Arkford was an industrial town, no doubt about it. Below the noxious fog enveloping the town, one could sometimes see older brick smokestacks judgmentally pointing at the sky (though their age mattered little to the inhabitants, for smoky spirits of human progress still arose from their sooted tops), their parent factories with vents for windows, and, on a lucky and very bright day, the toxic rainbow sparkle of the river Ark. Two hundred thousand souls toiled here, eighty per cent working in one of the town's plants, and less than two per cent unemployed.
One day ('twould be improper to say "one sunny day" in the manner of most story beginnings, as most every day bathed the city in a dim orange glow regardless of Sol's intensity), the Chemist awoke late, and only thanks to the bellowing of an early tanker from the ports did he rouse from his dream at all. He dreamed of a desert - his childhood fascination, what with its weird cacti and vicious scorpions and Arabian caravans and all - wherein he had been a soldier ant fighting brave battles with his brethren against their eternal enemy, the Desert Anting Gnat. And he had just lost half of his brothers to the beast when, through his dream, he heard the whistle of the morning commuter train. So odd, so out of place appeared the sound, that he immediately realized: he must be dreaming!
Wasting little time on excitement, he recalled that there was still the matter of the villainous Anting Gnat threatening the hive. A shadow of a thought later, he had grown himself to ten times his size, and easily snapped the insect in half, throwing the little corpse into a puddle. The slain ant army awoke from their deathly rest, and sang a song of war to the Chemist as he grew butterfly wings and took to the skies. Had it not been for the roar of the fog horn shattering the blissed illusion to pieces, he would spend the rest of the day in bed, exercising his newfound powers.
But now, the mundane world called back for him. His early morning ritual was short - a quick splash of water unto the face, a short fight for superiority with the work clothes, and a customary re-incantation of the Periodic Table. Donning his overcoat and flushing sleep away with half a cup of yesterday's coffee, he dove into the busy morning crowd.
The Chemist knew that this specific Friday will painfully mark itself in the otherwise bland week, hardly distinguishable from all the others. In addition to doing his normal work of brewing and mixing various chemical concoctions for the industry giant BOSS AND SONS CO., as well as engaging in his slightly less normal hobby of imbibing minute samples thereof, he knew that in the murky depths of his laboratory, a hideous toad of paperwork slouching upon his desk had to be disposed of (though what he did not know - and this question tormented him with the persistence and ferocity of a mediaeval witch hunter - was whether the Desert Anting Gnat indeed existed outside of his dreams).
As usual, the plump Secretary chattered with the phone about "the kids these days" and "the weather these days" and "the kids' music these days", paying nil regard to the rather sizeable crowd of would-be workers clumping in the hallway. When the grumbling clearance-machine vomited up a clearance-certificate, she'd hiss once or twice at the congregation, allowing one or two people to slip by (the number of luck-struck slippers-by was therefore directly and mathematically correlated to the number of hisses). Impressively, she managed this without pausing her conversation with the plastic tube.
After a half an hour of glaring at the evil clearance-contraption which worked exactly 12.582 times slower than the manufacturers promised (and an additional 2.041 times slower when it was the Chemist's turn to receive his certificate, as it held a personal vendetta against him for the time he dared to call it a "damned slow thing"), he did his first duty of inspecting, and then imbibing samples of, the various chemical formulae he set to simmer overnight. Ah, the Quadroxophlegmoderatine could use some Tritric Acid, his tongue complained, for that characteristic zest which only the Tritric can provide. The Chemist's stomach, on the other hand, lauded the mix with an abnormal bubbling. Hilarity involving excessive flatulence and subsequently very awkward peer auditory testing rapidly ensued.
Almost all of the other mixes, including the normally temporary-blindness-inducing Vadrogen Hemidrasconide, performed exactly as designed (an occasion that is odd in itself). The sole exception proclaimed itself to be Serum 208 - an insignificant solution ordered by a client of BOSS AND SONS CO. for the removal of a particularly nasty ketchup stain. Shortly after its union with his stomach acid, the Chemist heard - or thought he heard - a vivid snapping noise; a noise which could, with a more fluid sense of metaphor, be likened to the clash of a large bird's beak. Quickly inspecting his belly for any holes that are not supposed to be there, he came to the conclusion that the sound originated from his mind. Considering all of the effects of variable violence that his concoctions caused in the past, the Chemist dismissed this one as "slightly odd" and forgot about it. He sighed at the lack of more mixes to imbibe, and went to do battle with the paperwork that usurped his rightful place at his desk.
Unfortunately for the Chemist, the paper turned out to be a formidable foe. Somewhere by the middle, while reviewing Article 552, Section Four, Subsection VI, Paragraph iii, Subparagraph e) of the BOSS AND SONS CO.'s Chemicals Charter (Thricely Abridged Edition), Sleep's dark mist stealthily enveloped him. The transition from reading about Xenomatrezine's reactions in Cadron Trimusculated water to sinking hardened mandibles into the Desert Anting Gnat's segmented leg went smoother than a baby sliding down a warm butter mound.
Alas, this time, the Gnat brought a buzzing army of two other Gnats along with him, and swiftly took the battle to the hive itself. The Chemist fought bravely, but to no avail: the hairy probosci sucked up his brothers by the hundreds, and it seemed as though he too shall fall (or, rather, rise) a victim the ants' nemesis. The powerful vortex caught him, and he felt himself rising from the ground. And then, he heard the snap of some powerful bird's beak.
Immediately recognizing the snap from before, he realized his dream-state, and turned himself into the dreaded Desert Anting Gnat Eater - a curious combination of an ant, an eagle, and a bear. The Anting Gnats ceased to be a problem in two swoops of his great paws, and his resurrected ant brothers once again sang a song of war to him as he rode his enormous wings to the skies. This time, it was the sheer excitement that woke him up.
Wasting no time, he left the half-defeated paper pile to lick its wounds and scheme desk domination, and went straight to the elevator to the highest floor of the building. Clutching Serum 208 in his hand, the Chemist knocked at the BOSS's office. Telling the other plump Secretary that it was a matter of making millions and he didn't care that the BOSS was in an executive meeting and what did she mean when she said she'll call security, he handed her the vial to give to the BOSS after the meeting. Although he felt somewhat defeated by this turn of events, plump Secretaries had an admirable sense of duty - the vial will end up in BOSS's hands, one way or another. After comforting himself in this way, he returned to his desk, and resumed warring with the Thricely Abridged Chemicals Charter until the end of the day (and, subsequently, the work week).
Coming back to work from the weekend suddenly didn't seem as bad as it did on the Sunday, when the Chemist realized that he already worked through all of the papers and that he'd have the day to mix his solutions. On the other hand, even this prospect excited him less than usual - he spent most of the weekend sleeping and living out his phantasies in his dreams, aided by the Serum 208. The dreams offered a world where Braloxymodane perfectly mixed with Dodaceframate without any green explosions, and where he could travel to the desert without ever leaving his home. The only thing that 208's magic couldn't afford him was an extra holiday; work awaited.
He saw the banner a mile away, hanging at the very top of the BOSS AND SONS CO.'s building: "Drink 'Dreamsnap': Only two bird-snaps away from your wildest dreams!" The Chemist found the message of the banner very difficult to misinterpret. The BOSS seems to have taken the solution, experienced its extraordinary effects, and set up a manufacturing empire over the weekend! Victory was on Chemist's side this day, but nothing could prepare him for what awaited him inside the building.
The Clearance-Machine, forgetting all of their past rivalry, let the Chemist in first. Even the perpetually phone-glued Secretary stopped talking and stared at him in amazement as he strode through the doors, eager to avoid curious glances from his coworkers. The BOSS himself met the Chemist, and showed him to his new office: a great, sparkling-white laboratory with more vials, tubes, Bunsen burners, vats with questionable bubbling liquid, lab coats, and ant farms than he had ever seen in his life. On the far side of the lab, a churning conveyor produced an endless stream of brightly packaged Dreamsnap bottles with sloshing pink liquid inside. These found themselves in boxes after a multi-armed metallic conglomeration packed them, and sent them on their way to an awaiting fleet of trucks, ready to deliver the revolutionary drink to every Arkford store.
The next few months may as well have been a dream for the Chemist: the laboratory did everything he wanted it to and more. The last time he touched paper faded quickly in his memory, partly for his joy of the new equipment, and partly because of that curious incident with Vardrogen Trioxite. When he came home, he too drank Dreamsnap, and visited worlds that no tribal shaman smoking the sacred star-grass could ever envision. The rest of Arkford also enjoyed their nights in no way they expected, all thanks to the Serum 208-enriched Dreamsnap drink. The Taxi Driver became the Formula One Racer; the Slashfic Writing Fan launched to fame as the Celebrated Author; the Secretary, now the Princess, swooned at the young Prince; the SONS each succeeded the BOSS, and the BOSS descended to the level of a simple-minded, jungle-dwelling Savage: the one coveted existence that his money could not buy.
And so, incredibly, this story comes to the day the Chemist was no more. Everything started normally: he woke up at about an hour past noon, and complained at the bright light shining through his window for waking him up so early. He pulled himself out of his bed with the effort of an ant trying to drag a rock behind it, and shambled to the bathroom. There, he simmered in the shower for a good half an hour before getting out to dress and put the kettle on the stove for his fresh coffee. The poster of the Periodic Table lay in the corner of his living-room, covered with dust. After reading a mundane fiction book he picked up the other week, he left the house - it was about three in the afternoon.
Though people usually did get up at around this time, the only action in the streets were impressive tumbleweed races. The Chemist walked to work now - the trains stopped running when there weren't enough people to carry (and the train crews stopped showing up). Overall, the town didn't quite look deserted - there was too little garbage to be seen anywhere, as there was no one outside to litter. Every street flaunted faded Dreamsnap banners, dimly reflecting the pink shimmering of the river Ark. Pink, the Chemist thought. Odd. This inconsistency did not bother him for long, however - a grand day was planned today in the lab, now almost entirely conquered to producing massive amounts of the (at first) innocent Serum 208. He entered the empty front hall of the BOSS AND SONS CO. building, paying no heed to the weakly complaining clearance-machine as he passed the front doors on his way to the laboratory.
Inside, he was greeted by a crowd of people. A crowd, he found himself exclaiming quietly. It was a long time since he had seen so many people in one place. What do you mean, he asked, why does it matter that the town died? The world of dreams is a better one than the real world. The crowd didn't want to listen to him, though - they already disposed of all Dreamsnap by dumping it into the river, and the Chemist followed, to be fed to the fishes. Unfortunately, there were no fish left to eat him - they all soundly dreamed of angling fishermen.
