Free Memoirs Of An Invisible Man by H.F. Saint Page A

instant I thought that the Students for a Fair World had already struck, but from the startled silence emerged the excited, rapid-fire voice of Wachs, intoning: “Accustomed as we are today to think of magnetism as the vector of spins and orbits of subatomic particles, it is often with considerable astonishment that we discover how entirely differently men at other times in history have viewed the set of phenomena that we tend to group together under the term ‘magnetism.’ As early as the sixth century’ B.C., the Greek philosopher Thales observed the extraordinary ability of lodestone to attract other pieces of lodestone, as well as iron.”
    From the back of the room came a sudden commotion of clicking and whirring, and a picture of a large stone appeared unexpectedly and incongruously at the front of the room.
    What in the world was going on? This must be Wachs’s idea of how one explains things to people outside one’s own field. We were getting part of the lecture course in the History and Philosophy of Science for humanities majors.
    I was going to have difficulty sitting through much of this. My hangover was rapidly being intensified to an insupportable level. The contrast between the piercing brightness of the images on the screen and the darkness of the room was aggravating an already evil headache, and every time the slide machine would click and grind, violently wrenching yet another image onto the screen, I would feel a little wave of nausea, a sort of motion sickness. I began to cringe at the advent of each new slide.
    “In the year 1785 the Frenchman Charles Coulomb…”
    Whirr. Clack. An incomprehensible instrument appeared which could have been used as an illustration in the history of anything. Gunnery. Contraception.
    After ten or fifteen minutes of this, we were still not out of the eighteenth century. I was sure a lot of important work had been done in the nineteenth century. If I could slip out of the room for a while, I might find a lavatory or go outside and clear my head. I could still be back in plenty of time for the twentieth century. I clambered out of my seat and felt my way to the door. When I pulled it open, the light in the corridor illuminated me, and I felt the gaze of everyone in the room on me. I leaned over to the person sitting nearest the door and apologized in a loud half-whisper.
    “Excuse me. Feeling a little bit off. Be right back.”
    I pushed the door shut behind me and hurried back down the corridor toward the entrance. Just moving around would make me feel better, I thought. I was wrong. There was no one in the reception room now: everyone must be attending the lecture. Perhaps some fresh air, a walk on the lawn. I pushed open the door and stepped out onto the porch. There was a steady, uninviting drizzle. The students, undeterred by the weather, were right there on the lawn in front of me, erecting some part of their fair world. One of them looked at me and waved; he started toward me as if he wanted to ask me something. I waved vaguely back at him and retreated quickly into the building again, locking the door to be safe. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. An insupportable wave of nausea flooded over me. Really what I wanted was a lavatory. After that I might come back and curl up on the couch in the reception room. Just for a few minutes. I tried the door to Wachs’s office. Locked. I went back into the corridor and pulled open the first door to the right. Janitor’s closet. The next door, however, opened into an enormous and quite splendidly equipped bathroom, which had, in addition to all the usual plumbing, an open shower stall and a sauna. There was a stack of freshly laundered towels and along one wall a row of hooks from which hung running suits and other random pieces of clothing. The employees of Micro-Magnetics must have used this as a sort of locker room.
    I went to the W.C. and tried to precipitate whatever purgative convulsions my body was capable of.