I do not think of myself as an “alchemist,” but I can see how some could apply that word to my pursuits.

It began simply enough — at least, in comparison to the end goal.

As a child, I was fascinated by energy. I lived near a wind turbine, and was walked through the process of how energy was harvested from the wind. Then there were solar panels, coal, gasoline… I just kept eating this stuff up. One of my greatest memories of school was a field trip to a nuclear power plant, although I think most of my classmates found that one forgettable.

But my life changed when I was dealt the biggest curveball of all. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but I learned that energy can be turned into matter. If I wanted to, I could HOLD electricity. I could drink it with my cereal in the morning. True, it would be just a regular glass of water, in theory… but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It became my obsession.

The major problem, of course, was the amount of power it takes to do that. We’re talking multiple nuclear explosions worth of power. Thank goodness for Doctor Drake. He found a method to harvest that kind of power in a fairly easy way. Of course, it revolutionized everything. With that kind of power available so easily, coal, gasoline, even wind and solar became a thing of the past. The Drake Process pushed us into a whole new world.

Unfortunately, such power could and would be weaponized… but that’s not part of my story. Suffice it to say, it was no utopia.

Anyway, with the Drake Process available, converting energy into matter was suddenly quite possible. I was on the team that designed and built the first Drake printer. Similar to the old 3D printers, you could just plug it into the wall and it could create anything you wanted. This, then, led to the dwindling of ovens, microwave ovens, refrigerators… when you can just get the food you want in a matter of minutes, cooking was reduced to a hobby for those who enjoyed such things.

But I couldn’t help but ponder the possibilities. In particular, I began researching the brain. Our brains, after all, are electric… could THOUGHTS, so to speak, be turned into matter? Would there be anything different in the end result? Would it impact the brain it was harvested from?

Only a handful of people wanted to invest in this idea, and none of them agreed with what I wanted to do. They wanted to experiment with mice and such; I wanted to go straight to humans. Mice can’t communicate what they were thinking at the time the energy was harvested. I wanted to know exactly what I was working with.

Maybe it was a little reckless, but my obsession drove me to go behind the backs of the scientific community a little bit. Under the pretext of doing a neurological study, with some adaptation of the standard equipment for such research, I attached nodes to subjects’ heads and asked them to think of various things. As their brains changed in response, I harvested some of their mental energies, storing each thought in its own battery. When I was alone, I began turning each thought into a liquid. The results were fascinating: The molecular structures of each one came out different. The liquid form of angry thoughts came out clouded, like impure water. Happy thoughts had an almost carbonated quality. Feeling especially bold, I decided to taste the results. Curiously, as I drank them, the thoughts came into my mind. Not just thoughts that made me feel angry; I saw and heard EXACTLY the things the subjects thought when I asked them to think of something angry.

I took it a step further and began crystallizing the thoughts. The results were similar to the liquids in terms of varying molecular structure. But, upon further inspection, I noticed there was barely-noticeable movement at the core of the crystals. I held one up to the light. There, on the wall behind me, appeared the thoughts inside, as if being played on a projector.

The wildest thing yet then occurred to me: Could I have the power to turn thoughts into a fully-realized reality? Take my wildest imaginations and put them into the world around me?

That was how I created the Thought Bomb.