Curse of the Potency Read online

  Daryl frowned.

  “Really?” he said. “I was under the impression you hated it and couldn’t wait for Molly here to bring it to a halt.”

  I could smell a trap being laid, though I wasn’t sure who it was for.

  “I do miss a lot of my favourite foods,” I admitted. “And not being able to enjoy a nice pint.”

  “Well then!” said Daryl. “You’ll be pleased to know your diet will now be changing back to something closer to what you would call normal.”

  “Daryl…” said Molly, clearly put out.

  “No, no,” he said. “It’s only right, given what we now know.”

  “What do we now know?” I said.

  “We don’t know it yet,” answered Molly, still frowning at Daryl. “At least, I don’t deem we have collected enough data to make that call.”

  “But, my dear doctor,” said Daryl. “We do know. You said yourself—”

  “I said there are signs. That’s not the same as knowing. Plus, the conclusions you are drawing are far from ethical. It’s likely that what you propose will have a detrimental effect on Dave’s health.” She looked at me seriously. “An extremely detrimental effect, quite possibly.”

  “Guys,” I said, “please, can you explain what you’re talking about. I’m not sure I—”

  “The facts are clear,” Daryl interrupted, addressing Molly. “We can see both from the data gathered from before Dave joined us and in the weeks since. Come on, Molly, you’re just being overly cautious. Plus, I might add, you are not focusing appropriately on the job at hand. Potency is vital for our development at this stage. Right now, his general physical optimization is a secondary concern.”

  “How can his physical condition possibly be secondary?” Molly wrinkled her nose in that lovely way of hers. “We signed this man up on the basis that his interests would be served.”

  “At this point in time, his interests will be best served if the interests of the company are served,” said Daryl. “Isn’t that right, Dave?”

  “I’m not sure I follow you, actually.”

  “You want to be paid the big salary I promised, don’t you? You want the freedom, the independence? You want your own place, kitted out with plumbing that can handle your”—he searched for the word—“special needs.”

  I frowned at him. Was he being serious? Trying to wind me up? Those were precisely the things he had failed to deliver!

  “Yes, I bloody well do,” I said, thinking it was high time I gave him a piece of my mind. “In fact, I wanted to talk about—”

  Molly interrupted me again. “Daryl, that’s not fair and you know it. You can’t simply supersede one set of interests with another. A man’s health is always his first priority. Everything else must come second.”

  “I am not sure Dave would see it that way,” said Daryl, looking at me slyly. “And everyone has the freedom to make their own decisions. What do you think, Dave?”

  “Well, actually—”

  “Daryl,” growled Molly. “We need to give him the full picture before asking his opinion on anything!”

  “Bloody enough already!”

  That was the second time that day I’d shouted down my betters. It felt good, actually, especially since they kept interrupting me, almost as if I was some kind of simpleton struggling to choose what underpants to wear.

  “I’m sorry, Dave,” said Molly, lowering her voice. “You joined us in the middle of a heated debate. It’s probably best if you just leave us to it and then we can talk later, okay?”

  “I disagree, I am afraid,” said Daryl. “Dave, unfortunately Molly here insists on treating you like a child—”

  “Come on, that’s not fair!” Molly threw her arms in the air.

  “Whereas I,” continued Daryl coolly, “prefer talking to you as an adult. Man to man.”

  He paused, looking at me, seemingly now wanting me to step in. She looked at me too, biting a lip.

  “Why don’t both of you just give it to me straight,” I said, parking my anger at Daryl for the time being. “I’m sick of all this technobabble and never knowing what anyone really means. For Christ’s sake, I’ve just come from a long conversation with those two in the lab downstairs! I’ve had it up to here!”

  I put a hand at around my shoulder height.

  “More like here, actually.” I raised it till it was way over my head.

  Molly smiled at me. Daryl just gawked.

  “So come on,” I continued. “Give me the beef. In plain English. Daryl, you first. Then you, Molly. Just the facts. And no arguing like a pair of football hooligans. And once you’ve done that, Daryl”—I pointed at him now, giving him a proper menacing look—“I’ve got some words for you too.”

  *****

  They gave me the full picture—at least, as full as it could be.

  Daryl’s point boiled down to Solar Ray needing my wee. Lots of it. They were using it in all sorts of ways to develop their mega-dega-whatever-it-was-supposed-to-be-called material. Studying it, mixing it up with other things, testing with it. It had lots of amazing properties that were going to make their material the strongest and best super-strong, super-thin stuff in the world.

  The problem was, since I’d been on the vegan diet, my pee had apparently lost some of its potency. Just as Byron had mentioned. And that spelt trouble because the more potent the pee, the better it was for their development. I didn’t really understand it fully, since it seemed that even with a bit less strength my urine was still a luminous green death liquid, but that was the fact of the matter, apparently.

  Plus, as Daryl explained, there was a “rate of reduction” that appeared to be increasing “exponentially,” meaning it looked as though the longer I stayed on that diet, the less and less toxic my pee became, and therefore it was going to be less and less useful, and this was happening faster and faster every day. “Our investors are worried too.” He made a point of mentioning the investors several times.

  I looked at Molly. “It’s like you were saying at dinner last night, about my diet.” I sensed Daryl glancing at me uncomfortably when I mentioned dinner. “My wee really could go back to normal then? I might pee like a normal bloke again? If I stay a vegan, that is?”

  “Yes, Dave, it might—” Molly started to say.

  Daryl interrupted her pointedly. “But we don’t know that. As I understand, Molly, the rate of reduction, whilst a significant problem for development purposes, is actually not likely to result in anything that could be called ‘normality’ for Dave. At least not in the short term.”

  “No,” Molly agreed hesitantly. “Current data suggests it would be a decades-long process. But we need more data on that. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “So it could take what? Ten years—or fifty years,” said Daryl. “Or never.”

  Molly nodded silently. They both turned to look at me again.

  To be honest, I was struggling to get my head round things. A vegan for life on the off chance I could use the pub loo again in maybe ten or fifty years’ time? Or never. And by the sounds of it, it wasn’t just a vegan I’d need to be. I’d need to refrain from boozing, too, and live my life according to all the rest of those boring, healthy rules.

  “What about why this is happening to me?” It suddenly occurred to me. “If you figure that part out, won’t the rest of it make more sense?”

  “You’re quite right, Dave,” said Molly, smiling and putting a hand on my arm, causing Daryl to frown again. “Unfortunately, there just aren’t the tools to—”

  “Molly—” Daryl moaned.

  “I’m not saying anything that he shouldn’t hear. I’m not saying this is your fault either, Daryl.”

  She turned to me again.

  “Dave, as you know, I do think that somehow your diet has caused what’s happening to you. I’ve not found anything else in my extensive investigations of your physical condition to suggest any other source of your predicament. No infections. No viruses. No… outside elements.
Just this utterly strange mutation. But the problem is that I can’t know for sure that your diet is responsible without way, way more data. I’m talking a level of data that is pretty much impossible to come by. Even saying that, if I was to somehow come by all the data in the world, it could still remain a mystery.”

  “Eh?” It sounded like a fairly significant point, but my head was spinning. “What do you mean all the data in the world?”

  “Well, your unhealthy eating habits are certainly not normal, but then again, they are not totally out of the ordinary either. You eat a great deal of processed food, as do many others, yet you’re the only person in the world—or should I say, the only person we know of—to have had this mutation occur. If it is diet-related, we’d need to nail down the precise combination of foods that you have eaten over a long period of time—years, I mean—and then compare that to a suitably large sample from the general public. As you can imagine, that is not really feasible. Even in just your single case, there is no way you could recall for us the precise amounts of every single thing you have eaten for the past, say, five years.”

  “No,” I said grimly, thinking of all those hundreds and thousands of burgers and chocolate and crisps and fizzy drinks and packaged meals I had consumed. And the rest. “So it’s impossible to know what’s happened to me? I mean, what’s caused this?”

  She frowned. “Not impossible, but until more cases arise, and a lot more data is collected, it’s going to be pure supposition. But I want you to think of it this way though, Dave: what we do know is that by changing your diet, you have reduced the potency of your urine. That tells us a lot, doesn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “And it means you have a means to tackle this. By altering your diet, you can—”

  “Alright, that’s quite enough,” said Daryl, rather rudely I thought. “I think I was in the middle of explaining something to Dave, wasn’t I? May I finish?”

  Molly nodded politely while I just did my best to resist the urge to lamp him.

  “Essentially, Dave,” he explained, “it doesn’t seem likely you’ll ever be normal again, but if you keep on with this vegan diet, your usefulness to this business will rapidly come to an end. Obviously, we can’t pay for someone who is of no use to us. We certainly can’t invest in expensive long-term research to find out what’s wrong with you. If there is no profitable business, if we don’t succeed in creating a marketable product, and if we go under, as would most likely happen in that scenario, well, you can join those dots yourself.”

  Molly looked shocked “Daryl, I can’t believe how unethical you’re being. You’re trying to force him to—”

  “No, Molly, I’m sorry, but it’s just business, pure and simple. I think Dave is more than ready for some home truths.”

  Blunt as a rock and snappy as a crocodile, wasn’t he? And time to ask the last remaining question I had on the matter.

  “I get that, sort of,” I said to Daryl. “But what I don’t get is why you can’t make use of my wee even if it isn’t diamond-melting-strong. It’s still pretty nasty stuff, whatever the weather, isn’t it? I mean, you just said it could take decades for me to get normal—if ever.”

  “That’s a logical thought,” he said, nodding at me respectfully and about bloody time too. “But you still don’t quite appreciate the business proposition we are operating under. In this industry, technical innovation is king. It’s our currency. And time is of the essence. Plus, and you can talk to Byron and Marcus for further details on this, I believe we can only go so far with what we’d had up until this point. We need more—lots more. And we can’t store it, not for any length of time, so it needs to be a constant supply. The stronger, the better. If the potency goes down, we might as well use water. The bottom line is that we need at least the level of potency you were at before the diet. And we need that sustained.”

  “I see,” I said, nodding solemnly, thinking how utterly ridiculous it was for an entire business to rely solely on one man’s pee.

  “Alright, Molly.” I looked at her. “Can you finish what you were saying?”

  And now I got from her what was basically a very different side of the same coin. Molly, bless her, was concerned about my welfare. For her, my previous diet was, as she put it, “frankly, a death certificate,” and going back to it was only going to lead me to a heart attack or obesity or diabetes or cancer or all of those—or worse.

  “There’s not going to be any development at Solar Ray if our star player is lying in a hospital bed, is there?”

  I have to admit I was sceptical that my diet was quite that bad.

  “What’s more, Dave,” she continued passionately, “I want you to value yourself. You’re not just some urine-producing biological machine. You’re a person, an individual. You have rights, and you should be respected. You should have self-respect. Going along with this is only going to harm you. I guarantee it.”

  Daryl was looking darkly at her.

  “So basically, you’re saying I have to stay a vegan?” I said. “If I don’t, I’ll die, is that it?”

  “You don’t have to be a vegan,” she said. “I mean, I think it would be a good idea, for sure. But all I’m saying is that you should think about your own health and what works for you. You need a diet and a lifestyle that doesn’t sign your future away. And I’m sorry to say, what Daryl proposes is really not in your interests. I can’t recommend it, and I can’t go along with it.”

  Daryl looked shaken.

  “Molly,” he said. “What are you saying?”

  “I think it’s clear, Daryl. I can’t work here if this is the path you are taking. Unless you figure out another way, a way that doesn’t involve Dave here eating his way to oblivion, I quit.”

  “Are you serious?” he said, face pale. “You must understand there’s no other way. We can’t do this any other way.”

  “Well then,” she said. “That’s it then. I quit. You don’t need me anyway. To be honest, I am really not sure at all why you hired me in the first place. I have my suspicions on that though.”

  “Molly,” he said, reaching out to touch her, hurt in his eyes. “Please. If we get this right, we’re going to change the world together. You know that. This material we’re creating, it’ll take us to the stars. Just imagine.”

  “Maybe, Daryl,” she said, recoiling from him. “But you’re going too far for me. This is all just… wrong.”

  Chapter 11

  Daryl didn’t take to this turn of events very well at all. He was speechless, and that’s saying a lot for the guy who’s always got just the words to twist any occasion his way. Actually, I got the feeling he had more to say to her, a lot more, yet he seemed to be caught hanging, tongue-tied, possibly because of the shock, possibly because I was there. Basically, it was quite obvious he still had the massive hots for Molly, but to look at her picking up her bag and putting on her coat, it was equally as obvious she was not interested in him and was not going to be talked out of her decision.

  “I’m really sorry to be leaving like this,” she said, coming over to me when she was done, completely ignoring Daryl. “Good luck. I hope you make the right decision for you.”

  “Alright.”

  In truth, I was just as gob-smacked as Daryl was. It was hard to imagine life at Solar Ray without her.

  “Here,” she said, handing me a business card. “If you need to talk or need any help or advice, please don’t hesitate to give me a call. I mean it. And remember, however it may seem, there is always another way. Always. Please don’t forget that.”

  She was looking at me sadly, almost in tears. Then she did something totally unexpected and totally wonderful. She kissed me, right on the cheek. Alright, it wasn’t a proper mouth-type kiss, but it was hardly just a peck either. She gave me the full attention of her lips, letting them linger there just that tad longer than she had to, if you know what I mean. Enough to feel the lovely silkiness of her, a little bit of her breathing, her warmth, and it put me i
nto a right spin, I can tell you.

  “Goodbye, Dave. Take care of yourself.”

  “Bye…”

  I couldn’t help mumbling, like a total prat, really. It was the smell of her that did it. Lovely, like strawberries. Or was it apples? And with a certain hint of nuts. The smell of a female, I guess. A real woman.

  She said something short and sharp to Daryl before she left, but I barely processed the words, to be honest. I was still in a galaxy far, far away. That kiss had sent me to a little place I like to call La La Land.

  *****

  After the blissful moment, reality came thudding down like boots in mud. Daryl and I sat there silently—in shock, really. I was trying to come terms with things, the fact that Molly had just quit, not to mention all of the other revelations about my situation.

  Firstly, I had a chance to get better. A small chance, and it involved a total change of diet, a lifestyle catastrophe, more or less. I was far from sure I could hack it.

  To complicate matters, if I went down that path, that meant leaving Solar Ray. No more basement, but also no more salary. How would I manage daily living expenses? Accommodation? Could I find someone to look after me? Who would be interested enough to invest their time and money if my wee was going to be getting weaker and weaker? Clive? Molly? And what would the police say about me bolting? Worst of all, without Solar Ray helping me, I wouldn’t have their material to safely piss in. I’d be back to pissing in fields. I’d be back to square one, basically.

  But then, what if I stayed? I’d continue to get paid, have a place to live, a bog I could use safely. And what if the material was developed into the very best and super-strongest it could be, used on spaceships and God knows what else over the world? If it was a massive success, surely I’d be rich, even with just my two per cent, as Daryl had said. The chance of wealth wasn’t something to be scoffed at.

  Quite frankly though, all of this blew my mind. I hadn’t the foggiest what the best thing for me was—it was all just so bloody confusing!