Author's note

This is just an idea I had in school (well, it's based on H G Wells' novel 'The Invisible Man' and the film starring Claude Rains). I thought I'd try to write another science fiction type story thing because I like science fiction and well, I thought it would be fun. So give this a go and let me know what you guys think :)

Finding out

Imagine if you were invisible. It would be great right? You could say, sneak up on someone and you could easily get out of awkward situations and no one would be able to see what you were doing. Yeah, that would be great. But what if, with your invisibility came madness. What if, when you were invisible, you wanted to kill? And steal. And hurt people. What if you were not yourself and you had no control? Yes, what I am about to tell is a story of a genius, of sorts, but also his madness and the urges he had, to kill, to hurt, to steal. Yes, this is the story of a man who had that power, invisibility.

Ross Geller, a professor at NYU was, as usual, the last to leave. It happened so often he even had his own set of keys to the building so the maintenance guy wouldn't have to stay behind until God knows what time. Ross left his office and, after locking the door, walked down the corridor, past locked doors leading to empty labs until he reached one that was open. He was about to shut the door when he noticed something rather curious. On one of the lab desks there was a notebook and on top, a pen and a pencil. The notebook had been left open on a page which contained scribbled notes and equations. On the surface, this did not seem unusual. Students sometimes left notebooks or pens; he would simply put it on the desk at the front of the room.

It was only on closer inspection that he noticed something was perhaps not right here. The notes in the book had been scribbled in such a reckless manner it was almost impossible to make out what they said, Ross could only pick out certain words and phrases; 'Monocane', 'chemicals' and 'light'. The rest was near impossible. Curious, Ross sat down and tried to make out the rest of it. The word 'Monocane' stuck out to him. He'd heard of it before alright, but where? And what to do with light.

His mind racing, he continued trying to decipher the scribble, aware it was getting late. Suddenly, his mind reached back to a few days ago when he'd had an interesting conversation with one of his students who was doing a joint honours degree; Palaeontology and physics.

"So, you're saying it is possible to turn yourself invisible?" Ross couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Yeah." The student, Toni Cassady replied. "All you'd need is like, some monocane an' some other chemicals. Does somethin' to the light, reduces the refractive index of objects or something."

Ross had never really believed it would work, still didn't. But looking around the room, he noticed apparatus set out. He wondered over and examined what was inside. It seemed empty but when he put his hand inside, it definitely touched something before the bottom. What the hell? He thought. He turned his head to look at the bottle on the shelf. He was right; monocane. In an instant, he was scared. He had to get out of there. If Cassady had turned himself invisible, he could literally be anywhere. Ross turned around and headed out of the door. Disturbed somewhat.

He rushed through the streets quite paranoid. It was only when he was near his apartment block that he realised he still had hold of Cassady's notebook. He slid it into his pocket and started walking up the stairs to his apartment. Suddenly, he got a feeling he shouldn't go home a feeling which grew as he walked further up the stairs. He stood still for a minute before making his way across the street to his sister's apartment.

He rushed in, the feeling of dread increasing. It wasn't until he was inside with the door locked that he could relax.

"Hey Ross, what's up?" Joey asked. He hadn't noticed that the whole gang was there.

"G...guys, I….he…" Ross stammered.

"What's up? What happened?" Chandler asked. Everyone looked worried.

"I found this." He held out the notebook. "One…one of my students…. I think…"

"What?" Monica asked.

Ross's voice was barely a whisper, "I think they managed to turn themselves invisible."

Footnote

Dun dun duuuuuhhh so, what will happen next? Will they believe him? Well, find out next time (wow, that was a bit dramatic…) Anyway, despite the fact I do physics some of the stuff about refractive indexes etc. may not be accurate (in fact I may ask my physics teacher tomorrow whether it would be possible for one to turn themselves invisible by reducing their refractive index, or whether you could actually turn yourself invisible) x