Second Strike Part Six
Rated: PG (Conclusion)
MacGyver was placed in the Phoenix infirmary, a unit recently added to the massive complex to treat the most severely injured from laboratory experiments gone awry and the emergency cases that did not have precious time to waste transporting them to a nearby hospital. Staffed with highly trained medical personnel with government security clearances, it had been expensive to construct but deemed necessary, given the sometimes unpredictable and dangerous nature of the substances being studied, potent toxins and contagions that they did not want released into the general population if they could somehow contain them there. It was still relatively new and had seen few patients yet, except for MacGyver. Although it was safe for Pete and the medical team to be near him again and treat him normally, there were still concerns that the electricity that had surged through his body would return, especially since they had to defibrillate him. They did not want to take chances bringing him to a regular hospital, so the infirmary served its purpose—containing the possible return of his dangerous condition. Pete sat beside him, waiting for him to regain consciousness now that his pulse was normal.
“You shouldn’t be here, Pete,” MacGyver said quietly, opening his eyes. “I could electrocute you.”
Surprised that he spoke, Pete turned to look at him, noticing the sadness and hopelessness in his eyes, resigned to his fate. Without saying a word, he approached him and took hold of his hand, squeezing it tightly and smiling. Instead of jolting or screaming in pain, he remained smiling, unaffected by his touch that had hours ago been so powerful. MacGyver stared at the hand clasped harmlessly around his, stunned. He looked back up at Pete, seeing the warmth, affection, and relief in his eyes.
“How…?” He asked. “I don’t understand. What happened? Why aren’t I hurting you?”
“The electricity that was in your body was completely expelled somehow,” Dr. Brock said, entering the room and answering his question. “It’s gone. It may still return, so we will have to monitor you with extra caution, but so far, it does not appear that you have recharged in any way.”
“So I’m…back to normal?”
“I think so, Mac,” Pete said.
“I’d like to conduct a few more tests to confirm that he’s back to normal, but those can wait. He needs rest,” Dr. Brock said.
MacGyver nodded in agreement. Ever since he had been endowed with his electrical abilities, he had been unable to sleep, as if the electricity was keeping him wired and running as well. The only times he could reach anything resembling rest were when the more violent expulsions of energy occurred from his body, weakening him and forcing him into unconsciousness. He was overwhelmed with exhaustion, and he desperately felt the desire to retreat into a long, peaceful, uneventful sleep. As he drifted away, Pete watched him, smiling, glad to see he could at last continue with the usual cycles of his body, nothing controlling him.
“Sleep well, Mac,” he whispered. “You’ll be all right now.”
***
A few days later…
Dr. Brock set up another test similar to the one she had done before, designed to allow MacGyver to interact with unplugged electronic devices and random items he could attempt to move telekinetically. He failed, everything he touched not reacting. Pens and other items on her desk remained stationary no matter how much he suggested they move with his mind. He was a regular human again, no longer special. As relieved as he was, a small part of him was disappointed and missed having the powers he’d had. Now, he wouldn’t have the chance to learn and understand more about them, from their exact origins to how they functioned. If they had stayed with him just awhile longer, perhaps he could have somehow learned how to control them better and not inflict such harm and destruction. He could have possibly benefited mankind by learning more about energy and how to manage it more effectively. As it was, the source of his brief powers would forever remain a mystery.
“How does it feel, to be normal again?” Pete asked, watching him.
Smiling, MacGyver fell into his arms in an embrace, laughing slightly. “It feels wonderful, Pete,” he said. “After all, I can do this again. I didn’t realize how much I would miss touching and interacting with other people, how isolating the electricity around me had been.” The two men pulled away from each other, smiling.
“Well, we may never get to explain what happened,” Dr. Brock said. “All my recorded evidence was destroyed by the intensity of the voltage.”
MacGyver glanced at her melted, burned computer. “Ah…yeah, about that…I guess I owe The Phoenix Foundation a lot of money for all the expensive, state of the art technology I…blew out.” An uncomfortable, apologetic smile formed on his lips. He still couldn’t believe he had caused so much damage.
“Don’t worry—it’ll come out of your next bonus,” Pete said, chuckling and winking at MacGyver to show he was teasing him.
MacGyver laughed slightly and shook his head. “Seriously, I feel I owe the Foundation something,” he said. “Not to mention an apology to the city for inconveniencing everyone.”
“Except that they would never believe a single man could cause such a widespread outage,” Pete said. “I tell you, I still don’t believe it, or anything that happened to you over the past few days.”
“I’m not sure I do either,” MacGyver said. “You know me—I don’t usually think about the paranormal, chalking it up to superstition or ancient fears stored in man’s memory—but something definitely happened to me, and it’s a shame we can’t know more about it, although I certainly wouldn’t volunteer to get struck by lightning again.”
“Some things aren’t meant to be explained, I suppose,” Dr. Brock said. “The way the electricity clinging to you behaved—it was almost as if it didn’t want us to understand it, arriving abruptly to demonstrate its force and then leaving just as quickly. It’s strange, but in a way it was as if the electricity wanted to see what it was like to be near a human body without harming it, as if it was seeking some kind of relationship.”
“Doctor, are you suggesting that the electricity was somehow a sentient being?” MacGyver asked, smirking at the absurdity of such an idea. “It didn’t communicate with me.”
“No, but it communicated through you,” Dr. Brock said. “It was as if it wanted to establish a connection that it realized it was impossible to maintain, so it left your body.”
“Boy, I hope lightning and electricity don’t really act like that,” Pete said.
Dr. Brock shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps that’s what a lightning strike is—an attempt for a force of nature to contact us,” she said.
“Oh please,” MacGyver said. “Now you’re talking nonsense, Doc. Lighting is nothing but a discharge or electricity from an unstable atmosphere, possibly formed by ice particles in a cloud becoming electrically charged. It doesn’t have a consciousness, and it’s certainly not alive.”
“That’s how the scientific community defines it, but do we really understand how everything around us works? We can ascribe certain attributes and theories to how things work in our world in order to make sense of our confusion over the complexity surrounding us, but the truth is…we don’t really know anything. This world remains an enigma beyond our ability to describe except in the most basic and elementary of principles and assumptions. After all you’ve experienced MacGyver, you can’t tell me that you completely disagree with me.”
“No, I suppose not,” he said. “I mean, I am still alive and practically uninjured, something unheard of for the extreme volume of currents of electricity that were in my body. As much as I would like to know what happened, you’re right—some things are just beyond our understanding. I’m just glad it’s over, so I can return to my life.”
“No more hikes, right?” Pete asked.
“Aw come on, Pete—hiking is fun. We’ll just have to be more careful about severe weather next time.”
“Next time? You think I’m going to put myself through such grueling exertion again? You had to pick the steepest expert trail of the highest difficulty!”
MacGyver moved his hand, and a pen on Dr. Brock’s desk fell to the floor. All of them stopped and stared at it.
“Did…did you just move that without touching it again?” Pete asked.
“Come on, guys. I brushed against it with my sleeve and knocked it off the desk,” MacGyver said. “There was nothing paranormal about it. I’m back to my old self, remember?”
Pete and Dr. Brock nodded as if to agree with him, but they weren’t so sure. Both of them had clearly seen the pen float in the air for a moment before falling to the floor. MacGyver hadn’t directly touched it at all. It seemed some residue of his powers remained, after all, but they couldn’t convince him. Even after all he’d been through, he would remain the skeptic, more curious and open-minded than some, but still unwilling to completely accept that there were forces beyond his control and understanding. Then again, maybe he did accept it, and that was why he remained so casual about the pen. They could never be sure, but it was the last, small action influenced by the mysterious force that had invaded him through the lightning strike. After that, neither of them ever noticed anything else peculiar around MacGyver, although they would never forget what happened to him. It remained a closely guarded secret shared only with a few Phoenix scientists, still unable to prove the mechanism behind it and probably never able to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. Occasionally, MacGyver would be the recipient of stares from those who had witnessed his electrical transformation, but eventually the curiosity, speculation, and rumors about what had actually happened to him faded. He was back to normal, at last.
The End
