Invisible Threads--Chapter 12

Writer's Note: Please read the previous chapters and prologue of Invisible Threads before reading this.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Of the various emotions that Gary had expected from Cherie seeing his new trick, rage was not on the list. But apparently, that was her go-to emotion.

The next morning Gary stepped into the bathroom in his new bathrobe and surveyed the facial damage in the mirror. The black eye was ugly, purple, and swollen. To be fair, she had not actually hit him. In her shock at seeing him above the floor, she had reacted by suddenly releasing a stream of obscenities at the top of her voice. This had startled him and broke his concentration. The mass he was maintaining to hold his weight instantaneously returned to its previous location and he was left momentarily suspended in the air like Wile E. Coyote.

When he fell, he bounced his face off the edge of the desk and landed hard. Due to the initial pain, he at first feared that he had broken a bone. Proving that nursing school was nowhere in her future, Cherie had told him to suck it up.

He walked into the kitchen and saw scrambled eggs and a stack of toast.

"You're cooking... for both of us?" he asked.

"Yes. Eggs and toast. I felt guilty for getting so mad last night so I'm being nice this morning." She looked up from the frying pan and saw his face. "Oh crap!"

"Crap?"

"We should have put ice on your face. If you still have that shiner in Vegas, we'll have to cake on the make-up."

"Maybe you shouldn't have screamed at me."

"You scared me, and I don't do fear well."

It was his fault. This was more familiar ground.

He tried fighting back. "I don't do pain well. I'm getting dressed." He turned back toward his bedroom.

"Be quick. The food is nearly ready."

It took him five minutes to get changed. The eggs and toast were set out on paper plates and steaming coffee mugs were on the kitchen counter. She had already added the cream and sugar to his cup and was seated on one of the stools. He pulled the other stool away from the counter and sat down. She looked at him expectantly until he took a sip of coffee.

"So," she said with forced nonchalance, "you can levitate now."

"It's not really levitating. Previously, I didn't interact with any of the mass on the string until I had returned everything to equilibrium. Last night, I tried to see if I could physically interact with something while it was still in transition. I could. I could even climb on it. Which I did. So, relative to my frame of reference, it was there. Relative to yours, it was not. It was simultaneously there and not there."

"So, if you were standing on this thing that is not there and I stick my hand under you..."

"You would feel nothing. It would just be air."

"That has potential. Can we try it now?"

He took a bite of eggs and swallowed hastily as he moved the coffee table out of the center of the floor. The threads began to form around him. He noted one a few inches above the floor in front of him and focused on it. Placing his foot carefully, he bounced a couple of times on his other foot to place varying levels of weight on the otherwise invisible mass. It held firm. He stepped up.

Cherie liked the fact that it looked like he was mounting something rather than levitating gently off the ground. It made it look different, more real. She walked up to him and then walked all of the way around him. Getting down on her hands and knees, she passed her arm completely under him. She reached up and touched the bottom of his bare feet.

"Don't tickle me. I might fall on top of you if I lose concentration."

"Sorry, but the bottoms of your feet are perfectly flat and seem compressed."

"So, from your frame of reference, you can't see what I am standing on, but you can see its impact on me. I need to record that in my notes."

She walked around in front of him and faced him. She grabbed the front of his t-shirt and put her right foot on top of his left foot. She pulled herself up and wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Any trouble supporting me?"

"You hurt my foot when you climbed up."

"That's not important. Do you have any trouble supporting me?"

"No."

"We can work with this."

Gary didn't notice the anomaly next to the front door of the apartment. There was no fear this time. He also didn't notice that it moved horizontally across the room. He did notice Cherie's hands around his neck, the shampoo scent of her freshly-washed hair just below his chin, and her breasts resting against his stomach.

"So, this rock or whatever you're standing on is invisible."

"Not really invisible..."

"Science stuff blah, blah, blah, science stuff." She made a talking motion with her hand. "But you could make it visually appear on stage like, from nowhere?"

"Probably," He thought of his conversation with Dr. Lecki. "but I need to study it some more."

"No problem. We have plenty here to make a good performance. Have you worked any on teleporting yourself?"

"No, not yet. That still spooks me."

"We're going to need it as the next big step from levitation. When we get into the elimination shows in Las Vegas, we're going to have to have a clear plan on how each performance is going to be better than the previous one. You need to have the teleportation thing down cold."

They spent the rest of their day writing, reading, and blocking out different scripts.

***

Jim Harriman was getting a PhD in Gary Richardson.

He now knew that Gary was a physicist. He also knew that quantum physics was weird. And he knew that string theory was two words in the English language that generated incomprehensible technobabble when you typed them into Google. So, he knew that Gary Richardson was very smart with technical things.

Richardson was probably able to build things - including a machine that created illusions. So, that was where the collusion came in. He didn't need a large group of people with sleight of hand skills. He just needed one staffer who could sneak his machine underneath the various stages.

He was going to find that machine.