Soon I was going about my business with my longest extension cord looped over my belt, touching the skin under my shirt. The mites took care of the rest. Other than getting used to the cord’s twelve-foot range restriction, the arrangement was a big improvement—because before that I’d sometimes reach to turn on a lamp or a light switch and be unexpectedly glued to it for twenty minutes at a stretch.
No bueno.
At least I wasn’t terrified that I’d die in my sleep anymore. I had that aspect fixed, too: Before I climbed into bed I tied the extension cord to my wrist and the mites fed continuously all night. Still, the arrangement was awkward, and if the relationship were a symbiotic one, I sure hadn’t realized any benefits on my end yet.
What else did I do those three days? A big, fruitless chunk of time was spent trying to find the right command that would tell the nanomites they didn’t need to hide me anymore.
“Nano! No hide! No hide Gemma!”
“Nano! Unhide Gemma!”
“Nano! Abort command, ‘Hide Gemma’!”
“Nano! End ‘Hide Gemma’!”
“Nano! Stop hiding Gemma!”
“Nano! Dr. Bickel says ‘Don’t hide Gemma!’”
“Nano! Red rover, red rover, send nanomites to Dover!”
“Nano! Go away!”
“Nano! Discontinue stealth mode!”
“Get out! Get out, you nasty freaks!”
Grrrr!
Meanwhile, the range of responses to my ineffective commands swung from comical to the macabre—depending upon whether or not your sense of humor has been completely skewed out of norm by an infestation of nanomites.
“Nano!” always produced instant silence, an alert attentiveness—something that felt akin to a German shepherd poised to attack—which was disconcerting.
After I said “Nano!” and the mites came to attention, the next words or phrases I used produced a wide pattern of responses in clicks, chirps, buzzes, or hums. I didn’t know what to make of them and I can’t replicate them—but I do possess a vivid imagination that supplied a kind of “reply and ranking system.”
“Nano! No hide! No hide Gemma!”
Click, clickity, click. Minus three points for talking down to us.
“Nano! Unhide Gemma!”
Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Six points for precise diction; null score for ‘wrong command.’
“Nano! Abort command, ‘Hide Gemma’!”
Five points for originality. Still wrong command. And we haven’t forgotten the hair dryer business. Not even.
“Nano! End ‘Hide Gemma”!”
Negative two points for poor grammar. So much for today’s college education.
“Nano! Stop hiding Gemma!”
Hide and seek? Yes, yes, yes! We’d love to. You hide first.
“Nano! Dr. Bickel says ‘Don’t hide Gemma!’”
Dr. Who? Goodie! Where’s the tardis?
“Nano! Red rover, red rover, send nanomites to Dover!”
Been there. Boring.
“Nano! Go away!”
Pfffftttt!
“Nano! Discontinue stealth mode!”
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
“Get out! Get out, you nasty nanomites, you freaks!”
The Russian judges award straight 10s but are being investigated by the Olympic committee for cronyism. The athlete has been disqualified and banned from future participation.
Sigh.
As you might presume, I abandoned this amusing but unproductive pastime to try other approaches. Dr. Bickel had said that the mites understood print language, so I opened my laptop and typed a long communiqué to them, complete with salutation, social niceties, and closing cordialities. I got nowhere—even after pointing to the screen and practically screaming, “Nano! Nano!” to get their attention.
Reruns of Mork and Mindy, anyone?
Next I used the laptop to first type and then read aloud simple words and phrases, hoping to teach the mites new commands.
My favorites were “roll over” and “play dead.”
We got on famously.
Note to self: I am now convinced that Dr. Bickel quite exaggerated the mites’ intelligence.
I took a break from my attempts to evict the mites to focus on the logistics of my situation. You know, the whole, “Oh, wow! Now that I’m invisible, how am I going to pay my bills?” And that pesky, “How will I survive as an invisible person in a visible world—whether or not General Cushing ever comes looking for me?” question.
I’m not what they call a “prepper.” I usually buy and eat fresh and raw foods as I need them.
With admirable courage and dignity, I faced the stark reality that two cans of tuna, a canister of wild rice, and a jar of peanut butter were all that stood between me and an ignoble demise via starvation.
Yes, I’m being facetious.
I did what I always did: I sat down and took stock of my options. For three months I’d earned a generous cash income from Dr. Bickel—self-employment, he’d called it. That job was over now, but I had a few months of unemployment benefits I could reapply for—benefits I could activate either over the phone or online.
As long as I kept applying for jobs and no one actually invited me to an interview, I would have a meager income for a few more months. My savings account contained a little (very little) money—and I still had a half-filled can of cash stashed away in the freezer. I counted out the cold cash from the coffee can: $1,100.
Do any Albuquerque grocers deliver?
I typed “Albuquerque grocery delivery” into a search engine and got a long list of returns.
Aaaaand apparently grocery delivery isn’t a sustainable business. Link after link led nowhere. Some links were dead, some businesses were closed; the rest of the listings were for frozen or takeout foods. Even Walmart let me down.
Then I found Amazon’s Grocery & Gourmet Food page. If I didn’t mind salad or fresh fruit never passing my lips again, Amazon was the answer.
Soon I will know exactly how Dr. Bickel felt, I snarked.
Well, to be fair, I really could get much of what I needed online, and I certainly would not starve anytime in the near future. I would just have to figure things out as I went along.
“Figure things out” became my new mantra. I spent the next hour trying to “figure things out” and gave my brain a cramp. What did people who couldn’t go out in public do, anyway? For heaven’s sake, what did bank robbers “on the lam” do? OD on pizza delivery?
A life of crime never sounded so unappealing, so unromantic.
Besides that, no criminal had my problem. In fact, no one had ever had my specific problem. I was the world’s first “invisible” woman—and my condition did not come with instructions.
Hold on jest a cotton pickin’ minute, Junior. Ah said, ah said, hold on there.
I was still on Amazon. I switched from groceries to books and typed “invisible man.”
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man came up first. I read the description: The story wasn’t about a literal invisible man, and the reflections of a black man growing up in a world in which he felt invisible would not help me in my pressing circumstances, as compelling as the story might be.
H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man was next on the list. Although fiction, perhaps I could glean some ideas from this book. And one version was free on Kindle! I pointed my cursor at “Buy now with 1-Click”—
Wait.
Life-long hypervigilance—my habit of scrutinizing options before acting—warned me to wait and think before I clicked.
I dabbled my toes in the Paranoia Pool: No Feds had come knocking on my door. Yet.
Shark Face had the unlimited resources of the federal government behind her—but did she know about the nanomites’ stealth capabilities? If she did, it would be nothing for her IT lackeys to scan Internet traffic for certain search terms or patterns. Or purchases.
If they were searching on the word “invisible,” her stormtrooper
s could scoop me up in, well, a nanosecond.
You’re such a clever punster, Gemma.
I had come within a hairsbreadth of buying the book and felt ill from anxiety. I went to close the browser and paused again. I returned to the list of books and scanned farther down the page. I was looking for a similar title.
There it was: H.F. Saint. Memoirs of an Invisible Man. That was the book I’d been searching for, the one I hoped would be most helpful. Except I would need to get it in a different way—and I already knew who had an old copy.
Again, the “how” was going to take some “figuring it out.”
Those three days dragged by and I fell into some semblance of routine. In the mornings I searched for work and rewrote my résumé and cover letter: I rewrote them so that mine would be the first application tossed out. I added little spelling errors and gaffes. I made my cover letter read like it was written by a high school dropout. I’d never worked so hard not to get a job! But every application added to the list of job searches needed to keep those unemployment checks coming.
In the afternoons I worked on the mites’ language training (a complete waste as far as I could tell) and made lists of things I should figure out.
What does a list of “things I should figure out” look like? You’d be surprised.
For starters, I was very worried about my PNM bill. PNM is the local electric company. What if my bill doubled or tripled as the mites fed? How would I pay it? What if my bill was higher than triple? What if the amount of electricity the mites imbibed was astronomical? How would I explain it? Would PNM come looking for a “leak” in my meter?
I believe I confessed earlier to not being scientific?
Anyway, my electric bill topped the “figure it out” list. Other items on the list included fresh food (I ran out of fruit and salad makings on the second day), nosy neighbors, and curious kids. And what I would do when my unemployment and savings ran out.
That third night, when darkness became my friend, I slipped outdoors. I stopped and peered down at the cross Emilio had left on the sidewalk. It was plain and yet elegant in a simple way, and the polished wood glowed. He’d done a nice job, but I still needed to leave it where it lay.
So, while the rest of the world was tucked up indoors, I walked the neighborhood. I reveled in the fresh air and the sense of freedom I felt in the night.
Which is strange, right? Since I was invisible and all? I know, but I was still adjusting, still trying to “figure it out.”
AS THE NEXT DAY DAWNED, I sipped my coffee at the kitchen table, careful now to keep my mug from view of the window. I watched Emilio, head down, trudge off to catch his school bus. I saw old Mr. Flores take a broom out into the cul-de-sac and sweep up the broken glass and trash left by Mateo’s crew. Mr. Flores did that, cleaned up after the gang parties every few days.
It made me spitting mad, but I understood: Mr. Flores wasn’t ready to surrender our little neighborhood to the gangs.
The day dragged on, and I grew anxious. Itchy. Restless. By the time late afternoon arrived, I was going stir-crazy—and reckless. My thinking jumped about in wild tangents.
If I’m basically invisible, why am I afraid to go outside? Who’s going to see me? Why don’t I just figure out how to sneak around? If I make a little boo-boo, who’s going to believe what they see? Er, don’t see. Right?
That “figure it out” list I was making? I started a new “figure it out” list—a list of what I needed so I could go where I wanted to go and do what I wanted to do while I was invisible. At the top of the list? A pair of lightweight, ultra-quiet shoes. I got crackin’ on the Internet, looking for the right pair.
A few afternoons later I had the scare of my life: The front doorbell rang.
I freaked out. I really did. I was convinced it was Cushing and her army. I tried to run, but I couldn’t get my legs to work. And where would I go anyway? I was sure they had my house surrounded.
The bell rang again and a voice called out at the same time. “Gemma? You in there? Girl, I ain’t seen you in days. You okay? Gemma!”
Abe! I clutched my chest and tried to cram my thundering heart back inside. I didn’t know what to do. Should I pretend I wasn’t home?
I opened my mouth to answer and the nanomites went nuts. Apparently the mites were voting for silence.
Over the riot in my head I heard Abe add, “Gemma? Your car’s been settin’ in the drive for days. That ain’t like you. You need to answer me now, hear? Or I’ll get the police to come do one of those wellness checks on you.”
I walked up to the door and made a horrible coughing sound. It wasn’t as hard to fake as you might think, because the mites had flooded my throat until I gagged.
“I’m just sick, Abe,” I croaked. “I’ve, uh, caught a bad bug.”
And the puns just keep coming. Unbelievable!
I smacked myself on the forehead, but at least the mites had stopped trying to choke me. They just wouldn’t shut up about it and were warning me in their inimitable way to keep quiet.
Well, if their Prime Directive was “Hide Gemma,” they were doing their job, but they gibbered so loud I couldn’t hear myself think!
“Nano! Silence!” I choked.
Abe knocked again. “Gemma? Someone in there with you?”
Cough. “No.”
“Thought I heard you talking to someone. You sure you’re okay?”
Cough. Hack. “I think I’ll be fine in a few days. Just need to rest.”
“Well, do you need anything? And I found this cross out on the walk. It yours?”
I coughed (badly) a few more times. “Um, yeah, it is. Guess I dropped it.”
“Well, open up so’s I can give it to you.”
(Panic!) “Oh, no, Abe,” cough, cough, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I, um, don’t want you to catch what I have.” (That was true.) “Maybe just put it under the mat, okay? I’ll, um, get it later.”
I heard some shuffling outside the door and the thump of the mat as Abe dropped it. “All right, Gemma. But I think you need some of your Aunt Lu’s chicken soup.”
My throat closed up for reals when Abe said that. I didn’t have to pretend when I croaked, “It could fix anything, couldn’t it?”
“Yup, it could at that,” he whispered. I almost didn’t hear him.
“Thank you for coming to check on me, Abe,” I meant it.
“You call me if you need something, you hear?”
But I did need something—and it was something he could get for me. “Abe? I could use a good book.”
He guffawed. “Thought you had all them Kindle books on that electronic gizmo.”
Think quick! I coughed to give myself a moment.
“I, um, was hankering for an old book, something I read a long time ago. I don’t think it’s available on Kindle. That Memoirs of an Invisible Man?”
“That old thing? Only halfway good. Movie not much better. You sure you want it?”
“Yes, please.” Cough.
“I’ll fetch it for you—and I don’t need it back.”
He shuffled off the porch and I peeked through the curtains to watch him. Darned if Emilio wasn’t right there on the sidewalk again!
“Kid, you are standing on my last nerve,” I scowled through clenched teeth.
He had noticed the curtain move and was all eyes and steely watchfulness. Abe nodded to him as he passed. Emilio was still waiting, watching, when Abe came back.
“You need something, young man?” Abe inquired.
“Nah. Just wondering . . .” Emilio’s response trailed off.
“Gemma’s got herself a bad cold. I’m bringing her this book.”
Abe stood there, waiting for Emilio to move on, until the kid shrugged his shoulders and turned toward his uncle’s house. I watched their short exchange. As Emilio marched away, I watched him glance over his shoulder, his black brows drawn down over wary dark eyes.
I wasn’t fooling him a bit.
Ch
apter 18
As big a pain in my backside as Emilio was, I was touched by the kid’s gift. I strung the cross on a chain and hung it around my neck, then spent the evening reading the first chapters of Memoirs of an Invisible Man.
Just to recap, for those who may not be familiar with this novel, the book’s main character is Nick Halloway. Nick was unfortunate enough to be inside a building that housed a research laboratory when an explosion (an experiment gone awry) occurred. The explosion didn’t demolish the building, however. Instead, the experiment-gone-wrong turned Nick, the building, everything in the building, and the entire area around the explosion, right down into the ground, invisible.
I was drawn to the fictional account because the author had been so inventive in his description of how Nick survived as an invisible man—how he got around, how he kept his condition secret (more or less), how he provided for himself, and how he eluded capture. Nick’s emotional state during his adjustment sounded a lot like mine, and I was able to apply several of the practical aspects of Nick’s survival to my own situation, although our conditions and problems were somewhat different.
How were they different? Well, Nick had to deal with the problem of clothing. Only things that had been affected by the explosion were unseen, so the suit he’d been wearing when the event occurred was invisible; however, anything else he put on (or in his pockets) was not invisible! This limited him to only one set of clothes, which presented another whole set of problems—like the time when he undressed, set his clothes down somewhere, and couldn’t find them again.
Nick also had an issue with eating: Everything he ate was visible. I laughed over his account of watching himself in a mirror as he chewed and swallowed food and then observed and timed his digestive process until the food disappeared.
Observed his digestive process. Ick.
Nick and I actually were in quite different circumstances: He truly was invisible; I was “only” optically invisible. Those differences didn’t mean my life was any less strange or difficult, in the practical sense, but my form of invisibility had certain, rather huge advantages.
The most significant advantage was how the mites covered any clothing I donned. It was as though they “guarded my perimeter” by hiding whatever fell within that perimeter—including my digestion.
Stealthy Steps Page 23
