Page 119 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Arbor Vitae Cortex

most flavors of liquid sunshine. I’m sure he had enough left in the
bank to start his own distributorship once he discovered mine had
somehow vanished.
This adventure in enablement played out as sourly as it had begun.
Not only had I started seriously questioning my ability to hold on to
significant portions of the ever-increasing windfalls blown my way,
but a seed of doubt had germinated in my own cerebellum. I didn’t
know if it would sprout into a sturdy sapling or wither from neglect;
it was, however, the first time I wondered if I really had the
stomach—not necessarily the lack of conscience—to go on meddling
in the affairs of people with potential to do great mischief. Perhaps I
had stumbled on the paradox of the unintended consequences of
intentional inconsequentiality. Who knows what might or might not
happen following any specific action or inaction? Such considerations
lead you to a kind of situational ethics, at the mercy of your own half-
recognized biases.
Despite my disinterest in the outcome of previous
implementations funded secretly by Al Magnus, I found myself
attentive to any information regarding Tree of Life Tonic. As the
elixir market and its organs of aggrandizement were outside my
sphere of ordinary exposure, I was dependent on general sources of
news for satisfaction of my curiosity. The mills of the gods grind
slowly, and so did those of Tunnelight Therapies. It was more than
two years later that I learned what had happened. And I did not feel
proud of my part in setting the wheels in motion.
Predictably, once Betzaroff had produced a few thousand gallons
of his bottled brain-food, he set about spreading its name far and
wide; he knew the drill from his days of pushing Iatrotropin and
Arrowmatic. The man could be Johnny Appleseed when the fervor
was upon him. So the magazines and health-food shops and
counterculture marketplaces were flooded with product and
promotional material—for about six months. When his name caught
my eye in an article on ecological disaster, his tonic was mentioned
merely as a necessary but indirect cause of the impending extinction
of Hippocampus grandiceps.
The cedar solution had indeed fallen flat. Its guiding principle did
not. The absence of any documented benefit of the miraculous fluid
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