#science gone wrong

Ancient failed conceptual experiments performed by the first Harolds themselves. Old Gods are strange Semi-Concepts, distorted, wrong, eldritch experiments that rebelled against their creators without ever knowing they were created.

Now they're multiversal in scale, some have even become full Concepts, like Yig: father of serpents or Atlach-Nacha: mother of spiders.

Most, however, simply adapted to existence after they were abandoned.

The most well-known, Cthulhu, has been inflicting visions across the Multiverse to make sure even the less active Old Gods remain Semi-Concepts. One of these men was named Howard Phillips Lovecraft, and he took the idea and ran with it.

The most truly infamous of them, Nyarlathotep, wanders the multiverse in black pharaoh's garb. Some call them the god of snake oil salesmen; others call him the bureaucrat of the apocalypse.

Many worship Shub-Niggurath, The Black Goat with a Thousand Young, a thousand is most likely a very low estimate by now. This fertility god of confusing gender identity is well known for having strange children with its priests.

The world didn’t end with a bang, but with a profound, chilling silence. The engineered virus, meant to solve overpopulation, had worked with brutal efficiency. Now, the only sounds were the whisper of the wind through empty skyscrapers and the creak of a world slowly reclaiming itself.

Your name is Y/N, and you were, as far as you knew, the last woman on Earth.

The last man was H/N, the boy you’d secretly loved through all four years of high school biology, the one you’d never had the courage to ask to the prom. Fate, in its cruel irony, had locked the two of you in the university's biosafety lab that day, the only two people immune to the very pathogen you were studying.

For months, you’d survived together in the echoing quiet. You’d raided silent supermarkets for canned food, read books by candlelight, and talked for hours about everything and nothing. That nervous crush had slowly, under the pressure of the end of all things, bloomed into a deep, anchoring love. He was your reason to keep going.

But the world outside was still toxic in other ways. A cut on H/N leg from a scavenging run, insignificant in the old world, had festered. There were no antibiotics left that worked. No doctors. No hope.

You found him propped against a wall in the old library you’d made your home, his skin pale and clammy. Your heart shattered into a million pieces. You knelt beside him, taking his cold hand in yours.

“Hey,” he whispered, his voice rough. His eyes, the warm brown you loved, found yours. “Don’t look so sad, Y/N.”

“How can I not?” you choked out, tears welling. “H/N… I can’t do this alone. I don’t want to.”

He lifted a trembling hand to your cheek, brushing away a tear with his thumb. “You’re the strongest person I know. You survived the end of the world.” He managed a weak smile. “You even survived Dr. Evans’s pop quizzes. This is nothing.”

You let out a sob that was half a laugh, leaning into his touch. “That’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny,” he breathed. His strength was fading, his breaths becoming shallower. The silence of the world pressed in around you, heavier than ever.

You curled up next to him, resting your head on his shoulder, memorizing the feel of him, the sound of his heartbeat, however faint. You knew what was coming. The thought of being truly alone, of wandering this empty planet without him, was a terror worse than the apocalypse itself.

He turned his head, his lips close to your ear. “Y/N,” he murmured, his voice barely a whisper. “Promise me… promise we’ll find each other again. In the next world. Or in the stars. Whatever comes next.”

You squeezed his hand tighter, your voice firm despite the tears streaming down your face. “Never one without the other.”

A peace settled over his features. “Never one without the other,” he echoed, the words a soft, final sigh.

You held him until his hand went slack in yours, until the last warmth left his skin. The silence was complete now, and it was yours alone.

But as you sat there in the quiet, you held onto the words. They weren’t a goodbye. They were a vow. A promise that stretched beyond the end of the world. Wherever he was, you would find him. Because some bonds, even love, could defy even science and the apocalypse.

The Fly (1986)

Science Fiction: Alien invasion decimates Earth AI systems become hostile Climate disaster reshapes world Pandemic creates new species Space colony escape plan Scientific experiment gone wrong

Fantasy: Ancient prophecy fulfilled Magic becomes unstable Gods abandon mankind Mystical seals breaking Dark forces awakening Mystical plague spreads

Horror: Zombie virus outbreak Demonic invasion begins Cosmic horror revealed Mass possession event Supernatural plague Ritual summons end times

Literary Fiction: Slow societal collapse Environmental degradation Economic system failure Social order breakdown Mass psychological change Cultural identity loss

My Book Review:

Talk about clutching one’s pearls. Chile, I broke all seven.

Pandora’s Lab is a rollercoaster ride to hell; it examines seven pivotal scientific breakthroughs turned deadly blunders that altered the stability of humans throughout history and drove the public down rabbit holes of misinformation, insufficient test trials, and unsupported data due to careless actions and obsessions with recognition. 

Each chapter provides the key moments that led to wrong turns and concludes with lessons that we can learn to prevent situations like the ones covered from happening again. (Fingers all the way crossed.)

Paul Offit’s writing style is engaging and precise with tons of important, eyebrow-raising information flowing seamlessly without a hitch.  

Lemme give you a taste of this damn hell ride:

In 1803, Friedrich Sertürner, a 20-year-old chemist’s apprentice, isolated opium’s most abundant and most active ingredient. He named it morphium after the Greek god of dreams: Morpheus. Later, the name was changed to morphine. Sertürner never trained at a university, never earned a degree, had no professional standing, made his own laboratory equipment, and tested the effects of his newfound product on the only person he could find to do it: himself. A shy and solitary man, this remarkably young chemist’s apprentice would soon change the face of medicine. 🙃 […]

In the late 1800s, Heinrich Dreser, a young chemistry professor working for a struggling pharmaceutical company in the Rhineland, discovered Alder Wright’s article. Like Wright, Dreser wanted to rid morphine of its addictive properties. He was impressed by Wright’s paper. Dreser knew that by acetylating morphine, the drug could enter the brain more quickly. Therefore, much less morphine would be required for pain relief. […]

In 1895, Dreser instructed his assistant, Felix Hoffmann, a postdoctoral student, to acetylate morphine. This was nothing new to Hoffmann, who had recently acetylated another chemical, sodium salicylate […] The problem with sodium salicylate was that it damaged the lining of the stomach, causing gastritis, bleeding, and occasionally ulcers. Hoffmann found that by acetylating sodium salicylate, resulting in acetyl salicylic acid, the gastritis problem virtually disappeared. In 1899, Dreser and Hoffmann’s company—which was named for its founder, Friedrich Bayer—marketed its new drug, calling it Bayer Aspirin.

Now, Dreser and Hoffmann were ready to see if their success with aspirin would carry over to morphine. […]

In September 1898, Heinrich Dreser presented his findings at the 70th Congress of German Naturalists and Physicians. Dreser claimed that diacetylmorphine could treat colds, sore throats, and headaches, as well as severe respiratory infections like pneumonia and tuberculosis—two leading causes of death. Further, diacetylmorphine was five times more potent than morphine and completely non–habit forming. (At this point, Dreser had tested the drug on only a handful of people for about four weeks.) 🙃 […]

Dreser didn’t have to work hard to convince Bayer executives to launch the new drug. But first they had to come up with a name. Some of the workers wanted to call it wunderlich, meaning miracle. But Dreser preferred the name heroisch, meaning heroic. 

In 1898, Bayer launched their new drug, calling it heroin.

“I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy!”

Charlie Hunnam in  King Arthur: Legend of the Sword