Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (10 page)

I had, for one reason or another, not given much serious thought to the afterlife anytime recently. Probably not since childhood. Random images of winged angels on clouds, demons tending fires, collided in my mind. Abandon all hope! Done! Because all these vulgar images of haloed saints and pearly gates were like shooting stars lighting up momentarily against an infinite black universe of despair. Despair at a life not so well lived, including doing those things which I ought not to have done. And not those which I ought to have done. A shallow life, filled with wasted afternoons and evenings. And days, weeks, and years. There was a sort of celestial judge, I recalled, consigning souls to their final abodes. If there were two choices, I reasoned dimly, the outlook was poor. The headache, nausea, and plain terror I felt were inconsistent with the basic idea of paradise. You couldn’t have headaches in heaven. The Catholics, it seemed to me, had some other possibility — Purgatory, or Limbo. But for some reason I pictured that as a vast version of one of those rooms filled with sleeping babies in maternity wards.

But I could not have reached any sort of final destination. I was still at MicroMagnetics. The former site of MicroMagnetics. It flitted through my mind that MicroMagnetics, Inc., no longer had any financial prospects worth calculating. I was right here where my life had been brought to an end. It must be, I reasoned, that I was whatever it is that people call a ghost. I knew even less about ghosts than about heaven and hell. An image of the Flying Dutchman floating off the Jersey coast formed and dissolved in my mind. Ruddigore. As far as I can remember there has never been a time, even in my earliest childhood, when I believed in ghosts. I could never abide people who believed, or pretended to believe, in ghosts. I have never understood the appeal of ghost stories. In fact, I have never understood the point of ghosts. Usually they seem to be doomed to wander the earth restlessly for ages — which, when you stop to think about it, is exactly the existence that most people choose for themselves insofar as longevity and wealth permit. Or else they are condemned to remain for centuries at the scene of some terrible event in their own lives. The latter fate seemed to fit my own immediate situation quite well, actually. Although to haunt New Jersey through the ages seemed an odd doom. Still, it was an improvement over the possibilities that had been running through my mind moments before. An extraordinary improvement. A world of difference.

My mood picked up a bit. My heart was still whirring like a wind-up toy and I was still trembling, but I felt as if I had struggled to the surface of the uncontrollable terror in which I had been drowning. The ghost hypothesis gave me some frame of reference, however distasteful. If I had to be an entity in which I had not previously believed, “angel” would have been more satisfactory. “Ghost” lacked theological dignity. But the status of angel was clearly beyond hope now. And, in any case, the whole question was surely far too complex to be described with words like “angel” and “ghost,” which represented only the crude notions of uncomprehending mortals. Apparently I would have time to consider these sublime issues. There was even the possibility — I hardly dared formulate it in my mind — of some sort of immortality in my present form. Or at least of some existence of a duration incomparably greater than I could have expected in my previous form.

Come to think of it, how
would
I seek answers to these questions? Looking around me, the world seemed as opaque as ever, its ultimate meaning, if any, obscured by the trees and sky and other random things blocking my view — and by my own shifting moods and fragmentary thoughts. How would I learn of the conditions and responsibilities of my new existence? Would I be coming into contact with other immaterial beings? Also, how would I slake my awful thirst? With a pang of horror I thought that the thirst might be the beginning of some eternal punishment — for overindulgence, no doubt. I should try to find some water and see if I could drink. Could I move about? How? And if I could float in midair forty feet above the bottom of this crater, why not a hundred feet or ten feet?

My mood plummeted again. I was kneeling on a carpeted floor, and the rules for moving about on it were exactly the same as they had always been. Putting this hypothesis to the test, I leaned forward and explored the floor around me with my hands. Without any particular destination, I began to inch forward on all fours. Nothing to look at but the dizzying sight of the crater surface far below. I stopped and, bracing myself with my hands, carefully, slowly, raised myself to a standing position. I stood in place for several seconds, keeping my gaze fixed on the surface of the crater, since there was nothing closer to look at, trying to get my balance but feeling the whole time as if I were about to pitch over in one direction or another. Sickening. Then, because there was nothing else to do, I slid my feet forward over the carpet in one, two, three, four tiny, cautious, shuffling steps, groping in front of myself with extended arms. The feeling was indescribably eerie. I was moving my body just as always: I could feel myself shuffling across the floor. But I could not see anything happening. I could not see anything at all but the edge of the crater yards away. My left hand encountered a desk. I slid my hands along the edges to get a sense of exactly where it was. I ran my fingers over its surface: it was covered with papers and books, all perfectly intact but utterly invisible. I was in Wachs’s office. Everything was intact; everything was exactly as before: the carpet, the desk, me. The only difference was that everything was absolutely invisible.

Now, people may become ghosts, or angels. They may go to an eternal reward. They may, for all I know, play harps and float above the clouds arrayed in radiant vestments. On that morning, in that incomprehensible and terrifying situation, I entertained all sorts of extravagant and unlikely ideas. But even then I knew there could not be an afterlife for desks or broadloom. No theological purpose, however mysterious, would be served. Some altogether extraordinary but drably logical catastrophe had transformed me and my immediate surroundings, leaving us absolutely invisible but otherwise unimproved.

However fantastic this conclusion might seem in the abstract, I saw at once that it was the least fantastic explanation of my situation that fit all the facts. After all the ridiculous and terrifying things I had been imagining, it was a relief to have solved the problem and to have arrived at what by comparison seemed like a straightforward, common-sense understanding of what had happened. Beyond that, I was not sure whether I should feel joy or despair — or what I should do next. I was not sure of very much at all. I was trembling. I had to stop and think this out.

Keeping my left hand on the desk, I carefully inched my way around it, located the chair with my right hand, and sat down. It was a leather swivel chair, and from it I could survey my entire surroundings — insofar as they were visible. I had to fight down the panic and make myself take a long, careful, rational look all around. The sun was up well over the horizon now. It was a beautiful, bright, cloudless morning, and I could see everything with extraordinary clarity. Even beyond the range of the explosion — it hadn’t been an explosion, really — something seemed quite different. For one thing my vision seemed subtly altered, sharper than… How long had I been lying here unconscious? Probably since the morning before. Perhaps twenty hours. Look at everything and think it through.

The main thing was that what I had perceived as a crater was not a crater at all: it was evidently a spherical area in which everything had been rendered invisible but remained perfectly solid. The sphere included all of the MicroMagnetics building together with a good deal of shrubbery, lawn, and earth around it. In fact, as I and others would learn several hours later, this was not quite correct. The sphere had a hollow core: at its center, where Wachs’s equipment had stood, everything within a radius of fifteen feet had been absolutely obliterated. But then, sitting trembling at Wachs’s desk, I still assumed that everything within the sphere had suffered the same fate as I and the desk and the chair — that is, it was exactly as before, but unseeable.

Unseeable by me, at least. I considered the possibility that the only change had been to my vision, so that I could not see objects near myself, but everyone else would be able to see them perfectly. No, that seemed the least logical of all the improbable explanations I could contrive. You could not alter someone’s vision in such a way that he could see
through
other objects. Furthermore, the boundary of the sphere within which everything was invisible to me remained fixed no matter how I moved. No, it must be the objects that were altered, not my vision. Or perhaps the objects and my vision both. It was hard to think straight about these possibilities, but that seemed like a logically consistent alternative: an unaffected human being might be able to see everything; only I, or another altered person in the sphere, would be unable to see the altered matter.

Could there be another human being here?

My mind filled again with the vision of Wachs and Carillon bursting into flame. I knew with horrible certainty that neither of them had survived in any form. Looking out ahead of me I judged that they had been standing somewhere on what was now the charred perimeter encircling the apparent crater rim. In that band there was nothing but ash and cinder, not even the form of a tree; everything had been incinerated. All the other people had been standing farther out, where everything was untouched and exactly as before. Not quite as before: there was something different. Perhaps the fence in the background — I didn’t remember a fence. But someone else might have remained in the building, like me. Like that damned cat. If only that cat would stop howling, I might be able to think more clearly. No, there would not be anyone else left in the building. They had been quite thorough about clearing everyone out. Why, I began to ask myself, had I insisted on remaining? I alone. Never mind. No point in going over these things.

I experimented with the objects on the desk before me. I flipped through the pages of a book. I rapped a pen sharply on the desk top and listened to the clear tapping sound. I found a stapler and stapled together some papers. It all worked perfectly. I cannot tell you how uncanny it felt touching, holding, manipulating those objects without being able to see them, or myself, or anything else within twenty feet. The sounds and tactile sensations floated in front of me somewhere in thin air as if in another dimension. I didn’t know where to focus my eyes; I felt again a mounting nausea. I wished I could close my eyes.

My head ached excruciatingly. My entire body ached. With another dreadful shock of understanding, I realized that I must, almost certainly, be dying. God, I hoped that when they rescued me, they could see me somehow. How otherwise would they be able to give me medical help? I must be dying. I hoped not. Even in this horrible form I hoped that I could survive somehow. I had no idea what might have happened to my body. Leaning forward in the chair, and beginning with my feet, I ran my hands methodically over my entire body, trying to detect any tangible injury. Nothing, thank God, although how could you feel the effects of radiation with your hands? Even my clothing seemed to be absolutely intact. I loosened my necktie. As I ran my hands across my belly I realized that my bladder was painfully full and that it had been making me horribly uncomfortable for some time. I had to urinate at once. Twenty hours. Thirsty too. Weren’t headache, dizziness, and nausea symptoms of radiation poisoning? Probably I had only a few hours. Stop, and think through all the symptoms. But the most urgent thing was that I urinate.

Such is the power of civilization that it never occurred to me that I could do anything other than use the toilet. I knew there was one only a few yards away, but I had to figure out just where it was and then get myself there. I tried to reconstruct in my mind an image of the building from what I could remember of the day before. In the walls in front of me and to my left — I turned my head although there was nothing to see — were windows looking out over the lawn. Along the wall behind me were bookshelves, a blackboard, and the door into the corridor which ran the length of the building. In the wall to my right were two doors: one leading into the reception room and the other, near the rear corner, opening into the bathroom.

It was there that I would have to make my way now. Even if I was dying rapidly, I had to relieve my bladder one last time. Then I could go for help, for whatever that might be worth. With both hands resting on the desk top for balance, I carefully raised myself to my feet and saw to my complete astonishment that I was not alone after all.

Standing upright and looking back toward the other end of the building, my line of vision now extended over the screen of shrubbery and across the parking lot to a large field, which had been incongruously bisected by a chain link fence at least ten feet high with strands of barbed wire coiled along its top. I was certain it had not been there the day before. Protruding above the bushes I could see the roofs of two large vans and a sedan which had been left in the parking lot, but everything else had apparently been cleared away, and the entire area on my side of the fence was deserted and motionless. However, the far side of the fence swarmed with people. At that distance, and with my field of vision interrupted by trees, shrubs, and the fencing, it was difficult to make out exactly what was going on, but I could see that the people were wearing military or police uniforms and that the uniforms were not all the same. There was every imaginable sort of vehicle: jeeps, trucks, tractors, vans, sedans, all in drab, solid colors — grey, white, or khaki — which proclaimed them as government property. I could see people erecting temporary buildings, standing in line to use portable toilets, assembling what looked like radio equipment, walking about with clipboards, but I had no sense of what the purpose of all this activity might be.

They had for some reason built an entirely new access road from the field directly to the far side of the parking lot. At the point where the road intersected the fence, there was a large gate, also made of chain link. As I watched, men were hanging opaque green fabric over the inside of the fence, so that my view of the field full of people and equipment was rapidly being closed off. I turned slowly in place and with a vague apprehension saw that the entire area around me — comprising several acres and including the lawn, the parking lot, and part of the adjoining fields-was encircled with the same metal fencing shrouded with fabric.