Conversion Gel
The white one. Listed in the 1959 catalogue as a thing this company intended to make out of a thing it intended to buy. It has bought it. It has made it. Both facts are on the label, and so is a third.
First up, conversion gel. [cough] The bean counters told me we literally could not afford to buy seven dollars worth of moon rocks, much less seventy million. Bought ’em anyway. Ground ’em up, mixed em into a gel.
And guess what? Ground up moon rocks are pure poison. I am deathly ill.
Still, it turns out they’re a great portal conductor. So now we’re gonna see if jumping in and out of these new portals can somehow leech the lunar poison out of a man’s bloodstream. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. [coughs] Let’s all stay positive and do some science.
What It Is
Conversion gel is the moon, ground fine, in a carrier. You paint it on a surface and the surface will take a portal. That is the whole of it and it is the thing this company has wanted since 1953, when the hole came out of the wrong wall and the lab boys told me that it would only ever come out of certain walls, and I asked which, and they said the ones made of the moon, and I said then we will buy the moon, and the bean counters said no, and here we are. [cough] Twenty-nine years. Seventy million dollars. One wall, with a number on it, shipped up with the rocks and hung in the mixing room over the vat.
What It Does To A Man
It kills him. I want to be plain about that because I have been plain about everything else and I am not going to start hedging now. The 1959 sheet on the Lunar Substrate Programme said the meteorites were a respiratory poison in any quantity, at any exposure, with no threshold, and it said it on the label, and I read the label, and I ground my own at seven in the morning without a mask for twenty years because I wanted to see. I have seen. Medical has a chart. The chart has a line on it and the line goes one way.
The Leeching Trial
Here is the idea, and it is a good idea, and I want it understood that I would think it was a good idea even if it were not my bloodstream. The gel conducts the portal. The poison is the gel. A man who goes through the portal is, for the length of the transit, in a place where the gel is the wall, and the lab boys think the wall may take the poison back. Like calls to like. [cough] So we send a man through, and we sample him, and we send him through again, and we sample him again, and we see which way the line goes.
That said, I would really appreciate it if you could test as fast as possible. Caroline, please bring me more pain pills.
“Ground up moon rocks are pure poison. I am deathly ill.”
Particulars Of The Substance
- Designation
- Conversion gel. The white one.
- Base
- Lunar material, seventy million dollars, ground fine
- Carrier
- Proprietary
- Conductivity
- The finest conductor of quantum tunnelling fields ever measured. Still.
- Toxicity
- Pure poison. Both facts on the label. The label is now very long.
- Listed
- 1959 catalogue, not yet available
- Available
- Yes. That is the difference between 1959 and now. That and the coughing.
- The wall
- In the mixing room, over the vat. The number faces the door.
Results, Leeching Trial, First Series
Lunar load in the bloodstream before and after portal transit, as sampled by Medical
| Subject | Transits | Load, before | Load, after | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employee, Accounts | 6 | Nil | Trace | The wall gave. It did not take. |
| Employee, Materials | 12 | Low | Low | No change. Subject asked to stop. Subject reminded testing is mandatory. |
| Employee, Print Shop | 20 | Low | Moderate | The line went the other way. Medical has the chart. Medical has the subject. |
| Greg | 9 | Nil | Nil | Fine. |
| Chief Executive | 11 (he insists) | High | Higher | A start. |
Medical notes that in no subject did the load decrease, that in one it increased, and that the Chief Executive has described this as informative. Medical has asked that the word ‘informative’ be attributed.
A Memorandum Concerning Masks
Interoffice Memorandum
Masks are mandatory at the bench. [cough] This instruction is issued by a man who did not wear one and is issued for that reason. Anybody who wants to argue the point can come upstairs and look at me, and then go back down and put the mask on, and I will know whether he has, because the tape is always running and Caroline tells me who comes up.
The wall stays where it is. Nobody touches the wall. The wall is the reason for the masks and I want the two things in the same room so that the reason is never in doubt.
Masks were issued in 1959. He has one. It is in the drawer. — C.
MEDICAL · OFFICE OF THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE · 1982 SUBJECT ........ C. JOHNSON, 73 AGENT .......... LUNAR SUBSTRATE, GROUND, INHALED, 1961-82 LOAD ........... HIGH TREND ...... [ONE WAY] TRANSITS ....... 11 (SUBJECT'S COUNT) 9 (MEDICAL'S) TREATMENT ...... PORTAL TRANSIT (TRIAL) PAIN PILLS (CAROLINE) PROGNOSIS ...... SUBJECT DECLINES TO HEAR IT NOTE ........... SUBJECT SAYS "A START." SUBJECT COUGHS.
Cave JohnsonChief Executive OfficerDictated 1982, from bed. Subject zero. A start.