Have Invisibility, Will Travel

Jake sighed as he cleaned the test-tubes. He was a freshman, and realized that he needed to pay his dues to get the really choice assignments in the lab, but cleaning the results of grad students experiments was still really nasty. Although, the job wasn't without its perks.

One of the perks was that he was always the last one in the lab in the evenings - like many first semester freshmen, he had no social life during the week - so he could work on his own experiments. He had made several things that would lead to his arrest and expulsion if anyone found out about them, but Jake was always careful.

The biggest perk, however, was the chance to see Adrienne Reynolds every day. Adrienne was a graduate student, working on her masters, and she was the most stunningly beautiful woman that Jake had ever seen. She stood about five foot six, had long blonde hair, which Jake secretly thought came from a box, and a fabulous body. Jake knew nothing about dimensions or measurements, but Adrienne's breasts straining against the buttons of one of her blouses while she bent over an experiment, made all of the males in the room take notice.

Jake had heard rumors that she had been very serious with a boy during her sophomore year of college, but that there had been a terrible break-up. Since then, she hadn't dated anyone, despite the offers she received.

As Jake finished rinsing the last of the test-tubes, a timer went off toward the back of the lab. His latest experiment was finished. It was a that would alter the eye's perception, creating the illusion of x-ray vision. If he had done everything right, that was. His experiments were often failures.

He put a couple drops of his latest concoction onto his tongue. As he waited to see what effect it would have, he bottled the rest of the liquid and stored it in his backpack.

Within a few minutes, something definitely started happening with his vision as the room grew much brighter. A few seconds after that, he realized that he could see even with his eyes closed. He brought his hand up in front of his face, expecting to see his bones, but realized that he could look right through it as if it weren't there. The sleeve of his shirt was plainly visible, however.

"What the hell?" Jake asked himself. He looked into one of the reflective surfaces of a chemical storage cabinet. His clothes seemed to hang in the air, holding his form, but his body was invisible. Jake looked at his watch, wanting to time how long the 's effects would last. He quickly snapped a polaroid of himself, as well, using one of the cameras that had been left behind by someone else. He had to know if the was preventing him from seeing any people at all, or if he was somehow invisible.

When the picture developed, Jake's jaw dropped open. He had managed to turn himself completely invisible.

"Ho-lee-Shit!" He muttered, staring at his seemingly empty clothes in the photo. "No way. No way, no how. I must be tripping out of my skull."

Of course, he couldn't see the skull that he referred to. That was why the room had seemed brighter to him - the top of his head was providing no shade anymore. There was still the possibility that he was hallucinating, of course, but the photograph would still be there even after the wore off. Also, he didn't feel stoned at all - but he had heard of that prevented you from feeling like you were buzzed, even while you were.

About half an hour later, just as he was starting to worry that the effects might be permanent, he realized that his hands were starting to come back. They floated, ghost-like, at the ends of his sleeves for a few minutes, then solidified back to their regular selves.

Best of all, the picture still showed his empty clothes. He had truly been invisible. Two drops of the had made him vanish for half an hour. Jake smiled as he contemplated what he could now do. Being unseen would allow him to go anywhere. The only drawback was that his clothes were still visible.

Jake started thinking about the nakedness, which was really the only thing keeping him from wandering around invisibly. Over the next few weeks, he timed the effects of the , and made several attempts to turn his clothes invisible.

He finally came to realize that if he wanted to go out, he would have to go naked, but he had determined that the 's effects would last for up to ten hours at a time, so he would just have to make short excursions. He couldn't take the liquid along with him for fear that someone would see the bottle hovering in the air.

Jake contemplated his next move, now that he could travel completely undetected.