The da Vinci Disappearance

Leonardo da Vinci strolled through the crowd slowly with his mind on how to improve his new flying machine. Ever since he was a child he had pondered about how things worked, while all the other children were playing games. His biggest dream was to invent something that would enable man to fly in the air with the birds. So far he had plans, but no one would give him the money to fund his project because almost everyone thought what he was doing was rubbish. Around him merchants called out prices in a barrage, each and every one hoping to get some more customers. Everyone bustled around in a hurry and some people recognized him and glared at him. Leonardo just ignored them because he believed one day he would show them he was right after all.  He walked up marble steps to an elegant fountain, then slid his hand under and felt the icy river water. He scooped up some to wash his face and drops of water dribbled down his beard.

Suddenly, he felt dizzy, leaned forward and fell into the water, blacking out. Leonardo looked around; all he could feel was a darkness that stretched as far as he could see. Then in a flash everything began to spin faster and faster.  Leonardo felt like he was being stretched and pulled by an invisible force.  He felt something strange; his ears began to pop because of the air pressure. Then he disappeared in a flash of a purple light.  Leonardo suddenly emerged from the darkness, into a whole new area.  One of the possible reasons people did not know da Vinci’s location when he was apprenticing with the artist Verrocchio, was that they could not find him during this disappearance. They probably never bothered to look again, because they believed Leonardo da Vinci had gone insane.

***

I scribbled a few notes onto a piece of paper, listening intently to the presentation. Suddenly I felt the air get hotter and denser and I could feel sweat starting to form on my forehead. Then I began to smell a strong smoke coming from the middle of the classroom. Everyone else identified the smoke too, and the teacher began to line us up. Then a small explosion shook us down to the floor and I heard screams throughout the classroom. Out from the thick purple smoke emerged a man with a grey beard who was trembling. He seemed familiar from somewhere, but I couldn’t remember.

Then I knew who he was, I recognized him from a self-portrait print in our class. I looked up at the wall to make sure. Everything was about right, except he looked older in real life. This guy looked like Leonardo da Vinci! I figured that he got here by a kind of transportation, but how he had got into our classroom was bugging my mind. I could tell that he was just as scared of us as we were of him. He looked dizzy and gaunt, his hair and beard were uncombed and messy, and some parts of his shirt were covered in mechanical grease. Then he groaned and collapsed.

We didn’t know what to do, so we just got some paper and water. I dipped the paper into the water and laid it onto his forehead. The decision to contain what had just happened was a class vote, as we considered that this could turn into a worldwide crisis. All of a sudden his eyes began to flutter. “He’s waking!” I shouted. A couple students ran over to see what was happening. The teacher came over and told us she could handle it and thanked us. I walked away and sat at my seat, wondering how my life had turned upside down all of a sudden.

***

Leonardo woke up in a flash. Opening his eyes he saw children around him dressed in bright weird clothes. For a second, he forgot what had happened to him in the first place. He began to stand up. Where am I, he thought?  His eyes darted around, observing everything.  This technology is way too advanced, he thought, this isn’t possible. Then he remembered how Verrocchio had talked about creatures called aliens that kidnapped humans. Could he be one of the kidnapped? They almost looked exactly like him except for the choice of clothing. In addition, they spoke a different language. A crowd had already formed around him. He heard a variety of languages around him; finally he heard something sort of similar to Italian. Of course, he did not know it, but Italian had changed by a lot since the 1500s. Leonardo responded in a few words, asking what was going on. The teacher thought for a moment, and explained what had happened. Then Leonardo explained his journey through the darkness. Leonardo questioned where he was, in a fluent stringed Italian. The teacher told him where he was and the date. His mind was in shock from what he heard. He stood up slowly, and the crowd dispersed, making way for him. He looked outside from a window, following something with his gaze, and then he dropped to the floor and fainted.

Later that afternoon, Leonardo groaned as he sat up. He looked around and saw that the room was empty. He stood and saw that he was really alone. Then he remembered what he had seen outside, an object like a bird floating in the sky with a great humming noise. He had to tell all his friends about it. Maybe he could try to make one himself. Maybe he could use the same design to make his own flying machine. He quickly scribbled a sketch of what he had seen on his notepad, and stuffed it back into his pockets. Leonardo leaned on the ledge of the window, and saw more amazing objects: he saw fast moving vehicles on a smooth black road! He could see smoke coming from the back of them, and he saw humans in the front. There was only one possible answer to where he was. He knew about America, but this was something entirely different. This was beyond everything he had thought possible.

Then the same person who had spoken Italian before walked into the room. She told him that everyone had left the school building. “You’re going to have to take shelter in the school tonight,” she told him. She led him into the nurse’s office, and pointed to a small bed on the floor. Leonardo just sat on the bed for a while. The woman came back and told him he would have to wake up early in the morning. He lay on his bed thinking about the previous events.

He woke up prior to someone shaking his shoulders. He looked around and the teacher told him to run as fast as he could back to the classroom. He burst up the stairs and into the classroom. His hands gripped the wooden door but it didn’t seem to budge. He shook the handle even harder but still nothing happened. Then he pulled down on the handle and the door swung open with a squeak. He stumbled into the room and saw that this was not the same room, and there was a mass of people staring at him.

He became worried, not recognizing anyone in the crowd. Then all of a sudden he saw someone that looked like Verrocchio. Leonardo was relieved that he had actually found someone he knew, and he suddenly spoke in a fast panicked Italian asking what was going on. Verrocchio did not respond; instead, the group of people all started talking to him at once. Suddenly, the teacher that had spoken Italian walked into the room and pulled him out quickly. She asked him what his name was, and confirmed that the information from the students was correct. Leonardo followed her lead and ran after her as fast as he could down the stairs, not turning around amidst the yelling which was getting louder and louder. He suddenly looked behind him to check if they were close and tripped onto the ground. He stumbled out of the building only to slide and fall. Suddenly, Leonardo fell an immense pain in his neck and blacked out.

***

All the students in my class agreed that everyone should be able to listen to the supposedly-called Leonardo da Vinci. We hooked up a microphone to the computer that translated ancient Italian to English. Our teacher tested it out first by saying a couple phrases of Italian. Everyone had communicated that we were there to help Leonardo, because we had help him heal from his concussion from the emerging with the purple smoke and his other falls. We encouraged him to ask anything he wanted. Leonardo spoke something we couldn’t quite hear, and a robotic female voice translated the message: “How did I get here?” We told him how he had suddenly appeared in the classroom. The automated translator repeated what we had said, and his eyes began to grow wider as he heard the whole story. “I have to get back to Italy,” da Vinci said in a worried Italian.

Then da Vinci began to explain his account of how he had arrived in the classroom. After the translator spoke the last word, everyone began chattering at once. “Maybe Leonardo has to fall back into a fountain?” a voice called out from the back of the room. “That is a possible answer,” I responded. “But what was so special about the fountain Leonardo fell in?” the teacher asked. Everyone in the classroom began to ponder the matter, and wonder how we would get da Vinci back to Italy in the year 1515. Then as my friends and I were discussing, Jacob suggested that Leonardo could go the opposite way he came. “That means he would have to go through fire!” I shouted. The idea was approved by all, for all saw that the fountain mystery needed solving.

That day, incidentally, we started our new science unit, which incorporated the “Different Ways of Making Fire”. The principal had approved this unit, but we all had to wear protective equipment, as this was a dangerous experiment. We decided to let anyone outside the classroom think that Leonardo was a scientist supervising the experiment. He was more experienced with fire than us anyway, since he was an inventor.

We tried many different combinations every day. Leonardo would approach the fire in his protective suit, but nothing would happen, until the day everything changed. My group and I walked into the classroom early in the morning. No one was there yet, so we began to sit down and discuss how we could get Leonardo back to Italy. Ridge suggested using a fire made from natural gases. We went into the laboratory to ponder how to make the fire big, while still having it be connected to its supply of gas. We walked into the room only to find Leonardo slumped over a table, with broken beakers lying on the floor.

“I can’t give up on finding how I can get back,” he muttered. We were surprised at how dull his voice sounded, as he was usually more energetic. The translator had already picked up our early conversation about the natural gases, so Leonardo said into the translator, “Let’s get started on the natural gas project.” We began to wait for the rest of the class to get to the classroom. The teacher decided to let Leonardo take over the class, as he was more educated in science.  Everyone was assigned to make a group of three: all the groups were supposed to make a model of how we could possibly make a big and safe enough fire for Leonardo to walk into. We all finished models in the next fifteen minutes, and after looking over the models, Leonardo announced through the translator, “We will build the two models from Group 7 and Group 3. Everyone needs to volunteer for a certain job that they want to do while building the life-size model.” I was assigned the job with Sean, to dip the wood into a special coating Leonardo had created to make it more fire-resistant.

“Ready … 1, 2, 3!” I shouted, as Andrew and I dipped a large piece of wood into a thick black liquid. We held it up with our hands, to keep it from submerging. We then, according to da Vinci’s instructions, lifted it again after five minutes. You could see that the wood was now covered in a hard black covering. After an hour, we finished all the pieces of wood. Next we had to glue giant pieces of fiberglass to all four sides of a wall, in our testing room, to prevent the fire from spreading. It took six of us to lift up each piece of glass, and then two of us would spread glue onto the wall. Next, we would slowly push it into place, and make sure it was sturdy. After the first one, everyone was exhausted. By the time we finally finished the last one, we were out of energy. However, we did not get a long break, as we still had to coat it with the thick black material. We had to stand on chairs to reach the top of the wall. The only problem with the thick black material was that it kept dripping on the floor. We improvised by using a blow dryer to make it dry faster. Later, we found out the material was a thick rubber and metal combination. Now, we had to load the model that two other groups had built into the special protected room. However, the model did not fit through the doorway. This caused a giant delay for us; we had to work three times as fast to catch up. We had to dissemble everything, and then bring all the individual parts into the room to be assembled.

Finally, everything was assembled. Everyone waited in anticipation for the next day. At the beginning of class, I shouted across the room, “We’re ready!” and everyone ran over and crowded behind a fiberglass panel. da Vinci gave us the thumbs up, and we all clicked a red button that triggered the starting fire. However, our morale went severely down when nothing happened. We pressed the button repeatedly, but nothing happened. da Vinci looked at the pipe and began to walk toward it. He took the two pipes and switched their positions. However, as he popped the last pipe into place, he erupted in flames. Everyone leaped back, standing a safe distance away from a tremendous fire. We knew that something had gone wrong, but the fire was too big for us to go in and put it out. We activated our emergency sprinkler system and the fiery ball of fire diminished slowly. However, when we looked inside, no one was there. All we could see was smoke rising from the ground. “Where is da Vinci?” somebody cried from the back of the room. Our teacher rushed into the room, but it was completely empty and Da Vinci was nowhere to be found.