"Look," I took a Muscle Stimulator injector from my pocket. "This is the result. At a full dose, it allows a person to achieve almost superhuman performance for 15-20 minutes. It acts on a cellular level: clusters of unstable ozone bind to ATP in the muscles, creating a 'nitrogenous ignition' for them, and a palladium stabilizer works like a radiator, preventing the cells from burning out."
Peter looked at me like I was crazy.
"That sounds like complete antiscientific nonsense. 'Clusters of unstable ozone'? Ozone is O₃, a powerful oxidizer. It would cause tissue necrosis, not strengthening! 'Nitrogenous ignition' is a term from automotive mechanics, not biochemistry. And palladium is a platinum group metal, a catalyst, not a 'cell radiator'! Heat is dissipated by the bloodstream! You've mixed terms from three different fields of science, and none of them work the way you described!"
"Then let's test it," I shrugged. "On any of these mice."
"Why not on yourself? You say it works."
"Well, it'll take one drop for the mouse, and the whole dose for me. Too bad," I smirked.
"Ha-ah, okay," Peter sighed. "But if you thought you convinced me, you're wrong. Until I see it with my own eyes, I won't believe it!"
"Peter, you're working with Connors on a regenerative serum that theoretically regrows limbs. Since when does a simple muscle stimulator surprise you so much?"
"Firstly, it's not simple at all!" Peter snapped, taking the injector. He was clearly touched to the quick. "And secondly, Connors' serum, for all its ambition, is based on understandable principles of interspecies genetics and stem cell stimulation! Not on the fact that palladium suddenly decided to work as a radiator!"
I watched in silence as he carefully extracted one drop from the injector and gave it to a lab mouse using a pipette.
"As I said, I can't explain HOW it works. But..." I smiled, noticing how the mouse began to change. "You see that it works."
The effect was almost instantaneous. The rodent's muscles bulged before our very eyes, the relief became so clear as if it were a ridiculous photoshop. The mouse itself didn't seem to notice anything—it calmly chewed its food, only nearly falling on its side a couple of times from the unusual power in its paws. No signs of pain, aggression, or brain abnormalities. After about seven or eight minutes, the muscles began to "shrivel" just as quickly, returning to normal. A light, barely noticeable steam emanated from the rodent's body.
Peter was silent. He looked at the mouse with wide eyes, in which skepticism fought with absolute astonishment.
"Okay..." he muttered, stunned, coming to his senses. "Now... now I believe that something happened. But I won't believe in safety until I examine this mouse!"
His disbelief instantly turned into a feverish scientific passion.
"I need blood samples, right now! Do a biochemical analysis, check for cellular damage, lactate levels, residual elements... God, what is this crap?!"
For the next hour, I watched with genuine interest as a genius in its natural habitat. Peter darted around the lab like clockwork. He took blood samples from the mouse, spun them in a centrifuge, analyzed them in a spectrometer, studied tissue sections under a microscope. He constantly muttered something to himself: "No signs of cellular breakdown... Lactate level is normal... Where did the extra biomass go? The law of conservation of energy hasn't been canceled... It's impossible!"
It was amusing to watch, but it was already three in the afternoon. I had to leave soon for my meeting with Lucas.
"Peter," I called him quietly. "Accept it. You won't find anything. This stimulator works without side effects. I know that for sure."
"Impossible!" he turned sharply to me, clutching a printout with some graphs in his hand. "It's just physically, thermodynamically impossible! Muscle mass doesn't come from nowhere and doesn't go anywhere, dissipating in the form of steam! Listen, can't you give me the full formula?" Peter broke off here, realizing how it sounded. "Um... I swear I won't reveal it to anyone and won't use it. It's... it's solely to satisfy my scientific hunger! I must understand the mechanism!"
"Haha, I understand everything," I chuckled. "And while you were rushing around here, I've already sketched it out for you. True, this is not a formula, but rather... a recipe. Here you go."
I handed him a piece of paper. Peter greedily stared at it, and his face began to change rapidly, going through all the stages from bewilderment to despair.
"No... Nonsense... What nonsense..." he grabbed his head. "This is not chemistry, it's a set of shamanic rituals! A titanium mesh as a catalyst for testosterone? Colloidal palladium as... what, a cellular heat sink?! Maybe, due to quantum fluctuations, a certain sequence of molecules creates a local disturbance of reality? To negate the observer effect, everything happens inside muscle tissues? No... Quantum mechanics, launched on testosterone and created on the knee... Damn..."
The last word was uttered with such intonation of hopelessness that I felt a pang of conscience for a moment. I confronted the young scientist with something that shattered his worldview. On the other hand, he needs to get used to it, because there's more to come.
"Want to try creating it?" I offered. "You have the equipment. You can synthesize testosterone. I have the rest of the ingredients with me, in a box in the car (actually they're in my Inventory)."
"Yes! Of course, I'll try! Right now!" His despair instantly turned into determination. For his brilliant mind, this simple recipe was like instructions for assembling a stool. But the effect... it was like assembling a stool that could withstand a meteor strike.
I went to the car and took serum albumin and a colloidal palladium solution "from the box". Peter, having received the ingredients, set to work. Even the Master Clockmaker inside me admitted: the guy worked with incredible precision and meticulousness. Every movement was precise, not a single extra second wasted.
In less than half an hour, he had a ready-made injector in his hands. He tested it on another lab rat. The effect was identical. Peter silently watched the rodent's muscles swell and then return to normal. After that, he slowly sat down at the lab table and held his head in his hands.
"Fuck..."
"Agreed," I confirmed weightily. "And you haven't even seen the Potion of Intellect yet."
Before he could ask anything, I continued: "But that's the next level. Right now I have a specific task for you."
I handed him another sheet detailing the recipe for "Beast Potion." For several minutes, Peter silently studied it, and silence was clearly absent in his head.
"I see..." he finally said. "Activator, syn-epinephrine complex. A classic catecholamine storm. It overloads beta-adrenergic receptors. Hence the side effects you described: tachycardia, risk of arrhythmia, hypertensive crisis. It's not a stimulant, it's a sledgehammer blow to the nervous system."
"You're a genius, you know better," I agreed. "I need you to eliminate these side effects. Create a pure product that can be perfectly used in conjunction with the Muscle Stimulator."
"This... this is not a job for one month, John!" he exclaimed. "You need to model the active components, calculate hundreds of analogues for the stabilizer, conduct simulations, synthesize dozens of options for tests! This is a whole dissertation, not a Saturday task!"
"Stop, stop, stop!" I stopped his stream of scientific speech. "We'll manage it today. Have you forgotten what I said? You haven't seen, let alone felt, the effect of the Potion of Intellect. Believe me, it doesn't just add IQ points. It accelerates synaptic connections, sharpens intuition, and allows you to see all possible solutions at once. Those months of research you're talking about... you'll conduct them in your head in a couple of hours."
I could see he was doubting. But he had already witnessed the impossible. After a moment's hesitation, he nodded.
"But if nothing comes of it..."
"It will," I said confidently. "I'm going to the supplier now for rare ingredients. When I get back, everything will be at your disposal. Under the intellect buff."
The dialogue was over. It was approaching five o'clock, and I went to the meeting. I myself was curious how much more genius Peter would become. And am I making a mistake by getting him involved in this?
Okay, get rid of the doubts. Ideally, it will be necessary not only to make the stimulants compatible, but to combine them both into one drug. Even more ideally... Somehow permanently fix the effect of the Potion of Intellect, or at least its weakened version, so as not to overload the processor. Hmm, another set of tasks for my new genius partner.