Invisible Men

Entropy: The degradation of matter and energy to an ultimate state of inert uniformity; a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder.  

 

Or at least the book under Professor Lumine’s fingertips defined the word as such.  He ran his hand over the small bumps which seemed to dance under his fingers, a unique sensation, very unlike the moist stone which had surrounded him his whole life.  Each time he read this book, a dictionary of a forgone era, he always felt awe for how much the world had changed.  A myriad of words which had changed, and others which were lost.

 

Entropy was one of the prior; now meaning something very different, or more precisely, it was an intimate word, far more personal than the distant and indifferent definition listed in the book.  Imagine how different 'Murder ' sounds to those who are under the bloody hatchet?  It was almost as though the man who had written the book never considered what it would feel like to be held captive under the pervasive decay of this single word.  Entropy meant so much more now, it was an unavoidable death which delighted in letting its victims fully realize their own futility, the end of all things--the end of any legacy which might give them hope.  Everything was going to dwindle away, everything which sustained life for the fifty-six people who lived in the community--a number which likewise dwindled.

 

As for the words which had died--succumbing to the entropy of a changing, now dying, world--their last remaining vestige remained in and upon these slowly rotting pages.  But even recorded through the bumps which adorned each page, the meanings of so many words had faded: Light, Sun, Color, Sight, Warmth, Dry, Sky, Day, Night… the list seemed without end.  To be dry was to be “devoid of moisture.”  This world was always moist, the walls always slick.  As such, while Professor Lumine could imagine the concept, he’d never experienced what it was like to 'be dry ', so it remained a mere abstract idea.

 

Other words though couldn’t even be abstractly imagined.  Light… that was a confusing word.  It was the opposite of the dark, but the world was dark and always had been.  It was as difficult to imagine as the lives of those who had come before him, before the holocaust had poisoned the world.  Once people had lived a hundred years, something which was also impossible to measure or understand.  No one knew how many years had passed or how old they were.  But Professor Lumine was certain that no one lived to be a hundred, no one died of the old-age which was mentioned in this library.  

 

The world was poisoned now, and each person would inevitably waste away under that pervasive blight.  He himself felt death creeping up on him, a pain which settled deep in his chest.  With a violent cough, he felt that all too familiar moisture trickle down the sides of his mouth.  He didn’t have much time; it would just get worse until he was unable to complete his research--a research which was his family’s heritage.  He was the last of a once prestigious line, which had now succumbed to the entropy.  His time was running out, and there was no one to continue his work when he was gone.  His laboratory and this library of mostly empty books would remain forever alone, until they too... flickered out.

 

With a sigh of resignation, he traced his fingers across the ancient medallion which hung around his neck, the last remaining sign of his heritage--other than this trove of incomplete research that is.  It was not the familiar bumps which he was accustomed to, but rather the old script which was lost with the light.  Thousands of empty books, no ridges or bumps across their smooth pages were a testament to that lost era.  The medallion had a circle with ridges bursting from its every side, the family creed “Lumen ex Noctibus” running along the edges.  To this day, Professor Lumine had no idea what the medallion meant, only that he had been named after this family creed.  And so, whenever he awoke from fitful sleep, he would always thumb through this book, trying to find a hint… a hint of what the creed meant--what his legacy was.

 

But whatever secret his medallion or the book before him held, he had yet to find it.  So as he did every cycle, Professor Lumine sighed deeply, a mix of frustration and whimsical sadness.  Setting the book aside, he moved on to his research--the mystery of invisibility.  It was an enigma which had evaded his family for generations, long before the sundering of the world.  Professor Lumine always felt conflicted at first, as though he knew that there was nothing special about him; if so many of his forefathers couldn’t solve the secrets of invisibility, it seemed unlikely he ever would.  But he was the last of his breed, no other of the fifty-six was able to read these bumps or to carry on the legacy--he was alone.  So the beginning of the cycle would start with an odd mix of despair and desperation kept in check, which would in time fade to Professor Lumine’s innate fascination with the unknown.  There was a joy in this lab, which he knew he’d never find elsewhere; especially in the dying halls outside, where entropy had even consumed hope.

 

Invisibility was a complex idea; an even more complex feat to accomplish.  The dictionary described it as being 

 

Invisible: Inaccessible from view, and being unable to be seen.

 

Of course this description had not made much sense, so he had done some cross referencing

 

Seen: To be notice or revealed by use of the eyes.

 

  Professor Lumine understood what eyes were, he could touch them, they would quiver, but he had never heard of someone using the eyes for anything. How did a person notice something with their eyes?  Invisibility had to be some form of extrasensory perception, of this he was certain.  So he would spend the cycle trying to make sense of the idea--how a person could see--if he understood this, then he could understand how a person became invisible.

 

Of course the fifty-five others did not understand his work, or its importance.  The well-spoken of the lot would insist that the idea of invisibility was irrelevant in this world.  Others would claim that the abstract ideas were just that, abstract… absurd even; that with such hard lives, they had no need for dreams and dreamers which produced nothing.  Or at least this is how they would have said it if they could speak as eloquently as the Professor.  As the only professor, he knew they were wrong; while it was not obvious now, once he had solved the mysteries of invisibility, their lives would all be changed in a way that none could imagine.  The more abstract the idea, the more life-changing its understanding; a pity that those fifty-five he sought to help would never understand.

 

The laboratory was piled up with failed experiments, just like the library was filled with empty books, only a few showed any promise; the rest were left to gather dust.  Professor Lumine debated which of the experiments he should work on this cycle; after all, he had several waiting for him to complete.  He could try his eye-drop solutions, an idea he had recently; maybe the eyes required something to let you see?  Another option was the gases, another idea of his which involved inhaling the special gases which he had collected from the chthonic depths of the cavern.  Exposure to these gases caused erratic behavior, allowing the inhaler to perceive things which could not be seen.  Or so he had gathered from the incoherent ramblings of resident fifty-seven who had wandered too deep a few weeks prior.  Professor Lumine was determined not to let fifty-seven’s sacrifice go in vain.  Even if it was risky, it was the best lead he had had in many cycles, and his eyes still hurt from the eye-drop experiment; he would do the gas experiment today.

 

“I’m certain I placed the vials of gas around here somewhere” he mused, running his hands through his patched hair, which was starting to fall out like all who were tainted with the toxins.  It was a habit of his, one which he indulged when he was trying to think.  He offhandedly wondered what he would do when the last of his hair had fallen out.  Fumbling about he reached for where he had last left the vials a few days prior.  But before his fingers had grasped the thin tube, at the moment he could almost feel its presence, a sharp jolt burst from his fingers.

 

As if all existence was shaken from its foundation, the air rippled around him.  His eyes exploded in a burning sear far worse than the eye-drops, and as he felt his skin crackle a wave of pain erupted across his whole body.  Quivering from what he couldn’t begin to understand; Professor Lumine stumbled back from the force and fell to the ground.  Moisture trickled from the shards of glass which had pierced him like a thousand needles.  He lay there for what seemed a whole cycle, screaming in an agony which defied his understanding.

 

It was but a matter of time before his reverberating screams drew the attention of the other fifty-five.  Hesitantly entering Professor Lumine’s workshop, they called out with worry in their voices, concern for the strange man and his cries for help, “Are you alright?  What happened?”

 

Professor Lumine lay there for several moments, perplexed, “What had happened?”  His skin felt strange, as if all the moisture had been stripped of it, so this was what dry was like?  He ran his fingers across the small bumps which were forming across his skin, trying to not wince at the sensation.  The bumps were not unlike those within the dictionary. But unlike the dictionary, they seemed to convey a message far deeper and more enigmatic than those words had ever held.

 

Despite the pain across his face and his, a hand which would no longer move as he desired, the worst pain of all was his eyes!  It felt as though the whole world had tried to force itself within him; never had he imagined such a thing.  Thinking back, he realized that he had felt something so pure and powerful that words failed to describe it, not just with his flesh.  No, he had sensed it with those eyes, and with understanding sinking in just like that burning world, he understood at last--he had seen.  For once in Professor Lumine’s life, he had finally seen that light.  It was something which words seemed unable to express, and his mind unable to address. 

 

The revelation was so incredible that he could only ramble out an awe-filled mumble, “I’m alright.”  All those words came stumbling into his mind, words he had never understood.  While he couldn’t explain them, he now understood them on some primal level.   Overwhelming Light… burning like a thousand Sun… exploding Color filling his Sight… with Warmth…  And while he did not know what Sky, Day, or Night meant, it was as if an ancestral memory had been unlocked.  He finally understood that there was more to this world… something terrifying, something exciting, and something which, if only for a moment, contained more beauty than he had ever felt; that was the power of light.  It was true what he had told himself, the more abstract, the greater the understanding.

 

Even through all the pain, Professor Lumine stood with a revelation so great that it seemed it could never be contained.  Seizing his bags, he recklessly filled them with as many vials as he could manage.  And leaving his lab for the depths below, he, for the first time in his life, could feel the curious and confused eyes of those who had never seen… looking at HIM!  Yet despite all of this they couldn’t see, just as he once had; so this is what it was like to be invisible!  With a gleeful laugh, the Professor forgot the burns from the heat, the pain from the light, the confusion of color; he understood at last how wonderful Sight was.  Ruffling the remainder of hair on the back of his head which had not been scorched, he declared to the fifty-six who had finally assembled, “Come! I have understood the wonders of Invisibility.  It will change everything!”  And followed by those confused eyes which could not see, Professor Lumine led his entourage to the depths.

 

To learn,

What it means to be invisible

 

Reviews

[Kuandio]

Hi, I got a bit of a fever but am doing reviews anyways.
A pretty intriguing and unique start, having a blind man read the first words with braille

Nice line - "Imagine how much different 'Murder" sounds to those who are under the bloody hatchet?"

Didn't ever fully understand this - "the world was always moist, the walls always slick"

Nice line - "before the holocaust had poisoned the world"

After all the talk of entropy, the inclusion of invisibility as the aim of his research helped raise my interest which had begun to falter a bit by that point

Another nice line, one with grim humor that stood out within the prevailing gloom - "But unlike the dictionary, they seemed to convey a message far deeper and more enigmatic than those had ever held"

I could kind of see it coming from the moment of the burning-jolt-explosion thing, that he was going to get his eyesight back

Nice line - "it was as if an ancestral memory had been unlocked"

When I first started reading, with all those big paragraphs of unbroken first person narrative about entropy, I was getting the feeling this was becoming a little bit of a depressive, existentialist rant, and the whole theme was starting to lose its power, but there was just enough tension to keep it going until it started to get interesting again. The ending was nice, for it came full circle, leaving us with a little bit of a disturbing cliffhanger

Overall, not quite as interesting as the story about the forgotten temple, but much better written than that or the story about the Groban.

Good job

[Delmar Cooper]

I have read several of your posts now and I will, if spared, comment on others later. But, I wanted to say something about this particular piece at this particular time. As much as I enjoyed the story and the way you wrote it I enjoyed and admired the task you set for yourself even more. This is the essence of the "what if" question. I have several times thought about how the concept of color could be explained to the blind. The idea of invisibility among a population of the never sighted was a master stroke. The positing of this question gave the writer huge scope to answer a magnificant challenge.

Thanks for posting this remarkable work.
Cooper

[CountNicholasAlti]

I made the mistake of attempting to guess what this story would consist of, and as always with your work, I was sorely mistaken. What a play! This is so unfamiliar that it almost seems satirical to humanity in itself and how we go about our perceptions. The language that you use for the professor is outstanding. You paint of his omnipotent knowledge, yet at the revelation of sight he can not compose the proper words to even explain his thoughts. "He had finally "See" that "Light"" - that is a bold and brilliant move. And this is so mysterious, with lines like "this library of mostly empty books" you even made it haunting.
If I had to give you one complaint, the use of ellipses does make it more archaic - which is a compliment to this piece, but I feel it is used just a pinch excessively.
Well done!

[Jennie Baron]

A couple of things that I even hesitate to mention because you are so sharp that you'd see them yourself eventually on proofing. At one point you say "had see" when it should be "had seen" and there is a possessive "eye's" that is really plural "eyes." Also, for the sake of symmetrical sentence structure and a better flow of words, I would probably make "far deeper and enigmatic," "far deeper and more enigmatic."

The premise is thought-provoking. I love that your stories make me think "outside the box" and beyond the romantic types of things I usually cover. There's only so much creative gold to mine there. I stand in awe of an imagination that can produce this concept and I can't think of a thing to change about the way you present it.

[Dai Hanshou]

Best. Work. Ever. Esoteric piece!

[Miss Marlette]

You have taken a concept and created a very interesting story from it.

[Hack1000]

I dig this story! I was with it from the start, I too thought he was blind but then it was revealed (in timely manner) that he was in the dark. Your writing is rich and full. My only complaint is that there's not another chapter to read! This is a winner!