The Intruder by Greg Krehbiel Page A

of the park. Perhaps he could study for a while. He still had a few more lessons to do, and he wanted to read as much as he could about the implant and hole communications.
    Back on the sidewalk, Jeremy turned from North Capital Street onto H Street , generally watching the pavement immediately in front of him as he continued to work on walking and working his implant. As he turned the corner Jeremy froze in mid-stride to avoid a collision. He'd almost walked right into someone's back. He was about to excuse himself when a sudden, irrational fear gripped him. It was that same pale, floating creature he had seen through the restaurant window. It wasn't a foot in front of him, facing away, drifting down the sidewalk.
    There was no hover board or anything else to explain its odd, mid-air movement. Its feet moved slightly, but it wasn't walking -- the legs just stretched from time to time. The head moved about, left to right, up, down, taking in the surroundings, apparently unconcerned about where it was going.
    But it wasn't just the unearthly movement that was so shocking. The body itself looked like a shade, or a mirage of a person. Jeremy could make out the form distinctly, but he could also see through it, which is why he nearly called out when the form looked as if it was going to collide with a man walking the other direction, towards Jeremy.
    He could see the man through the body of the phantasm, and then there was the awful moment when they touched, then occupied the same space, then separated, both seemingly oblivious to the union they had for no more than a second. Somehow it seemed disgusting. Jeremy had one last thing he had to do before it got away. He closed his left eye.
    The image vanished. There was nothing on the walk but normal pedestrian traffic. He tried alternating eyes, and there was no question about it; he could only see it through the eye that the implant was connected to. But why didn't anyone else see it? Or did they?
    He had to know.
    "Pardon me," he said to the man who had just shared space with a ghost, "did you see that?"
    "Did I see what?" the man asked, clearly not pleased about being disturbed and eager to be on his way.
    "I'm sorry, but did you see the form of a man floating along down the sidewalk?" He felt foolish asking the question, but he felt he had to be direct.
    The man scowled at him. "Is this some sort of joke?" 
    "No, but I'm sorry to have troubled you," Jeremy said and immediately turned away, walking slowly down the sidewalk. The creature was nowhere to be seen, but Jeremy continued to scan the street, hoping for another look.
    What could that have been? he thought. He checked to make sure he didn't have any odd programs running on his implant. He had been playing a spy game the night before, and it was possible there was some odd visual effect from that. But his implant was on standby: only the clock was running, and of course the mail system was on.
    Could that be it? Can you send a ghost image by mail?
    Jeremy ran a series of searches in the help sections of the mail database as he continued to walk toward the university. Tracing down his hypothesis had a calming effect. The adrenaline was wearing off, and he began to breathe more regularly. Seeing that thing had been a jolting experience, but he wasn't sure understand exactly why. It had frightened him at an almost animal level.
     
    From what he could tell in the help database, it wasn't possible to send visual images by mail. You could send a message with a tag to a visual image stored on the hole, but the recipient would have to activate the tag before the image would appear. He had just received a message from Dr. Berry , but there had been no tag.
    He arrived at the park and paused from his frantic thoughts to take in the beautiful lawn and stately oak trees, of all different varieties. In the center of the park was a reflecting pool, complete with a dozen or more ducks and geese. Jeremy sat on one of the wooden benches