A/N
I decided to re-upload this fic (and my other works) to FFN for the people that aren't on AO3. Minor edits have been made since the first version. Yes, I am the original author and I took it down of my own volition; no one has stolen my work and is now reposting it. Please don't message me about this, I'm not plagiarizing myself. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the story (again).

If I Could Save the World

Professor Joan Newtronium stared at the document in her hands as her lips slowly separated into a triumphant smile.

'The City of Townsville's Scientific Discovery Council has granted the Project W research and development team permission to begin application trials on live subjects.'

Joan read that sentence two more times for absolute clarity, then she gave the whole thing another re-read. Once positive the Council hadn't included any arbitrary restrictions, she raced to find Project W's other lead scientist. "John! John!" Professor Utonium glanced up in alarm as she practically skidded to a stop before him. "We got the letter from the SDC! We're greenlit to start animal testing!"

"That's wonderful!" he exclaimed, pewter eyes sparkling. "I'll call a meeting to inform everyone."

"We can do it together!" Joan moved with a spring in her step while telling her fellow researchers to convene in what served as the conference room. Their building was small, their laboratory even smaller, and most of the equipment was secondhand, but they made do with the funding provided by their singular benefactor. It had been difficult selling the concept of Chemical W, a liquid injection that would cure degenerative neurological diseases. Their investor was an old man who suffered from onset dementia, hoping the compound might reverse his condition. The Project W collective worked diligently but kept getting caught up in the bureaucratic process, so being able to begin animal testing would help them make some much-needed progress.

As expected, the rest of the team was overjoyed by the news. John gave everyone the remainder of the day off since they'd be working nonstop once their subjects arrived. Joan came into his office, sitting on the corner of his desk while grinning from ear to ear. "I had some suppliers bookmarked when we started this collective but I've never ordered animals before," the man admitted. "What kind of simians do we want?"

"Chimpanzees, of course," Joan answered. It should have been a no-brainer because the genomes of chimps and humans were 99% similar.

"There are also bonobos, gorillas, lemurs…" John looked handsome even when his brow furrowed in worry. "You're sure you want chimpanzees?"

"I'm positive," Joan said. "The compound won't be nearly as effective on anything else. What's your hang-up?"

"They're expensive…" he muttered. "With our current budget we can only afford a dozen."

"Make it a baker's dozen. I'll take a pay cut."

The man knew better than to talk her out of it; Joan always said what she meant. Her candor was a quality he instantly respected after they met as college juniors, fast friends for the past thirteen years. She finished her PhD first, proudly introducing herself as Professor Newtronium during their high school reunion. Their coworkers sometimes accidentally, sometimes purposely mixed up their names since they shared phonetic similarities, but both scientists considered it a compliment. With John's innovation in biochemistry and Joan's brilliance as a genetic engineer, they had become fortunate enough to recruit like-minded people to their project despite the improbable, idealistic nature of Chemical W. At least one person believed in what they could achieve and that provided enough motivation to keep pushing forward.

Two days later a truck containing thirteen Pan troglodytes specimens arrived at the lab, accompanied by their own caretaker named Jane Goodwin. She encouraged the scientists to refer to the chimps by their names rather than their assigned numbers; kept their moral high, she said. Her star pupils were a male and female named Mojo and Momo. They were more docile than the others, and Jane had started teaching them sign language so they could communicate a bit.

The testing commenced as seven of the chimps had their food dosed with Chemical W and the other six received a placebo. After being fed twice a day for one week, MRI scans revealed a slight increase in synaptic activity. Jane reported that she'd been able to teach Mojo and Momo several new words with relative ease, and she swore there was a greater spark of intelligence in their eyes. After one month the W dose was increased but there were no noticeable results, so John suggested adding omega-3s to the chimps' diet. He presented ample evidence to support the theory that the human brain evolved as it had due to the consumption of fish, which were rich in fatty acids.

Joan was dubious. "You're telling me that one of the major things separating us from monkeys is salmon?"

"Salmon is a fantastic source of omega-threes," John said, already placing a bulk order for fish oil capsules. "I just have a feeling this will push us in the right direction."

Joan pursed her lips. Science wasn't about what one hoped the outcome would be, it was about what one could prove. Wishful thinking had never been responsible for advancing the human race. "What if the inclusion of another variable skews the results?"

"First we have to get some results to skew," he returned. She acquiesced, but if they negatively affected their test subjects it would mean the end of their study. Their financier's health had taken a dive and his grandson was now in charge of his estate. The man was young, entitled, and of the mindset that his grandfather shouldn't be pouring money into experimental medicine. Project W now faced the gallows and would be axed if it failed to work as promised.

Thankfully they worried for naught. Four days after introducing the new diet, Jane started her morning routine only to notice something different. All of the chimps were quiet, not a single hoot or holler at the promise of food. Her gaze traveled the room to find them all watching her intently, patiently. When her eyes landed on Mojo, he stuck his hands through the bars of his cage and signed something that made her jaw drop before she ran from the room. "Professor Utonium! Professor Newtronium! Come here, quick!" John calmly exited his office as Joan abandoned her data review. "Professors, you have to see this!" Jane kept glancing over her shoulder to ensure they were following. "Look, look!"

Both scientists focused on Mojo who signed something after a moment. "What's he saying?" John wondered.

"'Good morning'," Jane relayed, beaming. She signed it back to him, then he made several gestures. "He wants to know your names. He's asking who you are!"

"I suppose you should tell him," Joan said. It unnerved her to see the chimpanzee tilt his head to one side as he scrutinized them, committing them to memory, but Mojo soon turned back to Jane and signed the same thing three times in a row. "What does that mean?"

"Oh, this is what I wanted to show you! When I made eye contact with Mojo, he said 'good morning Jane, breakfast soon?' Breakfast now!" Happy-sounding noises arose from several chimps while John regarded them in mild disbelief. It certainly seemed the subjects, or at least Mojo, possessed a level of awareness they hadn't before.

Joan wasn't convinced until giving one of them another MRI scan, her expression softening. "Well I'll be…" she murmured. "Looks like your fatty acids did the trick, John."

There was a tangible increase of neural activity in the seven chimpanzees that had received the combination of fish oil and Chemical W. Their brains formed more complex pathways as Jane began teaching all of them ASL. By the time the second month of the study ended, Mojo and Momo had learned to communicate with word boards, now capable of interacting with the entire development team. Under Jane's supervision the pair was allowed to explore the lab, asking simple questions about their environment and the scientists at work. If Joan didn't know any better it was almost like their compound was on the verge of developing sapient-level intelligence in non-humans.

She walked into her co-creator's office after work, the two of them staying late as usual, and sat on his desk with her arms folded. "I think it's almost ready, John. I think we have a possible cure for our benefactor."

He shook his head once. "Two months isn't enough time for side effects to present themselves."

"There aren't any side effects," Joan countered. "Thanks to you, W is chemically pure."

He still didn't agree. "We need to administer the compound with the omega-threes to the other six subjects and see if we can replicate the results we already obtained before we even think about generalizing."

She fixed her blue eyes on the man, leaning forward into his personal bubble. "John, we're seeing the same thing happening to those monkeys, right? You've seen the increase in brain activity, the formation of synapses, their ability to not only accept new information but retain it and use it to form individual knowledge bases?" She scoffed at his stoic silence. "For god's sake, Mojo helps you at your station! According to Jane he now has the intelligence level of a six year-old child!"

"And I want to be certain that the compound won't reduce Hastings to the intelligence level of a ten year-old child," John retorted.

Joan huffed. He'd always been one to adhere to the rules whereas she would gladly bend them to achieve her goals. "Then let's request permission from the SDC to start clinical trials."

The man looked up sharply and she pulled back. They were the same age but John appeared older when he donned that expression, brow knitted and square jaw set in a patronizing manner. He too closely resembled her disapproving father at times like this. "We can't test Chemical W on people. It's only been two months," he said pointedly.

"Two months with nothing but positive results," Joan muttered, then she grew bold. "Did you forget that someone's life is at stake? We owe it to Hastings to cure him before he dies! If he goes, so does our funding!"

"We can find someone else to pick up the project."

"Like who?!" No answer. Joan tutted. "I'm going to request a clinical study from the SDC with or without your signature." She stood to leave.

"Wait…" She paused in the doorway as John sighed. "I really do believe it's too early for human testing… but maybe we can see how W affects other animals. Rats, parrots, dogs, ones that can learn certain behaviors like the chimpanzees."

Joan nodded in agreement but inwardly rolled her eyes. Those species were too different from humans for the findings to matter. John was getting cold feet, his fear of success rearing its head. He'd never led a team before, never been in charge of a project like this. He never believed Chemical W would behave exactly how it had been designed to since failure and the acceptance thereof was also part of the scientific process. But they had done everything right. Their group of biologists, chemists, neurologists and genetic engineers had invented a compound that improved brain function. Joan didn't understand why John would mistrust the results or even be in denial of them, like he was determined to find fault with his own invention.

Well, she wasn't going to let all their hard work go to waste. If John didn't have faith in himself, her, and their team, she'd find someone who did to help make their miracle cure a reality.

Shopping for a new benefactor was as simple as knowing whose elbows to rub. Acquaintances of friends of colleagues eventually put Joan in contact with Maximilian Morbucks, a name that was not unfamiliar to her but one she never expected to see attached to a scientific field. He was in real estate and small business; sometimes those businesses turned into large companies that gave him substantial stock holdings. He was also one of the biggest contributors to the Aegis Project, some kind of computer network that would allegedly revolutionize the entire world. In the office of his personal home Joan sat with her hands clasped tightly as Maximilian flipped through the documents she had gathered, development notes and research findings and such.

Finally he closed the folder and laced his own fingers atop his zebrawood desk. "I'm highly intrigued by this compound you've created."

"Y-you are?" Joan stammered, totally not expecting that based on his bland expression.

"Yes." The man reclined, looking down his large nose adorned with a thick orange mustache. "Miss Newtronium… it is 'Miss', right?" Joan nodded. "In the interest of full transparency, I'd like to inform you that I too belong to a collective, one comprised of Townsville residents possessing a certain level of financial security." She nodded again, fully aware of the club for wealthy people since she had attended their events in search of funding. "The main goal of the collective is to preserve things for the future. Recently a few members became focused on preserving themselves."

Her eyes narrowed. "I don't follow."

"There are those who want to extend their natural lifespans in order to accomplish long-term goals," Maximilian explained. "With the advancements in stem cell research the ability to replace failing organs, including skin, has become a feasible practice. There are several groups attempting to figure out how to upload and download the human consciousness to machines so that there may no longer be a need for a body." Joan could only blink at such an outlandish prospect. She didn't get the T types in STEM. "Now, I understand you're one of the world's leading practitioners of human genome editing, right?"

"Yes," she answered. No point being humble when it was true.

"But the edits need to be made fairly early in life, yes? Before someone is even born?"

"That's correct." Joan sat up a little straighter. "I find that editing the genome during the zygotic stage of development results in the expression of desired traits and the suppression of undesirable ones about ninety percent of the time."

Maximilian hummed throughtfully. "So edits can't be made retroactively, to people already living?"

"Correct."

"But this compound you've developed… W can be taken by anyone at any time?"

"Yes, and as our current findings show, there are no negative effects on healthy brains. The compound was designed to restore neurological functionality, but it also seems to enhance functionality if the right stimuli are applied. In the case of our simian subjects, they have become highly skilled at association and can communicate with American Sign Language or word boards or both." The man quirked an eyebrow at the latter term. "They're like tablets with an assortment of pictures and emojis on them, so the chimpanzees can express their feelings and ask for things. Some of the conversations our researchers have had have been quite… existential."

"I see." Maximilian held her gaze. "What would you like to accomplish with Chemical W?"

Joan didn't have to think twice about it. "I would like to introduce it to the medical field as a viable cure for diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia."

"I see. I already own several chemical plants around the globe so we can certainly create enough supply for the demand. There's just one reservation I have…" She steeled herself. "I want to know how your compound actually affects humans, not monkeys. If there's one thing I've learned from investing in so-called miracles, it's that disparities between laboratory testing and real-world applications often result in product recalls and substantial payouts. Do you follow?"

"Yes…" Joan sighed, "you're saying you can't support my research until clinical trials have commenced."

Maximilian blinked in surprise, then his loud laugh filled the room. "That's not what I'm saying at all, Miss Newtronium!" His professional demeanor returned. "I can expedite the time it takes you to begin human testing."

"Really? How?"

A slight smirk turned his lips. "I know someone on the Council who will give you permission. You don't have to wait for a peer review."

"Oh." That was all Joan could say. The idea of evading peer reviews was… tempting. It sometimes took months for the Council to reach a conclusion, but none of the members knew Chemical W like Joan did. She had been right there with John during every step of its synthesis, knew the formula by rote. It was pure, and perfect, and she was tired of dancing on one foot while waiting for other people to make decisions regarding her life-saving invention. "How soon could we begin human testing?" Joan inquired.

"Oh, there's no 'we'," Maximilian replied. "I don't want to fund your entire collective, just you. You would personally receive unlimited backing from me." The woman stared at him through wide eyes. They were extremely blue, piercing and beautiful, a bit of a shame since the rest of her was so underwhelming.

"You want me to leave my group?" Joan clarified.

"Yes. I could have you in a new facility tomorrow. Your own lab, top-of-the-line equipment, and a new team handpicked by you. This is the offer I'm laying on the table, Miss Newtronium. You can have whatever it takes to get your compound to market." He scrutinized her. "But it must get there. There's no point if I don't profit, but once the money starts rolling in you'd be free to research and develop to your heart's content."

So Morbucks wasn't an altruist. Good to know. Joan proffered her hand. "I accept."

John took her resignation better than she anticipated, at least outwardly. Joan saw the hurt in his eyes, the questions. Why would she abandon everything when they'd come so far? She wished she could admit he was moving too slowly for her, but she didn't want to hurt his feelings and lose him as a friend. And she'd signed a non-disclosure agreement so she couldn't tell him about Morbucks. They were technically rivals now, racing to develop the same cure. Joan would still credit him when she won.

Maximilian personally gave her a tour of her new workplace, an underground facility descending several miles deep into the earth. It was located in Townsville's industrial shipping yard and powered by hydrokinetic energy with geothermal backup generators in compliance with the green initiatives Mayor Sarah Bellum had introduced when she took office. It almost reminded Joan of a hospital in its layout, the floors grouped together by subject. There was a computer technology division, a clinical wing and on-site medical treatment options, cafeteria, chemistry lab, various engineering workshops, and a handful of administrative offices or "overseers" as the seasoned personnel referred to them. Joan became the head of the genetic engineering division overnight, assembled a new group of underlings and assistants within a few days, and got to work.

The human test subjects provided by one of the overseers were imported from the local prison. The morality of this arrangement didn't bother Joan because they were being used for the betterment of mankind. Besides, they were criminals and no one much cared whether they received the death penalty, rotted away behind bars, or were transferred elsewhere. Working with prisoners only subjected the scientists to crass, vulgar language and obscene gestures. Joan repeated the same method she'd used for the chimpanzees by adding pure Chemical W to the subjects' food, the results immediate. The aggressive men and women became better behaved, more conscientious of their environment and how to act within it. "Was Chemical W designed to make people docile?" an assistant inquired of Joan.

"No. What you're observing as docility is a conscious choice to reform behavior, enlightenment. They realize there's no reason for misplaced anger. It's a waste of everyone's time and energy." Joan let the observation period run its course, focusing her attention on an epileptic woman. She had not taken epilepsy into consideration when designing Chemical W because it was typically a genetic condition, one she'd edited out of embryos for multiple clients, but the woman had become epileptic after the drunk driving incident that landed her in prison for vehicular manslaughter. MRIs showed the damage to her lobes healing with each passing day until she no longer suffered seizures.

"We should broaden the scope of the experiment," a young neurologist suggested. "I know you're mostly concerned with dementia and Alzheimer's, but what about palsy, sclerosis, dyskinesia?"

"We'll get there eventually," Joan replied. She was bold, not brash. John had a point when he said it was too early for clinical trials. As she had initially hypothesized, W affected humans differently than chimpanzees. Smaller doses were required, there was no need for fish oil, and some of the subjects already started expressing signs of hyper-intelligence.

Admittedly Joan wasn't sure how to feel about that. The chimps had grown more intelligent when presented with new information, but with these prisoners it was like specific pieces of knowledge they'd randomly been exposed to were suddenly on the forefront of their minds. A lot of them asked for books so they could further educate themselves. Some of them were granted internet access and became capable of debating topics with experts, including her own team members. It was a side effect Joan had not anticipated or if she should even label it as such. Chemical W was doing its job to improve brain health and that was what mattered.

Half a year passed until Joan spoke to John again. He called her out of the blue one Saturday morning while she was still in bed. "John," she said by way of greeting, "it's been a minute."

"It has. I figured you wanted space after you left the collective." She inwardly sighed. She was not that dramatic. "I won't ask why, but know that we miss you." A pause. "There's something I need to tell you, Joan."

"So tell me."

Another long pause. "The chimps… we lost most of them."

His tone made her heart skip a nervous beat. "What do you mean you lost them?"

"They… died." There was no skirting the issue but John hated saying it with such finality. "Mojo, Momo, and Tiki are the only three left, and for a while they kept getting smarter. They tried speaking to us like humans and got frustrated that they didn't have the vocal capabilities to do so. It was honestly astounding."

"How did they die?" Joan asked.

A heavy sigh. "Brain aneurysms."

"Do you know why?" she pressed.

"A few developed arterial infections, but for most it was a spontaneous rejection of the W compound and rapid, I mean very rapid, neurological degeneration."

Joan wished she wasn't hearing this right now. She placed a hand on her forehead to quell her rampant thoughts, taking several deep breaths. John had been right: two months wasn't enough time for side effects to present themselves. Now the question was whether they would occur in her human subjects. "Tell me you have a theory as to what caused the rejection. Obviously Momo, Tiki, and Mojo didn't degrade at the same rate."

"Right, but their mental faculties are fading. I have the team trying to develop something to stabilize them and hopefully reverse the condition. As for theories…" Joan pictured his broad shoulders slumping. "The most viable explanation I've come up with is that the compound is too synthetic." That made sense; biological organisms tended to reject artificial additions to their bodies. Nature was a purist like that.

Joan suddenly had a stroke of inspiration. She would hold out hope that the minds of the prisoners wouldn't degrade, but in the meantime she could run an entirely new experiment, a pet project she'd keep secret from everyone, even Maximilian, in case it didn't conclude favorably. But if it did, if what she was thinking about doing actually worked, she'd go down in history. No, better than that, she would forge the future. "Thank you for telling me about the chimps, John," she said evenly.

"I thought you'd want to know since Momo was your favorite."

"She was."

John cleared his throat. "You could always visit her at the lab. I'm sure everyone else wouldn't mind if you stopped by."

"I might take you up on that offer." Joan made sure not to sound dismissive; she didn't want anyone to suspect her attention of being elsewhere. That meant making her old peers believe she'd stepped away from the field for a while and her current peers believe the study would continue as planned. What were a couple white lies for the sake of advancing the human race?

Joan needed to start from scratch, blank human slates for her experiment. She made a trip to a genealogy bank and, since she couldn't just walk out the door with genetic material, bribed someone with Maximilian's money to let her browse the inventory. She was quick about it, choosing a good variety of cells, and left with ten sets of male and female gametes. She planned to make babies in vitro and splice Chemical W into their genomes during their zygotic stage. It would work in theory, but in practice it was much harder to add coding to DNA than to edit things away. She had the best equipment in the world at her disposal, though, so she was confident in achieving a favorable result.

Joan botched the first two sets completely, frustration prompting her to abandon the project for a while as she continued the W study. There were no signs of degeneration until a year had gone by, then several of the prisoners began regressing. Amnesia occurred in a handful of them, some developed hypothalamus and pituitary issues, and only a few passed away from brain aneurysms. Maximilian wasn't happy with the outcome and neither was Joan, but she got over it quickly since her side project took precedence over everything else. Six months ago she had successfully spliced Chemical W onto the last four zygotes, hiding them within her personal private lab at the facility. The fetuses grew quickly, too fast to calculate, and now resembled four year-old children. They were responsive, reacting to external stimuli such as music and lights, and cranial sensors revealed promising neural activity.

It was time to see whether her experiment had been a success or a failure.

Joan drained the incubation tanks of synthetic amniotic fluid, holding her breath to see if her subjects could breathe without oxygen masks. Thankfully they did. The room was dark so as not to blind them when or if their eyes opened. One of the girls stirred first, her lids fluttering while she gathered her bearings. She placed her palms against the glass and took in her surroundings until her gaze landed on Joan, who inched forward. The girl's expression remained passive while they stared at one another. The first human being to be imbued with Chemical W was alive and cognizant in her lab. Joan didn't know whether to be proud or terrified of herself for creating such a lifeform. "Out," the girl said. It took a second for Joan to register the tinny sound. "Want out."

"Oh my god, you can speak." Wasn't learning to talk a significant part of childhood development? "How do you know how to speak?"

The girl merely blinked at her before asking, "Who you?"

"Joan. My name is Joan!" Oh god, this was really happening. They were interacting.

"Joan." The girl glanced around again. "Who me? What my name?"

And she was already trying to establish an identity! "Your name? Let's call you… Une."

"Oon." The girl managed a small smile. "Une want out."

Joan burst into a flurry of movement, soon realizing she was not equipped for handling four young children. What should they wear? What did they eat? What did they do? She had never been around kids yet was obligated to take care of them. They were like her babies… her genetically-engineered-and-accelerated babies. Joan never desired to marry or have kids, never felt that "maternal instinct" everyone told her would kick in one day. She wasn't exactly a workaholic but she placed a high value on time since there was no way of knowing when it would run out, and she sought to accomplish as much as possible until then. Like a lot of people she wanted to be remembered for something. Augmenting the human genome with Chemical W seemed like one hell of a legacy to leave behind.

For precisely one week the children remained perfectly ordinary, but by week two they began expressing unusual physical characteristics. Une's hair changed from black to navy blue as her eyes went from sepia to burgundy. The other girl named Tvaer grew extremely pale, making Joan worry she had contracted an illness despite the lab's filtration system and sterility, but then her blonde hair and blue eyes also paled, leaving her with stark white locks and grey irises. The two boys, Natt and Sai, retained their natural dark hair and skin as their brown eyes turned sienna and amber respectively. Natt also underwent a substantial growth spurt one night, putting him a whole foot taller than his siblings.

Joan couldn't keep them secret any longer. They required more than she could personally provide, least of all an education. She called her team to her lab for an important announcement. Needless to say everyone was speechless to discover four live children there. "What have you done?!" was the first question hurled at her. She weathered the verbal torrent that followed.

Once things had calmed down, Joan expressed her reasoning: Chemical W's restorative properties were only temporary and could not be applied to people with preexisting conditions. The side effects did as much damage as they repaired, even more in some instances. "But these children represent a new standard of human health," Joan explained. "The scope of gene editing is limited– it can't be performed on every fertilized cell in the world. However, I believe the majority of detrimental conditions can be erased from the genome via the application of Chemical W at the zygotic stage. It has so much more potential than I realized. We can market the compound as an injection that will prevent any and all forms of illness in developing babies."

"That's a bold statement…" someone muttered.

"Yes, it is bold," Joan agreed, "but we've just bypassed a boundary that mankind as a whole was content to stay behind."

"We didn't do anything. Those… abominations are all yours, Professor."

Her lips turned down. What a horrible word to describe her flawless creations. "How dare you call them that. These children are my magnum opus. They're heralds of a future where everyone will be able to live long, happy lives in optimum health. What parent wouldn't want that for their child?" Joan took a deep breath. "What I would ask you all now is if you'll engage in a long-term study of these children with me. I want to observe every aspect of their development from this moment on."

The young neurologist shook his head. "With all due respect, Professor, you're insane. You just sprung the result of your unethical experiment on us. How the hell did you expect us to react?" He knelt before Sai, the smallest of the four. "They don't even look like us. It's not just the freaky eyes, there's something different about them." Sai's bushy brows furrowed in a scowl.

"The difference is they'll never get sick." Joan huffed and lifted her chin. "Anyone who isn't interested in studying my children should leave now." About a third of her team walked out the door but the neurologist wasn't among them. "Thank you for your support, Doctor Anderson."

He shrugged. "I don't get the opportunity to study superhuman brains every day."

At that, Une broke her promise to be quiet and tugged on Joan's coat. "What does 'superhuman' mean? Aren't we normal?"

Joan smiled and ruffled her curly hair. "'Normal' is different for everyone, Une. The four of you are normal in a way that seems strange to other people, but they'll understand in time. Someday everyone will be normal like you."

"But what's 'superhuman' mean, Joan?" Sai repeated. "Tell us."

"Superhuman… It means above, better, more capable than the average person." She looked at their adorable, inquisitive, upturned faces and all she saw was promise. The promise that she, Professor Joan Newtronium, was guaranteed to change the world.