Death As We Know It

DEUX: L'INGÉNIEUR

"Wait, I don't understand, why are we talking about diets?"

Ahmet sighed slightly. I could tell he was losing patience with me, but i just couldn't understand what he was explaining to me (for the third time)

We were in the on-campus apartment he shared with another student, going back over our plans for our first attempt at creating a serum that would cure, or at least stall, death as we knew it. Ahmet was trying to explain why a person's diet played a student part in the effectiveness of the serum, but having failed Home Economics when i was thirteen, i couldn't grasp anything he was saying.

"Okay, I'll try explaining it again." Ahmet began. "Everything we eat is for a reason. Every food provides something to the body, whether it be vitamins, minerals, proteins or so on. And, all of these things serve a purpose,"

"So what a person eats affects how efficient the serum would be on them?" I interjected, finally understanding what he had been saying for the past hour or so.

"Yes! Yes, that's exactly what I mean!"

I took a look around the room. It was small, but homey, with elements of comfort, style and things I could only describe as distinctly Ahmet. The green carpet that covered the wooden floors was raggedy but soft underneath my feet, and the couch beneath me was well-loved, to say the least. Ahmet looked perfectly at home in the apartment he had spent the last three years living in, but I felt as if I stood out like a sore thumb among the dark green decor and the aura of homey-ness that enveloped it.

Ahmet and I had been working out of the library for the past few days, but there, it felt as if we had no privacy, as if someone was always reading over our shoulders, and so we had barely gotten any work done at all. Here, it felt private and welcoming, plus, Ahmet insisted on making a different kind of cookie nearly every day, so there were definitely added perks. (My favourite were the vanilla bean and chai, he still makes them for me to this day)

Ahmet took a seat beside me on the saggy couch with a sigh and flipped through his notes again, so fresh that the black ink was still wet. I peered over his shoulder, staring at the detailed diagrams of the human cells, telomeres, and the human body as a whole. He definitely had some interesting ideas, for certain, but he and I were too used to thinking practically, with no imagination, just basing off facts rather than fiction, which made coming up with new ideas and theories as to how the serum could hypothetically work next to impossible.

This is where Journ comes in.

Ahmet handed me a piece of paper with hastily written information scribbled on it. He had the next two hours full of lectures, so it was up to me to go back to his apartment and find the person he believed could be essential to The Project. It had been over two weeks, and we still haven't made any headway, and so we both decided that it could be beneficial to The Project, and to us, to get some help from outside of our chemistry class. And luckily Ahmet knew the perfect person.

His name was Journ Harel, or so Ahmet had said. He had been Ahmet's roommate for the past two years he had been at the college. I had seen him around campus a few times, mostly with Ahmet, smiling and talking with large, animated gestures that Ahmet couldn't take his eyes off of. To me, he seemed immature, and more of a hindrance than a help, but Ahmet had convinced me to give him a shot.

I knocked on the door of the apartment where Ahmet and I had been planning and theorizing less than forty-eight hours ago. It swung open to reveal a young man, smaller than me, but not enough to be called short, or even average. Precariously built, all angles and sharp edges. But there was something about him that drew me in, weirdly.

He raised an eyebrow. "Can I help you?"

I scrambled from the piece of paper in my pocket before handing it to him quickly. He took less than a second to skim it with wary, green eyes. "Ahmet sent this?"