Wonder Guy (7 page)

Now was his chance to check out the invisibility thing. He’d been too tired after Serafina vanished last night. This morning he’d been concerned with getting to campus and delivering those papers to the professor first thing. Now, before any of the other grad students turned up to use the lab, made a perfect opportunity for testing his transformation. He’d go out on the campus, try wandering unseen among others and still have time to get back.

He stowed his empty book bag in his drawer and glanced around the lab. Morning sunshine slanted in across rows of tables bearing monitors and CPUs snaked together with lengths of cable. Everything seemed in order, but he walked down the rows to make sure people had powered down all the unused equipment. He adjusted the blinds to keep the sunshine from falling directly across any of the screens.

Standing at the window, looking out over the quad and past neighboring buildings, Greg spoke the magic words, “Zone Out.”

He didn’t feel any different. He lifted his hands before his face and they failed to appear. No legs or feet, only the bare linoleum floor and the power strip running along the nearest row of tables. On seeing nothing where his parts should be, a flash of vertigo hit him. Forget looking for a mirror.

“Weird.” At least he heard his own voice. He turned back to the room. Invisible feet shouldn’t trip him up. He could maneuver around obstacles as long as he saw them. Everything around him remained perfectly visible, though it shouldn’t, logically. If his eyes were transparent to light, how did his retinas capture an image? He had no idea how this magical stuff worked. At this point, he’d take it as it came, amass data first, analyze later–despite his temptation to experiment on himself.

Voices sounded in the outer hall. Someone approaching. A key turned in the locked door to the lab.

Will and Eric. Greg stood quietly in place, back to the windows without blocking any of the morning light. Will entered ahead of Eric, who struggled for a moment to free his key from the door.

Both of his fellow Teaching Assistants were in their mid-twenties, near Greg’s age, but there the similarities to him and each other ended. Eric, the shorter and stockier of the two, wore his light-brown hair trimmed close to his scalp. He caught up to the slightly built, tall, bearded and bespectacled Will at the first row of computers.

Will continued talking the whole time. “But quantum theory states they’re only probably there, so each Eigen state in a quantum computer might potentially hold–”

“I heard enough about this in class, genius. When are you going to remember your
Magic
decks? You promised me a rematch.”

“One of these days,” Will drawled. “Did you remember the extra blank disks?”

“No.” Eric looked around the apparently empty lab, nodded to the front desk. “I’ll bet Greg’s got some in his drawer.”

“Yeah, but it’ll be locked. Now who’s the genius?” Will had mastered the art of the vocal sneer.

Eric brandished his set of keys, jangling them. “I’ve got the drawer above his. If I unlock it, pull it out half-way and reach under I can manually turn the latch on his.” He spoke as he went around the desk.

Greg stood frozen at the windows. Interesting. Which was worse? His own eavesdropping or the guy breaking into his locked drawer to steal from him?

“You sound awfully sure that’ll work.” Will trailed after Eric.

“Empirical methodology.” Eric shrugged. He unlocked and opened his drawer, bent, fumbled around for a moment. Greg moved closer, edging along the windowed wall for a better vantage. Eric opened Greg’s drawer, lifted aside the limp book bag and pulled out a package of new writable disks.

“Neat trick.” Will reached for the package, “Greg won’t mind if we borrow a few.”

Yeah, that’s why I keep them in a locked drawer.
Greg clenched his jaw to keep from speaking.

“Oh, just keep ‘em.” Eric closed Greg’s drawer, reached under his own half-opened one, probably latching Greg’s lock. He closed and locked the upper drawer. “He’ll never know. The space case will think he used ‘em himself, and go buy some more.”

“Well, if you think so...” Something like guilt crossed Will’s face before he took the package and headed for the computers.

“I think so. Let’s get to work, here.” Eric headed out from behind the desk, crossing in front of Greg, whose invisible foot extended of its own volition, just in time for Eric to stumble over it.

“What the hell.” Eric lurched forward, and would have fallen on his face if he hadn’t caught the edge of a table. He righted himself, looked back to the desk, scanning up and down. “What’d I trip over?”

“I don’t know. Your own foot?” Will looked over from a computer station another row down.

Eric shook his head and muttered something too low to hear, but turned to follow.

Greg held his breath until both passed out of earshot. What had he been thinking? He might have been caught. But so what? It wasn’t a crime to be invisible. Eric had stolen from him. That was a crime. Greg had been buying more disks, adapters, cable and other small bits of hardware than he’d been using. It’d never occurred to him he couldn’t trust his fellow grad students. Maybe eavesdropping was wrong, but it didn’t compare to theft.

Surprised at the heated tone of his own inner voice, he took a deep breath.
Let it go.
He had data to collect. Greg managed to exit the lab without knocking into anything or making noise. Fortunately, his fellow TAs had left the lab door standing open.

Now to check out the campus–with maybe a brief stop in the men’s room. Greg averted his eyes as he passed the mirrors over the sinks. He’d seen a couple different movie versions of
The Invisible Man
. By his theory, the title character’s eventual descent into madness wasn’t due to the chemicals. It happened because he believed if no one saw him, he wouldn’t be accountable for his actions. Greg would have to keep the issue in mind to avoid falling into the same trap. Easier to do if he avoided mirrors showing nobody there.

He’d gotten as far as the first stall when a voice alerted him. He wasn’t alone. He’d treaded softly even after leaving the lab, not wanting to spook anyone with the sound of disembodied footsteps, and the door to the men’s room had closed silently behind him. Whoever spoke in hushed tones in the stall at the far end of the row must not have heard him come in.

“I’m telling you, I need more time.” The man’s voice rose in both pitch and volume. “The projects aren’t complete. End of Term just applies to the undergrads. Don’t you want the whole package?”

Greg backed quietly to the door. He entered again, this time striding in, making some noise before taking a stall. The man in the end stall fell silent. Good. Greg didn’t want to be guilty of nosing into somebody else’s private business, even inadvertently. The other guy flushed and departed before Greg finished his own business.

After the pit stop, Greg made his way downstairs. What good was an invisible superhero here? He looked over the shoulders of students studying at the scattered tables in the open area where four floors of the building bellied up to the slanted skylight windows above.

When he found someone on the wrong track with a problem, he waited until they got up or turned away. Frustrated students had a tendency to head for the snack wagon or the restrooms. He circled the problem area, highlighted a statement or turned the pages of the textbook to the section offering a clue. He might as well be visible if he wanted to act as a study aide, just talk to people directly.

Greg visited the snack wagon and wiped down some surfaces the busy attendant hadn’t had a chance to polish, but the fellow seemed to have everything else well in hand. Might as well venture outside and see what else he could do.

Considering how many had finished with both their classes and finals, a lot of people remained on campus. It looked like most of them had come to the quad in front of Northrup Auditorium. The June day beamed sunshine on people lying out with books, playing Frisbee, standing or sitting around on the lawns in groups chattering like flocks of birds, or sprawled under oaks burgeoning with leaves already near their full growth.

First test: walk from one side of the area to the other without bumping anyone. Harder than it might sound, considering the people darting around after the Frisbee and those who chatted as they walked together, hardly noticing the entirely visible people around them.

He’d made it nearly halfway across the lawn when a girl jumped to her feet and raced in Greg’s direction after a sheet of paper flying, dipping and turning in the air. It had too much of a start on her and seemed in danger of being whipped into the path of an oncoming light rail train rushing up Washington Avenue.

He easily caught a corner of the page and whirled around, guiding its flight on an almost natural looking path, to secure it among the shrubs lining one of the walkways between buildings.

“Oh, thank God!” The girl caught up to the restrained sheet of paper and tweaked it free from among the new leaves and twigs.

“God huh?”
Smiling, Greg looked over the young woman’s shoulder. The sketch captured an oak’s limbs in bold lines contrasting with the careful detailing of the textures of bark and budding leaves.

He stood still as she returned to a sketchpad and the jacket still marking her place on the lawn. Most of the undergrads looked hardly more than children to him these days. This girl reminded him of Gloria back in their middle school days, a fresh-faced blonde whose lively features clearly showed her dismay when the sketch flew from her and her relief when it caught in the bushes.

He’d have been just as capable of helping her if he’d been visible, and the artist might have thanked him and struck up a conversation rather than thanking God. Yet, in the act of helping her maybe he’d taken on the role of God’s assistant, playing the invisible helping hand, making things a little better even if he got no credit or recognition for his deed. Should this count as a pro or a con for invisibility?

The question warranted further investigation.

Greg took only a few steps further onto the quad before halting at a sharp buzzing in his ears. Putting a hand to one ear, he asked, “Serafina?”

“Yes, dear. This is urgent. Go at once to the middle of the pedestrian level of the Washington Avenue Bridge.”

“Why?”

“Now. The young man is planning to jump.”

Greg’s gaze shot across the green lawns of the mall to Washington Avenue. The road ran east-west across a bridge spanning the Mississippi and linking the main campus to the west bank, the law school, art school, library and other buildings.

He ran. Not as fast as yesterday by any means, but biking had given him strong legs and good wind. He treated the people in his way as mere obstacles. He dodged around a gaggle of coeds ambling toward the auditorium. He ducked aside from a young man who dove across his path for the Frisbee. No one reacted. No one saw him, but his steps thudded on the earth and sidewalks and the impact of his feet pounded through him. His heart thumped double-time and his breath rasped in his ears. At the far side of the quad, he jumped over a sunbathing woman in shorts and halter-top. He hurdled the low wall and bike rack bordering the sidewalk to the pedestrian level of the bridge.

He sprinted to the bridge. Go right? Or to the left of the covered central walkway? A jumper would have to be at one of the outer rails, right? Breath coming faster now, Greg spotted a small crowd gathered on the upriver side of the walkway, halfway across the bridge’s span. They formed a half-circle a respectful distance from a figure perched precariously outside the railing...

The river stretched wide between its banks at this point, murky water curling lazily below. Far below. Greg put on a burst of extra speed. People had died here before, after jumping from this bridge. He ignored the broad vista of the winding water and the tree-covered slopes below as he pounded down the walkway, dodging others headed the same way. He narrowly avoided a bicyclist. Maybe some remnant of his super speed remained, but it seemed to take too long to cover the remaining distance. Greg shoved past a man in the half-circle crowd to reach the guy who’d climbed out over the railing.

“Hey!” The shoved man looked around, scowling like a bulldog.

The thin young man outside the railing seemed hardly more than a boy. He startled at the shout, and wavered, leaning out over the river. Facing the water below, only a white-knuckled grip on the railing behind him kept him from falling. Clad in a worn white t-shirt and jeans, his blond hair lank, the potential jumper’s baby face looked drawn and pale with strain.

At his lurch, the crowd gasped, swaying forward as one. The next moment the young man cried out and everyone stilled.

“Don’t come any closer.” He looked out at the crowd through eyes showing the full circle of their whites.