{"id":2494,"date":"2013-08-11T09:30:42","date_gmt":"2013-08-11T09:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.revolutionsf.com\/revblogs\/geekcurmudgeon\/?p=2494"},"modified":"2013-08-08T23:07:04","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T23:07:04","slug":"rayguns-over-texas-preview-lawrence-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revolutionsf.com\/revblogs\/geekcurmudgeon\/2013\/08\/11\/rayguns-over-texas-preview-lawrence-person\/","title":{"rendered":"Rayguns Over Texas preview: Lawrence Person"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cover<\/a>

Cover by Rocky Kelley<\/p><\/div>\n

As we barrel toward the August 29 premiere of\u00a0Rayguns Over Texas\u00a0<\/em><\/a>at\u00a0LoneStarCon 3<\/a>\u00a0(aka the 71st Annual World Science Fiction Convention) in San Antonio, I am presenting book excerpts, one contributor per day.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s selection comes from\u00a0Lawrence Person<\/a>‘s “Novel Properties of Certain Complex Alkaloids.”<\/p>\n

For centuries man has searched for the\u00a0God of All Psychedelics. In this hard\u00a0science exploration, Lawrence Person\u00a0ponders what happens after the ultimate\u00a0pharmacological experience.<\/p>\n

IT WAS A thing of terrible beauty.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you think?\u201d asked Doug.<\/p>\n

Timothy Shackleford shook his head. \u201cComplex\u201d was all he had to\u00a0say. He didn\u2019t know what<\/em> to think.<\/p>\n

The object of adoration was the molecule slowly rotating on the\u00a0screen of his laptop, a small miracle featuring a central spindle and\u00a0multiple branching arms, the latest and greatest synthetic psychoactive\u00a0thrown up by the kitchen sink wizards of the chemical underground.\u00a0Tim was impressed despite himself, because most emanations of that\u00a0underground were utter crap beneath his contempt.<\/p>\n

There were people out there taking random walks through the\u00a0alkaloids and hoping that whatever they brewed up in their shitty\u00a0home labs wouldn\u2019t kill them. They would get a recipe off the Internet\u00a0or a copy of PhIKAL<\/em> or (God help them) The Anarchist\u2019s Cookbook\u00a0<\/em>and thought they had a freaking clue. The vast majority didn\u2019t, and\u00a0were a danger to themselves and others, assuming their poorly\u00a0ventilated labs and makeshift equipment didn\u2019t kill them first. There\u00a0were twenty brain-dead cretins trying to cook meth for every one that\u00a0had even a tiny inkling of skill or ability, and underground chemists\u00a0who could do even slightly competent reductions for psychoactives\u00a0were an order of magnitude rarer.<\/p>\n

Tim had two overriding passions: Information theory and\u00a0recreational pharmacology close enough to his regular organic\u00a0research chemistry topics so as not to rouse suspicion as long as\u00a0he was careful. (And he was<\/em> careful. He did all his psychoactive\u00a0molecular modeling inside a virtual machine on his own laptop, did\u00a0all his reading of the underground literature from a coffee house WiFi, and encrypted all his notes.)<\/p>\n

Which is why Doug, a fellow psychonaut from his college days, was\u00a0his only conduit. Naturally he went into computational chemistry. It\u00a0was easy enough to do information theory on his home computer, but\u00a0where was he going to get access to an integrated gas chromatography\/mass spectrometer on a regular basis?<\/p>\n

Which is how he ended up teaching and researching at the\u00a0University of Texas chemistry department. Benefits included access to\u00a0high quality college lab equipment, perfect establishment camouflage,\u00a0and a steady income to fund his experiments. The latter allowed him\u00a0to avoid the most common downfall of underground chemists: getting\u00a0busted for making stupid, boring crap like meth to pay the bills.<\/p>\n

Tim hated<\/em> meth. In addition to the central nervous system\u00a0stimulation, it fooled you into thinking it made you smarter while\u00a0doing the opposite. He took careful, clinical notes of his psychonautic\u00a0excursions, and was able to track the obvious degeneration in his\u00a0thinking on meth. Drugs that make you dumber? No thanks! Plus\u00a0the entire drug warrior apparatus had watches on dozens of meth\u00a0precursors. Too much heat, not enough profit, and best left the\u00a0Mexican cartels and their industrial-scale production.<\/p>\n

Besides, once you figured out the chemistry and process controls,\u00a0there was nothing interesting about cooking meth. It was a solved\u00a0problem. No challenges.<\/p>\n

But phenethylamines and tryptamines offered vast topologies of\u00a0chemical search spaces and lay of the underground. Not only was\u00a0Doug equally careful, he had even better cover: The company he\u00a0worked for did drug testing for police departments around the state.<\/p>\n

Tim was cautiously optimistic whenever Doug texted him for a\u00a0meeting in a private little room of a funky coffee shop near campus,\u00a0but most of the time he was disappointed. The most interesting thing\u00a0he\u2019d ferreted out heretofore was a novel reduction of hydrochloride\u00a0salt in creating 2C-B.<\/p>\n

The beast on his screen was in a whole different league.<\/p>\n

It was a beautiful molecule. It was also completely insane. It\u00a0shared characteristics with multiple alkaloid groups, and each arm\u00a0end seemed to act as an agonist for the\u00a05-HT1A<\/sub>, 5-HT2A<\/sub> and 5-HT6A<\/sub> receptors<\/p>\n

Even more amazing, unless he was mistaken, the structure of\u00a0the fourth arm end suggested it acted as an agonist for a previously\u00a0unmapped receptor<\/em>. That was off the charts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell?\u201d asked Doug. Doug was a competent chemist in his own\u00a0right, but he knew Tim was out of his league. And until he had seen\u00a0the molecule, Tim would have said he was out of anyone\u2019s league now\u00a0that Shulgin was retired.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere did you get this from?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cA guy that specializes in DMT synthesis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tim frowned. DMT tended to attract the mystic cranks of the\u00a0psychedelic underground, people following in the steps of that loon\u00a0Terence McKenna and his hallucinated \u201cmachine elf\u201d intelligences.\u00a0They were as bad as UFO nuts.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny suggested dose?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRecipe?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the text file.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tim pulled that up and read through it. There were careful stepby-step instructions for creating the monster, even the steps everyone knew, and some of the process parameters were incredibly tight\u00a0(\u201cHeat for 97 seconds at 178.3\u00b0C.\u201d). They went on for 10 pages and\u00a0189 detailed steps. One step required an ultracentrifuge and another a\u00a01500 PSI pressure vessel. No amateurs need apply.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you do it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStill reading.\u201d Tim went through the instructions a second\u00a0time. Some of the steps were extremely tricky, even with the right\u00a0equipment, but none looked impossible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think so. But it\u2019s going to take some time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow long?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least a month.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doug nodded. Obviously the beast couldn\u2019t be built overnight.\u00a0\u201cWhat do you need?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll send you a list.\u201d The deal was that Doug would provide\u00a0any needed base compounds from his underground connections\u00a0(especially the ones on any of the DEA watch lists) while Tim did the\u00a0work. \u201cDid your DMT guy have a name for this?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGOAP.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGoap?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGod of All Psychedelics.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Excerpt from \u201cNovel Properties of Certain Complex Alkaloids\u201d \u00a9 2013 by Lawrence Person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we barrel toward the August 29 premiere of\u00a0Rayguns Over Texas\u00a0at\u00a0LoneStarCon 3\u00a0(aka the 71st Annual World Science Fiction Convention) in San Antonio, I am presenting book excerpts, one contributor per day. Today\u2019s selection comes from\u00a0Lawrence Person‘s “Novel Properties of Certain … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-rayguns-over-texas"],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n