This was one of those silly but intriguing ideas that come up on a Sunday afternoon in the van. I wrote a little story about it when I was around twelve years old.
What if, right now, everything but the people became invisible?
It would be like being blind. Since you wouldn't be able to see clothing, its only purpose would be to keep you warm. As a result, jewelry would disappear, along with anything but the most practical clothing. “Things” would completely lose their importance. Writing would soon be replaced by Braille. There would be millions more car crashes.
Instead of trying to look at what the earth would be like as a whole, let's look at the life of a five-year-old girl, Susan. She lived with her Mom and Dad and baby brother Johnny on the fifth floor of an apartment building.
She woke up in the middle of the night and it looked to her as if the roof had disappeared. Then she realized that she could see all the people on the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth floors, stacked above her, as if suspended in air. She thought she was dreaming, and rolled over. But then she screamed in terror, for it looked as though there was nothing underneath her, no bed, no floor, no ground, either. She could see people stacked beneath her, too.
Her scream had woken the other people in the apartment, and within an hour, everyone was groping madly about, trying to figure out what was happening. There was a blind person living on the fourth floor, and he thought everything was normal, and couldn't understand why everyone was screaming. Before long, most people had found their way out of the apartment, although lots of them had broken legs and arms because of falling over the balcony.
Susan found her way out unharmed, and stood there watching everybody scrambling around up in the air. She began to laugh when her mother tried to run to Johnny, who was crying, and slammed into a wall. Then she gasped and started laughing harder then ever. Her mother had turned on the light switch by accident when she ran into the wall. Now there was a room-shaped block of light, up in the air. It was the middle of the night, so all around was darkness. But what was funny was that all the objects in the room showed up as clearly defined shapes of darkness! The objects were invisible, but the light still couldn't go through them.
Her mother could now walk where she could see there were no shapes of darkness, and easily get Johnny out of his crib. The people still grouping around saw this, and began searching for their light switches.
By morning everyone in the town had found their way to the centre of town. It was hard to eat breakfast, because you couldn't see the food, but everyone went home and managed somehow. In the hospital, however, everything was in complete chaos. All the medicine was in bottles with written labels. No one knew where anything was. Susan's Dad came home with the news that a lot of people were dying from having been given the wrong stuff. He said that everything was being changed to Braille to make it readable. Susan's Mom was just telling Susan's Dad that they needed Braille too, when Dad said,
“Why is there ketchup on my pancakes?”
“See,” Susan's Mom answered, “I thought it was syrup.”
“I wonder what the earth looks like from space?” Susan asked.
“Well,” said her Dad, “I don't know. I don't suppose the rocket will become visible as soon as it left the earth.” Susan's Mom said,
“But if that were true, wouldn't your clothes become visible when you jumped? Try it, Susan. Try jumping.” Susan jumped, but nothing happened.
“It might be the atmosphere.” Susan's Dad concluded. That afternoon, Susan took Johnny for a slow, careful walk.
“As far as the eye can see, Johnny, there's nothing but the people.” Susan said.