Like so many adolescent boys, Allan hated his family. He hated the way they embarrassed him. He hated the pressure they put on him. He hated the way they wouldn’t, couldn’t understand him. His short-sighted pubescent brain didn’t realize how temporary it all was; that in a few years, when the hormone cloud dissipated, he’d come to terms with them. He’d realize he was his own person, not fated to become what he currently so loathed. But for now, Allan was like so many adolescent boys.
Except Allan wasn’t like so many adolescent boys. He was armed to the teeth. Armed to the teeth with a quirky sense of flair and an extensive knowledge of chemistry.
Allan was determined to disassociate himself from the rest of his clan. His attempt to stow away in the wrong blue Honda Accord after a pit stop on I-83 failed miserably. He grossly underestimated how long his presence would go unnoticed when he slipped into the adjoining campground on the annual Weinshank family camping trip. His divorce case was thrown out of court.
Understandably, Allan was frustrated. He was down, but not out. Plan after plan may have failed, but he had a quirky sense of flair and an extensive knowledge of chemistry. If he couldn’t separate himself from his family, he’d do the next best thing.
Allan Weinshank ceased to be. He became, quite simply, a boy named Xenon.
Xenon. That’s it. One word. Like Socrates or Cher or Elmo. He was proud. He was no longer a Weinshank. He would achieve celebrity status. He would increase everyone’s productivity by 50%.
Aside from being Allan’s new name, Xenon is the 54th element of the periodic table with an atomic weight of roughly 131g/mol. It exists at room temperature as a colorless, odorless gas. Allan often felt invisible (he also often wished he was odorless). Xenon has a stable valence, and therefore hardly ever reacts chemically. Sometimes Allan just wanted to be left alone (other times he wished fervently for a girl to experiment with). Xenon (or Xe, as his friends called him) is not commercially useful, except in complex scientific equipment. Allan, too, served science, and was nobody’s corporate pawn (although that didn’t mean he wouldn’t like to be used every now and again). Xenon has no biological function. Allan identified all too well with that.
What drew Allan (sorry, Xenon) to the name, however, was its family. You see, Xenon is a member of Group 18, the Noble Gas family. Allan liked the sound of that. No one had ever before described the Weinshanks as “noble”, perhaps due to their bent-over-old-lady lawn ornaments or their love of batting cages and ketchup.
Allan knew his parents considered his transformation merely a phase. They were partly right. Allan had sublimated, changing directly from a solid into a gas. So his “phase” was actually two. He had gained enthalpy and lost entropy in the process. He was hotter and more of a rebel – exactly what teenage girls wanted. He had an answer for everything. There was no turning back now. Nothing could stop him. He could not be vinced. He had become Xenon. A boy named Xenon.
Until the next year, when he took physics. Then he became Inertia.
A boy named Inertia