Amber Sparks: May We Shed These Human Bodies

He will be pleased with his success.

That night, her neurons will refuse to stop firing, refuse to stop etching a Mobius strip of dying men across the inside of her eyelids. She will not find relief or release from all that blood until she remembers his army pistol: a blunt instrument, and a simple answer to the series of complex processes that add up to her.

Standing alone in the garden, she will use classical mechanics to combat chemistry, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion — until it meets bone and flesh and a critical mass of muscle. Or to put it another way: a bullet will travel along a certain path at a certain velocity, propelled by a striking device and a firing pin. When it reaches the heart it will not stop but merely slow as it plows through tissue, disconnects nerves and stifles breath and life. It will be an elegant victory, if a somewhat messy execution. A jagged exclamation point at the end of their last argument.

This subject is different from all the others. This one travels with you. It will comfort you, and teach you to make do with what you have and with what you lack. It will teach you to make the best of the unhappy chance that has left you alone and different. Peter Parker became Spiderman by accident. Bruce Banner made the best of his terrible growth spurts and temper spasms. You, too can turn trouble around and become a small god. The fictional science will show you how.

It will show you how to protect yourself. It will show you how to make earmuffs out of duct tape and ashes. To fix your glasses with nail varnish. To conjure the words that will warm your mind, even when your body is cold and the fires have gone out all around you and the wolves have your pimply skin in their teeth.

First Period: Chemistry

You study the periodic table, brush up for your quiz today. Gold. Au. Lead. Pb. Iron. Fe. You wish you were made of iron, especially when John Allen and Ricky Baker shoot spitballs at the back of your neck and laugh and call you a fag. Lithium. Li. Uranium. U. You wish you could call down a small, focused nuclear blast and blow their cells apart. You wish you could do it so slowly they’d know it was you who called it down, you who had a secret strength shining through you.

But this is not impossible. Sometimes fictional elements will serve you best. Bassnium, for example, could help you create a powerful robot to destroy your enemies and make you sandwiches. With Mithril you could construct a strong suit of armor to stop punches, wedgies, or flying detritus, like spitballs, from harming you. Or you could use Cavorite to shield yourself from the effects of Earth's gravity and slowly float away, the world a tiny diorama in your rear view mirror.

Assignment: Become well acquainted with the following fictional elements and materials. Adamantium, AntiPlastic, Arcanite, Bazoolium, Beresium, Capsidium, Carbonite, Dalekanium, Dark Ore, Destronium, Dilithium, Eternium, Galvorn, Indurium, Inertron, Jasmium, Kryptonite, Liquid electricity, Lunar, Magicite, Melange, Necrogen, Nitrium, Nth metal, Omega, Phazon, Plasti-Steel, Polarite, Red matter, Residuum, Runite, Solenite, Strongium 90, Transparent aluminum, Truesilver, Turbidium, Uridium, Vibranium, Zamonium, Zyflud crystal, Zuunium. Learn them. Recite them like a spell. They may be that important. They may save your skin someday.

Second and Third Period: Nurse’s Office, Asthma Attack

You hate American History. That’s really why you’re here. Actually, you like history, but you don’t like sitting next to Paul Boehler and Landon Shaffer while they draw pictures of you in your underwear doing unspeakable things to pigs and sheep. Mary Elizabeth Johnson and Heather Hoffman sometimes throw pencils at your head to impress the boys. And your American History teacher, Mrs. Leighton, is three-fourths blind and never notices anything. The last time, a pencil hit you so hard it drew blood and you gasped out loud, and Mrs. Leighton turned around and said, Bless you, dear.

The nurse keeps walking by, eyes narrowed, looking at you suspiciously. And so should she — you practically live in here. Don’t you have your inhaler today, she asked when you arrived in a panic, having only narrowly avoided being slammed into a locker by some asshole friend of your asshole brother.

No, you said. I mean yes, you said. I don’t know.

Why can’t you just be a little bit brave, the nurse sighed. Why can't you?

But you just can’t, that’s all. It's the one thing you have no talent for: being a little bit brave. You think you could be very brave, if the need arose, and if you had to slay a dragon or fight a Sith Lord. But enduring Paul Boehler's wedgies and Marvin Grossman's under-the-breath-threats? It's too much psychic trouble for so small a reward. You cannot do it. And so you’ll stay here for third period, and lunch, too. There is no one to eat with in the cafeteria, no place to sit without feeling alone, and so you eat in the nurse's office and pretend that you are her assistant. She never really seems to mind, though she sighs a little whenever she looks in your direction.

You unwrap your cheese sandwiches slowly, eat them bite by bite, each bite chewed eleven times. Eleven is your lucky number. Though you've never won anything in your life, though you’ve always been a loser, you believe in luck. You carry a rabbit's foot on your keychain, cross your toes inside your shoes, wear red on prime number days. You blow on your eight-sided dice. You confuse luck with hope, of course, in the helpless way you have of getting anything that really matters wrong.

While you spend your hours in the nurse's office, please ignore the salves and compounds on her shelves. Think broader. There are many fictional tonics, cure-alls you'd be better off with a spoonful of. You don't have time to learn the side effects and benefits of all of these marvelous medicines, but you could start with Dylar, to remove the fear of death, and Substance D, to see what it's like on the other side for a while. In case you start to feel your luck or your hope has run out. In case you start to consider your options.

Assignment:Memorize these medicines in case of a fictional emergency. Break the glass around your mind to ingest them. Atheas, Aqua Cure, Bacta, Cordrazine, Daylight, Doloxin, Digitalis, Healing potion, Hydromel, Kick, Moly, Morpha, Nectar, Neodextraline solution, Phoenix Down, Retinax 5, Ryetalyn, Safsprin, Sapho, Serum 114, Stress Pill, Tretronin, Triox. Roll their names around in your mouth like a capsule. Swallow with plenty of water. Breathe. Breathe. Keeping breathing.

Fourth Period: Shop Class

You don’t mind shop class so much. You like making things with your hands. You like using the circular saw, the protection it gives you, how it makes you feel powerful for the fourteen seconds you’re sawing through a two by four. You like to picture Paul Boehler’s neck pressed to the metal table, those teeth slowly driving toward his jugular. You like to picture the fountain of scarlet that will spring up and spill out, his life yours for the minute or so it takes to bleed out onto the sawdust-sprinkled floor.

Still, you’d be better off fashioning weapons you can take with you. The kind of weapons a hero wields. You could carry them to your locker, to your classes, to the cafeteria. You could hold them threateningly on the long bus ride home. You could demonstrate how the meek will truly inherit the fire, if not the earth.

Assignment:Solder, weld, saw, hammer, tie, carve, break off, bind and fire until you have the weapon of your choosing in mind. It can make you strong in real life, too. What do you need to be strong? A powered armor suit or a power ring, an enchanted lasso, webbing, Adamantium claws, a billy club, a hammer. Or a shield that doubles as a weapon, a batarang or maybe a whole utility belt, a magic sword, a light saber, a katana, supersonic wings, nuclear fire breath, fangs, superhuman strength, or even a special surfboard. The rule is usually this: whatever you need will find you. Whatever you need will seek you out in the end. And no one will be able to wield it against you, unlike most everything else you've ever treasured.