Anti-thesis.

I've never liked writing essays.

And I'd do anything I could to avoid them.

Not great for an Cambridge boy.

I was a student under Professor Homer. Good man, incredibly smart. Professor of Physics and Chemistry. So naturally, when he asked me to assist him in the lab on some extra-curricular research, I jumped at the chance... I liked the man, and it beat writing about atomic mass and fusion mechanics.

He was, for want of better terms, an Alchemist and a dreamer. He loved theorising new methods of testing the atom to it's fullest potential. I couldn't understand why no-one else wanted to work with him.

Maybe I was as mad as he was...

On the first day assisting him, I was drenched in toxic waste. It was a test of a new polymer he'd developed - "Homewrap", he jokingly called it, due to it being "Safe as houses". He was right. Nothing got in. It was fantastic. It could have revolutionised safety in hazardous areas, it was lightweight, incredibly durable, and could be customised easily for working conditions different to science - I said he could have even sold it as jumpsuits for the motoring industry. He laughed, and said it was a good idea, but I could tell there was something... off. I'd rattled him with what I'd said, my praise of his genius...

He let me take a sample of it home. A real show of trust. I could have taken it, and the notes he'd made me take to the nearest patent office and taken it for myself... Why didn't I? Respect. He trusted me, and I wasn't the type to do so.

Not back then.

Now? I can be a little... Dishonest. But I like to think I'm a good guy.

We worked together on really out there concepts, like an atomic kettle, like a pressure cooker for dark matter, and other such substances. We used it initially to make water, iron and carbon balls. 

I had enough notes on that to write my entire thesis. But... I still avoided doing so. Homer promised me credit for it, in place of wholesale documentation. That was good enough for me.

He introduced me to his colleagues, a real wild bunch. Doctor Lovell was a psychologist. Miss Amberin was a business guru. And Professor Maxim was an engineer. All really, incredibly smart. I felt like a sore thumb, but I absorbed so much information from them, it was insane. I loved listening to them argue about things.

Homer also introduced me to the ASM - Anti-Superhuman Movement. Some doctor gets the power to blast a beam from his little finger, destroying buildings and killing people worse off? That's not fair. They need to be regulated... 

The Prof wanted to create a power suppressant, a bracelet that stopped the flow of unnatural elements in the human body, stopping the explosive reaction within the body. It's all physics.

He just needed a test subject.

This is where I honestly started to be scared of the man. He was intense. He was obsessed by EVERY one of his projects... Even the finished ones.

One day, it changed. 

I came in, and found him suspended from a device. He was inside of the kettle, or at least a new attachment. He asked me to be the random element. He told me to push 3 of the god-knows how many buttons on the panel... There must have been close to 40 buttons...

I saw he was in the Homewrap, a jumpsuit of the stuff, with no sleeves.

I pushed number 9. Something viscous and black poured into the kettle, as it slowly began to move.

I pushed 23 - My age then. A huge amount of some sort of green dust began to circle him...

I sealed his fate with 16. He was showered in, what I later discovered was, moss. Common moss.

The kettle whirred like crazy. We was in agony, bleeding into the mix and glass.

When it finally stopped, we was... Alive. To say the least for that miracle.

He was green. Literally green, like the moss. and covered in sores that oozed black and green sludge.

He stepped out of the kettle and put the inhibitor bracelet on...

Nothing.

A complete failure for the bracelet.

But a success for him. He was a living spreader of the disease called Harmain - The one that ate through the New Forest - The sentient bacterium.

Yeah... I should have stuck to with the essays...

Now what? For me, I mean.

I got my degree, fine... But I made him into a monster.

So I became the opposite. The antithesis of the organic disease - A cure.

Chalk white and yellow.

The cure.