“Did you make it?”

“No. I found it.”

“Where? On the moon?”

“Right here on earth, but please do not ask me to be more specific. At least not at this time.”

Nadia accepted that. Before inserting a sample of this Loki molecule into the imager’s sequencer, Dr. Monnet had sworn her to secrecy, insisting that nothing of what she was about to see was to leave this room. Looking at it now, she could see why. This was unique.

Nadia stared at the odd shape. The molecule looked like some sort of anabolic steroid that had collided with serotonin and then rolled around in an organic stew where it had picked up odd side chains in combinations unlike any she’d ever seen.

Something about that singular shape and the way it seemed to go against the laws of organic chemistry and molecular biology as she knew them disturbed her. She felt chilled and repelled… as if she were witnessing a crime.

She shook off the feeling. How silly. Molecules weren’t right or wrong; they simply were. This one was unusual in a disorienting way, and that was all.

And yet…

“That can’t be stable,” she said.

Dr. Monnet glanced up at her. “It is… and it isn’t.”

She didn’t see how it could be both. “Sorry?”

“It remains in this form for approximately four weeks—”

“Four weeks!” she blurted, then caught herself. “Excuse me, Dr. Monnet, but that structure doesn’t look like it would last four nanoseconds.”

“I agree. Nevertheless, it does last about twenty-nine days; then it spontaneously degrades to this.”

He tapped a few keys and a second hologram took shape in the air a few inches to the right of the first. Nadia felt a trickle of relief when she saw it. This molecule had a much more natural structure. She felt oddly comforted to know that the aberration on the left assumed the more wholesome configuration on the right.

There I go again. Wholesome? Where did that come from? Since when do I assign moral values to chemical structures?

“What are its properties?” Nadia said.

“Animal studies are under way. It appears to work as an appetite suppressant.”

“We can always use one of those. Any side effects?”

“None yet.”

Nadia nodded, feeling a tingle of excitement. A true appetite suppressant with a low side-effect profile would be the equivalent of a license to print money.

“But don’t load up on GEM stock yet,” Dr. Monnet said, as if reading her mind.

“I won’t.” Looking at that molecule again… Nadia couldn’t imagine herself allowing something like that into her system, no matter how thin it might make her.

“Because we have the stability problem to contend with. We can’t exploit a product with a shelf life of twenty-nine days, no matter what its effects.”

“I take it then that the degraded molecule is bio-inert?”

“Utterly. That’s why I call the unstable form Loki.”

“Wasn’t he some sort of Norse god?”

“The god of deceit and discord,” he said, nodding. “But Loki was also a shape shifter, able to assume another form at will.”