Invisible Touch

Invisible Touch

Chapter 11 ~ Pranksters

Kim's cell phone rang while she was in the shower. Ernie had waited until 7 AM to call her, to be sure he didn't wake her up. He knew she was concerned about this psychology exam and didn't want to take away from her mental edge. Still, he had something important to tell her.

"Look for a question on the back of the first page," he had said into the voice mail system. It didn't sound as cryptic to him in his head as it was when it came out of his mouth.

Good, he had told her, and everything would be fine.

She had overslept again. This alarm clock was her enemy, and was out to get her, she thought. Some day she would set her alarm to wake up and take the Bar exam. Snooze. Some day she would set her alarm for an important court appearance. Snooze. Some day, she dreamed, she would set her alarm for her first day on the Supreme Court! Snooze. No, somebody needed to invent an alarm clock with a hammer that would smack her in the head in the morning. That just might work!

Kim was so rushed that she almost forgot to grab her phone off of the charging stand in the kitchen. But she had her phone, she had her keys. Did she remember to bring her brain, so she might avoid flunking this exam? She really wanted a good grade on this exam, so her final grade wouldn't pull down the rest of the very high grade point average she had earned so far.

She had left herself plenty of time for parking, which was always an interesting challenge. Luckily there was a spot just two blocks away. She had noticed her phone was blinking and had just enough time to check her voice mail before she would go inside and need to turn her phone off.

Something about a question on the first page. She would read them really carefully, she told herself. Thanks, Ernie!

The exam had not taken as long as she thought it would. She was prepared, after all. She remembered what Ernie had said, and had plenty of time to double check the first page. It was then that she realized that there were questions on the front and back of pages two and three, but not on the back of page one. How the --, she started to think, but rushed to the front of the room and spoke with the T.A.

The assistant looked at the exam and held it up for Kim to look at. When it was turned sideways, there was now a question at the top of the page. A diagram was to be drawn in the blank space below it. When Kim had looked at the page the other way, the question had been in the lower left hand corner and she hadn't seen it. She had completely missed it.

"Oopsies," she said to the assistant and went back to her seat. She only had a few minutes now but drew her diagram confidently. Finally she turned in her exam and left.

She pulled out her cell phone and selected Ernie from her address book. He didn't pick up. Of course not, she remembered. He wouldn't be back from his classes for a couple hours. She was about to dial his cell phone when...

"Boo," she heard behind her.

She turned and saw his smiling face.

"How did you know?" she asked him. "About the back of page one? How did you know?"

They walked a block and sat down in a coffee shop so they could have a more private conversation. She waved her arms and prompted him to answer her question.

"How did I know?" Ernie repeated. "I had a dream about it, of course. That's what I was trying to tell you last night."

"I know, but the details, I mean you..."

"I had a blue dream," he began, and realized he hadn't really explained the whole color thing to her. "That meant that you were going to be sad or upset about something. And the vision came and I could see that you were receiving your exam back. I could see that you were upset about the your grade. And then it became clearer and I could see that you were looking at red marks on a blank page, that you hadn't answered the back of the first page."

"Remarkable," Kim said. "I don't know what to say. The question was printed on the side, and I just missed it. You saved me, Ernie." She didn't want to sound overly dramatic. "You saved my grade. Thank you so much!"

They smiled at each other.

"You know what this means, don't you?" she said. "What you saw in your dream didn't happen after all. You changed it. You changed the future!"

He thought about it with both pride and dread at the same time.

"I did, didn't I?"

He wasn't sure whether it had been the right thing to do, changing the future. But he hadn't caused any harm, had he? He stared into space as he thought about this question.

"Ernie," Kim called, as if he were at a distance. "Are you having..."

"Oh no," he said with a chuckle. "I was just thinking."

He had seen the future and changed it, she thought. She just couldn't get it out of her head. This was incredible. It was like having a time machine, and they could go and... Well, you couldn't go back in time and change anything. You could only go forward, and... If you could travel into the future and back, you could bring back winning lottery numbers. You could be rich!

They had dinner together and Kim brought the subject up.

"What if you went into the future and you could get winning lottery numbers?" she asked him.

He laughed. It wasn't as if he had never thought of anything like that.

"Well, for one thing, it doesn't work quite that way. I can only see people and what they are doing." He paused and looked seriously at her. "And I don't know, but it just seems wrong."

"You are such an old bitty, admit it!" Kim said with a smile. She was glad to see him smile back. "We're still in college, aren't we? What if we just consider it, you know, just a college prank."

Ernie laughed. He thought about what she was saying. There wouldn't really be any serious harm in this, would there? And he wanted her to feel comfortable with this affliction of his. Moreover, he wanted her to believe, if she still had any doubts, that what he had been going through his whole life was real.

"OK, OK," he finally said. "You've sold me."

"So how would we do it?" she asked.

"Like I said, the dreams are about a person. I can see when they're happy. I can actually see when they're going to get money. How would we find the..."

"Don't they make a big deal about the store that sells the winning ticket? Wouldn't the store manager be happy about that?" Kim suggested.

"That's true, but there are a heck of a lot of stores that sell..." he started to say.

"Well we'd better get right on it!" she replied.

This was crazy, he thought. They were going to have to visit every convenience store, every gas station -- this was going to be a lot of work. But at the same time, it didn't have to be the big prize, did it? And he was always reading in the paper about local stores selling a lesser winning ticket.

They made up a "lost cat" poster. They downloaded a picture of a cat from the Internet and gave a pay phone number for people to call. The plan was to go into each store, ask the manager to put up the poster, and even if they said no, Ernie could still shake the manager's hand.

They covered a lot of ground just on foot before Ernie needed to sit down. His vision was beginning to blur and he knew he ran the risk of bumping into something once his vision was obscured. This might have been a bad idea, he started thinking. There were different dreams happening all at once. It was not a good experience, and one he remembered from times before when he had been in a big group of people all pushing and shoving. This was very unpleasant for Ernie, but he concentrated on the "show" he was watching. Suddenly he saw a man in a green haze. Could this be the right one? What if he just getting a pay raise next week. As the dreams finally all passed away, that was the only one that seemed promising.

Ernie tried to explain to Kim everything he had just experienced. In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought. She knew his big secret, so she might as well know everything about it. She just looked him in amazement as he told her about the blurring colors and waves of faces. She tried to imagine what he was seeing or feeling but it was just too much to grasp.

He then told her about the detail of the green man he had seen. She had been taking notes about what people were wearing whenever Ernie did touch somebody. The man Ernie had seen was wearing a uniform, and there only three people in uniforms. Ahh, and one of those had been a woman, they remembered.

"Did either of those men have a hat?" Ernie asked Kim. "The man in the dream was wearing a hat with a star on it."

"Well wait a minute," she said. "Just because they're wearing a uniform in your dream, that doesn't mean they'll be wearing a uniform in the future, does it?"

"No, no. You have a really good point," he told her.

"But look, only one of the stores has a company logo with a star," she said. "And we went to two of their stores. And look, one of those had a woman working there. It must be this other one." She pointed to one of the stores on their list.

"Boy, you've got quite the analytical mind, young lady. You are a regular Kate Carson!" he told her, referring to the famous detective from the novels he enjoyed reading.

She blushed and they retraced their steps back to the store she had picked out.

"Now wait a minute. How are we going to buy a winning ticket," Kim suddenly asked.

She was right, Ernie realized. There was a slight flaw in the plan.

They would have to think of something else, they realized. It was one thing to know where the winning ticket was going to be sold, but it was a very different thing to try and buy the winning ticket once they got there.

"I've got it," Ernie announced. "What if we go and visit the state lottery commissioner."

Kim laughed. "I thought you said you had it!" she giggled.

"No, seriously," Ernie replied. I have to write a paper for my business ethics class. The state lottery system is perfect -- there are so many ethical issues there."

"And you shake his hand, and..." Kim continued.

"And we see what happens," Ernie said.

Ernie made an appointment to see the state lottery commissioner on Friday, a day that he and Kim had no classes scheduled. He would really write the paper, he thought. It had to be about something, after all. He told the commissioner's assistant that he wanted to ask a few questions, so that he could use first person direct quotes in his paper. The commissioner would be flattered, the assistant told him.

The lottery commission's offices were all the way over in Madison, an hour and a half away. Kim drove, and they were there in plenty of time for their appointment. She waited in the reception area while Ernie did his interview. He took good notes, and realized this was actually going to be an interesting project -- the term paper, he told himself.

He emerged 20 minutes later, notebook in hand. He thanked the assistant.

"Did you get what you needed?" Kim asked Ernie.

"I sure did," he replied, holding up the notebook.

They headed for the car. As soon as they were buckled up, Ernie asked Kim to wait, and handed her the notebook. It was her turn to write a few things down.

He could see it so clearly, the commissioner in a green haze. Standing next to her was a man with an enormous smile, holding up one of those enormous ceremonial checks. At the bottom of the check, Ernie could see six circles, right next to what must have been the commissioner's enormous signature. He concentrated as best he could under the circumstances he always faced.

"One," Ernie said. Kim started writing. "Eleven. Fourteen. Twenty-two. Twenty-nine. Seven."

He was in a daze for another minute and a half, Kim figured. She waited until he looked like he was himself again before she spoke.

"Good work, my friend," she told him. And pointed out, "This last one is out of order."

"I think that's some kind of bonus number," Ernie told her.

"When is the drawing?" she asked.

"Tomorrow night," he answered. "In fact, the commissioner was just on her way to take care of the security arrangements. It's quite a system. Air tight security. I'm glad you talked me into this."

"Hey, I didn't..."

"Gotcha," he teased her. "I'm just kidding. But we do make a great team, don't you think? And you do make a heck of ring leader!"

They had a good laugh. And then Kim went and bought their ticket.

It seemed like an eternity before the drawing was held. They met at Ernie's apartment to watch the numbers being picked.

The first number to come up was 11. They were tingling with excitement. Next was the 1. Two out of six. They had to watch a little animated commercial before the next number would be picked. It was the 29.

"Can you believe this?" Ernie said.

Kim just nodded. She wanted to scream, she was so excited. Next number, 14. And then the last regular number, 22.

"Eeep," she chirped.

"I can't even believe this is for real," Ernie said.

"And this week's bonus number," the announcer said, before the number popped out of the tank, "is a seven. One, eleven, fourteen, twenty-two, twenty-nine, and the bonus number is seven."

Kim and Ernie both jumped up.

"This is incredible!" Ernie shouted. "We did it!"

"Well, kind of," Kim began to confess. "You were right, and I didn't feel very good about this," she said. "I did buy a ticket, and we did get the five numbers, but I chose 'two' for the bonus number. If we had won the big jackpot, that man you saw in your dream, he would have had to share it with us. And even if we really did have the winning number, I didn't know if I would want to collect the money. It just didn't feel right."

Ernie wanted to hug her, but knew better.

"You're a good girl," he said, and he meant every syllable.

They wouldn't claim the prize, the decided. It was an easy decision for him, with his trust fund paying all of his expenses. But for her to give up the five number prize, more than $800,000 -- that was remarkable. Talk about ethics, indeed.

Kim held out her hand to Ernie.

"Touch me again," she offered. "Tell me what's in my future."

"Oh no," he told her. I already know what's in your future. Only good things, my darling. Only good things."

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