It turns out you really can find anything on the internet.
One day Irving turned to me and said, “Hey, dude, you know you can make anti-matter in the microwave?”
We’d spent most of the summer reading skateboarding magazines in the air-conditioned Chapter’s and surfing the world wide web. Sure enough he’d found half a dozen or so websites, some with instructional photos and a printable recipe card, with titles like “kitchen anarchy” and “cosmic engineering”. So we figured it was as good a way as any to spend an afternoon, and if it went wrong, we could claim it was purely in the interest of science, which it kinda was. We split ways, Irving went off to the hardware store and I started scouting Sally Ann’s for a microwave. The first shop I went to had one of those super retro Maytag L47’s, you know the ones with a dial and a specific button for lamb. It was a classic machine, but at $25, it was way out of the budget. The store down the block had plenty of lamps and a super cool old school foosball table that I was mighty tempted to get instead of the microwave. But most of its little men were missing and I had no way to transport it back to the garage, so I left it there and went on looking for the cooker. At the third store, I hit the jackpot. They had at least three or four microwaves, all under $15. I ended up picking out a black LG with a working turnstile. The price was listed at $10, but I got the lady down to $8 by pointing out the scuffs on the door. Irving and I met back at his parent’s garage, where we laid our finds out and went through the list.
Large glass mixing bowl? Check. Two inch long magnets? Check. One cup pencil shavings? Check.
“Where’s the desiccated coconut man?” Irving said, crouched down on the floor untangling an orange extension cord.
Good thing Irving’s mom was an active bake sale participant, and after a mix-up with flour, we were back in the garage with our assembled ingredients. Irving started mixing things together while I enviously stared into the bucket at his feet. When he finished we had a thick gooey matter that probably resembled some sort of baby food or nuclear waste. We poured the mixture into the prescribed glass bowl and both stared at it with awe. Because he got to mix, I had the task of placing it in the microwave, where I set the timer and then started wondering if maybe we should have opened the garage door. Irving and I stood five feet away, trying to discern what was going on through the small window. The liquid started gently rocking before it began to bubble. The bubbling got more and more rigorous and steam was soon escaping into the garage. The sounds of liquid hitting the inside walls was acutely audible over the dull hum of the microwave. Irving didn’t look worried but I was ready to bale. What if we’d created a wave of nuclear radiation that would eradicate first the neighbourhood and then the world?
Ping. The microwave went dark and the steam lessened.
Irving took a step forward before he turned to me and said “What exactly is anti-matter, dude?”
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