A Mouthful of Lost Thoughts

4

The next morning, we got into it again. He had made breakfast for me. Pancakes, if I remember correctly. I hadn't even been bothered to ask about last night, because by the time I'd gotten up again, it was gone.
"Well, for the first week or so after we got all the statistics and boring stuff together, we just sort of sat around and stared at each other," he explained, finally willing to offer answers. "I mean, we were prepared for something, but nothing quite like what we found." Isaac shifted restlessly in his seat across the table and began cracking his knuckles.
"Jesus, I hate it when you do that," I groaned.
Isaac grinned at me. "Sorry, Dan," he said with a scoff. "Anyway, after I dropped the other researchers and went off on my own, I started at broad geological tests, then microscopic analysis of the water. I didn't expect a lot, after all I wasn't ruling out that their diet may have something to do with their life expectancy. I primarily focused on a little village off the shore, with only about 45 residents in the area. But I thought if there was something obvious causing it, it would have been turned up a long time ago. But when I tested it, I ran into some pretty weird stuff."
This lead to a brief pause.
"What kind of weird stuff?"
"Some kind of unidentified protein. Water isn't really water, y'know? Not when you add all the sulphides, irons, fluoride, and God knows what people put in their region's aquifers." His eyes darkened. "But the protein was the most interesting thing, Danny." I rolled my eyes. "So far as we know, it's only been found in one other place; the human brain."
The chemical talk went on for hours, but the main idea was simple: the blue stuff in the jar—which he had more of on him than I thought— was supposed to "save the world."
"We've got our own plant in Texas now, producing more of this stuff than you can imagine." Something about the way he talked made my throat go dry. "Once we produce enough, we'll be transporting it across the U.S. and Canada, and probably work our way up from there."
I felt my breath seize up again. "... And then where?"
"Well, we're gonna start testing it in Fort Worth--I've already worked out the dosage per pound and everything, but if all goes well, this thing's gonna be all over the world, Danny." I thought I'd either lost my mind or misheard him. I remember thinking at the time that for a genius he wasn't all that sage. I stared down at him as if he were unfamiliar to me.
"Isaac." There was a long pause between us. He went about pouring syrup. "What if I was right? Like I said before, what if you give everyone polio or alzheimers or . . . something?" He calculated this for a while, and that's all he could do about some things. "Isaac," I repeated, knowing all well he wasn't, "you're crazy."
He cleared his throat retaliated quicker than I would've thought.
"You wanna see crazy? Turn on the news. Look at all the people, all around the world... dying. Losing loved ones. Terrorist attacks, mass shootings, suicide bombings. Imagine if we brought them all back. Hell, imagine if we could've brought back the dog when we were kids," he gave a tantalizing laugh, and I felt twinge of anger toward him, but it dissipated after a moment. It's not like I needed to turn on the news to believe him, but there was something horribly misguided about his idea. It was wrong. I'm sure it's cliche to say I knew his idea was mistaken, but there was something instinctually at fault I couldn't possibly ignore.
"Please, Danny b--Sorry, Daniel. You have to help me." I stared at him, appalled, but his eyes nearly blinded me. "Please."
And so I did.
And we messed up. In fact, I can say we single-handedly destroyed the world. You want the truth? I don't care. I just don't care. We killed all the plants, but something will grow here, someday, somehow.