The Hollow
Sprite
by Joshua Falken
Based on Paul Verhoeven and Douglas Wick's "Hollow Man" and H.G.Wells's "The Invisible Man"
Thanks to Sydney for the beta-reading and to Julia_Cat and BenRG for the revision. Thank you! :-)
Chapter 2 - Partial Recovery and Diagnosis
Dr. Welman Matrix analysed - or better, he tried to analyse - his daughter's energy-blood in the microscope. This was a little difficult, because the energy-blood in question was invisible. A brief energy discharge brought it back to the normal, but just for a few nanos. Logic suggested that a continuous discharge would keep it visible. Instead, what happened was that the sample would be erased.
Frustrated, he turned off the machine and went to the room B1423 of Mainframe General Hospital.
As soon as the door of the elevator opened, he verified that the floor was empty. Good, he thought, as fewer people who know, better.
Room B1423 was completely isolated, a measure only used in case of suspected infection by some Class 20 virus. Now, that isolation was being used to protect Dot.
Sitting on the couch outside the room were Bob, Matrix and Enzo. They slept, tense expressions on their faces. They must have waited the entire cycle for news! Careful not to wake them up, Dr. Matrix looked into the interior of the room through the observation window. He thought about the story that they had invented to explain Dot's stay in the hospital. Officially, she had suffered very serious burns on her whole body. That was the story that Mainframe Data-Times and Mainframe Tattler had published. Maybe AndrAIa would be playing the PR expert right now. After all, if the Command.Com of the system suffers an accident, that's news, right?
With a sigh, he entered quietly in the room.
Sat down in a chair beside the bed, his wife, Kathleen, slept. On the bed there was a sheet moulded in the form of a sprite, as well as the deformation in the bed. Sensors that measured neural activity floated over the pillow. Energy serum was being fed down a cable to a point where he assumed Dot's arm was.
At that moment, Kathleen woke up. "Huh? Oh. Hello, Welman."
"Hi, Kathleen. You look terrible." He said, commenting on his wife's tired face.
"You aren't better." She answered in a distracted tone of voice.
"Yes, I know."
Holding her husband's hand, she whispered: "I still can't believe. I mean, I know that Dot is sleeping in that bed, but, nevertheless..." She shook her head. "Any news?"
"No really. The biopsies and the medical readings indicate that she's physically well. She will wake up as soon as she recover from the trauma of the accident." He explained, gesturing in the direction of the neural activity meter.
Kathleen nodded.
He bit his lower lip as he examined the readings. 'Well.. it isn't something to really worry about.' He told himself.
=======
After two cycles, Dot had still not recovered consciousness. Meanwhile, two people were always with her. The idea was that they would stop Dot from hurting herself if she panicked upon awakening. This would be a natural response to the situation.
While Bob kept his eyes shut, Enzo looked at the empty bed, bewildered. He already read sci-fi stories where the protagonist become invisible, and now... it was his sister that was in that situation. Although a part of Enzo was thrilled with that, the other part was really concerned. A lot of stories finished with Invisible Sprite going mad. Of course that would never happen with Dot, but...
Dot began to groan. Bob immediately pressed a button, calling Dr. Matrix and the others. The two sprites were immediately alert.
======
Some thing made Dot's eyes burn. She opened them and a really strong light began to shine, blinding her. She tried to close her eyes, but the light continued to shine. "OH, MY USER! MY EYES!" She screamed, in pain. "SOMEONE TURNS THAT LIGHT OFF!!" She tried uselessly to block the light with her transparent hands.
In a spasmodic movement, Dot kicked the blanket that covered her away. Now, the only indications of her presence were the indentations on the mattress of the bed. and her screams of pain. "TURN OFF THAT SPAMMED LIGHT!" She yelled, pleading.
Enzo turned off the light of the room, while Bob hugged her, trying to calm her. He ignored the chill that he felt when feeling a resistance where his eyes said that there is nothing. "Dot, calm down! Shh, shh, love. It's okay. Everything is okay."
He felt Dot stop moving, as soon as the light was turned off. However, he could feel her fear in her voice and in her quick, panicked breaths.
"What did happen?! Why I can't see...?"
"You suffered an accident. The experiment in the Project Rainbow went wrong, and part of the energy reached you." He took a breath. "You are invisible."
"Invisible?" She asked, in a whisper. She was seeing with her own eyes the transformation, but even so a part of her mind demanded a confirmation.
"Yes."
Bob felt Dot suddenly become very still. He loosened the hug, slowly.
In a tight, controlled tone, Dot asked for a mirror. Enzo looked in a drawer and he found one. The Guardian-in-training saw the mirror float from his hand, when Dot took it.
She looked at the mirror, unbelieving. Bob was seated behind her, and she saw him perfectly in the mirror, but she didn't see her own reflection!
Bob and Enzo saw the mirror fog with her breathing.
All of a sudden, the mirror dropped on the bed and the deformation where was Dot was sitting vanished.
"Dot?..."
They heard the water running in the sink on the other side of the room. They turned back in time of seeing the water form a puddle in thin air, rise and splash over an invisible surface, revealing Dot's face. With an incredulous and afraid expression. Enzo felt a chill when he saw his sister's face disappear, as the water slipped away.
"So, Dot, how is it to be like a ghost?" He asked, cautiously, with a weak smile. Bob closed his eyes in disbelief at the young sprite's disastrously weak attempt at humour.
"I'm not sure yet." Now her voice came from behind them, close to the door of the room. "You really cannot see me?" She asked. Their expressions answered the question. "Wow." She whispered.
She couldn't believe it. She was invisible!
Dr. Matrix entered at that moment "Where is she?!" he asked when he didn't see the form of Dot in the bed.
"Right beside you, Dad," Dot answered.
Dr. Matrix's reaction was one of barely-hidden fright.
======
Later, Matrix, AndrAIa, Mouse, Ray and Kathleen were in a waiting room. The renegade guardian didn't stop walking to and fro. His girlfriend and his mother were seated on a bench. Mouse was cleaning her katana, in a reflex action, leaning against the wall. Ray was just standing close of her. Dr. Matrix, Bob and Enzo entered. There was a gap between Enzo and Bob.
"How is Dot?" Kathleen asked, trying to the maximum to hide her apprehension.
"Huh... Mrs. Matrix ... why you don't ask her?" Bob spoke, clumsily indicating the space between the youngest guardian and him.
"Huh... how are you, Dot?" she asked, even more clumsy.
"Fine, I think."
Everybody turned in direction of her voice, on the other side of the room. The light of the waiting room decreased abruptly in intensity. These events combined to leave all of them feeling rather nervous.
Dr. Matrix cleared his throat. "Her eyes are sensitive to light now as her irises can't control the amount of light that enters them."
That information left everybody calmer.
"Hey, Dot, are you really ok?" Mouse asked.
"I thinks so, yes," Dot replied in a strange tone. "Beyond the fact that I'm invisible, of course, and my eyes are more sensitive to light. According to Dad I'm pretty much norma..." Now her voice came from the middle of the room, beside AndrAIa.
"Dot, cut it out, please!" Her mother asked.
Ray laughed nervously. "It seems that we are playing hide-and-seek!"
"Sorry." She tried to explain. "As long as I am walking, I have the sensation that I am still here..."
AndrAIa swallowed hard, when she felt something bump into her.
"Excuse me, AndrAIa. I still haven't got used to not being able to see exactly where I am."
"It's ok, Dot. But can't you stop while we talk?"
"It is a little strange to speak with you moving places." Enzo explained, trying to help his father.
"Her gait is very stealthy, isn't it?" Mouse commented to Bob, who blinked surprised. "Maybe she should think of becoming a spy?"
They heard a sigh. Then a chair, which was leaned in the wall, turned to them and the cushion was forced down.
"Does that help?" Dot asked, her voice coming from the chair. As they didn't comment, she asked a question that was very important to her. "I think can ask now: how did this happen to me?"
They explained again, this time in more detail. An accident had happened during the test of Project Rainbow. No, they didn't know what had caused that reaction, but they were researching that in the Project records, or better, in what remained of the records. They were waiting for Dr. Cisco recover from his injures, to question him about the invisibility process. No, the tests didn't indicate any collateral effect besides the invisibility and a type of intensified vision. And no, they didn't know how to make her visible again.
Her father tried comfort her. "Dot, we are doing and we will do everything that is possible to reverse this it."
Dot was quiet for a while. "Huh... Daddy, do I have to stay here?" she inquired, weakly. He and Kathleen exchanged glances: both knew how Dot didn't like to be in hospitals, since she was a kid.
"I think is better for you to be monitored this downtime. Only so we can sure that you are well."
Resigned, she agreed.
======
In the dead of the downtime, Dot looked at the roof of her room. She wasn't sure what scared her more: the fact of being invisible or of being in a hospital. Not able to sleep, mostly because she had transparent eyelids, she stood up and she began to walk to and fro.
She placed her right hand to her face, feeling the invisible fingers. She looked at her own body, seeing through it. When she passed her hands over her body, she realised that still wore the clothes of the day of the accident.
She clicked on her icon, rebooting her clothing. Now, she felt that she was wearing a long coat, but that was also invisible.
Then, she lay on the bed. The moulded form was of a sprite in fetal position.
======
Next cycle, Matrix and Bob were back to the fourteenth floor of Mainframe General Hospital, to take Dot to her last medical exam. It would be in the floor below, already properly isolated.
The door opened, and Dot's voice spoke. "Let's go."
With the brother at one side and the boyfriend in the other, they went to the stairways. Mouse was right: Dot walked very quietly. In the first step of the descent, Matrix and Bob felt being grabbed and pulled down, at the same time that they heard Dot yell. They had not only fallen downstairs, because the two sprites held themselves in the handrails.
"I...I think that I slipped..." Dot recovered the breath. "I think I'm not accustomed to going down stairways without seeing where I step..." They heard a forced laugh. And very embarrassed, they noticed. For the rest of the descent, Matrix carried his sister in the arms, in spite of her protests.
Later, the invisible sprite was placed in a neural exam machine, similar to an Userworld's MRI. A chill went down the spine of Dr. Matrix, who operated the device: while Dot's head appeared on the monitor, to the naked eye, there was nobody in the machine. Results of the exam: normal neural readings, except for some high activity outbursts.
Back to the room, Kathleen and AndrAIa talked with Dot, while Matrix and Bob talked with her father, outside.
When AndrAIa left the room quickly, Matrix asked:
"Dad, is she really alright?"
"Well... yes. There were some changes in the neural signals, but everything inside of the normal patterns."
"What kind of changes?" Matrix pressured.
"The sleep waves present some frequent high activity outbursts. That's normal, considering what happened. Only if the outbursts were very powerful and constant would that be a reason for concern."
The game sprite entered again in the room, bringing a bag. "Come in!" Kathleen called them a little later.
When entering, they saw Kathleen sitting down in the chair, AndrAIa leaning in the wall and a female sprite in biker's black wear: boots, leather pants, a leather jacket with the collar shut, gloves and a helmet with a mirrored visor. The "biker" opened the visor of the helmet. There was not a face inside of it, they just saw emptiness.
"At least now you don't have to speak to empty space and I can leave this hospital room." Dot said.
What do you think? Read and Review!
Chapter 3 coming soon...