I was part of "Project Chimera". Here's what they don't want you to know – (Part 1)

Ever heard of Project Chimera?

Yeah, dumb question.

What I should ask is if you’ve ever listened to some half-crazy guy go off about secret government projects, stuff buried deep in places no one talks about. Stories that started pouring out when people finally realized the “American Dream” was just a bedtime story. Something to keep desperate workers quiet while they gave up what little they had left.

Maybe it was your uncle, you know, the one who only showed up for Christmas once in a while, always smelled like whiskey, and talked too much after dinner. Or maybe it was a stranger online, buried in some old forum with four active users and way too much time on their hands.

Even if you heard about it, it probably just blended in with the rest of the nonsense. Alien bunkers, brain chips, lizard people. The kind of stuff you laugh off.

But Project Chimera was real.

I was part of it.

I was the blindfold they tied around your eyes.

And now I want to be your match in the dark.

I saw things no one should ever see. Some were made by human hands, others I still can’t explain. Things that didn’t follow the rules of nature, at least the ones you learned about.

I saw every kind of fluid the human body can make. And a few I didn’t even know existed. 

One of those fluids is called Lux Mentis.

If you were to take something sharp, something like an ice pick or a long, thin nail, and press it just behind your ear, right where the skull thins out, what happens next is exactly what you'd expect.

At first.

There’s the blinding pain. The rush of blood. Your heartbeat pounding in your throat. Most people black out. Some scream until they don’t remember how to stop.

But if you survive those first few minutes, and that’s a big if, something strange happens.

The bleeding slows.

And in its place, a new liquid starts to form.

It’s thick. Not quite a gel, not quite a fluid. Pale. Almost transparent, like fogged glass. It doesn’t have a smell, not one you can place, anyway. 

That substance is called Lux Mentis.

The name sounds modern, but it’s old. Very old.

The earliest known mention comes from a Roman document, partially translated, lost for the longest time before it somehow resurfaced in a private collection of a rich Israeli Jew right after the Second World War. It describes the death of a man they called Yeshua Hamashiach and what came after it.

You know him by a different name.

Jesus Christ.

And according to the text, when the spear pierced his side, it wasn’t just blood that poured out.

Something else came with it.

A liquid. Thick, golden, almost radiant. It caught the sun as it dripped down his skin, glinting like molten glass. As if his body wasn’t filled with blood at all, but this strange, luminous substance, if someone had overfilled a vessel, and it finally gave way.

As long as he was suffering, the liquid kept coming.

It seeped from his wounds. Slow and steady, forming a pool at the base of the cross. And the people watched. First in horror. Then curiosity.

They began climbing the hill, not just the believers, but the doubters too. The ones who came to mock him. They moved slowly, cautiously, like something in them knew this wasn’t meant to be seen, like it was something holy too much to handle. But still, they came.

Some brought clay jars. Others cupped their hands. They dipped into it. Drank it. Kept it. Sold it. 

The ones who drank it didn’t stay the same.

At first, they claimed to feel blessed. Warmth in the chest, clarity in the mind, illnesses that bothered them suddenly going away as if they were never there. 

But then came the visions.

They saw towering sculptures in the desert, shapes no man could build, no eye could fully understand. Angles that bent in ways geometry doesn’t allow.

Others saw faces, brutalized, broken, and wrong. People, both dead and alive at the same time, their features shifting like wet clay. Some they recognized. Others were strangers with familiar sadness in their eyes, as if they were family. 

It wasn’t long before the liquid was banned.

Not just discouraged. Erased.

The order came from high places, men who didn’t agree on much, but agreed on this: Lux Mentis had to disappear.

Every jar, every cup, every stained cloth was to be burned or buried. Anyone who refused to surrender their supply was labeled a criminal. Some were dragged into the streets and stoned. Others were crucified on the very same hills where they’d first tasted it.

Christian believers who had drunk from the flow seeped with the same strange liquid their Messiah had.

When they were cut, they didn’t bleed.

Not red.

Not like the rest of us.

And the ones who hadn’t taken it?

When they died, they just bled.

Plain, mortal blood.

—

These days, Lux Mentis is rare.

A watered-down version of what it once was.

Most people live their entire lives without ever forming a drop of it. But every now and then, someone does. Not through science, not through genetics, but through belief.

True, deep, unwavering belief.

It’s more common in the deeply religious, not the casual Sunday crowd, but the ones who feel something when they pray. The ones who stare up at the sky and know someone is staring back.

And if that sounds like you, if the earlier description fits like a second skin?

Congratulations.

You’re worth a hell of a lot more on the organ market than you think.

Because there’s a very specific kind of rich bastard out there, old, dying, and terrified, who’d pay millions for just one taste of Lux Mentis. Not for salvation. Not even for healing.

They just want a glimpse.

A flicker of whatever place they’re headed. Even if it’s hell.