Some insist that it is completely impossible. Some say that, in the future, anything could be possible.
Which side does Aaron Harding stand on?
He knows it's possible, but he insists that it is not. For if everyone knew what he knows, the world would be a very different and much worse place to live.
From the time Shannon Harding was a little boy he claimed that he had an instrument that made it possible to simply vaporize any matter, organic or otherwise. His parents would raise their eyebrows and tell him to go play with it in the backyard and not vaporize the dog, and his older brother Aaron would laugh and tease him with his friends, telling him that they were so scared and begging him not to vaporize them.
Shannon would give them all condesending looks and head back to his room.
The summer that Shannon was fifteen and Aaron was turning eighteen, seemed to Aaron to be taking its sweet time in coming. Finally school let out and the boys were free. Aaron divided his time between working at the supermarket and driving his girlfriend around in his old but serviceable Ford car, and Shannon retreated to his room.
On the Fourth of July that year, Aaron's girlfriend came to the Harding cookout and as the group of twenty-plus people settled down to eat their potato salad and brats Shannon began to tell one of the younger cousins about his vaporizer.
"God, Shannon, you're not still going on about that?" Aaron said, the fact that Shannon was acting like an eight year old in front of his girlfriend annoying him.
"Why not talk about it? Nothing wrong with it. Someday the US Army will be using it instead of AK-47s." Shannon replied coolly. He was used to the disbelief and it didn't bother him. The cousin he'd been talking to had been a receptive audience and he was in a good mood.
"Yeah, and I'll be driving Cassie around in a hovercar."
"Aaron, come on." Cassie Kendal, the girlfriend, tugged Aaron's arm and avoided looking at Shannon.
"No, he's fifteen. When is he going to grow up?"
"Leave him alone, he's just telling his cousin a story." Cassie looked uncomfortable.
""He actually believes he has a vaporizer!" Aaron's heart was beating fast. He wasn't entirely sure why he was getting so hot under the collar about this, but suddenly making Shannon believe that there was no such things as vaporizing guns seemed the most important thing in the world.
"Whatever you say, Aaron." Shannon turned his back to his older brother and began to talk to the cousin again.
"Alright, if you have it, show it to me."
Shannon turned back around slowly. "You really want to see it?"
"Yes. Prove it works and I'll never doubt another word that comes out of your mouth."
"Okay. Later, when the relatives have cleared out, I'll show you."
"I'll bet."
*
Dusk was gathering when Shannon caught up with Aaron. "You want to see it now?"
"Sure."
Shannon took him out in the backyard and pulled something out of his pocket. He showed it to Aaron but he wouldn't let him touch it.
"That's just a squirt gun!"
Indeed, the small object looked like a cheap plastic squirt gun, like they played with when they were little.
"No, it's what I say it is."
Aaron laughed harshly. He made a grab for the little gun and pointed it at Shannon. "I'm going to vaporize you!" he said sarcastically.
"No!"
Aaron pulled the trigger and a split second later he wasn't laughing anymore.
Shannon was gone. Where he had been standing a fine mist was evaporating, becoming invisible in a mere moment.
"Shannon?" Aaron called, his voice cracking.
No one answered.
"Come on, how did you move that fast? Where are you?" He looked around but there was no where Shannon could be hiding. The last tiny sparkle of the mist disappeared and Aaron was standing there alone.
He looked down at the plastic gun in his hand. An indicator on the side showed one load used, three more left.
Shannon had made a vaporizer, but like what became of that imaginative young man, no one would ever know. No one could ever know.