A couple of high school students have changed the world of edible plastic forever. Spastic Elastic Gastric Plastic by D. Trull Enigma Editor dtrull@parascope.com The kids of today have lost the true meaning of Halloween. Trick-or-treaters have gotten soft and lazy over the years, traipsing languidly about the womblike cocoon of the local mall under the presumptuous demand for immediate candy gratification. What a sad, shambling mockery of the good old days, back when the meaningless mantra of "trick or treat" was a threat of primeval extortion. Goodie bags were loaded up in anxious fear of retribution, and a youngster had to take a full measure of terrorist pride in earning that righteous stash of weird candy that halfway tasted like plastic. Occasionally, though, there step forward those few lone inspiring kids, may the Forces of Darkness bless them, who remember the real hellraising spirit of All Hallow's Eve. Such were the deeds of a couple of boys in Virginia who conspired to perpetrate one monster of a trick, and in an appropriately warped upheaval of nature's order, the treat conferred upon them in return was weird plastic that halfway tastes like candy. And an unholy incantation of big-time cash, to boot. Gus Gray and Justin White, two 16-year-old students at Bluestone High School in Virginia, decided they would play a prank on their 10th grade chemistry teacher. The boys, who admit they aren't chemistry whizzes, just mixed up a bunch of chemicals and stuff in the lab after school to see what would happen. "We were trying to make green slime to cover our teacher's door on Halloween," Gus said. "But the experiment went wrong and exploded out of the fume cupboard, covering the floor and walls." Disappointed, Gus and Justin cleaned up the chemical goop as best they could, to conceal all evidence of the crime. But the following day their teacher and intended victim, Holly Hash, discovered a remnant of the boys' experiment on the bottom of a lab flask. "I pulled a glass rod out of the flask and found it was covered in a clear plastic like a lollipop," Mrs. Hash said. "When I picked it up, it squirmed, wiggled and curled around on my palm. I'd never seen anything like it." Mrs. Hash analyzed the substance and found that Gus and Justin had accidentally synthesized a plastic composed of a highly unusual protein polymer. In addition to its animated tactile properties, Mrs. Hash somehow determined that the plastic was perfectly edible. Understandably preferring to confine their consumption of unknown materials to the cafeteria, Mrs. Hash's class first served up the super-elastic wobbly plastic to their lab mouse, Cinderella. She reportedly chowed it down with great relish, and more importantly, she didn't die or anything. "Very soon all the class was eating it," Mrs. Hash said. "My son loved it; my dog loved it. They eat as much of it as they can get." And fortunately there'll be plenty to go around, since the boys and Mrs. Hash were able to recreate the conditions of the original experimental mishap and make more of the palatable polymer. The three have applied for a patent together, and they've gone into business selling "JG's Edible Plastic," available in an assortment of flavors including strawberry, peppermint, cinnamon toast and maple pancake. But the real money to be made from the boys' invention isn't in the snack food industry -- it's in pharmaceuticals. It seems JG's Edible Plastic would make an outstanding drug delivery system, and an unnamed company has paid Gus, Justin and Mrs. Hash $100,000 to use their substance for such an application. The invention has also piqued the interest of plastics oligarch Du Pont and Capsugel, the leading manufacturer of that most popular form of medicinal dosage, the gelcap. And it doesn't end there: a Dutch company wants to buy the plastic as a friction-reducing coating for the hulls of ships. It sounds like this amazing space-age polymer will be used to replace everything from the wrapper rings on bologna slices to the heat tiles on the Space Shuttle. So remember, kids, this Halloween be sure to play lots of dangerous tricks on adult authority figures, and if you're irresponsible and devious enough, you just might end up rich and famous, thanks to giant corporate interests willing to pay tidy sums for your intellectual property. Indeed, this is a twisted tale befitting the magical night when all sanity and reason is turned upside-down, which children have long celebrated by eating nefarious volumes of unexplained chemical sludge. Source: Electronic Telegraph. (c) Copyright 1997 ParaScope, Inc. More Fortean Slips! Share your views in the Fortean Slips message board!