That clinched it. I was wearing a see-through sweatshirt, and the invisible lettuce sealed it for me. I had to confirm the truth of my theory. I knew I was right, but I needed confirmation. I got up and hobbled to the bathroom where my jeans were draped over the counter. I reached into the back pocket and removed my wallet. I opened it. Inside were several very wet, very invisible bills. I couldn't see green.
My mind buzzed with this new information. I didn't so much question why it was happening, or what the cause of my new ability was, but it was definitely that: an ability. Maybe I didn't understand it, but I was sure this was something I could use. I wanted to test it, test myself. I wanted to find my limits. I hopped on the internet. Everything from about 500 – 550 nanometers was totally transparent. It was bizarre. Absolutely bizarre. Rationally, if I just couldn't process green light, you'd think I would've been color blind. You'd think I would have still been able to see the reds and blues. Or at least, I would've been able to detect green objects with the rod cells in my eyes. There was no reason I shouldn't have been able to sense light and dark. Objectively, green things were still reflecting and absorbing light. They hadn't up and decided to break the laws of physics starting that morning. But my vision was not operating the way logic would dictate. I was looking straight through green objects like they weren't even there. Whatever was happening was beyond any kind of rational explanation.
Early afternoon had turned into early evening. Instead of weakening or tapering off, the storm had settled in to stay. Rain was pouring from the sky and thunder was rolling. The darkness and the clouds outside seemed to envelope the building. I wouldn't be going anywhere, certainly not on foot. I couldn't drive for obvious reasons. Still, my discovery energized me. I wanted to do something! At the very least, I had to celebrate. I wasn't sure what my newfound ability was good for, but it had to be good for something! This was practically x-ray vision! Granted, I could only see through things that were green, but there's green everywhere! I poured myself a glass of bourbon and began to think about the possibilities.
I immediately determined I couldn't tell anyone. Not only would they call me crazy, but then I'd have to prove what I could do. Obviously that wouldn't be a problem, but what would happen once they had proof I was telling the truth? It would spread. Word would spread. People would find out about me. Everyone would find out about me. That might be kind of fun, but then I'd never be able to use my ability to my advantage. There would be tests and questions. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. I'd be someone important! Maybe the government would take an interest. That could be a bad thing, a very bad thing. What if they locked me away somewhere? My glass was empty. I poured another three fingers.
What if there were other people like me? There had to be other people like me. I couldn't be the first individual to develop this type of ability. I couldn't be one of a kind. Why hadn't I ever heard of anyone like me? That didn't bode well. It was ominous. There were no pleasant explanations to be found. If you had asked me a day earlier – even several hours earlier – I would've told you I didn't believe the government was capable of maintaining a conspiracy. But if there were people like me out there and no one knew, that had to be the case. Someone, some government organization, or worse, some shadowy organization outside government jurisdiction had to be keeping a lid on things.
By the time I reached the bottom of my third glass of bourbon, I'd put those fears to rest. More accurately, I'd decided I was being paranoid and went back to planning hijinks and escapades. My ideas were getting progressively more grandiose. I was having trouble following a plan from start to finish, but I was pretty sure I could rob a bank somehow. I toasted to my inevitable riches. I was practically a multimillioinaire already. I could afford to get drunk midweek.
When I woke up the next morning, my head felt like it was in a vice. Sunshine was streaming in through the blinds. Apparently I'd passed out with all the lights on, too. The little green message indicator on my phone was blinking. Oh boy. I picked it up and read my last outgoing message, sent to the only girl I'd wanted to share my victory with. Shit, she had responded.
“I can't see green!”
“Stop texting me.”
Yeah, I guess I had that coming. I felt sick and slightly more miserable. Not just from the alcohol. At least I hadn't called her. I didn't think I had, anyway. That ship had sailed months ago, but the renewed rejection still stung.
I stumbled across the room and switched the lights off. I grabbed the towel off the back of the door on my way into the bathroom and emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet, which made me feel a tiny bit better. I hung up the towel, stripped off my sweatshirt and let the heat of the shower breathe some life back into me. The steam made me feel like a new man, so it was only ten more minutes before I stepped out of the shower, dried myself off, and went to brush my teeth. My heart sank. I hadn't even noticed. Green toothpaste was smeared all over the counter.
LOTUS EATERS
Airports, casinos, and hospitals have a lot in common. You may not be aware of it, but alongside their locations in the real world, airports, casinos, and hospitals exist in a parallel dimension where time operates differently. Of course, that's not the only thing they have in common. There's more. They each have their own specialized equipment that normal people only ever see in airports, casinos, and hospitals. Each houses its own food service. They all have huge parking lots and buildings. They're all highly expensive, or can be if you're unfortunate. But those are some of the minor similarities. The more important things they have in common are...well, like the way each place sees you as a set of numbers. The seat and flight numbers on your boarding pass, the money in your wallet, your vital statistics. And while you may only be numbers to them, airports, casinos, and hospitals are places of hope, joy, sadness, and depression for the people who walk through their doors.
Now what makes all this interesting is that while they exist in this parallel dimension, this bubble, these comparisons allow you to see just how deeply they float in the aether compared to one another. For example, you might lose a few hours in an airport terminal, but an entire day or night can disappear in a casino. Hospitals can steal weeks. Months. Years. The metal detectors, moving sidewalks, and baggage carousel might offer some relief or frustration, but slot machines and video poker can produce wealth and poverty side by side. A defibrillator is a life and death piece of equipment, as are a dozen others in the hospital. Airports, casinos, and hospitals have a lot in common, but for me there's no competition. I hate hospitals the most.
It's not just the antiseptic covering up the smell of sickness – worse than the recycled air on a long flight, by the way. It's not even the way the overworked, underpaid nurses are too burnt out to acknowledge when family members are in the room. Or, for that matter, that you almost never see an actual doctor and that in the rare moments you do, they have too many patients to remember the medical history of the person in front of them. It's all of those things. It's the crippling cost. And the hospital food. And the anxiety and all the other things I can't even put into words.
There I was in long term care. Long term care because you're only allowed to stay in the ICU a certain number of days, because you're taking a bed from someone else who needs it more. Long term care, the land of feeding tubes and catheters, bed sores and fog. Long term care, where you spend your days watching for tiny changes, asking questions, where the only answers you get are vague and noncommittal. Long term care, where you can only guess at what might be a result of drowsiness, fatigue, low blood sugar, medication, or worst of all, brain damage. There I was at bedside, watching the IV drip, feeling guilty for thinking about the parts of my life I was neglecting. Thinking about the people I knew who didn't know my dad, or that he was sick. Going about their lives because everything was fine for them. Dealing with age-appropriate problems like homework and hangovers. I was a little bitter, but I knew I was where I needed to be.
A man walked into the room like he'd b
een there before. I heard him coming right away, but he didn't notice me because of the privacy curtain. I didn't recognize him, and he wasn't in any kind of uniform. He was past the foot of the bed before he turned and saw me. He was scanning the room for someone, and I was the only waking person he found. The cautious smile froze on his face and he ducked his head like he was caught red-handed, guilty. I raised my eyebrows at him. Gotcha. “Sorry!” he said, and left noticeably faster than he'd come in. I turned back to my dad's slack features. Sleeping, maybe. It was hard to tell. I took his hand in mine, but there wasn't any response in his grip or his expression.
Time crawled by. Or maybe it flew. I sat quietly, because that's what you do in long term care. No one else came or went. Dad didn't move. I felt a little bit sad. He didn't look as tall, laying in the bed like that. Every once in a while I heard the motors in the bed whir, shifting his weight to prevent bed sores. He had still gotten some anyway. Sometimes the machines beeped. The hospital noises made me jumpy when I'd first started visiting, but I'd gotten used to them over time. I learned what a few of the regular alerts signaled and what some of the numbers on the displays meant, but most of it just translated into what I already knew: that things were okay. Not great. About the same.
I watched the IV drip. It almost formed a steady rhythm, but not quite. I studied the system to try to figure out what caused the variation in droplets. Tiny changes in the amount of fluid in the bag, maybe. Different amounts of residual liquid from the previous drop. Chaos theory. Something. I focused in on the drip and began to count each one.
Ten...Eleven...Twelve...
Eighty-seven...Eighty-eight...
My eyes burned and the rest of the room began to get fuzzy.
Four hundred...Four hundred one...
The light filtering in from the window grew dim in contrast to the drip.
Two thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine...Three thousand...
The rest of the room fell away until it was just me, the hospital bed, and the bag of IV fluid. My eyes got dry and tired, but I didn't let up. I don't know how long it lasted. Numbers stopped making sense as I counted. It was like my entire world zoomed in on the drip until everything began to slow down.
The change was subtle at first. I noticed the irregular rhythm starting to break apart. As I watched, each drop of clear liquid came slower than the last, until they seemed to drift down gently from the bag to the line, like snowflakes. One clear bead of liquid after another, each a tiny crystal ball, defying gravity by sinking at an impossibly slow speed. I focused hard on each one, studying the perfect little spheres as they fell, slower and slower, each giving me more time to observe its descent than the last. As I watched, I saw the light bend through their curved surfaces, the world flipped upside down like through a lens. And then, a fraction of an inch above the line, a single globe of liquid halted, came to a stop in mid-air. I didn't move. I didn't breathe. I didn't blink. I felt it before I saw it, through intuition maybe. My eyes burned with focus. At first it was almost imperceptible, but after a moment there was no doubt. Tears welled up in my eyes. The bead of liquid hovering at a standstill in the IV began to rise back toward the bag. Just as the fluid reached the top, just as it made contact, I cracked under the pressure. My eyes blinked of their own volition.
And there I was sitting on the living room floor, wrapping paper crumpled up next to every chair. My mom looked about as happy as I'd ever seen her, and my sister seemed pretty pleased with herself, too. It was my turn. In our house, Christmas was an all-day extravaganza. A few gifts here, a few gifts there. Someone would suggest we open presents and everyone would come back to the living room where we'd take turns, each opening something. So I was up, with a nice big box in front of me. I had no idea what was inside, and there wasn't anything I was specially hoping for that year. I tore into the paper, and it was off in seconds. There, in the box, were two pairs of big, padded, overstuffed boxing gloves.
“THESE ARE AWESOME! THANK YOU!” It's tough to beat an eight year old for sincerity on Christmas. “Anybody want to try them out?” I really wanted to knock my sister around a little bit, but I didn't get any takers.
It wasn't until later that afternoon that my dad picked a glove up and asked, “Ready to go?” I couldn't believe my luck. This was going to be good. I started pulling a pair on. They were surprisingly tight, and I really had to work to get them over my fists. Dad had even more trouble. I think he only got about half of each hand in there, but a few minutes of tugging had him decided. “Alright, put 'em up.”
I took my fighting stance, because every eight year old boy knows that deep down he's an elite fighter. I knew, like all my friends did, that I could beat anyone in a fight if I got mad enough. This was going to be a good one. I was tough. I put up my dukes, ready to rumble. We sized each other up for a minute. My dad tried to hide a smile. It looked like we were both going to get a kick out of this. He wasn't taking me seriously enough, so I threw a flurry of fierce punches. That would teach him! He caught all of them with his guard and gave a little chuckle when I realized that none of my swings had connected. I took half a step away from him, and a quick jab snapped my head back before I knew what was happening. What was that? I shook it off and decided he was going to pay for that one, so I launched a counterattack with another round of mean punches. I didn't land a single one, so I fell back to prepare another offensive. This time I was ready for the jab. I ducked quickly, and the oversized boxing glove skidded across the top of my head. I dove forward and went for his stomach. Success! I got him right in the gut, but he laughed and turned away. Who knew my dad was so strong? I put my fists up the way he did, with one hand in front of my face. I knew what was coming. He waved his left around in a circle, teasing me. I was gonna block this one! He wasn't faking it, either – his left came right for me and I moved a hand to block. Our gloves connected and my own fist popped back into my nose. I flinched away automatically and opened my eyes just in time to see the second punch in his combination an inch from my face. It absolutely rocked me. Even though the big soft gloves didn't hurt, I stumbled. How did my dad know about boxing? When did he learn to fight? Sure, the little taps from the boxing gloves rattled me, but what he really knocked loose was my image of him. I'd had no idea what I was getting myself into by agreeing to this pillow fight of ours.
I opened my eyes again, half my face buried in my pillow. It had been a long day and a longer night. I was tired, dirty, happy, a little bit relieved, and very glad to be in bed. The day had started out simply enough.
“Hey – we're going to go look at that car – just wanted to let you know.”
“Good. Go look at it.”
“Yeah, I won't lay any money down until I check it out.”
“That's a good idea. I don't want some broken down car sitting in the driveway.”
“I'm not going to buy a car without looking at.”
“Alright, drive safe.”
“See you later.”
Truth is, I had found a guy online who was willing to part with a great little convertible for next to nothing. Cheap enough so that even at seventeen, I could buy three with what I had in the bank. Now, I hadn't actually put down any money. I was still free to walk away, but I wanted that car. Yes, it was a junker, and yes, it was easily forty years old, but that was half the fun. I would work on it. Lots of people worked on cars, so why couldn't I? Sure, it would take a lot of time, but I had time. Parts might be expensive, but as cheap as the car itself was, how bad could parts be?
I called a couple friends to help out. One had a four wheel drive with a towing package. We picked up a tow dolly on our way across the state. The convertible was far away. We rigged up the hitch and got the tail lights wired correctly in no time. I paid extra for the full bed dolly because it seemed safer. Once we were all set to tow, we stopped by a gas station to fuel up and grab snacks.
The ride was fantastic. It was a sunny summer afternoon. Blue skies and fluffy white clouds. I rode shotgun
and we rolled down the windows. We joked around and I hung my elbow out the window. The pane startled me by rolling back up on its own. I looked toward my buddy in the driver seat and he started to crack up without looking back at me.
“Dude. Stop rolling up the windows. It's Hot.” Our friend in the back seat was a big guy who made a habit of sweating through his shirts. He over-pronounced the H on “hot”, like he was coughing for a physical examination. I laughed out loud as the windows hummed closed, one by one. “Dude. Cut it out. It's freaking Hot in here.” The two of us in the front seats only laughed in response. I leaned forward and turned on the car's heater. “What the hell are you doing? It's Hot in here!” The driver turned the heater's fan to maximum output.
I lost it. I couldn't stop laughing. In seconds, the car was sweltering. Between the sun beating down on the metal roof of the vehicle and the heater, the car was like an oven on wheels. I was still having difficulty controlling myself, and it was getting to the point where the other two were laughing at my apparent case of the giggles.
“Seriously guys. This is crazy.”
I got my laughter back under wraps and looked at my fellow passengers. Like the other two, beads of sweat were beginning to form on my forehead and back. I made eye contact with each of them and began to chant. “Test-of-wills. Test-of-wills.” My buddy in the driver seat chuckled and added his voice to the chant. “Test-of-wills! Test-of-wills!” The car was becoming hugely uncomfortable.
Telemachus Rising Page 2
