Invisible Threads--Chapter 04

Writers Note: Please read Invisible Threads--Prologue and Chapters One through Three before reading this.

CHAPTER FOUR

To Gary, the idea of living with a woman who was not his mother was both exhilarating and terrifying - mostly terrifying. For the week after he returned, he didn't have time to think about that as his days included large quantities of Diet Coke, Red Bull, and Pop Tarts in order to put in the hours needed to catch up with his teaching assistant responsibilities after taking the three days off.

But now, it was Saturday, and he was looking down at the text that he had just received. Meet me in front of Loomis Hall at 4pm.

He checked the time on the wall clock - 9am. He still had plenty of time to clean his apartment. He would keep working to a stopping point but would stop no later than 10am.

At 10:00, there was still plenty of time, so he would stop at 11:00. No excuses. He forgot to set his alarm.

At 1:30pm, his phone rang. "Hello."

"Gary, this is Cherie. I'm running a little late and I probably won't be there until about 4:30."

"Oh. Okay."

"See you then."

She hung up. He was out of time. His work area was a mess of scribbled notes and calculations. It would take him hours to return to this point in his thought process if he stopped now. He needed to organize his notes into an Excel file. It would just take a few minutes.

He got to his apartment at 3:30 PM.

He didn't smell good but his apartment smelled worse. Loomis Hall was a ten-minute bike ride from the apartment which gave him fifty minutes. He picked up as much as he could carry and ran through the door, down the two flights of breezeway stairs, and out to the dumpster in the back parking lot where he found a dirty cardboard box. Running back up the stairs to his apartment, he began filling the box with drink cans, pizza boxes, and three well-used porno DVDs.

He opened the refrigerator and added to the box old ketchup and mustard packets and some antiquated compost from a health kick he had started some months before. There were no dishes in the sink since he owned none. The box was now full and very heavy. He wrestled it out the door and down the stairs.

Out of breath from his run back up the stairs, he stepped into the bathroom and surveyed it. The mold in the shower had gone from green to black, the lower third of the mirror was blocked by toothpaste spatter, and spaghetti-like strands of used dental floss were stuck to the floor.

First up was the toothpaste spatter. Grabbing his razor, he began to shave the mirror. The toothpaste spatter crud flaked off in front of the razor as it screeched along the surface of the glass. He scraped the flakes into the sink and turned the water up as hot as possible in the hopes of dissolving the flakes.

He scraped up the dental floss with his fingernails from the floor until he had a wad in his hand the size of a ping pong ball. There was no garbage can. He knew little about women, but he did know that garbage cans in the bathroom were important to them. He dropped the floss wad into the bottom of the two drawers in the vanity. He turned his attention to the black mold around the bottom of the shower. He was out of time. The mold would live another day.

The mirror now looked like a chess board where he had scraped his razor side-to-side and then top-to-bottom. That was what it was.

He stepped into the shower and turned the hot water full up. He had shampoo and soap. He was, after all, civilized. He brushed his teeth and applied deodorant. After dressing, he looked at his phone, 4:25 PM.

He mentally declared the apartment adequate, grabbed his coat, and headed out the door arriving in front of the Loomis Building at 4:40 PM. Cherie arrived at 5:45.

After waiting for over an hour in sub-freezing temperatures, Gary was irascible when she finally arrived: "You're late."

"I called and said I would be late."

"You said 4:30. It's 5:45"

"I got hungry, so I stopped off and took a break."

Gary swallowed the words he wanted to really say. "Okay, go down this street and take the next right. After three blocks, you'll see a sign that says 'Arborwood Apartments'. Turn in there and park."

She drove slowly and he arrived in the parking lot right behind her. Two suitcases and a travel bag were in the back seat. He carried the suitcases up the breezeway steps and put them down as he opened the door. She stepped into the apartment while he turned back to pick up her luggage.

She stopped three feet inside the door blocking his way. "Oh my God!"

"What?"

"You live like this? This is disgusting."

"You can see that from here?"

"I can smell it from outside. Do you have a vacuum?"

"I think so."

"Find it now."

He put her luggage down, "I'll get it."

"Just tell me where it is."

"If you don't like the living room, I'd rather you not see the closet."

Her eyes rolled.

He disappeared into the storage/mechanical room. She heard the not unexpected sound of falling debris after which he stepped back out into the living room using his hands to rub dust from the side of a small vacuum. The clear plastic window in the side of the dust tank showed it to be filled to the point of compressed. She sighed, "Garbage can?"

"I don't have one."

"I see. What are your plans for this evening?"

He had not thought about it. "I kind of thought you would tell me."

"Do you have a place that you could go?"

"My lab. I was sort of in the middle..."

"Good. Go there. Leave me alone here to do what I must do."

"Are you going to clean my apartment?"

"Yes. Now go away."

This was a pleasant surprise. "Okay." His mind was fully immersed in his work before he made it to the bottom of the stairs.

Cherie was not particularly tidy, but the apartment was gross, and it gave her the opportunity to get settled in without him hovering. Before going to the store for supplies, she needed a quick bio-break. She opened the door to the bathroom and knew that she would be going elsewhere. And why was there a checkerboard on the mirror?

***

Gary got back to the lab, settled into his desk, and turned on his laptop to find his notes from earlier in the day. He had been stopped by needing to take the square root of a variable that could be positive or negative. He either needed to make major changes or use an imaginary number.

"Imaginary numbers suck." He mumbled as he stared at the offending variable.

After the dread 'i', he added the line:

???t = (??_1a + ??_1b + ??_1c + ?(((-1^.5)*(?^.5))_1d)?t

So now the math was going to work but he was going to have to deal with that 'i' when trying to apply the model to empirical real-world data. But how real world was this data? To the untrained eye, his empirical evidence was magic. What he was seeing defied explanation within the existing models of physical reality.

***

At 1:00 AM, Cherie was exhausted. The apartment was now fit for human habitation and Gary was nowhere to be seen. He had neither returned nor called. What she had encountered in the bathroom could never happen again. The bottom drawers of the refrigerator were no better. The sofa was old and probably purchased in a yard sale - or worse! God forbid that it could have been taken from the street? On the upside, there didn't seem to be any active infestations. New sheets and a Green Bay Packers blanket had been used to make the sofa into her bed.

She looked at her phone and wondered again about Gary. Well, she was his theatrical manager and temporary roommate, not his mother. Maybe he had a girlfriend and was staying the night there? Exhausted, she slid fully-clothed under the blanket on the couch, turned off the lights, and went to sleep. Her last thought before going to sleep was, "I hope he's not a pervert or something."

***

Gary's head was down on his desk, but he was not asleep. He was dealing with the frustration of his entire train of thought for the evening running into a complete dead end. It just didn't work unless something moved faster than the speed of light. A transition can be made from slower-than-light to faster-than-light. All you need is infinite energy. That was fine for theoretical physics but his had to be practical.

He had moved three white boards into a line. Two boards were full, and he had started on the third when the door to his lab opened.

Duong Phang was another physics graduate student who shared his office/lab. While both he and Gary were social outcasts, Gary was quiet and thoroughly introverted while Phang was loud, frequently rude, and wholly unapologetic. After they had known each other about a week, Phang had waxed philosophic, "Dude, you and I both got beat up by bullies when we were kids. The difference was that I deserved it."

He was as close as Gary had to a best friend.

Phang noticed Gary with his head down on his desk. "Hey Gary. Sun's up, dude."

Gary looked outside. "What time is it?"

"A little after seven. What've you been working on?"

"Personal stuff."

"Working on your magic stuff again, huh? Lecki will have a fit if he catches you still putting time into that." Dr. Lecki was their doctorate advisor.

Phang was right, Lecki would have a cow. "He's not here yet, is he?"

"No, dude, its Sunday. When was the last time you saw him here on a week-end?" Phang said dude a lot. It seemed odd for a twenty-five-year-old second-generation Vietnamese guy who was raised in Ohio. But he loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

"Oh, right, it's Sunday. Then I am on my own time and Lecki can stick it." Gary suddenly froze. "Oh crap."

"What?"

"I've got someone staying at my apartment. I forgot all about her."

"Her?"

Gary did not respond.

"You would have specified if it was your mother. So... cousin?"

"No, she's my theatrical manager. She's staying with me to get me ready for the next round of the show. They're sending a crew to interview me next week."

"What's she... like 40 or 50?"

"No, I saw her get a drink at the bar in Nashville so I guess she's 21."

"A 21-year-old girl is staying with you in your apartment? Dude, you're my hero."

"She's not really pretty or anything."

"Is she breathing?"

There was no way to constructively move the conversation forward from that, so Gary took pictures of the white boards with his phone and erased them.

"Boards are all yours. I better get back."

Phang didn't look up from his screen. "I would if I were you. And try and get some sleep. You don't want to be crashing out all day again tomorrow."

Gary sprinted down the corridor, through the stairwell and exited outside. He rode back to his apartment through empty early Sunday morning streets. Arriving at the apartment building, he ran up the stairs and caught his breath a moment before opening the door as quietly as possible. Cherie snored.

Closing the door, he wondered if she needed one of those breathing machines like his grandmother used. The latching of the door lock was louder than he anticipated and she awoke. Not immediately recognizing him, she took a pre-scream breath until her eyes came into focus and she slowly let the breath out. "Where the hell have you been?"

"I was working."

"All night?"

"I work when I work. I had an idea I wanted to flesh out."

"This happens a lot?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Good to know. Well, what do you think?"

He looked around. "The apartment is very clean."

"It was a lot of work. You owe me big time."

He did not completely understand why he owed her for making his apartment suitable to her standards but kept that to himself. "Thank you."

"You can repay me by taking me out for breakfast. Y'all have a Waffle House around here?"

"No. No Waffle House."

She glowered. "Illinois sucks. How about an IHOP?"

"No IHOP. There's a place called Sam's about three blocks from here. It's okay."

"I'm sold. Let me brush my teeth and tidy up my make-up."

"Okay. Do you mind if I use the restroom first?"

"Can you aim?"

Awkward. "Uh... yes?"

"Okay, make sure you do. It took an hour to get the urine smell out of the floors and walls around the toilet."

Awkward was not a strong enough word. He went into the bathroom and aimed carefully.

While she was putting on her make-up, he began opening doors and looking around the apartment. He probably did owe her breakfast. When she came out of the bathroom, she had not only fixed her make-up but brushed her hair and changed clothes. It made him quickly check the mirror to make sure that he was also suitable for public. He looked adequate.

The dining room of the diner was about half full as they took a small table against the wall. Even half full, the room was loud.

A middle-aged waitress with a nametag that read 'Babs' walked up. "Can I get you two some coffee while you look at the menu?"

Gary answered first: "I would like a Diet Coke, please."

Cherie was immersed in the menu. "I'll take some coffee."

"Cream and sugar?"

"Just black."

The waitress poured coffee into the cup on the table and said "I'll be right back with that soda and to take your order."

The service was quick and, within minutes, Cherie had a plateful of pancakes and hash browns while Gary, still full from eating a box of Pop Tarts overnight, ordered scrambled eggs and toast.

Between bites, Cherie put on a serious expression. "Do you remember Rule 1?"

"I remember that you have lots of rules."

"Rule 1 - there will be no sex. This is business."

Gary thought he hid his disappointment. He was wrong. "Okay."

She ignored his disappointment and pulled a crinkled piece of paper from her pocket. "This is a Non-Disclosure Agreement. It says that I am not allowed to disclose to anyone anything I learn from you regarding how you do your tricks."

"But I want you to. That's the whole point."

"You don't get this at all. The secret of your tricks is your bread and butter. Right now, you can do things that no one else can. If other magicians learn your secrets, then your value goes down."

"No. My bread and butter is research grants. I have to get as many people as possible to know exactly how I do this in order to get enough interest to get grant funding to study it further."

Cherie spoke with her mouth full. "What kind of grant can you get for magic tricks?"

She really did not understand yet. "Pick up your spoon and hold it tightly in your fist."

"Okay," She unrolled the napkin, freed the spoon, and held it in her right fist.

"Now hold your other fist next to it."

"Okay." Her two fists were side by side. One held the spoon and the other was empty.

"Concentrate on the spoon."

He checked her eyes to make sure that she was looking directly and intently at the spoon. He then focused his mind. The noise of the room faded, and only he saw the room fill with greyish-pink threads. He located a thread that passed through both of her hands including the spoon. It continued forever in both directions in a true straight line, away from the curvature of the earth and into space.

He then compressed the universe along the thread until everything in the universe that touched that line co-existed at a point in front of her at the same time. Within this incredibly dense - but massless - jumble existed both of her hands and the spoon. The spoon was being held by both of her hands at the same time. He associated the spoon now with her left hand rather than her right and released his perception to return to normal. The spoon was in her left hand.

She was, at first, befuddled. The spoon was gone. But then she saw it in the wrong hand. Without warning, she felt a wave of terror run like a tsunami through her nervous system. It seemed almost to originate outside of herself rather than from within. She dropped the spoon, making a loud clatter as it bounced off the table and onto the floor. Several diners turned to look.

She leaned across the table and whispered harshly, "How the fuck did you do that?"

He leaned forward so that only she could hear, "Like I've been telling you all along, this is not a trick. It's something that I need to figure it out. I need grants. Big, long-term ones. It will take years and that is assuming that my basic theories are correct."

She leaned back. "I need to ask you a serious question."

"What's that?"

"Are you under a doctor's care? I mean a psychiatrist-type doctor?"

"If I'm crazy, explain the spoon."

"It's a trick. A goddam trick. Quit fucking with me."

Gary looked around the room. Other people were noticing and he was beginning to blush. "Do you always use that language?"

"I will use whatever language I fucking please. I didn't like the spoon thing. I don't like your sense of humor and you are freaking me out."

Gary looked up. The number of people that were pointedly not watching their conversation was growing. "Please finish eating and we can talk about this back at the apartment."

"I am not going anywhere with you until you tell me that was a goddam trick!" Although whispering, her voice carried.

He tried to return to a normal speaking voice. "I can't. It's not. I don't know what you want from me."

She was staring at him now as if he was an animal in the zoo. He knew it was important to hold her gaze, but he was not accustomed to prolonged eye contact. Finally, she stood up, "Fuck you. I'm not hungry anymore."

And, with that, she left. He assumed that he would be walking back to the apartment.