by Gemini
My quest for perfect skin had taken me down some dark alleys of online beauty forums. I’d tried snail slime, fermented rice water, and even, briefly, a facial mask made of mashed avocado. So, when I stumbled upon “Deuterium Delight,” a bubble bath promising skin so flawless it could reflect satellite signals, I figured, why not?
The bottle, admittedly, looked a bit like something you’d find in a lab, with its “D2O-infused” label and a warning about “potential minor temporal distortions.” But hey, a little time travel for a youthful glow? Sign me up!
I poured a generous glug into the tub, and the water immediately shimmered with an otherworldly luminescence. Bubbles, heavier and more substantial than any I’d seen before, rose like miniature, glowing moons. I sank into the bath, the deuterium-rich water enveloping me like a warm, slightly radioactive hug.
The first thing I noticed was the silence. The bubbles seemed to absorb all sound, creating a tranquil, almost unsettling quiet. Then, my skin began to tingle. Not an unpleasant tingle, mind you, more like a gentle, atomic-level massage.
Emerging from the bath, I felt… different. Lighter, somehow. My reflection confirmed it. My skin was not just smooth; it was hyper-smooth. It was so smooth, in fact, that my fingerprints had vanished. I was a human slip-n-slide.
The next day, things got weird. My cat, usually aloof, stared at me with an unnerving intensity, as if I’d suddenly become a fascinating scientific anomaly. My voice had dropped an octave, and I kept accidentally knocking over lightweight objects with my newfound, deuterium-enhanced density.
And the compliments! “You’re glowing!” people would say, their eyes wide. “Are you… heavier?” My skin, it turned out, was too amazing. It was like I was radiating a low-level hum of pure, isotopic perfection, making everyone around me feel slightly… inadequate.
I became a minor internet sensation, “The Deuterium Diva,” with beauty gurus dissecting my newfound radiance like a lab specimen. But the truth was, I just wanted my fingerprints back and to stop accidentally phasing through doorknobs.
So, I went back to regular, boring, hydrogen-based soap. My skin is back to its normal, slightly-less-than-perfect self, and my cat has stopped staring. But sometimes, when I’m alone, I miss the silent, shimmering bubbles and the brief, glorious moment when I was the most isotope-ically enhanced human on Earth. And I still have a faint, but definite, low frequency hum.”
