night, with no one else around to bother him. Straight away he closed the door behind him and headed down to the basement. They’d left the blue light on downstairs since they didn’t know whether the mushrooms needed it or not.

Then, with the notes by his side, he began experimenting. The different apparatuses were unfamiliar to AxEl, but with enough time and perseverance, he deciphered the steps written down.

It took even longer for that to yield results, however. Perhaps it was him operating the machine incorrectly, but the pills still came out wrong. Once he was out of usable samples of the mushrooms to use, he began searching around for a knife so he could chop one of the ones still growing in their habitats.

He opened several drawers, then happened upon a case in one of them that caught his eye. It looked delicately made, glass over a stand that held a necklace. It was a simple and primitive looking thing, but it looked special nonetheless.

There were two beads of metal attached to the necklace. They felt heavy in his hand and while he noted that they looked a bit strange, it wasn’t a major discovery. Something called to him, however. Perhaps it was the delicate design on the metal beads. Perhaps it was the weight of history behind the piece, but AxEl removed the top of the glass stand and slid the necklace out of it.

Unless the old man came back to the house, he was sure that he would get away with taking it. He slipped the string around his neck and it felt right. Like it completed his look in some way.

AxEl searched around further for any blades and found the cabinet where the professor had kept them apparently. He cut the pieces of the mushroom in the way described in the manual, then crushed them into the desired form. It took time, effort and more thinking than AxEl would have liked, but he finally completed it.

Once he put the pill down in front of him, he noticed the differences. The blue colour wasn’t as deep as the one on the earlier pills. He then took a deep breath and popped it into his mouth. Immediately images blurted onto the scene.

The only downside was, these didn’t reach as far into the future as the ones before. No, this one didn’t reach far at all. AxEl was about to move his arm ahead of him, when the same sight appeared to him as an image. The phantom images overlayed his normal view, giving him a look at both.

His arm moved normally, but what always stayed ahead of it was a perfect recreation, leading the path that his hands would take. Down to the last detail of the fingers, it led. AxEl intended to snap his fingers, but heard the sound from the future before he could move his fingers. It held him for a moment, so he didn’t actually go through with the action.

His power faded moments later, leaving him standing there staring at his arm. AxEl had forgotten that he had left one of the machines on, so when it inevitably broke down with a hiss that sounded none too pleasant, he hurried over to it.

He unplugged it, but the damage was done. A tiny wisp of smoke eased its way out of the machine, so AxEl opened up the window near the top of the basement walls. The smoke cleared while AxEl sat and thought.

So, the pills can’t let me see too far… But they can let me see what’s just about to happen. AxEl began synthesizing more of them. When he next met Kel, the man would regret what he had done.