The Wishmonger: Origins

The Afternath

"So...you don't feel anything different at all?" Dr. Jericho asked me. He was dressed in his usual white suit, and looked down upon me, lying in the bed drinking my ninth can of red bull while having pizza.

"No, nothing really. I don't feel any stronger or any more weaker than I am, mentally or physically." I said as I threw an empty can into the dustbin at the corner of the room. It fell right inside it.

"Yes, you failed the willpower test too. Are you sure you weren't trying hard? Even I can do 15 minutes on the treadmill at that speed, you barely did 10." said the HR manager beside me.

"Hey, you told me I will be able to do it. But I couldn't, and perhaps I really wished to be here on the bed, eating pizza and drinking red bull, rather than running laps after all that mind-boggling mumbo jumbo." I said.

"Well, on the bright side, your body has fully accepted the serum, and its uniformly dispersed in your blood." Dr. Jericho said. "Ray has collected all the data he can...from a live specimen."

I coughed and spluttered, almost spilling my precious red bull.

"Don't worry, we are not savages." Jericho said, and I breathed a sigh of relief. "We won't kill you, we just want that whenever you are dying, you hand over your remains to us."

"That doesn't make sense, scientifically or otherwise." I replied.

"Which is why Ray has made a life-tracker for you." the HR manager said. "If your vitals drop anytime, it alerts us and we will send medics who will arrange your recovery, and if that isn't possible, then transport your corpse to our lab here."

"You just want to track and babysit me." 

"Oh no, I assure the tracker is harmless. It only activates when your vitals indicate a near death situation." Dr. Jericho said.

"I wish I could believe that its the truth." I said.

"Oh, but it is!" Jericho said. "Look, this is our tracking system app." Dr. Jericho showed me an app login page on a black tablet. "See, it is not even activated yet. Here's the tracker and I place it on you." Dr. Jericho slapped a chip on my palm. "Yet, nothing changes in the app! It will only work if you are almost dead. Now, are you convinced?" Jericho asked me.

"Yes, I am." I never expected it to genuinely be non-functional till my demise, but that's how it seemed to be. I could still suspect, but my brain was too tired to go on a paranoia streak.

"Well, the surgery would take an hour or so, and after we embed the chip inside your body you can be discharged." Dr. Jericho said, picking up the chip.

"We have paid your credit card bills and got your parole plea approved. As a gift, we have also paid 6 months of your rent to the landlord." the HR manager said, as he stroked his short white beard. 

"You guys are the best!" I said.

And so, the experiment was over, the corpse-tracker was inserted and I was sent back home. I didn't know where the lab was because they took me in the windowless van, but they gave me a phone number and email for emergencies and updates. I confirmed it by calling and mailing them, and found it functional. And thus, the boring life was still out there for me, though I had a criminal record now. I wished that I could know that if the experiment had changed me, even a little bit, or was I the same old loser like before.

"It has." said the voice of my thoughts, inside my head. Yeah, it must have done at least something, I replied, or rather, thought back.