Invisible Threads--Chapter 28

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

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Gary woke and experienced a moment where everything felt normal. Then it didn't. He remembered that he had lost Cherie. Depression hit in a wave and he did what all good depressives do: he faked it.

"Good morning."

Cherie was still asleep. "Leave me alone. The alarm hasn't gone off yet."

On cue. It went off.

"Goddamnit!"

The depression receded a bit as Cherie sounded for a moment like her old self, but then she, too, remembered.

She sat up and turned toward the wall, facing away from him. "Call is at Noon but you're the last act. So, you'll be sitting in the green room for probably about three hours. Let's meet here at 11:15 and then walk down there about 30 minutes early. I won't be able to stay with you in the green room, but I will leave you with the anti-perspirant and the throat spray. You mind if I use the bathroom first?"

"Go ahead. I'm going to have breakfast at IHOP."

"Thanks for telling me." And she went into the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later she came out and he went in. When he got out of the bathroom, she was gone. He next saw her at 11:15 and they walked in silence to the theater. She dropped him off at the Green Room and then made her way to the balcony.

She got there in time to see Harriman's act. It was a pretty thing and very artsy and graceful but lacked a wow factor. The actual magic was subdued and kind of lost within the artistry of it all. Maybe the rat bastard wouldn't move on, and Gary would have one less competitor to worry about in the finals. The other acts weren't turning any heads, either. She watched as the announcements were made to the audience about the voting and then sat through the voting process. She was bored by the time the music started and the show attempted to build tension with long periods of dead air.

***

After the voting, Harriman stood on stage with the other seven contestants and waited to see if his name would be called. Why had he ever thought that going for a stylized change of pace was the right call? It was too cerebral when going against people dancing with holographic images, guys telling bawdy jokes, and waves upon waves of singers.

The performance itself had gone off without a hitch and the judges' comments had ranged from warm to gushing regarding the artistry and beauty of the presentation. And many in the audience had stood with their applause. But the emotions of the overall response seemed tepid. They were impressed by what they saw but not actually entertained by it.

And here he was standing on the stage in a spotlight. One of the last two. The Hi-tech dance group had already been told they had made it. And they had slowly chiseled away at the remaining contestants until he was standing alone with one of the singers. Her voice was good but not great. Had he chosen another trick there would be no question, but how many in the audience just didn't get his act?

"The one moving on is..."

"Jim Harriman!"

His relief was so great that he almost forgot to look surprised and humble. He threw his arms around the unfamiliar woman next to him. And she had to hug him back and smile and wish him well. She handled herself with dignity and then left the stage.

Gary watched the celebration in the Green Room as Harriman and the other winners from the morning session came into the room, shook hands, and exchanged hugs. The losers were nowhere to be seen. By this time, Gary recognized most of the other contestants and crew. He didn't know any names, just faces. A young couple in jeans and t-shirts sat in one corner of the room quietly watching. He didn't know them.

Cherie showed up in the room amidst the hubbub with a bottle of water. "Keep one of these on you at all times. Take a sip every few minutes. Don't gulp - just little sips. Keep your mouth and throat wet. Go to the bathroom as much as you need to. You're going to be in here for a long time before you go on. Stay in character. Pretend to care about the other contestants. Console them if they seem sad and congratulate them if they seem happy."

"What if I can't tell?"

"Then hug them. Hugging is always good. This is theater."

Gary sometimes missed Covid when nobody hugged anybody.

"Who are they?" Gary gestured at the couple that he didn't know.

Cherie glanced. "I don't know. Probably police. Any questions before I go?"

"No."

She turned and took a step.

"Cherie?" The name seemed funny. He had spoken with her almost non-stop for the last few weeks and almost never said her name aloud.

She stopped and turned back.

He hesitated but forced himself to say it: "I'm going to miss this."

"All good things come to an end."

She paused a moment as if she were going to say something else, and then left. He had rarely seen her seem awkward before.

***

Mercurio was alone today. He had woken up without any vertigo issues and Maggie had errands to run. They had offered him access to the food service table and he took them up on it, grabbing himself a sandwich, some fruit, and a coke. Coke was a luxury with Maggie not here to lecture him about his caffeine intake and his history of kidney stones.

The morning session would probably be pretty entertaining after some editing and the infusion of some additional videos. The high point to him, of course, had been Jim Harriman. The young man was very good and delivered solid technical illusions. But why on earth had he chosen that old Murat bit? It was less of a magic show and more of a puppet act. Harriman had radically improved on it and Mercurio was not yet sure how he had brought life to both faces but he had some pretty good guesses. The technical parts were very good, and it was unusual and pretty to look at. However, boring was boring.

But the audience didn't have anything better to vote for, so Harriman had survived. There were seven more performers of average talent to sit through before he got to see Gary Richardson--which was why he came.

***

Gary's mood had turned from blue to black. Two and a half hours of inactivity was the worst possible thing when he was battling depression. If there could be a silver lining to being depressed, he was no longer nervous about his performance. The bad side was that he was indifferent regarding whether he succeeded or even if his research was ever funded. He waged an internal war against this rising lethargy and forced himself to go through his lines in his head again and again. Finally, he was standing backstage. Fisher tapped on his shoulder and pointed to the stage. He was up.

Gary walked out, found his now familiar mark, and turned toward the judges. A smile was not going to happen, so he stared at them. Which was odd and put them slightly off their game. Which made the stare last longer.

Unusually, Lindsey was the first of the judges to speak. "Hello Gary."

"Hello."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine thank you. How are you?"

In the balcony, Cherie stared in shock. He was crashing and burning. Why had she had to tell him she was leaving? She could have kept it to herself, gotten to the end of the show, shook his hand, wished him well, and then left. But she had to make a big, dramatic scene out of it and now he was a train wreck. Why did she always do the wrong thing?! She wanted to look away, but it was her job to watch. So, she watched.

Lindsey continued: "I'm fine. Is your fiance here today?"

"Yes, she should be up there in the balcony." He pointed.

Lindsey and Brenda were both reasonably intuitive and the words should be gave them a grasp on the problem. Bob and Danny had no clue.

Lindsey looked over her shoulder and squinted into the audience. "There she is." Lindsey waved.

Cherie looked off to her left to see who Lindsey was waving at and waved back anyway. A camera might be pointing her way.

Lindsey turned back with her biggest smile. "Alright then. Tell us about what you're going to be doing tonight."

At last, he could go on script and get this thing over with.

"From the beginning, I have explained to you that what I do is science and not illusion. It is a branch of science either newly discovered or long lost, but it is through science that I do the things that I do. But so far, I have packaged them as if they were magic tricks This was in order to get your attention and get me to the point that I could be standing right here, right now."

He paused briefly for dramatic effect before continuing, "I have explained to you already that an illusionist must control either the objects or the space involved in the illusion at some point before or during the presentation. I have shown you that I have no such need. The illusionist must also control the perspective - the vantage point - from which the audience views the illusion.

"Tonight, instead of asking one of the judges to come on stage and view the performance, I would like to ask you all to come up. And, also, to invite someone at random from the audience to come up with you."

The audience began buzzing as the judges turned and looked for someone young and attractive to put on stage. There was no shortage of options in the front rows.

While the hubbub built and the judges began to make their way to the stage, Gary focused into the extraverse. The threads appeared immediately filling the theater. But there was a gap directly in front of him. It took him a second to see the outline of the anomaly towering over him on stage. It was three feet from his face.

He stared up into what could only be its eyes as the thing threw its head back, flung its arms wide, and let forth a huge - although silent - scream. Gary heard nothing but he felt the scream to his bones. His knees weakened and he stumbled a step backward. Continuing to stare upward, he froze.

"Oh crap." In the booth, Al looked up from her screen and down to the stage. "He's locking up." She spoke into her microphone which fed to the judges' ear pieces: "Lindsey, keep talking like you were before. Calm him down."

In the balcony, Cherie looked on in horror and started mumbling under her breath: "C'mon Gary. C'mon Gary. C'mon Gary. C'mon Gary."

The anomaly stood over Gary for a handful of seconds and then turned away from him and toward the audience. It seemed to grow larger while it surveyed the room as if it were looking for something. Like in his dream, it lifted from the stage and began to fly towards the rear of the theater just inches over the heads of unseeing people who were beginning to murmur over Gary's odd actions on stage. A hideous and terrified human scream burst from the direction where it had gone. That was not on the flow chart.

Headset people appeared from his left and right and ran out to the judges' table and stopped the judges from getting on the stage. A quick conference was convened at the table and the random audience participants were sent back to their seats.

Silhouetted figures were running into the audience toward the sound of the scream. Two of them identified themselves as police as they ran.

Al's calm voice came over the loudspeaker: "Everyone please hold your places for a minute while we see what's going on."

Gary breathed deeply and began to return to his senses. The terror had immediately receded when the anomaly had turned and flown away. He felt a hand on his arm and looked to see a female staffer who grabbed his arm and pulled him in the direction of the stage left wing. He followed her offstage and out of sight of the audience. They offered him a bottle of water and a seat. He rejected both.

The anomaly had done something to someone. He peered around the curtain trying to look in the direction of the scream. He could see an open door and some commotion but nothing else. It was too dark. He wanted to do something, maybe tell the police about the anomaly. But they would just think he was crazy. Everybody always thought he was crazy. He was powerless.

Again, he was stuck with nothing to do. A vacuum in his attention would instantly fill with depression. He had to focus on something and he chose the performance. The sudden shock and terror had burned through the depression and he wanted to keep it at bay. He used the respite to focus. There would come a time - hopefully soon - when his research would again be the most important thing in his life. And any hopes he had of getting money and assistance depended on this performance. Not on being depressed. Not on focusing on what he was losing. And not on figuring out who had screamed and why.

But the anomaly had acted in an undeniably sentient manner. Again, he wondered, why the fear? There was no proof that it was harmful. It was not like him to react so strongly to something simply because it was an unknown. But then the fear had vanished as soon as the anomaly had turned away from him. That was a data point of some kind. Focus on the performance, Gary thought. He needed the performance. But if the anomaly was sentient, then it was unpredictable. A chaos variable. His math would never work.

His thoughts were in the tumble dry cycle and he could not get them steady and focused.

"Gary?" It was a staffer. "Everything is cleared up. You have about two minutes."

"Thank you."

Two minutes. A deadline. A deadline cleared his mind. Much more so than it had been when he first went out. Do the lines, do the performance

He was tapped on the shoulder again. "Can you start back up right where you left off?"

He thought for a moment. "Yes."

"Good, let's get you back out to your mark."

The crewmember led him out to center stage, stepped away from him, looked around and yelled, "Quiet, Please!" She looked back at Gary. "And five... four..."

When he saw the final finger, Gary started. His voice was now stronger and he was standing straighter.

"The rules for observing from the stage are simple: you can stand wherever you wish; you can move as much as you wish; you can touch whatever you wish whenever you wish; and you can ask me anything you wish at any time. In fact, you can even ask me to change what I am doing. Please, do not be shy. You must come away from this experiment convinced that what you have seen is impossible under the present understanding of Physics."

He stepped back to make room for the judges and audience members as they surrounded him. Two stood uncomfortably close.

"I am going to levitate as I did in my previous performance but this time I am simply going to step up into the air."

He focused again on the extraverse, a brief sudden fear passed though him as he worried that he might again find himself face-to-face with the anomaly. But the stage and theater filled with threads. Nothing was there.

"Wait!" It was Bob Standifer. "Don't do it here. Do it over there." He pointed to a spot downstage right about ten feet.

Gary nodded and stepped over. He then focused along a thread and found a collection of objects of different sizes and mass. He brought them together and held them as he stepped up on the lowest. which was about a foot above the ground. One of the invitees laid down on the stage floor and rolled completely underneath him. They all began to touch him and reach as high as they could around him.

Bob Standifer again: "Take three steps sideways."

It was a little clunky because Gary had to find invisible objects to support his weight as he moved. But the requested movement was made.

Danny chimed in, "Take your shoes off."

He did and they dropped to the floor.

Brenda stepped up in front of him. "Take me up there with you."

Gary hadn't expected this, but it should work. "I can't really support you the same way that I'm supported but you can stand on my feet."

Without hesitation, she kicked off her heels and placed the toes of her right foot on top of Gary's left foot. At this point, it was about a 14-inch step up. Danny offered his hand for her assistance, and she gently swatted it away. She bounced twice on her left foot and then popped up onto his feet, wrapping her arms around his neck. He had no option but to rest his hands on her waist. It looked and felt like an awkward high school slow dance.

She dropped her right foot off of his left and used it to poke around under. She found nothing.

Gary jerked a little as someone touched the bottom of his foot. It tickled. They pulled on the bottom of his socks which were loose but felt the bottom of his foot which was compressed. The guy who had rolled on the floor asked, "Can I take your sock off?"

"Yes."

Brenda lifted her foot and the sock was removed. The man on the ground was looking at the bottom of Gary's feet. "Come look at this."

A cameraman came up and shoved the camera under Gary's foot as two others got down on their hands and knees to see. That the feet were compressed against something hard, and unseen was impossible to deny.

"Take us higher!" It was Brenda.

Gary took another step up.

"No. I mean higher higher!"

Brenda was a smallish woman and weighed maybe a hundred and ten pounds. but climbing up variable steps with her full weight resting between his neck and his two feet was tiring. He climbed until they were about twelve feet above the stage.

"Take us out over the audience."

He was winded and going over time but he complied and he made his ungainly way over the judge's table and out above the audience. There they stood for a moment as the audience began to applaud.

Brenda moved her face back so she could focus on his. "Let's get back to the stage now."

He returned with the same big waddling steps through the air that he had taken out. He was breathing even more heavily now. This was exhausting.

As they took the last few steps, Gary dropped his voice and spoke hoping that her lavalier wouldn't pick it up. or at least that they wouldn't use it.

"Thank you for talking to me before. I wasn't really in a good place."

"Are you in a better place now?"

"I'm in... a different place."

"Sometimes that's all we can hope for."

By the time they alighted on the stage the audience applause had reached crescendo and was already dying down.

The eight stage participants gave him one last thorough pat down and then returned to their seats. Now, Gary had to stand and just listen. It was almost over.

Bob Standifer started, "Well, I'm not sure what to make of that. I believe that you probably accomplished your stated goal. I, for one, am convinced that what I just saw is impossible. But it was a very slow-moving process and honestly kind of boring. It really was more like watching a science experiment than a performance."

"Thank you."

"I'm not sure that is going to be a good thing. We'll just have to see how the audience votes."

The other judges generally concurred although Brenda volunteered: "I just stood on air. How can I do anything but say it was amazing!"

And then Gary was sent back to the green room to wait while the audience voted.

In the booth, Al was muttering under her breath: "Dumbass. Dumbass. Dumbass." Standifer had just told the audience to vote against Gary Richardson. She was watching splits on her screen showing the different camera angles of him climbing into the air with Brenda hanging from his neck. It had something of a nerdy Christopher Reeve/Margot Kidder vibe. Or maybe a King Kong/Myrna Loy. Either one would make great video to get finale ratings up.

She got on her headset: "Bob, so help me, if Richardson gets voted off, I am going to personally come down there and kick your ass." It was an open line. Everybody heard.

His voice came back, "I have to call them as I see them. I need to think about my credibility."

Were it not an open line, she would have explained in detail what he could do with his credibility. But the interaction was for show, anyway. Richardson was not going to get voted off. She would make sure of it.

Cherie sat in her seat with her elbows resting on her knees and head in her hands. Gary had finished off okay and from the balcony his walk across the air above the audience had looked very cool. But it had been slow and felt laborious. And that beginning! Everything was out of sync. And through it all, Gary had been utterly lifeless.

At first it had been his mood. But then, the look on his face, it was fear. It must have been the monster thingy. Whatever it was - real or imaginary - it had been on stage with him. And then the scream. Right after Gary looked fearful. Related? Had the monster thingy hurt somebody? Or had it just hurt his chances to win this thing?

A voice came over the sound system: "You have two minutes to complete your voting. If you are having trouble with your screen, please raise your hand."

The room was filled with the dull roar of hundreds of simultaneous conversations. The judges had left the room and workers were cleaning their table and carefully placing soft drink cups and other items emblazoned with sponsor logos.

The voice came again: "Please be ready to resume shooting in five minutes. Everybody in your seats or to Places in five minutes."

Gary had been in the green room listening to another intern give another of the seemingly endless 'listen-up-campers' speeches that he had endured since this began. In this one, the process for announcing those moving on was detailed. It was incredibly inefficient. He did not see what could be considered entertaining about watching a bunch of nervous people standing on a stage sweating through ridiculously long silences hoping to hear their name.

An annoyingly upbeat voice boomed into the room: "Okay! It's Time! Group A follow Holly and Group B follow me! Let's go!"

They followed in single file through the backstage area. It all gave Gary memories of grade school trips to the water fountain. They were held backstage while Group A went through the process and heard the wild applause as the finalist was announced. Music came up and the various crew members became animated and gestured for him and the others to get on stage.

As they stepped out, the audience broke into more wildly excited applause. It was not hard to find his mark and he turned on cue with the others to face the booming sound of the audience. He could see nothing past all of the lights. Squinting, he tried to see into the darkness to that part of the audience from where he heard the scream. Maybe something was still there that might give him a clue about what had happened. It had to have been the anomaly. But what had it done? And why? Was there even a why?

Gary stood on the stage for over thirty minutes as they started and stopped and started again. At the ten-minute mark, he understood Cherie's obsession with anti-perspirant. At the twenty-minute mark, it didn't matter anymore, he was drenched. And worse, it was boring. He couldn't burrow into a good daydream because every so often, someone would come out and wipe and powder his face or he was asked to move, or he would be asked to stage a facial expression for a close-up. He was particularly untalented at the latter, but he grimaced at the camera on command.

Finally, his name was called out as moving on and the other winner from the session came running over and the hug happened which was sweaty and just nasty Then they stopped and make-up came out and mopped and powdered them again. Then the two fake besties gave a joint interview. And then, blessedly, it was over.

He left the stage for the Cherie running up and hugging him scene. He saw her standing next to a curtain, speaking with one of the crew. She squealed, she ran, she jumped, he caught her, they hugged. She whispered nothing into his ear.

With the shot complete, she pulled away and he asked the only thing that had been on his mind for the last two hours: "What happened with that yell in the audience?"

She shook her head, "I don't know. It came from underneath the balcony. I couldn't see anything. Let's talk about that later."

Fake smile for the cameras. Fake handholding. And exit to the green room. They filmed a congratulatory scene for the four that were moving on and a tearful goodbye scene for the others that were done. It was getting redundant. Gary just wanted it over so he could talk to Cherie about the anomaly.

After the green room filming, they were confronted by Al herself, "Okay, what was with the freezing?"

Gary shrugged. "I was distracted."

"By what?"

A nine-foot tall invisible monster? "Just... everything."

"Is it going to happen again?"

"I don't think so."

"You don't think so?" Al looked at Cherie.

Cherie grabbed Gary's hand defensively. "No. It won't."

"Good. The next time that you perform, you will have established yourself with the television audience as a high-quality professional performer. And they will be expecting a professional act. And I'll be honest with you. Going into tonight, you were the frontrunner. But my money is now on Harriman. You've got some ground to make up."

And the interview was over. Al got up and nearly ran from the room, talking rapidly into her headset.

Cherie turned to him. "It was the monster, right?"

"Yes, it was right in front of me and then it flew out..."

"It flew?"

"Yes, it flew. It flew out over the audience and then I heard someone yell."

"Did the yell come from the same place that the thing flew to?"

Gary nodded.

"You mean it attacked somebody?"

"I don't know."

"Okay, if anything serious happened, there'll be gossip. I'll try and chat up some of the interns that I know and see if they've heard anything. But now, you've got to get focused again and you've got to be ready for surprises like tonight on stage. You can't be distracted by the monster."

Gary expressed his feelings as well as he could, "It's not just the anomaly."

This made her pause but just for a moment, "Performers have to find a way to put on their best show even when they're dealing with stuff."

"I'm not a performer."

"You are for now. Find a place inside to lock away those feelings for just one more day."

That was exactly the opposite of what every therapist that he had ever seen had told him, but perfectly in keeping with how he lived his life. He nodded. One more day of doing what he had always done.

***

Mercurio rose from his chair during the festivities. What he had just seen was impossible. But, since it had happened, it wasn't. With more polish, this kid could be the best ever. The tricks were varied and off the charts. Walking on air while carrying a judge? Mercurio's mind was not able to begin to construct the apparatus that could accomplish that. He got up and began walking out toward his car.

"Mr. Hampton?"

Mercurio was pulled from his revery by a young man in a headset. "Yes?"

"Do you have a moment to meet with Al Parker?"

"The director, sure."

He followed the young man up the many steps toward the booth. As he grew older, he was developing a hatred of stairs.