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[seraphim] promises to remake the world in its image. Within minutes a fog will settle over the sharpness of thought. Some mild if disagreeable side-effects will become noticeable: eyelids feeling hot and heavy, a dryness coating the tongue, marked increases in pulse-rate and under-arm perspiration. You will begin to wonder if the body is still your body, indeed, if it is still a body at all. Then, as if to anchor you, the pain will come: a stir of discomfort in the pit of your stomach unspooling like thread. The pill is part of you now, its inconspicuous shell already dissolved. The pain will shift, change direction, as though it is not one thing but many – a swarm. You will wonder: is this symptom or side-effect? Or something else, something insidious, something in the corridors between the cells, whispering to the brain. A secret your body has kept from you all this time.
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