“Magnesium is Stupid!” Terra seethed, looking down at the card in her hand.
“Aluminum!”
“Oooh, Gold!”
“Lucky.”
Terra shot a glance over at Meg, her ex-best friend, lucky enough to be assigned Gold for the periodic table project.
“Of all the stupid metals on this stupid table,” she muttered, “Magnesium is the stupidest.”
“It’s not so bad,” Kai said, from the next chair over. “I got Boron.”
Terra looked at the card again before tearing it in half: Mg. Even its initials were stupid.
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High above, far below, in dimensions in-between–or where you will–the god of Magnesium sat fuming, indulging in self-loathing, letting itself be consumed and looking for things to feel bad about.
Somehow, Terra’s epithet passed from her intermediary classroom, through the fractal realms of the duodecimal, to the metallic god’s sensitivities. Magnesium sparked, white-hot and enraged, shamed by the thoughtless bullying.
“Very well,” the god said softly, hurt by Terra’s words–borne from ignorance and misplaced scorn though they were. “I am stupid. I wouldn’t want you to have to be around a stupid element anymore. I’m sorry. No more Magnesium. Magnesium is stupid.”
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Back on Earth, the 15 or so grams of Mg in Terra’s body dematerialized, leaving her pure of what she had attested to detest. Nausea and vomiting followed soon after.
Inside the cursed human, a 70-trillion-strong co-op of living cells found their minute-to-minute operations grind to a sudden, sloshing halt. Gates between membranes closed and would not open. Ions clustered and crowded. In cellular cities from head to toe, the mayoral majesty of the nucleus lapsed into powerlessness, its imperious DNA now less than useless.
If Terra hadn’t been dying of a hundred comorbidities, she might have noticed that the grass she collapsed into was a strange, dull shade–springtime’s green vanishing around her. Without Mg at the heart of each chlorophyll, there was nothing to catch the sun’s red-orange photons. No more photosynthesis–no more sugar.
What was left of the human’s heart spasmed and stopped. 15 grams lighter, and Terra wasn’t really Terra anymore.
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“No one even misses me,” the god thought, far away, ashen, and mired in self-pity.