This story is for persons of eighteen years or over. All comments, good or bad, are welcome and all will be answered.
Part Two
She picked it up again, gently this time, almost reverently even, turning it around and around in her hands. Then lifting it up, settled it down on her head. As she nestled it comfortably, she thought she heard a faint hum, but definitely felt a tiny tickle run down her body. Like a feather it was, just barely touching her flesh, but moving down much faster. She lifted the chin strap up and it seemed to glue itself to the other side of the helmet, making a nice firm attachment.
There was a sudden rapping against the tent pole and Brendan's voice called out.
`Are you still feeling bad Audrey?' he enquired. Audrey whirled round, trying to take the helmet off when the flap of the tent opened and Brendan stuck his head inside. His eyes traversed the whole tent and with a sigh, shook his head and withdrew, letting the flap fall back against the entrance. She was standing stock still in the middle of the tent with the helmet on, and clearly saw him as his eyes had swept round the tent, but he didn't appear to see her.
She quickly took the helmet off and placed it back into her basket under the table, and covered it up before running outside. Brendan was walking toward the mess tent, so she quickly scuttled across the site towards the latrines and then turned as though that was where she was coming from.
`Are you looking for me?' Audrey called out as he entered the mess tent.
Why yes,' he said, turning round and walked down to meet her. I went to your tent to see if you were any better, but you weren't there.'
`I...I...was in the toilet, sorry. What was it you wanted?'
`Nothing really. I just wanted to know if you wanted anything. Cold compress or something like that for your headache.'
`It's nearly gone, but I'd rather stay out of the sun for the rest of the afternoon.'
`Fine. See you at dinner then.'
Yes, see you at dinner,' Audrey replied, watching him walk away towards the excavations. He didn't see me,' she whispered fiercely to herself as she walked back to her tent. `He didn't see me!' She wanted to run to her tent, but made herself walk slowly until she was safely inside with the flap down. Quickly, she retrieved the helmet from the basket and looked it over very carefully, but still couldn't see anything to give her a clue as to what it contained up in the lining. Audrey put the helmet on for the second time, catching the short hum and feeling that shivery tingle run down her body again.
`Now let's try it out again,' she said to herself as she went and tried to lift the tent flap. She could feel it, but couldn't move it. It was like a solid wall to her. Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes as she struggled to move the flap, but to no avail. Giving out a sob, she gave up the struggle and went and sat down and took the helmet off. She shook her head to free her hair and wondered what prevented her from leaving the tent. She got up and went and as easily as anything, lifted the flap and looked outside. Letting it drop back, she went and sat down again to ponder the problem. It didn't take her long to understand that if she wore the helmet, she was invisible. Therefore, if she was invisible, she had no physical properties to either be seen or to be felt. That would mean that she could see but not touch. Well she could touch, but not physically move anything.
`Let's try again madam,' she said, getting up from the table and going over and lifting the flap back, making sure that it stayed open. Then she put the helmet back on, thrilling at the tingle it gave her before approaching the entrance of the tent and going outside. She stood still for a moment, surveying where everybody was and what they were doing before moving off herself.
Two of the boys were cleaning some bones and Manuel was poring over the maps, making his own notes. Audrey approached the tables and walked right round them and the three men, and not one of them noticed her. Brendan came out from the latrine, and after washing his hands, walked over and went right past her to stop and speak with Manuel.
I'm bloody invisible,' Audrey shouted to herself. It's the helmet! I can see and hear them quite clearly, but they can't see me!' Her thoughts went wildly racing off with the countless things you could do when you were not visible.
Audrey then approached Brendan to give him the surprise of his life and reached up to pat him on the shoulder. It was she who got the shock, for her hand passed clean through him. She watched as her hand disappeared into his shoulder up to her wrist as there wasn't a solid thing there to stop the movement. Then it reappeared as her arm swung down, coming out from his lower back
Audrey gave out a loud cry as this happened, but nobody turned round at the noise she had made. She looked down at her hand in disbelief and then had another shock when she raised her head, for Manuel had turned and was walking straight into her. She recoiled back, but only out of instinct, because she never felt a thing as he passed straight through her.
Her legs trembled and she went weak at the knees as she stumbled to the nearest chair and sat down. It took a couple of minutes for it to sink in that she was actually sitting in the chair and not sprawled on the ground. She ran her fingers along the arms, feeling their solidness, and reaching out, touched the table. Again solid. She picked up the pencil there, or rather tried to pick it up. Her fingers could close round it, but could not move it from the table, no matter how hard she tried to lift it. Audrey let go of the pencil and grasped the arms of the chair and lifted herself to pull the chair closer to the table, but that too would not move.
The truth was starting to filter through to her now. She got up from the chair and went to the two boys at the cleaning table. They showed no signs of noticing her presence and did not even feel her hand when she pressed it into their bodies. Then she tried to pick some grass that was growing by the table. Her fingers passed straight through, though she could touch a small stone, she couldn't pick it up.
Audrey wandered round the site knowing now that living tissue was untouchable, whereas dead or inanimate matter was immovable. But, she realised, if the dead or inanimate substance was in contact or worn by living tissue, then it became untouchable. This had been proven by her hand going through Brendan's shoulder through his shirt, and the same with the boys and even Manuel. So therefore the value of the helmet was only for the wearer to be a voyeur, an observer or a spy. She couldn't think of anything else as she made her way back to her tent. She tried to walk through the tent wall, but couldn't, so she had to use the open flap to gain entry. This also meant that if she was wearing the helmet to be invisible and then to spy, watch or listen to somebody in a closed room would be impossible. She'd have to take the helmet off and be visible to open the door to either get in or get out. It didn't seem to make much sense to go to all that trouble to make this helmet which only did half of what it should.
Now if you could go through walls with it, well...! She blushed at the thought of being able to see Brendan naked in the shower without him knowing she was there. I'd better go take a cold shower myself, she thought as she started to take off the helmet, trying to dispel the images she had conjured up. As she lifted her hands up to take it off, her fingertips touched the visor that was slid up into the top part. Not having tried the visor, she pulled it down.
As it snapped down with a click, the walls of the tent disappeared, as did the chair she had been sitting on. The suddenness of more light because of the lack of canvas as well as the chair's removal, startled her as she sprawled on her back on the ground.
What the heck happened?' Audrey exclaimed to herself as she sat up, dusting her hands. Where's the tent gone?'
She looked around and the sunlight seemed as if it was being slightly filtered by the visor, giving a very light blue tinge to everything. Without the canvas walls of the tent to impede her view, she should have being looking at the other tents opposite, but they weren't there either. Also, she should have had a good view across the plateau to the plains in the distance. Instead, there was a forested jungle scarcely a hundred yards away.
Audrey got up off the ground and automatically brushed her hands down the seat of her shorts and had a good look round. She was in a small clearing in what appeared to be a jungle, but what caught her eye and made her step back, was where the ground had been pegged out.
The pegs were no longer there, or the partially exposed bones of a prehistoric animal. Instead, there was the whole carcass of a dead Brontosaurus!
She was suddenly frightened. What had happened? Where was everybody else? Why had they disappeared? Why was she now in a jungle?
Sweat broke out on her forehead and she started to panic. Her hands went up to her head and pulling at the chin strap, pushed the helmet off her head to let it fall to the floor. As soon as the contact was broken between her and the helmet, she found she was back inside her tent. Audrey's heart was pounding and she could feel the sweat now running down her spine as the helmet bounced on the ground and rolled to a stop by the leg of the table.
She groped for the chair and found that it had been tipped over. Setting it upright, she sat down, shaking, her hands tightly clenched in her lap as she looked down at the helmet on the ground before her.
She had been amused at the being invisible part, but what she had just seen, frightened her. Did she really see the animal that had been dead for millions of years lying there just outside her tent? Did the helmet cause hallucinations? Or...?
The visor! It happened after she had pulled the visor down. Was that what caused it? The scientist in Audrey couldn't just sit there trying to think up reasons. Questions and experiments went together. The questions weren't answered without the experiments.
She picked the helmet up and pushed the visor back inside. It slid back in with a little click. She did this a couple of times, building up her courage to try the helmet on again. This time she stood up first, and with the visor up, put the helmet on her head.
She felt the now familiar flutter down her body and the brief hum in her ears. Then taking a deep breath, walked outside and went over and stood next to Brendan and Martinez who were discussing something on the table. Standing next to them, she was sure they couldn't see her, but was about to find out if they could hear her.
`Hello you two,' she said as loud as she could, and nothing happened. They carried on talking, ignoring her completely as if she wasn't there. She giggled at this because she was and she wasn't there. Her own voice had sounded very clearly, but it was now apparent that they could neither see or hear her whilst she wore the helmet. So with a determined effort, she walked in between them. There wasn't enough space for her to do this without bumping them aside as she moved forward, her arms easily passing through their sides as she went between them.
Audrey turned round, the back of her thighs touching the table and looked at the two men talking to each other, their faces only a few inches away from hers. She clapped her hands and reached up and stroked their faces, but they showed no reaction Whatsoever. It still amazed her that they could neither see, hear or feel her.
There's only one real way of knowing if they can see me,' she said, a daring notion running through her mind. Even a dead man would wake up to this.' She went round the table and stood before them and lifted up the front of her T shirt, exposing her breasts to their gaze. Not only did she move her body from side to side to make them sway a little, she even, with her free hand, stroke each one and made the nipples stand up. `That is definite proof,' she said aloud as the men continued to appear to ignore her, dropping the shirt to cover herself, blushing at her daring act to prove the point.
They and the table were now between her and the pegged out ground where the bones lay exposed. So with one more look around the treeless plateau, Audrey took a deep breath and pulled the visor down.
The visor came down with a click and in the faint blue light, somewhat akin to weak sunglasses, both men, tables and tents disappeared. What she saw before her was again, the whole carcass of the dead behemoth. A quick look round to see that the forest was still there, not far from where she was standing. There was a faint ping as her head swung round but she didn't give it any notice as she stared at the beast lying not many yards in front of her.
Audrey lifted the visor, and as it clicked up, the two men were suddenly there again in front of her, the forest disappearing. Now she was confident that she had the answer to the enigma of the helmet. It was some sort of time machine that could take her back over hundreds of millions of years, showing her what it was like at that time. But was it true? Was there any truth in the saying that seeing is believing? Could it be some form of hologram or picture transmitted into the helmet?
Of course not you silly girl,' she said to herself. Well there's only one way to find out.' She snapped the visor down, but now the jungle look more menacing as she was about to move a little closer to it. It was definitely a clearing she was standing in with this jungle or forest, she wasn't quite sure which yet, all about her. It was roughly the size of a football field and she was about a quarter of the way down one side.
Now was the moment of truth. She had to move forward and investigate or forever wonder what might have been. So without further ado, she moved off towards the felled Brontosaurus, getting a great tingle up and down her spine as she walked round the mammoth hulk of a creature she had been studying for years.
Even in death, it looked a magnificent creature. The long graceful neck was fully outstretched, the eye fully open, glazed, but seemed to hold a surprised expression as if saying, why me? She reached out to run her hand down the long neck, expecting her hand to disappear inside the animal if it was still alive, but it wasn't. It was dead, because she could feel the rough texture of its skin, rougher than she had expected it to be. More like the hide of an elephant but not as tough and scaly as that of a rhinoceros.
Audrey walked round the animal, marvelling at her good fortune to actually be able to see it, albeit a dead one, but a whole, complete animal of this size. Why, how, or what killed it, she couldn't even begin to surmise. It was enough for the moment just being able to look at what no other living person had ever seen.
She had walked around the animal at least four times before she really became aware of this odd bleep she got through the helmet with every circuit. It was now becoming intrusive as she looked around, trying to see what this small noise was, or what was causing it. So with a propriety air, she laid her hand on the dead animal and slowly looked round the small clearing.
There it was again! A small ping came through to her ears, but for the first time she saw a little flash of light on the inside of her visor. The flash appeared as a faint white line that quickly faded in time with the ping. Audrey stood still, waiting. Waiting for it to come again, waiting, keeping her head still as her eyes scanned the tree line.
Ping!
There it was again! The sound lasted about two seconds accompanied by a faint thin line that lasted for the same amount of time. A quick glance up at the sun told her that the line was pointing almost due East from where she was standing. Audrey stood there for several pings, counting the intervals between them and estimating that it came about every forty five seconds. Having left her watch behind in her tent, she resorted to the trick she had learnt in school of how to measure time. By counting from one hundred and one through to one hundred and ten, took ten seconds. So by doing this form of counting four and a half times, it gave her forty five seconds between the pings.
Of course,' Audrey exclaimed, thinking of the sonar used in submarines, it's a homing signal, and the white line is the direction!' But how far, she wondered, how far? `Only one way to find out,' she said at the next ping, and started forward in the direction of the fading white line in her visor.
She kept a count of her paces using her method of counting time achieving exactly forty five paces before the next ping, and reached the trees by the second one. At first, she walked round the trees that she encountered until she tripped over a dead branch and instead of cracking her head on a tree, she fell through it. Laughing, slightly hysterical, she sat up and called herself all kinds of silly names for forgetting about being able to pass through any living matter.
But the fall brought Audrey to her senses. She didn't know how far away she was from the source of the noise, and as she had been away from the camp for at least an hour, the others would be wondering where she had got to. That could lead to problems in the way of trying to make up plausible excuses for her absence. Besides, it couldn't be that long to dinner time, and she would definitely be posted missing then.
So she picked herself up and waited for the signal so that she could reverse her direction and get back to the camp. With the ping, she turned about face and started back through the forest of trees. Walking through the underbrush which she couldn't feel, she was struck by a thought. If I'm back in the prehistoric times because of the helmet, can I be seen and touched by any living creature? This made her shudder and she stopped and knelt down to try to find some form of small living thing to prove one way or the other. It took her several minutes before she saw some small type of beetles that she had never seen before and tried to pick one up. She couldn't. The thing just passed straight through her hand as though it wasn't there. Satisfied that she was safe with the helmet on, she stood up and carried on walking back towards the camp.
The sun was very hot on her shoulders as she came out into the small clearing. She was perspiring heavily now and realised that over the past couple of hours, the temperature must have gone higher. She mulled this over as she approached the carcass and lifted the visor to see the scene change back to the exposed bones. Audrey turned and made her way back to her tent, noticing that the two men were back at the table, still talking. Must have a lot to say, she thought as she entered her tent and took off the helmet and placing it in her locker.
`Hi fellas, time for dinner?' she asked as she approached them after leaving her tent. They both turned, Brendan looking at his watch.
`Bit early I'd say. We only had lunch two hours ago.'
Audrey gave a gasp and looked at her wrist, and remembering that she'd forgotten to put on her watch again.
`I...I guess I was feeling a bit hungry,' she said lamely.
`Well go grab a sandwich or something. Cookie's in the mess tent,' Brendan said, turning back to Martinez.
`How long have you two been talking?' Audrey asked, trying to sound as though it was just a casual question.
`A couple of minutes. Why?' Martinez answered.
`No reason. No reason at all,' she mumbled as she went back into her tent, trembling, and sat down on her cot and picked up her watch off the small side table.
I've been away nearly three hours,' she whispered fiercely, and it's still only three o'clock. It should be six! Why?' She strapped the watch onto her wrist and went up to the mess tent and got a sandwich from the cook and sat down at one of the tables. She was hungry, so the sandwiches were quickly demolished as she tried to work out where the time had gone.
After thirty minutes hard thinking, the only answer she could come up with was that the helmet was as she first thought, some sort of time machine, and with the visor down, time as she knew it, stood still. It was the only solution that fit, but she was too tired to pursue it any further that afternoon. The sandwich had stopped the rumbling in her stomach and hoped that it would suffice until dinner.
Audrey left the mess tent and went and checked the tables to catalogue the days finds and was pleased that the total was light so that she could then get on with making her notes and doing her typing before dinner. As soon as dinner was over, she said her goodnight's to everyone and turned in early.
She was woken as usual at seven the next morning by one of the boy's bringing into her tent a hot mug of tea. After a shower, she dressed and went up to the mess tent for breakfast. She lingered over her meal, waiting till all had left, and cookie had started to clean up. It was a bit difficult to make him under-stand, but he finally got the message that she wanted to make herself some sandwiches. He waved towards the fridge that was run by a portable generator and carried on with his chores whilst she made up a pack for herself. Also taking two bottles of water, placed them all in a bag she had brought with her. Armed with these provisions, she scuttled back to her tent.
With her backpack of food settled on her shoulders, a compass in her pocket along with pad and pencil, watch firmly strapped to her wrist, checked against her small alarm clock, she was ready. Retrieving the helmet from the locker, Audrey put it on, and with full confidence in her invisibility, went outside the tent. Pausing there, she saw one of the boy's cleaning the large bone that they had excavated the day before. She noted down the time on her pad and pulled down the visor.
As before, the scene changed from a treeless plateau with the tables and tents to a small clearing in the forest. But something was different, and Audrey was puzzled. It was not the scene in front of her, but something else. Something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Ha-ha, she laughed to herself. Only if it's dead I can, she thought. But what is it, her mind continued to ask? She snapped the visor back up to see the boy still at the table with the tents of the latrines behind him. Pulled the visor down again to see the same clearing. It wasn't until she had done this action twice more before it struck her what was wrong. It so literally staggered her as she realised what it was, that she sat down with the shock.
The sun has moved!' Audrey whispered in awe. No. It can't be the sun, it's the Earth itself that has moved.' She squinted up as best she could, and kept flipping the visor up and down. The sun was definitely there in the sky at a different angle between the visor up and the visor down. Pulling the compass from her pocket, she checked the polarization with the visor in both positions. No change. So the magnetic pole was still where it should be. Checking again with the visor up and down, she estimated that the difference of the two suns was about ten degrees.
`I must brush up on my sciences,' Audrey told herself.
`So the Earth has moved off its axis. Wow! Wait till I tell the boys!' Then she remembered that she couldn't tell them without divulging the existence of the helmet, and there was so much more to see before letting anyone else into the secret. That would explain the lack of snow on the mountains, she thought. We must be that much closer to the, what would be, equator. That would also mean that Canada and England would be like a frozen icecap. She shivered at the thought.
So with a sigh, Audrey got up from the ground, and with the visor down, turned round to pick up the homing signal. When the ping came, she noted down the bearing for her return trek. She checked her watch and noted down that the time was nine forty-five in the morning as she started off to follow the brief white line inside her visor. She crossed the clearing singing the well known song from the Wizard of Oz, only it wasn't a yellow brick road.
She strode into the trees without hesitation, passing through them and bushes, but being careful to step over what looked like dead wood. Audrey checked her watch and confirmed the beacon as repeating itself every forty five seconds with the white line lasting only two seconds.
It didn't take long to pass the spot where she had turned back the previous day, making short notes as she moved along. It was a strange experience to be striding along and not being able to see where she was going. Trees, bushes and leaves were continually just in front of her face, but not touching her as she moved forward. It was like having your face up close to a television screen that was showing a film of you moving through these trees. It was uncanny to see a large tree loom up in front and just pass straight through it. So it was a shock to suddenly step out into a clearing. Well it wasn't really a clearing, but a trail. One that had been blazed through the forest.
The trees had been trampled and most were without foliage, which could have only been the passage of one or more vegetation eating animals. A huge pile of dung off to her left confirmed that the animal was big.
`Another Brontosaurus has passed this way,' Audrey chuckled at her own toilet humour, and waited for a moment to pick up the beacon and carry on her way.
Audrey had been checking her watch to see if the hands moved, and they did. They moved as if she were in normal time so she knew that she was now just over an hour away from the camp, and was now wondering how far away the source of the beacon was.
No sooner had she thought this, was when she saw it. It was just a glint in the sunlight, but there was definitely something just up there ahead of her. She carried on, the foliage not causing an impediment as she sailed through the brush and trees before coming to a full stop as it became clearer.
It was still partially hidden by trees, but she could see that it was some kind of ball. As she got closer, it proved to be the case. It was spherical, at least forty feet high and just as wide. The top section appeared to be made of some type of transparent material or glass, though Audrey doubted it being glass. The rest of the sphere seemed to be of the same manufacture as that of the helmet.
Moving round the object, not yet giving it the appellation space ship, Audrey saw that there was an opening in the side with a short ramp down to the ground. Retreating back to the bushes, Audrey stopped and sat down and decided to have a sandwich and a drink before going any further while she contemplated and studied the craft and thought through her options.
It looked perfectly round with not a seam to be seen, apart from the door opening, and she was quite sure that if it had been closed, you wouldn't seen any join whatsoever. She'd finished one sandwich and stowed the rest and water bottle back in the bag as she considered what was to be the moment of truth. To enter the machine or not to enter. Surely it must be deserted, otherwise, if there had been anybody connected to whomsoever had worn the helmet, would have already been out looking for them. Maybe they were wearing a helmet so that she couldn't see them. Don't be silly, she said to herself, this was a hundred million years or so ago, and surely if the helmet was the same, they should be able to see each other. There were too many variations on this theme for her to consider at this time.
She couldn't really put it into words that they were aliens. Not those from another country, but from another world. Not human. Images of Sigourney Weaver fighting them in the spaceship came to mind first, and she shuddered at the thought of meeting creatures like that, but realised that they wouldn't have worn a helmet like the one on her head. That would be more in line with those from `Close Encounters of the Third Kind', which was more acceptable.
So it was with some trepidation that she approached the craft and went up the short ramp, and hesitated at the top and surveyed the gloomy interior before going in. The doorway was just over five foot high, so she had to duck her head as she went and entered the craft.