The hallucinogen

"You're joking." My colleague looked at me with an incredulous expression on her face. I nodded slowly. "For all you know, it might be possible. A single neurotoxin that is capable of completely altering your nervous perception. Although I can't say for sure what the side effects will be."

"We've been on a project for ten years to find out a chemical that will produce the effects of a truth serum. Not something which induces hallucinations."

"Winifred, you don't understand. The dark knight brings about specific hallucinations. We can morph it to our need and try to attain the desired results." I said patiently.

"And you have the formula? How were you even able to do something like this without my knowledge?" she inquired, somewhat suspicious.

"I have a couple of vials with me. Let's go try it out on the volunteer." Winifred nodded and I picked up the syringe containing the serum from one of the cold storage cabinets and we headed over to the interrogation room. The main objective of project Veritas was to come up with a truth serum like Winifred had stated earlier. People supposed that something like this could come in handy in courts and other such places where there was absolute necessity of having accurate accounts. But, I on the other hand had stumbled upon something that was probably ten times more potent, namely the dark knight.

The interrogation room was a rather bleak cell with white washed walls and not a speck of dust to be seen. Inside, our 'subject' paced back and forth in his cell. He looked up with a mixture of fear and disgust when we approached. I couldn't blame him. For all he knew, we were going to pump a stream of potentially dangerous chemicals into his system. He wasn't exactly a volunteer to be precise. He was one of the chief suspects in a huge case of some sort the nature of which slipped my mind. It probably concerned a bank which the government had until now considered impregnable. Anyway, there was a pressing need to get him to speak the truth.

Winifred somehow talked him into sitting on the test chair, though her success couldn't be entirely attributed to her silver tongue. She had a little help from a few burly lab assistants too. The volunteer squirmed in his chair.

"Okay." I said with the air of a flight attendant. "We are going to hook you onto this vial of dark knight...."

"The dark knight? What's with the ridiculous name?" he said.

"Well, the 'knight' part is there because it sounds good. As for the 'dark' part, the serum is essentially unstable and can decompose in the presence of light. So the reaction is completely a dark reaction and so we've even insulated the syringe and the tubing. Look..."

"Forget I even asked." he said. "So this has nothing to do with Batman?"

"No. We also don't own any radioactive spiders." I assured him.

We hooked him up to the syringe and for a few minutes we had absolutely no reaction. "Now I think we introduce the stimulus. We need something that connects his mind to the scene." I said. Winifred shrugs and holds a new dollar bill under his nose. He stirred.

"Carl! Get the bag. We're going in..."

Winifred looked at me in amazement. It worked! My serum had transported his senses back to the crime scene. He would probably recount everything that happened precisely and in order. Winifred switched on the tape recorder.

"Why are you so hung up on the code." he muttered. "Trust me, I've got it. If you wanna know how..."

My eyes widened on their own accord. We were probably going to hear the biggest confession of the year live. It was then that fate decided to play its tricks on us. Working in a lab is tough. It's only in movies that a team has a whole building solely devoted to its project. But in reality, a lab is a beehive where thousands of bees jostle each other and try to make optimum use of the tiny space allotted to them. In this instance, our interrogation room was next to a team who was trying to find a catalyst to hasten the conversion of organic wastes into methane. Someone was carting out a fresh tank of methane which had been prepared. To my shock, I realized that the lab assistants had left the door open. The cylinder had a strong smell of mercaptan because it had been exposed to the gas and they mixed mercaptan along with the methane they needed to store. What could I say? The team was handling huge quantities of methane and they needed some means to find out whether they had a leak. Only, it looked like they had finally gone overboard. The smell pervaded into the room making us cough. The volunteer stirred and muttered something. Then he yelled,

"Ma! Have you left the gas on?"

Winifred whipped around in surprise and then suppressed a giggle. I glared at her. After all, it was my research which was going a waste.

"Holland?" I called out angrily. One of the blokes from the adjacent room, namely Holland, rushed into the interrogation room and took off his gas mask. "You called, Yves?"

"Your team just spoiled my research!" I said, irritated.

"And you spoiled my lunch." he said holding a burger in one hand. So he had been eating in the break room nearby. The smell of the food he held out wafted over to us. "What did we supposedly do, Yves?" he demanded.

"Waiter?" said the volunteer hopefully. "I want some fries with ketchup. Oh, and a shake to go along with it."

I almost cry in frustration. "Your subject alright?" said Holland.

"He was! Until you came along with your damned sandwich. How can you even bring food into the interrogation room, Holland?"

"Hey, I thought you were dying with all the racket you were making." said Holland a shrug. " I didn't stop to think." Holland left with his hastily uttered apologies. I turn to Winifred, to find that she was silently laughing, holding on to one of the tables for support.

"Now what?" I demanded.

"I think we're going to have to work on the stimulus response part." she said, stopping between each word to regain her breath because she was laughing so hard.

"You think?"