Chapter 1: Iris Luna
I live in the attic of an old building built at the end of the last century, abandoned for a while and finally renovated to acquire its current appearance. The location is quite central, but my street is strangely quiet for this city.
My attic barely fits my bed, a tiny desk, a table to eat and a doll-sized bathroom, but this is really all I need. I also have a small balcony, from which I sometimes listen to the whispers of the city at night, after spending the day in the lab.
My laboratory is also in an old building, hidden in the meanders of the basement, where I spend my days unaware of the weather, the time and the flow of life outside my small world. The meager stipend I receive is barely enough to cover my monthly expenses, and yet I wouldn’t imagine myself doing anything else. The thrill of the discoveries I make in my reign of neatly aligned chemical bottles, beakers, syringes is worth more than any pot full of gold. Yes, there are also the frustrating times when day after day that result you long to see eludes you, and your failures haunt your sleepless nights. But then the lucky day will come, and the idyll of that much desired result will outshine the struggle. Oh, how beautiful it all seems then!
If you look close enough, what may appear ugly to the untrained eye will begin to appear fascinating, perhaps addictive. My addiction is mercury cyanide. To you mercury cyanide might be nothing but a potent poison, one that leads to death when touched or inhaled. But do you know anything about the dark beauty of mercury cyanide when, exposed to fire, it dies and revives in new forms? Pharaoh’s snake is the name of the twisted, mysteriously repulsive and yet hypnotizing being that mercury cyanide turns itself into when it is ignited. And do you know about the playful concert of sizzling bubbles mercury cyanide produces when it reacts with aluminum in liquid ammonia?
To me mercury cyanide was nothing but the malevolent encounter between one atom of mercury and two atoms of carbon and nitrogen. But my perception of mercury cyanide gained complexity, of course, the day I was assigned the task of discovering how it triggers the formation of glycosides, Janus creatures resulting from the ambiguous embrace between sugar and another type of molecule which is often not as sweet.
Today has been one of those days that leave me exhausted, and yet flaming with adrenaline. I am not there yet, that result I have been chasing for one year still eludes me, and yet I feel I am close, so close, to finding the key that will open the doors to the mystery room. Fragments of what I can experiment tomorrow race through my mind, but I am much too tired now to make a coherent plan.
And so I try to pause. I dine with a light soup in the dim light of my small room, a cozy shell surrounded by the humid dusk of this winter night, while I wait for a new dawn.