DISCLAIMER: I do own most of the material here, actually. The plot of the story and the characters will all belong to me, as well as my method of 'proving Alchemy'. What doesn't belong to me is the theories on Alchemy itself and other such Transmutations, or the results of such. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
(( A/N: Hey, everyone. D:
This is just an experiment in moderntimes writing. No, I can not write anything physically realistic, go die. Hey, at least this one doesn't take place in the world of a video game, right…?
Read and review. The more love I get, the more of an urge I have to write. ))
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October 18, 2006
It is said that children are imaginative, that they will believe most anything and they retain their infantile hopes and dreams for several years. To be an astronaut, to be the President, to be a superhero someday. Children are told at an early age that they can do whatever they want. They are lied to from day one.
It's no wonder they look to media entertainment during their leisure. Immersing oneself into something as simple as a soap opera is usually far more entertaining than living one's life normally (not to mention less dangerous).
Matthew Smithwood just getting to that age where the pessimistic realism was beginning to set in. He began to become interested in economics and business, while remaining hopeful in his dreams to become a famous physicist. He was one of the few kids in his class who was interested in such things as Einstein's Theories or Heisenburg's Principles.
He loved to immerse himself in improbable happenings in theory. Books like Adam Fawer's "Improbable" and stories like Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events" made up his personal library. He read graphic novels, as well, though they did not change his daily schedule more than slightly. A few books of "Naruto" and several copies of "Rurouni Kenshin" donned his shelves.
His newest infatuation was the anime show, "FullMetal Alchemist".
If you've never heard of the story, which I doubt, since fans of the original story rarely read fanfictions based on it, it's not that complicated (in relative to other anime).
It circles around the most eventful years of two brothers' lives: Edward and Alphonse Elric. Using a sort of magic known as Alchemy, they attempted to bring their mother back to life through human transmutation(a forbidden act). though it was a failure, such a powerful outcome was attractive to the government, the branch of State Alchemists. The main plot is of the brothers trying to repair the bodily damage caused by the human transmutation the younger brother(Alphonse) lost his body and the older brother(Edward) lost his leg, and then Edward put his arm up to stake to bring back Alphonse's soul and attach it to a suit of armour. It's an excellent and emotional story; You should read it.
The thing is, the book is labeled as fiction, and even proven in the storyline that it takes place in a different dimension from our own.
Matthew, though, was unconvinced.
"If there is a driving deity of this world," he postulated, "It must be unseen and therefore uneffectible by mankind as of present. However, if one could somehow force their way into controlling–-
I sighed and put my pen down. I know that the basis of the story could be possible, but it was a hard thing to explain. And to do so is to denounce both Newton and Heisenburg, and the scientific community would definitely be turned off by that.
Regardless of their imperfections. Pfeh... Physicists.
I didn't want to throw away what I'd written, so I put it in my folder with the rest of the half-finished pieces.
A glance at my computer screen showed that the YouTube video had finally loaded, meaning I could finally watch the full epilogue of my newest favourite series. Perhaps with the closure of the story I could prove my postulations once and for all?
I was halfway into the opening credits when my phone rang. The digital display read 'Nick'.
"What's up?" I asked casually, repressing my irritation at the video's interruption.
"Hey, Matt. Er, what was the math homework, again?"
"Page three-hundred-somethin, evens, two through... Uh, thirty-something."
"Damn. You finished it in class?"
I sighed. "Don't I always?"
"Could I come up and steal it then?"
I sighed again. "Yeah, copy it if you need to, just do a few of them alone to make sure-"
"Oh, I know this stuff," Nick interrupted me. "We did it last year, remember? Polynomials are nothing. I just don't want the lunch detention for forgetting my homework again."
"You wouldn't have that problem if you didn't jerk around in class every day."
"Go screw a porcupine," he laughed. "We both know who's grade is higher."
I chuckled. "By a point, yes, I know, ess-tee-eff-you. Hurry up and come up, I'm trying to watch a video, kay?"
"Yup, just turn off your 'pron' before anyone walks in."
"Die in a fire!" But he'd already hung up. I snorted, but grabbed my notebook nonetheless. Nick was awesome, he was never serious about anything.
I finished the opening credits, had to pause it again when the doorbell rang, nearly killed myself tripping over the cat on the way down the stairs, shoved my sister out of the way, and handed the notebook to Nick.
"I owe you one," he thanked me. He looked tired, but I didn't ask what was up. His chemistry class was taking a toll on him we knew.
"Make that three, from Friday too," I said, mock-frowning. "Gee-tee-eff-oh my house."
"I'm in your house," Nick sang, "Stealin' your homeworks."
"Just don't forget my notebook, all right?"
"Yup. Seeya in the morning."
"Yup."
I shut the door, explained to Mum what Nick needed, was forced into taking out the trash, and I realized it was already nine-thirty. I still hadn't eaten, either.
I sighed inwardly, putting two cups of water on the stove to boil and brought my laptop downstairs. I plugged in my earphones and made Ramen while finally watching the FullMetal Alchemist movie.
As always, I was in bed by eleven-thirty.
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School sucked.
Austin and Marie broke up, again. Nick kicked Tyler in the nads for un-quitting his smoking habit. The principle wasn't happy, but he agreed with Nick so it was okay in the end. Kasey was being emo again, worried that her boyfriend would break up with her because of something she said or something. Austin came to me just before First Period with a note for Marie. I gave it to her and she got mad at me for 'associating with that scumbag'.
High School drama. Woo-hoo.
The only relevant thing that really happened was during French class. The girl who sat in front of me, a notorious otaku, was wearing a red FullMetal Alchemist shirt. On the back was the Human Transmutation Circle, the most complex in the series. Since she sat directly in front of me, I had a perfect view of it and spent most of the period sketching it and taking notes of the more meticulous bits. It took a full sheet of paper and a half of another.
I listened to my trance music (mostly 'Infected Mushrooms', but a bit of 'DJ Tiesto') on the bus ride home, turning it up only to drown out the bouts of idiocy raging around me. Kids dropping the F-bomb left and right, or bragging about how they smart-assed a teacher or shoved a homosexual kid out of their way.
Half of the kids were older than me, too. That was the sad part. I was only a sophomore, too.
I vaguely wondered at what point it became 'cool' to be a weak-minded prick. I realized it was probably when those who wanted to use others' weaknesses for their own gain gained power. I wondered when that happened and realized it must have been when the system changed so those manipulative people could easily get into power. I wondered when and how that happened and realized I didn't have an answer. Probably around the time people stopped using fists and swords to solve their differences.
Humans suck.
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I stared at the screen of my laptop.
It had four windows open presently: Trillian Instant Messenging, Windows Media Player (Presently playing: 'Astrix' by Infected Mushroom), a minimized Maplestory, and a Firefox with several tabs.
One had a paused video of 'Rurouni Kenshin' on YouTube. One was open to My Account on BasilMarket. One displayed my Yahoo! Mail Inbox. But the last one was occupying the whole screen. An online forum I visited daily:
www.FMAdiscussion.7. …
Thread Topic: Alchemy, Once Scientifically Plausible (But why not anymore?)
Whoever wrote this up seemed to know what they were talking about. It was a huge block of text, at least ten thousand words because he had to post thrice in a row thanks to the Character Limit Flood Control.
I'll summarize the posts for the reader : …
Basically, Alchemy in a near sense to this anime series is possible. I'm a quantum physicist and I'm probably old enough to be most of your parents (but not too old to be an anime fan!). I ran my theories on Alchemy through today's accepted advanced theoretical tests, and it passes as plausible, if incredibly improbable.
One of the hardest things to find a cause for in this world is the continuous random movement of subatomic particles. With their discovery, of course, several theories came up; the most widely accepted being that of quarks and leptons. A recent realization are that these, the base of all energy and matter, are composed of energy in waves.
For those of you that missed the relevance of that bit, it means that all matter is just energy in a different form. And therefore anything that lacks matter also lacks energy. When you get to the nitty gritty, it's not all that complicated.
Now, through people's muscles we can move matter and therefore change and exchange energy. Through thinking, we are fooling around with the chemicals and electricity in our brains (and bodies), so even by accessing mental thought we are exchanging energy. So if one can move internal chemicals and energy by thinking about it, why shouldn't we be able to move things outside our bodies? The difference is, we are born with a full subconscious map of our bodies. We have knowledge on them, just not consciously. If someone can gain that kind of knowledge with something outside of their body…
I know a man in my profession that studied an undisclosed group of hermits-as-monks. These monks, through meditation, can go as far as to rise and lower the air temperature of a room. In fact, I once took a martial arts class in which we learned to control our blood flow (through meditation) and use the friction it caused to heat our palms. The energy the heat caused was enough to give us all small burns, and our Sensei (after a few minutes of intense concentration) was able to crack a cinderblock neatly in two.
Without actually touching it with his skin. See it now?
What these people are doing is extending their bodily aura-in-energy to effect their surroundings. I like to think of it as a sort of tendril of psychic-kinetic powers or something like that. If one can control that energy to an immense level, that is, to destroy and then rebuild…
Alchemy would be infinitely probable. Or, something like it, anyway. I still don't know where the Transmutation Circles come in.
After reading through his essay twice, I discovered where they did come in.
Good thing it was a Friday. I had a feeling it would be an all-nighter.
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NickEggo10101010101: Neh. . .
NickEggo10101010101: I don't like this one so much. That samurai one was ok, but this show isn't as great
MattDaMan: That's irrelevant, F7
MattDaMan: Anyway, I didn't really like it that much at first either
MattDaMan: tell me when you've watched the first few episodes
NickEggo10101010101: But Margaret's on… F4.
MattDaMan: F3…
NickEggo10101010101: She's getting off later for her piano lessons
MattDaMan: Fine, whatever
MattDaMan: Just watch like 5 episodes or somethin and then call me.
NickEggo101010101010101: Kay.
MattDaMan: I'm gonna go take a nap. This thing kept me up until like 6.
NickEggo101010101010101: F6? You okay?
MattDaMan: Psh. Doesn't matter. Just call me when youre done, kay?
NickEggo101010101010101: Fine.. Seeya.
MattDaMan has Signed Off.
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BREEEEP BREEPBREEPBREEP BREEEPBREEEP BREEPBREEPBREEP -
I groaned and picked up my cell, not bothering to check the name.
"Mornin'," I grumbled.
"Matthew?"
I sat up, awake. That wasn't Nick's voice.
"Uh, yeah. Hi."
"Hey… Uh, did I wake you up?" It was a female voice. I couldn't put a name on it, though.
"Yeah," I said, not unkindly. "But don't worry about it. I was sleeping in anyway." This was true, actually. The clock by my bed read 4:48 PM. I seemed to have missed lunch.
"Ah, sorry…"
"Don't worry about it, really," I said again. "Uh… Who is this, anyway?"
She laughed. "It's Lisa, dummy."
"Oh. Hi." Lisa, from French. She was that girl that sat in front of me.
"So, uh… You read FullMetal Alchemist, right? I saw your notebook today when I was getting a tissue."
I flushed. She'd seen me copying the transmutation circle off of her back. "Yeah, I was trying to perfect the Human Transmutation circle… You were wearing it on your shirt, and it was a boring class… Eh-heh…"
"I'm worried about something…" she said, suddenly serious. "You… You don't happen to use the Internet often?"
"Often enough to have heard of 4Chan, but not often enough to have ever visited it," I replied; It was a saying me and Nick had coined and it is actually quite humourous if you get it.
She didn't get it.
"What?"
"Yes, I do. Why?"
"Ever heard of, like, online boards? Foruming?"
I began to assume several things at once.
"I have several forums under my Favourites folder, why?"
"Do you visit a FullMetal Alchemist forum?"
"Two. One's a shipping forum, and the other's one for general discussion."
"Do you use the screenname 'The Matt'?"
"This is about the FMADiscussion-dot-forumer Thread about scientifically proving Alchemy, isn't it…" It wasn't a question, but it wasn't really much of an accusation, either.
"You… Is it all true?"
"To my knowledge, yes."
"Even the essay you posted? Where did you find that?"
"I wrote it," I said, a soft blush creeping up again. I don't like people I know reading my work…
"You wrote all of that?" she was dumbfounded.
"It took me until sunrise, but yeah."
"Do you believe that anyone can become an alchemist, then?"
"No," I replied emotionlessly. "Not just anyone. The person would need to be extra-perspective, and they would need to have pinpoint precision in creating transmutation circles, and they would need to have a photographic memory."
"Or they would need to be an epileptic who prefers foresight to hindsight," she quoted my essay.
"Yes, but I don't know any epileptics, so it'd be hard to test."
"I'm an epileptic."
"What?" I didn't believe her for a second.
"I am… No less, a Temporal Lobe Epileptic."
I couldn't help but laugh. Irony and dark humour really did something for me. TLE patients, by my theory, could easily use the sciences of Alchemy (if they did exist, which they kinda do). However, they could only do that if it wasn't a curable type of epilepsy, which is incredibly rare, and also if their subconscious already has data of how a transmutation works.
Er, welcome to quantum physics, by the way.
"Let me guess," I chuckled. "It's idiopathic, and in your pre-seizure aura you experience visions of Transmutation circles."
"Yeah," she said, almost hysterical. "They were what first made me read the manga. It was like an incredible sense of déjà vu."
I couldn't think of many ways to respond to that.
Finally I said, "You know, the manga and the show are completely different."
"Yeah," Lisa replied. "The characters and basis of the science are the only things that are really the same. I've watched the show, too."
"According to wikipedia, the games were different, too."
"I don't have a PlayStation Two."
"Me either."
We were silent for a few seconds.
"Well," I said, feeling very exhausted. "Congratulations. Be careful with your newfound abilities. Don't kill anybody."
"Wait," she said. "Don't hang up."
I wasn't about to, but I didn't interrupt her.
"You said in the essay that you were really perspective, in relative anyway, and that you possessed awesome precision in drawing through drawing tools because you took a lot of art classes, and that you-"
"It doesn't matter," I said, cutting her off.
"But-"
"If the source of the alchemy does not use it, then nothing is changed. That person is normal."
"You have no wish to use it?"
"I do," I said thoughtfully. "But I've seen what power does to people. I don't want it to happen to me. I don't want to become corrupted."
"Have you even tried it yet?" she asked exasperatedly.
I looked over at my desk table, where a large compass, a ruler, a sharpie marker, and a perfectly-created oragami swan sat on my desk.
"Not once," I lied smoothly. "I need to go. You did wake me up, after all."
I heard her snort irritably. "See you on Monday, then, Matt…"
I hung up quickly, but I could swear I heard a 'You coward,' seceding her sentence.
Before laying back down to rest, I crumpled up the paper swan and threw it into the trash.
(( The amount of replies left to this chapter will reduce the number of days it will take to write up a second chapter. Keep in mind, though, It's nearly Christmas, and I'll be out of state from the twenty-sixth to the third of January. So you can expect more, at the very latest, by early-mid January. Toodles.))