The Man Who Could Not Be Seen
by Charles Coiro
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A brilliant young scientist is interested in skin color changes in chameleons. He accidentally discovers a serum that makes the body invisible. This story is Free to Download legally in PDF, ePub, kindle.
A brilliant young scientist is interested in skin color changes in chameleons. He accidentally discovers a serum that makes the body invisible. This is the fictional story of how he copes with his invisibility and his difficulties living in the modern world.
Excerpt:
Arpad Lep was really an intelligent young man. He was tall, fair skinned and rather handsome. His jet black hair he combed straight back and the brilliantine he used gave him an aspect of always being well groomed. When Arpad walked by, the brilliantine always gave off a fragrance that lingered for a few moments. His very deep blue eyes were shielded behind the thick, horn-‐rimmed eyeglasses he always wore. As a child, he was always in the top 10% of his class; was congratulated for his efforts and enjoyed the praise of all who knew him. Arpad was gifted with a photogenic mind and could recall entire pages of books he read, but, that was not quite enough for Arpad, he felt that these gifts should have made him the best in his class, , not a part of the best. He suffered enraged outbursts when he was alone and was in general resentful and hated those students who received better grades than he when he knew instinctively that he was smarter and was more clever than the rest. So why did he always have to suffer the others being ahead of him in class?
The lack of an appropriate answer enraged him even more and he grew up with this suppressed sense of failure always within him.
Arpad had been born in Serbia and raised by a maiden aunt after his parents were killed in an automobile accident. He had a special gift for the Croatian/Serbian language but could also speak Greek, French, Italian and Spanish. Very often when he wanted to write something private, he would use the Cyrillic script to confuse anyone wanting to pry into his personal business.
Arpad eventually found himself fascinated in entomology and the medical research involved in reptile and lizard species with their ability to make chemical changes in body color. In particular, Arpad was interested in the Chamaeleonidae family. He went back to even basics such as the Belousov Zhodotinsky reactions and to the Briggs-‐Rauscher Oscillating color reactions using liquid chemicals. He could work hours on end in the testing and resolving of solutions in research and seemed to be tireless.
Arpad was hired by one of the most prestigious experimental laboratories in the City, the Peralta/Molina/LaBesette Laboratory, where his efforts were always praised. He was very proud of the praise given him and felt at long last that he was reaching his goal. Unknown to his employers, Arpad Lep was conducting research that he hoped would bring wealth to his firm and then recognition for him.
And then it happened; a recently hired researcher was selected over him to head an extremely interesting challenge in a research project; one of major importance that could have led Arpad to fame had he been entrusted with heading the project. The new interloper as Arpad called him, not only received a substantial raise in salary but was given a private office as well. He was treated with all the deference and respect that Arpad felt should have been his, Arpad’s.
Arpad was in a black rage. Feigning sickness, he asked and received a week off to recover. It was during this week that Arpad planned his revenge on his company and his bosses. He would not make what he felt were his secret experiments known to them. Arpad had been given permission to work on his own experiments with the agreement that any work produced by him in the lab would belong to the lab. At the present time, Arpad had been working on an experiment that would make temporary changes to the pigmentation and coloration on humans so that their images would melt into whatever background they were against. It was directly related to his work on chameleons and other sub types of the Chamaeleonidae species. Arpad saw the U.S. Armed Forces as the ideal organization to sell his experiment and in his mind saw that price would be no problem for the Government or if not the Government any other agency that needed the protection of invisibility, No, he would profit and gain fame on his own for his pioneering work. He must continue at the lab as though nothing had happened. He was too clever to do anything that might throw suspicion on himself and so he decided to take his hatred out on anything – the same as we take out our frustrations and anger by slamming the door behind us or throwing a vase against the wall. Arpad’s anger needed an outlet. It did not matter against what or whom, he just needed to get this anger out of his system. He thought, “How can I make this a perfect way to perfect my experiments and get back at the lab; something that is not connected to me or to the firm?” And so he decided he would randomly select some innocent victim – preferably a victim that would not be able to trace him or accuse him of being his guinea pig to complete his experimental work His thinking led him to select a patient in the local hospital who might be unconscious perhaps; or someone who would never be able to accuse him. After all, what would Arpad’s motive be? Yes, a perfect crime since neither the perpetrator nor the victim would ever even have seen each other before.
