Ftrain, by Paul Ford

This is how I see the next three years: I quit my job and go to pharmacy school. Each night, after the building closes, I stay in the lab with mortar and pestle, mixing, grinding, and testing.

A few months before graduation, I create a perfect pink capsule. It rests in a ceramic saucer. The gelatin refracts the sun.

Merck, Pfizer, and Dupont have analyzed the pleasures of molecules, turned stone to soup inside of centrifuges, but never found anything like this. They didn’t know to look.

To make the medicine work, a friend, or close acquaintance of the afflicted, palms the pill and wishes the illness away. The ill person then takes the pill with water, or juice. Within hours, they are well.

It is amusing to see these instructions on the orange bottles.

It really has to do with the properties of zinc as it interacts with animal protein. But most people don’t care about that. And all sorts of affliction are cured.

That is how I see my next three years.