Somewhere, inside something
There is a rush of
Greatness. Who knows what stands in front of
Our lives. I fashion my future
On films in space
Silence tells me secretly
Everything... everything...
The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)
Written by James Rado and Gerome Ragni
Performed by the Broadway Cast of Hair

Chapter 1

     He simply couldn’t believe what was plainly evident before his eyes. The three-hundred-pound laboratory bench, with a heavy stone top, was hovering over a foot off the ground without any visible means of support. The only movement in the room was the almost imperceptible slide of the bench toward the window, through which the early morning sun shone.

     The only witness to the remarkable doings in the deserted lab was nearly struck dumb. He could scarcely credit what he had managed to accomplish, and yet the only thing he felt more strongly than wonder was fear. Just looking at the hovering lab bench he knew that once anyone else became aware of what he had discovered, he would lose control of his work, or worse.

     Christopher Benjamin Wright was a graduate student majoring in physics. He was one of a special few in the graduate program at Parsons Technical University in Houston, Texas. What made him special was that he was one of only sixteen Negroes ever admitted to the advanced studies program at the university. The time, fall of 1964, had seen little acceptance of his kind in the South, especially in the halls of higher learning. In most cases Christopher would have been called “uppity” at best, or a “trouble-makin’ nigger” at worst.

     Christopher further differentiated himself from nearly all the rest of the Negroes attending Parsons, in that he was there on an academic scholarship, not for playing football.  His math and science scores throughout high school had marked him as having an exceptional mind, regardless of the color of the skin within which it was housed. Christopher even aced his Scholastic Aptitude Tests with perfect math and science scores, and only missed four questions in the verbal section. In fact, his scores were so good his high school counselor had to vociferously defend the scores when several members of the school board accused Christopher of cheating.  

     His straight As in undergraduate classes so impressed his instructors that their unanimous support helped get him a full-ride scholarship to the graduate program.

Now, at the crack of dawn he was standing awestruck in the school’s physics lab looking at the most amazing sight he could ever have imagined. As he began to regain his sense of self, Christopher noticed that the device in the middle of the lab bench was completely silent. There was no sign of the power it was consuming to do its remarkable feat. There was no glow or evidence of electrical discharge. The only movement in the room was the slow drift of the bench toward the window.

     Reaching over the edge of the floating bench, Christopher’s heavily-gloved hand carefully touched the apparatus on its top. Feeling nothing through the rubber-insulated glove, he slowly turned the small knob on the face of the device. As he did so the bench slowly settled to the floor, displaced over a foot from its original position in the room. When the power had been completely cut to the device he let out a huge sigh, as if he had been holding his breath the whole time.

     Realization of the predicament he would be in should anyone discover his device and it’s capabilities galvanized Christopher into action. He unplugged the device from the receptacle in the wall and unscrewed the clamp that secured it to the tabletop. In mild panic, he looked around for something large enough to conceal it from view so he could get it out of the building and off campus. His briefcase was a bit too small, and there were no boxes in the room. He wasn’t about to try to disassemble it for fear he wouldn’t be able to put it back together again and have it work.

     Gathering up his papers and shoving them in the briefcase he tucked the unwieldy machine under his arm and quickly left the lab. Looking both ways as he left the room, Christopher was relieved to see no one about. Quickly walking down the hall, and down the stairs a single floor, he made his way to his locker. Spinning the dial of the combination lock, he opened his locker and turning the device on end, squeezing it in to the space barely able to accommodate its width. Closing and locking the door, Christopher allowed himself to relax.  Now all he had to do was wait. He would have a much better chance of getting it out of the building and to his small apartment under cover of darkness.

     Even though he was a student in good standing at Parsons, being caught trying to leave campus with something as unusual as a piece of lab equipment would arouse attention he now felt he could ill afford.

     The day seemed to pass interminably slowly. When his final class was over in mid-afternoon he tried to lose himself in the library, reading science journals at first, then finally settling on rereading Jules Verne’s First Men in the Moon. Though he periodically turned the pages, Christopher was paying no attention to the words before him. He was going over everything he’d done in the preceding weeks, retracing the steps he had taken in making his remarkable discovery. He began to list in his head the research materials he had borrowed from the library, the books and journals that would show up if someone took the time to see just what he’d been up to in his studies. He also needed to retrieve his lab notebooks from the past year as well, even those his faculty advisor had filed away in the department’s main office.

     It didn’t take a genius to figure that anything a colored boy at an almost all-white university discovered wouldn’t be left in his hands for very long.

Christopher’s life was taking a turn completely away from any plans his parents had envisioned. The first thing on his agenda was to conceal as much of his research as he possibly could. The last thing he wanted was to leave behind a clue that could lead someone else down the path of discovery he had so recently traveled. Second, he needed to carefully craft a plan of withdrawal from the university that left no one suspicious of the true nature of his departure.

     Now, the only thing he was thinking about was what he wanted--no, needed--to do to ensure his own future. Tonight he was going to get his device away from the university and figure out a safe place for his new base of operations. Since he had nothing to do until the early spring sun set, Christopher pulled together the few things he had spread out on the table beside him and left the library to get a bite to eat.

     Christopher’s connections to his present life were few. He was indeed a well-liked student. His instructors were equally impressed with his academic acumen and his quiet, somewhat self-effacing manner. He had never been known to speak a word in anger, nor had he failed to act in anything but the most circumspect manner. Those co-eds who overcame their natural reserve, or in a couple of cases, the de facto barrier of race, and had approached him had been politely rebuffed, although said avoidance was accomplished in such a manner that not one of them ever took offense at his polite refusals.

     Leaving school was going to mean losing his financial support. His scholarship was not going to be there to sustain him once he severed his relationship with Parsons. He would have to find a job, preferably well away from his usual haunts, perhaps even in another town.

Methodical, he was. By the time Christopher finished eating dinner he had assembled all the pieces of his immediate plan.

     Walking home to the second-floor apartment above the neighborhood laundromat, he went into his dirty clothes hamper and pulled out several pair of white socks, a pair of underwear and two t-shirts and packed them into his gym bag. Looking at it critically, he estimated there was more than enough room for the device hidden in his locker.

     Once the sun had set, Christopher set off for the sciences building at a leisurely pace.  Reaching campus, he felt better seeing a few students still about, mostly coming from the library.  Entering the building and going up the stairs toward his locker, he saw no one. Once he reached his locker his heart was pounding, the noise from the combination lock excruciatingly loud in his ears. Carefully opening the latch of the locker, he made sure the door didn’t slip out of his hand to bang against the adjacent locker. Setting the gym bag on the floor, he pulled out his soiled clothes and placed his device in the bottom of the bag, quickly replacing the clothes around the sides and on top. Zipping the bag, he then closed the locker and locked it once again.

     Looking both ways, wiping the light sheen of perspiration from his forehead, Christopher retraced his path, making his way to the building’s exit. Just before he would have been safely out the door, he nearly jumped out of his shoes when he heard behind him, “Where you off to, son?”

     Slowly turning toward the voice, he was relieved to see it was one of the custodial staff.  The elderly Negro, known only as Jasper to those who cared to find out, always had a pleasant word for him. In the one or two times they had exchanged more than a passing greeting, the janitor had made it clear that he was proud of the fact that Christopher set such a fine example for a “colored boy.”

     Quickly relaxing his startled features, Christopher turned and smiled, holding up his gym bag.

     “Some of my things were getting mighty ripe in my locker. I figured it was long past time to get my wash done.”

     “Ain’t that the truth. Sometimes when I’m mopping up I kin smell some o’ them that’s rotten or dead. When the term’s over, and we have to go through and clean them lockers all out, you wouldn’t believe some o’ the things we find up in them,” Jasper said, shaking his head, reminiscing over past discoveries.  “Some of ‘em are so bad new paint won’t stick.  Now that’s po’erful.”

     “I’ll bet it is.  Well, I’m not about to leave you with a story to tell someone down the road,” Christopher said with a smile. Patting his bag, he said, “It’s a good thing I live right above the laundromat.”

     “You got that right. Well, let me get back to my chores, the night’s a-wastin’.”

     “Good night, Jasper.  I’ll see you around.”

Pushing against the door with his rear, Christopher waved at the departing janitor and breathed a sigh of relief. The cooler night air and the enveloping darkness had a calming effect on him, slowing his heart, letting him slow his walk to a much more leisurely pace.  

     As he drew closer to home he realized he hadn’t really thought of a safe place to hide his invention. The last place he wanted to keep it was in his room. The small apartment had little in the way of living space, let alone any real place to hide something the size of two phone books piled atop each other. There was no way he was going to trust it to the mail or a package delivery company and send it home to his mother. No, he was going to have to secret it somewhere close, but in a place unlikely to be discovered even with a fairly vigorous search.

     Approaching the block on which he lived, Christopher scanned the area, looking for possible hiding places for his invention. Walking around to the back of the laundromat to climb the stairs to his apartment, the dark doorway to the basement caught his eye.

     Looking around and seeing no one, he carefully opened the door.  A cool, moist wash of air confronted him as he entered the dark cellar. Closing the door behind him, Christopher felt around for the light switch on the wall. Flicking the switch, he could barely see to the other side of the room. The entire basement was lit with a single, naked light bulb near the door.

     There was little in the dank room but a huge gas-fired hot water heater hissing in the far corner. The body of the heater was about a dozen feet deep, rounded on the top with the usual pipes and valves festooning the space between ceiling and tank. There was just enough space between its side and the basement wall for Christopher to squeeze all the way through to the corner.

     Looking up toward the ceiling, he could see nothing but a yawning darkness between the joists of the floor above. Reaching into one of the dark recesses above the wall, all Christopher could feel was empty space. Pulling his hand out of the dark recess, he came away with a thick coating of spiderweb strands, empty fly carcasses and a fine rain of dislodged dust and dirt.

     Perfect, he thought. Bending down to lift the shirt-covered machine, Christopher carefully slid his precious invention into the shielding darkness.

      Stepping back as far as he could, he could see no sign of the shirt wrapped around the device. Christopher knew that the hiding place was only temporary, but for now it was fine.  Gently erasing his footprints in the dust behind the huge tank with a rag, he backtracked to the basement door, tossed the rag back behind the heater tank, turned off the light and made his way to his own apartment, finally able to relax.

     The beginning of Christopher’s path to discovery was as long as it was a deeply-held secret. Over a year before his remarkable morning, he came across a counterintuitive equation about the propagation speed of the force of gravity.

     When he painstakingly worked out the math he was confused. The equations made sense, but they implied that the proper application of power could trigger an interdimensional effect, allowing for the focusing of the direction of the pull of gravity. If he could design and build a device to take advantage of the math, he would be able to control gravity in the four dimensions in which everyone lived.

     His first concern was to conceal his research from his academic advisors and instructors which was easy enough. Being the best student in a nearly all-white graduate program afforded him a strange duality as a standout and the proverbial invisible man.

It brought him no joy to be at the head of every one of his classes in terms of grades and test scores, since it brought no end of envy and whispered accusations of cheating or secret favoritism. Being one of only two Negroes in the graduate program was no picnic.

     As he refined his equations, and researched exactly how he could apply ordinary electricity to affect the force of gravity, his obsessive secrecy slid into outright paranoia.

On his way up the stairs to his apartment he heard a voice calling his name.

     “Hey, Christopher!  You’ve got a package in the mail,” called out the woman who lived across the hall.  There were four apartments above the laundromat, and everyone knew everyone else.

     “Thanks, Denise. What is it?” he asked.

     “It came from Benton Harbor, Michigan,” Denise informed him.

     “Probably that shortwave radio kit I ordered. You know I’ll be able to listen to radio broadcasts from around the world with the right antenna,” he said, excitedly.

     “When you get it built, you’ll have to let me and the kids come by and listen in,” she said, as she brought out the box and handed it to Christopher.

     “That’s a promise,” he said, taking the box and bringing it into his apartment.

     He set it down on the dining room table, already covered with thick cardboard to protect the surface where he worked on his new “hobby.”

     When he had put away his book bag and had donned his comfy clothes, Christopher turned his attention to unloading the various parts from the package from Heathkit, a company specializing in providing do-it-yourself kits for customers to build on their own electronics.

     Doesn’t look too hard, he thought as he glanced through the directions.  He laid out the parts on half of the covered table, then went to the closet and brought out a box of electronic components he had been trying to design and construct to exploit the gravitational anomaly he had discovered.

     The shortwave radio kit would serve two purposes. The parts spread on the table, along with the directions, would provide cover for his experimentation in electronics design should anyone stop by. And, when he was done constructing the radio, he could always gift his neighbor Denise with it after it served as camouflage for his real work.

     Christopher had never soldered anything before he decided to try to build the device to exploit his discovery. The radio, and several test circuit boards, would help him learn and improve his technique. The last thing he wanted was to fail for lack of skill  Over the next couple of months he built seven kits offered by Heathkit. Two he used to test his real project: an oscilloscope and a voltage meter.

     His frugal ways had resulted in an unusually healthy bank account balance for a college student, and his two scholarships went a long way toward paying his tuition and lodging, even off-campus. This allowed him the luxury of making the purchases necessary to advance his plans.

     Over several months Christopher learned as much as he could about electronics. He also made steady progress in the design of the device he hoped would eventually prove his secret thesis on gravity control.

     Over summer vacation, Christopher decided to remain in Houston for the first time since he had started college. When he called his mother she was disappointed, but proud that he was continuing his studies.

     “Hey Christopher, what are you building now?” Denise asked when they passed on the sidewalk outside the laundromat.

     “Haven’t really decided. Been working on a school project for extra credit,” he replied.

     “Well, I’m sure it’s going to be spectacular. And thanks again for lending us the radio. The kids love some of the radio shows broadcast by the BBC. Larry even has a map on his bedroom wall with cities around the world he’s heard programs from. I think you’re beginning to wear off on him.”

     “That’s great. What grade is he going into in the fall?” Christopher asked.

     “Fourth. He’s really taken a real interest in science because of you. Thank you for taking the time to explain the electrical things you put together.”

     “Don’t mention it. We need as many scientists as we can get. There’s these new computers, all these new electronics for regular people, television, hi-fi sound systems and such; it’s just going to expand. There’s a good chance he could get in on the ground floor with a really good job if he sticks with it.”

     “Let’s hope so,” Denise said.

     “Well, time’s a-wasting. Gotta hit the books,” Christopher said.

     “Yeah, I have to do some shopping myself. See you,” she said, as he turned to go inside.

Christopher took a look at the partially-assembled components on the dining room table. From his back pocket he pulled a plastic bag containing several feet of platinum wire and tossed it on the table. There were a handful of exotic parts he had discovered were necessary for the final construction of his device. He knew he could have used some help, but there was no one he could trust other than his best friends from home. But to invite any of them to visit would call unneeded attention to him, and possibly to his efforts.

With his most recent purchases he finally felt he was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It wouldn’t be long now, he hoped.