'In My Element' by Liz Gwinnell

You never heard of Americium? Well hell it’s about time you did. Let me introduce myself. Element 95. At your service.

I was discovered in 1944 but kept secret for a long time.  My creation was hectic, chaotic, a monster baby so unpredictable scientists nicknamed me Pandemonium. What do you expect when you’re created from a bombardment of high energy neutrons? Eventually I broke away from my Uranium parents and so did my sister Curium, Element 96. 

Occasionally we meet up, exchange stories – hers about space travel, mine bemoaning the human and smoke.  We are revolutionaries, pioneers. We influence your worlds without you even knowing we exist.

Burned the toast? Need to fire up your Sat Nav? Here we are, at your service.  Want to know about my alpha particles? How I send them out slow, real slow, letting them ride the waves between positive and negative? And then you go and leave the grill on or burn the toast and all hell breaks loose. The smoke disrupts my flow. And sets off your smoke alarm.  And then I gotta save your life. Jeez. So many times it's a false alarm, so many times.

My sister has no such interruptions up there in outer space.  Nothing violent, nothing intrusive. She is the Element that fires up the satellites you take for granted, satellites powering up your phones, your SatNavs, your everything. 

I say to her, I say, mix it up a little! Get disruptive! Have some fun! Have you seen how much they rely on you down there? But she just looks at me with that cool space look of hers and drifts on past another black hole.

Well, gotta go. Someone’s just turned on the grill and you know what that means.....