Fourth week and #FollowTheWriter is still going strong! I hope you guys are enjoying all the stories as much as I am.

The super-duper quick recap:

"FollowTheWriter is a Writing Prompt Challenge. Every week, contestants continue the story of last weeks winner." (Original Post)

Let's jump right in. This weeks winner is:

@MrsLauren

Congratulations! The cat being up to date on recent tv shows was hilarious!

Proof of payment:

RULES:

Continue the story of last weeks winner.
Submit your entry as a comment to this post.

As always:

Original content only.
Feel free to edit your story until the deadline.
Deadline: Sunday the 11th of July, 21:00 CEST. (Next Sunday evening, EU time)
You keep all the rights to your story.
If you enjoy this contest, consider upvoting and resteeming. Also, if you're totally awesome, you may follow me ;).

I will choose the story I like best, together with @anarcho-andrei.

Win SBD

Untill now, I have given each weeks winner 5 SBD, thanks to a generous donation from @papa-pepper. Those 20 SBD have been given away, so from now on, the winner will receive the SBD from this post. I'm keeping the Steem Power because I'm greedy ;)

Example: if this post reaches a $50 payout, then 25 SBD will go to the winner. (Actually, it's a bit less because 25% goes to curation rewards like Hive account@miniature-tiger mentioned in the comments)

So if you like this contest, please consider upvoting and resteeming to grow the prizepool for the winner :)

Best of luck everyone! I look forward to your entries. Let's have some fun writing.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments.

#FollowTheWriter Contest: Week 1 - Week 2 - Week 3 - Week 4

The story so far:

The original writing prompt:

Shady Transaction
Cold. The rain's pouring down. You didn't even want to be hear in the first place, but it's not like you have a choice. Finally, the man arrives. 'Can I see it?' you ask. "Show me you're able to pay first, 2 Bitcoins."

Chapter one - by @mariebauwens

Give me a moment, trying to find my words.

Been a long night.

It all began 17 years ago, 2238. Seems like a lifetime ago. ELKON they called it. Promised it would replace the need for food. Just one little pill. Invention of the century. Food shortages were as common as polluted air back then.

So, eh, sorry, I’m a little out of breath.

Yeah, in the beginning.

For a while, everything was great. No more need for food, who could be against that? Seems like the greatest invention of all time, doesn’t it? That’s what we thought. Took two years. Hallucinations, it happens you know. Nobody suspected it with ELKON. But when the looney bins started filling up…

And there were other side effects too. Memory loss, convulsions. Some just went plain old crazy. Going back to eating food though, no way. Food production was way down, but even then, people wouldn’t have traded their daily dose for gold if you asked them to.

Always told them not to touch it. To stay away from that poison. They would listen, couldn’t really. Called me crazy, a lunatic. Well, this crazy lunatic just managed to buy one of the last pure doses of ELKON. Gonna save all of humanity! Or maybe I’ll feed it to my cat. Who knows… I’m crazy, right?

Chapter two - by @flaminghedge

"No, you're not crazy," Cheshire purred as I scratched the back of his neck, "But I'll stick with mice, thanks."

I nodded in agreement. Wise choice. Well, I guess that just leaves the first option. I scratched Cheshire a little more aggressively. Ready to save the world?

"The world kind of sucks, but I'm bored, so I'll watch," he meowed as he leaped onto the counter and curled up into a ball.

Not exactly the kind of motivation I needed, but Cheshire had brought me two fat rodents this week, so I couldn't complain.

I reached into a large brown box on the dirty basement floor and began extracting pieces of my chemistry set. A rat's nest of tubes began to form over the various beakers as I assembled my experiment for the third time that week. Once everything was in place, I wheeled over the tanks containing various compounds and began the tedious process of balancing chemical reactions.

Hours passed. Cheshire fell asleep, woke up, got bored, and then went out to hunt. By the time he came back with a couple of plump shrews, I was nearly finished.

Cheshire dropped one of the shrews at my feet before wolfing his down in one bite. He hopped back up onto the counter and began cleaning his paws.

Thanks, Cheshire.

The last measurement came out perfect. We were ready to give this another shot.

"'Bout time," Cheshire growled.

I gave him an exasperated look. These things take patience. I removed the small vial of ELKON from its metal case and used a syringe to extract 5 cc of the clear fluid. I emptied the syringe into the appropriate tube and turned up the Bunsen burner.

Now we wait.

"Great. More waiting," Cheshire hissed. "Hey are you going to eat that?"

I bent down, picked up the shrew, and tossed it into my mouth. This one was pretty good.

"Glad you like it," Cheshire purred as he began to clean his ears. I scratched his back absentmindedly as I waited.

After a few minutes, I bent down to check on my experiment. Little crystals had begun to form.

Cheshire picked up on my sudden excitement, "No way! It worked?"

After a few more minutes, I turned off the Bunsen burner and emptied the crystals into a Petri dish. I placed a small one on a slide and fed it into the little slot on my compact compound analyzer.

After a couple of seconds, the analyzer beeped and I removed the slide. It was a perfect match.

Chapter three - by @MrsLauren

I stood there for a moment with disbelief.

"Not to be rude, but I didn't think you'd actually pull it off" Purred Cheshire as he stared at the petri dish, eyes wide.

After multiple failed attempts to duplicate the compound in ELKON, I managed to finally do it with the last pure dosage.

"The power to restore the faith of humanity is my my hands! I'm going to save the world with the crystals I grew from my basement!" I exclaimed, hands up in the air as if I won the lottery.

"Okay okay--" Cheshire scoffed, bringing me back to reality, "Nice going, Walter White. But how are you planning to distribute this ELKON 2.0 to restore your beloved mankind?"

I took a step back from the table. Cheshire did have a point. How was I going to convince the world that what I had was going to fill their craving for food and restore their mental capacity?

I had the solution to the worlds problem and no one knew but my cat and I.

"If this doesnt work out, I could teach you to hunt rodents. We'd make a good team."

"Shh Cheshire, I'm trying to think" I motioned him to shoo off for a few moments as I started to pace the lengths of the musty basement. It was time to plot.

Chapter four - by ...

What will you write? Maybe your story will end up in the #FollowTheWriter chain!