Gervic in Wonderland

The Physics of the Unseen: Students explore the forces that shape what we cannot observe. They learn to measure the weight of shadows, calculate the velocity of a possibility, and discover the energy potential of a thought before it forms.


The classroom in the farthest, nearly forgotten wing of the University of Esoterica was lit only by the eerie, bluish glow of the Shadowmeter. Professor Malachi Thaddeus, his dark robes swirling dramatically around him, adjusted the strange, brass contraption with the utmost care. His class – a collection of misfits and dreamers intrigued by his unorthodox theories – watched in hushed anticipation. Among them was Gervic, a lanky, eternally disheveled student with eyes that always seemed lost in some distant calculation.

"A shadow," Professor Thaddeus intoned, "is not merely blocked light. It is a footprint in the unseen. An object's longing for a space it never claimed."

He gestured to the Shadowmeter. "Behold! With delicate measurement, we can determine the weight of that longing. The substance of what could have been."

A hesitant gasp rippled through the class as the needle on the meter quivered. A heavy, oppressive sort of weight filled the room, something more akin to regret than an actual physical force.

The next lesson focused on possibility. In a lab filled with strange, bubbling contraptions and circuit boards wired seemingly at random, Professor Thaddeus unveiled the Potentiameter. "Each choice," he proclaimed, "splinters reality! The paths not taken still carry a charge, a velocity as they fly away from what is! We shall learn to chart these discarded futures!"

The Potentiameter crackled. Lines traced themselves across a dusty screen – diverging and converging timelines, some bright and bold, others flickering and fading. Gervic felt a shiver down his spine. His whole life had been a series of near misses and almosts. Was this how it looked – the map of his missed turns?

Finally, the class came to the pinnacle – thought itself. In a chamber shielded from the noise of the world, Gervic and his classmates sat in heavy, padded chairs, each with a strange mesh cap wired to a humming machine.

"Close your eyes," the professor whispered. "Imagine, but do not choose. Desire, but do not reach. Fear, but do not flee. We shall harvest the pure, unadulterated potential of the mind!"

Numbers danced before Gervic's closed eyes. Graphs formed and reformed. He felt a hum beneath his skin; the world seemed to dissolve around him. Within him, there was a crackling energy, an itch for something that wasn't yet a thought, a choice not yet made. It was both unsettling and exhilarating.

Gervic was never quite the same after his experiences in Professor Thaddeus's classes. He still walked the solid ground of the visible world, but something had shifted in his perception. The weight of a shadow brushing against him was a tangible thing now, the lost possibilities branching from simple choices a constant in his calculations of life. The energy of his unformed thoughts crackled under his skin, a reminder that the unseen shaped the seen in more ways than one.