Invisible Threads--Chapter 06

Writer's Note: Please read Invisible Threads--Prologue and Chapters One through Five before reading this.

CHAPTER SIX

"It's heavy." Cherie was sitting in Gary's lab on campus adjusting the copper helmet on her head. It looked like a wicker ball. "And all those sticky things hurt."

"The sensors have to be directly against your skin. It hurts a little."

"One more time because I'm a worrier... I'm not going to get electrocuted."

"The apparatus is properly grounded. There is a switch right next to your left hand, feel it?"

"Yes." She tried to nod but the helmet held her fast.

"Turn it off and then back on again."

She did.

"Good. That is the emergency disconnect. If at any time you feel like you want to stop the experiment for any reason, turn that switch off. You are in complete control and can turn it off whenever you wish."

"Good."

"The monitor is in front of you and is broken up into six screens. Five of them are showing your head in real time from every direction. It's a little disorienting at first. Can you see yourself and understand the points of reference?"

She stuck her tongue out and watched it come out of her face on four of the five screens, "Got it."

"The sensors are going to be measuring the magnetic field that your brain is generating. On the monitor you will see colors forming around your head. Red represents where magnetic fields are the strongest and Blue to Purple where they are the weakest. If there is no color, then no field is detected. The sixth screen will show magnitude numbers that you won't care about."

Would he ever shut up? "I'm ready."

He turned on some simple toggle switches and then began to slowly turn a knob. It looked like a high school science fair project. There was a slight humming as the power increased.

She watched a band of color form on the screen looking like ear muffs running from above her ears over the top of her head. It started purple and then changed color to blue, then green, then yellow. Then colors began to form around her forehead and in the back of her head. As they strengthened, the earmuff colors changed back to blue. The color in back was orange while the one in front was yellow orange.

Her mouth dropped open. The colors on the screen represented the reality of everything he had told her. "What am I seeing?"

"What you're seeing is normal. While you were sitting in the chair, you were focused on how much the helmet hurt so the pain center of your brain was the most active. It is located kind of in the center of your brain. When the monitor turned on, you began to focus your vision on it which made the back of your brain get more active. Then you started thinking and trying to figure out what you were seeing which made the front of your brain get more active. What you should be seeing now is the colors in the front of your head will start breaking off and becoming much more diverse."

She watched as the yellow orange changed into something that looked like a squat orange tornado flying out of the middle of her forehead and coming up through an area that radiated away from it in yellow, green, and then blue with a very thin band of purple before hitting the colorless edge.

"Good. Now I want you to focus on one specific thought. A memory is usually easiest. But it has to be very specific. Don't remember a party but remember one solitary moment at the party that is frozen in your mind."

The tornado narrowed and turned into a thin orange-red hourglass shape over her right eye. A few other orange-to-yellow thin hourglasses appeared. They floated in an area of yellow surrounded by thin bands of green, blue, and purple. The color pattern stabilized. Gary pressed a button that took a still shot of the image and marked the point on the video.

"Now think about something totally different."

The earmuffs began to form again.

"Yes, the helmet hurts but try to focus on a different memory."

After a few minutes, a new pattern had stabilized on the monitor. He again took a still shot and marked the video.

"Okay, now return to the first memory and focus on it as hard as you can."

The hourglass formed over her right eye and the other portions of the pattern re-emerged. It stabilized in the same pattern as before. Still shot and mark.

"That's it for tonight," he said, twisting the knob.

The colors faded from the screen. He loosened the hasps that held the helmet together and then the straps from under her chin. She leaned forward to guide her head carefully out of the construct. Her hair was sweaty and matted down.

He handed her a paper towel. "You may want to wipe your face."

"Do I look as bad as I think I do?"

"Pretty much."

"I'm headed to the bathroom."

She left and he took the time to print out the still shots. He took them over to a light table and overlaid the first and third which should match. They were nearly identical which demonstrated that she had excellent control of her thought processes.

She had crept up behind his right ear. "Your turn!"

He jumped, leaving a row of h's across the screen. He pressed the "delete" key to erase them. "My turn?"

"To wear the helmet and do your thing."

"I don't need the helmet to do my thing."

"But I need it to see the all the colors."

It was a reasonable request, so he put on the helmet quickly, flipped the switch, and began turning the dial. The earmuffs briefly formed and changed into the red patterns in front and to the rear of his head. "Step in front of me and hold out your hand where I can see it."

She had to maneuver over some electrical conduit running from a panelboard on the wall to the stand, that supported the cables serving the helmet.

"See that dry erase marker at the white board?"

"Yes."

"I will move that to your hand."

"Great. I'm ready when you are."

He focused on his trigger memory and the universe of threads formed around him. Her image was relatively clear through the threads, and she spoke: "Your patterns seem to have settled down now." Her voice sounded like he was hearing her through a cheap hotel room wall.

"Right. Now I'll move the marker."

She nodded. He found a thread connecting the marker with her hand. But then he noticed a movement in the background. He stopped working the thread and focused on the area. But it wouldn't come into focus. Suddenly, he was afraid. Not afraid... but terrified. Yet, there was no reason. He forced himself not to get up and run..

Taking panting deep breaths to try and remain calm, he looked up at Cherie. "Look over your left shoulder. Do you see anything odd over near the door?"

She turned around. "No. Is something wrong? Your color pattern is changing."

The weird area faded out and the area near the door filled again with threads. Gary's fear dissipated as quickly as it had arisen. He took one more long, deep breath and then breathed out. "Not wrong. Just odd. The patterns are changing due to my being... distracted."

He refocused on the present experiment. "Keep your hand up."

He snapped the thread taught, collapsed the universe, moved the marker into her hand, and released the universe. She clutched it as soon as it appeared. The demonstration was over.

He quickly got out of the helmet and walked over to the area near the door. Cherie followed him. "What are you looking for?"

"I'm just looking. Seeing what's here."

"Nothing is here."

He talked under his breath: "What is different about this area from the rest of the room?"

He was talking to himself but she answered anyway: "It isn't full of stuff?"

He popped out of his revery. "Give me a few minutes to log the results and then we can head out."

"And rehearse."

Gary acquiesced, "Right. And rehearse."

"And get ready to talk with your faculty advisor, Dr. Lecki, tomorrow."

He had forgotten about that. "Oh shit."

***

Lacy knew that working around the clock would drive her to burnout, but burning out beat losing this job.

It was after midnight, and she was watching videos of Gary Richardson and Jim Harriman. Harriman was slick, polished, and attractive. And his tricks were great. She had no idea how they were done. Previously, they seemed to be... well, magic.

But Richardson's statement that illusionists must always at some point control the object of the illusion had changed how she viewed it. Harriman always controlled either the object itself or the area around the object. So, she started slowing down the speed of the videos right at the moment when he made contact. She would zoom in and then go frame by frame. She could not always see exactly how the trick was done but she could see that something had happened.

Richardson, however, had just stood on the stage and instructed the judges. She zoomed in on Bob Standifer's hands when they were closed around the card and could see a tiny bit of the corner of the card visible between his forefingers. She clicked through the frames. One frame it was there and the next it was gone. Nothing else moved or shifted around his hands. Each judge held their hands up as the card moved between them and there were at least two camera shots of each. She went through them all.

And then she watched Richardson on stage. He appeared calmer when he was performing the trick than when he was speaking. His eyes looked slightly glazed during the tricks but she had to look closely to see it. When he had been declared a frontrunner, they had done a video search of the different uploads from the waiting rooms and backstage areas and compiled all of the videos and video fragments of him into a folder on the show's sharepoint. She looked through them all.

She had made it a priority to learn all of the intern's names but she only vaguely knew Cherie Chandler. The Phase 3 interview was odd. Everything was there that was supposed to be there, but the interaction had something else. She took a few minutes and downloaded some of Chandler's other interviews.

One of the things that made the interview unusual was Chandler's use of sarcasm. Although sarcasm seemed to be a part of her personality, she had treated Richardson somehow differently, as if she were already seeming to coach him. Was it planned collusion? That made no sense. Collusion with a first-year intern provided no advantage. Chandler seemed to see something in him. His Phase 4 had been a disaster but then the miracle happened, and he had put on an act that jumped him from one-shot fodder to frontrunner.

Her mind replayed what she had just thought. Then the miracle happened...

Her next thought was a memory of Richardson speaking on stage. Magic is real...

Suddenly, Lacy wasn't alone. She could sense it. Her breath caught in her throat as her head jerked around the room. Terror was mounting and overloading her nervous system but nothing was there. Feeling like a child, she leaned over the edge of the bed and lowered her head until she could see beneath it. Nothing.

Forcing herself out of the perceived safety of her thick covers, she slipped quietly across the still bedroom and threw open the closet door. Again nothing. The room was empty. But it wasn't. She just knew it.

Stopping to listen, she tried to figure out what had caused the sudden reaction. Maybe she had heard something in the other room. Probably just one of her roommates either coming home, or maybe getting something from the fridge. Her mind suddenly translated her room as a trap and the fear intensified.

"Must be my anxiety creeping up on me," she spoke aloud to the empty room.

Nothing answered.

Mustering her courage, she opened the door to find the living room area and kitchen empty. Three steps down the hall and she confirmed that the bathroom was as well.

She knocked on her roommate's door. "Hey Evelyn?"

The voice came from behind the closed door: "Yeah"

"You okay?"

"I'm fine. Why?"

"Nothing. You maybe want to watch a movie or something?"

"No. I'm in for the night. Thanks though."

"No problem. Good night."

The brief conversation calmed Lacy and she returned to her room. The fear intensified again. It was worse in what should have been the sanctuary of her bedroom. That ticked her off.

She sat on the bed and tried deep breathing. It didn't help. Then she realized what she wanted to do next and laughed at herself.

She spoke again into the emptiness. "Old training dies hard."

She opened the drawer in her nightstand and had to pull out a wad of tissues before she unearthed the small Bible that her parents had given her. She held it in both hands and did some more deep breathing.

No change.

She then did something her grandmother used to do. She opened it, stuck her finger on a random page and then read:

And these are the names of the men who shall assist you. From Reuben, Elizur the son of Shedeur; from Simeon, Shelumiel the son of Zurishaddai; from Judah, Nahshon the son of Amminadab; from Issachar,...

She stopped reading and laughed to herself. "That was amazingly unhelpful."

The fear remained. She sat in her bed and continued the deep breathing until, just as quickly as it had appeared, it vanished.

She was pushing herself too hard. She put the Bible back in the nightstand with a mental note to tell her mother that she had read it. That would be good for some brownie points. Then she closed out all work on her computer and opened up the latest streaming service and watched some of the latest hot shows. They were a lot like all of the previous hot shows.