ask ragz

[[>]]
[[module Rate]]
[[/>]]

A young man stared at the floor of his dorm room thinking. He was a couple days away from obtaining a master's degree in chemistry. Hours later he was kneeling in the center of his dorm room. His bed had been pushed up the side of his wall, the rest of his belongings similarly rearranged to take as little space as possible. The degree was already his. Practically. Why not put his knowledge to use. He'd gone beyond what was in the textbooks, what could be gleaned from the lectures. He'd obtained this knowledge on his own. It was concrete, confirmed, it was real. It could work, it **would** work. His fingers, coated in chalk dust having long ago went numb, twitched in anticipation. He absentmindedly rubbed them against his jeans looking around his room once more then down at what he'd filled his floor with. Countless intricately chained equations, chemical names,  symbols, and numbers ringed the collegian. A perfect circle. Coal into Gold. Hah. He'd do better. He pushed back his dusty hair and perused the one hundred and two beakers he'd placed with exacting care in the web of chalked lines, sums, and chemical formulae. He closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, and opened them again. Wincing slightly at the sudden tremor that ran through him when he pushed himself against the one blank spot in the whole array he'd made, and nearly slumped over when an overwhelming wave of exhaustion hurtled through him. What followed was unimportant. Fire, fumes, explosions, ambulances, court dates, jail time. None of it mattered. He had failed. He would not fail again. Dustin was not a chemist anymore. He was an alchemist. He'd have to learn more if he was going to be a good one. Fortunately, he'd found just the place to do so.