Pinball

by Alan Seeger

  They arrived at the lumber yard and began to make an elaborate show of examining the various types of wood; there were massive logs that resembled Earth’s redwood trees, but with wood that was a pale lavender color. There were thin, spindly trees like birches with bark the color of dried blood. As he and Samuel examined the boards which the lumber team was cutting, Steven eyed a large open area just east of the mill that was separated from the main work area by a small grove of trees that appeared to have been dipped in molten gold. One of the workers explained that they didn’t cut these trees, called gildtrees, until they were ready to use them for a project, because if they left them stacked as they did the other logs, they quickly lost their unique luster and beauty.

  Steven decided to take advantage of the seclusion that this afforded, weaving through the golden grove when he saw that the woodcutters were otherwise occupied. He waited until Samuel was able to join him and slipped the GRACE remote out of his pocket.

  He pressed the power button and waited anxiously as the boot messages scrolled by, then glanced at Samuel apprehensively. He took a deep breath, hoping the next moment wouldn’t turn out to be an utter disappointment, and depressed the Summon button.

  They both jumped as there was a crack like the sound of a lightning bolt and a green vertical line appeared in midair about twenty yards in front of them, widening in a moment into a familiar green swirl. The device had created a Gate. Steven thought to himself that if the Guardian didn’t show up, perhaps they could at least escape into it, though he wasn’t sure if trading a lifetime of slavery for a possible eternity in the void of Gatespace was an upgrade or not.

  However, he had no time to dwell on this, for in the next moment, something massive began to emerge from the Gate.

  Chapter 34

  The high intensity mercury vapor lighting cast deep shadows that trailed behind the various buildings on the base like pools of ink.

  Wilkerson moved from one shadow to the next, mindful not to make his presence obvious.

  When he neared the guard shack by the anomaly, he stood silently, masked in shadow, waiting for the optimal moment to move out.

  He saw that PFC Simmons was on duty. Simmons was a good man, conscientious and quick to obey orders. Wilkerson hated to do what he was about to do, but it was necessary.

  He silently approached the rear of the guard shack and came around the left side. He found a fist-sized stone on the ground and tossed it so that it struck the fence on the far right side of the guard shack.

  Hearing the noise, Simmons emerged, looking to the right; Wilkerson got him in a chokehold from behind and held it until Simmons sank to the ground, unconscious.

  Wilkerson moved quickly to the gate of the fence around the anomaly, unlocked its padlock, and entered. He hesitated only a moment before plunging into the green, swirling vortex.

  Chapter 35

  Steven and Samuel stood rooted to the spot as a huge construct of chrome, plexiglas and leather emerged from the gate. It had two red-lensed eyes, similar to the single eye of the Mini-Guardian which Steven had destroyed in his driveway, and two large leaf-shaped structures angling upward from the top of its metal head which had the appearance of ears but which Steven took to be some kind of antennae. As they watched, it unfolded two enormous wings, and as they reached their full span of some 40 feet, Steven realized they were looking at the Bat Guardian.

  With one flap of its huge wings, the Guardian crossed the distance between them and came to rest in front of Steven, lowering its massive head to rest on the ground, revealing a row of four recessed seats molded into its huge spine. The display on the remote flashed the words, “Mount Guardian,” and Steven looked at Samuel. “I guess it’s now or never,” he said.

  Samuel didn’t hesitate. He clambered up the bat’s folded wing and took the second seat. “Come on, Dad,” he hissed. “Let’s go.”

  Steven looked around and saw that none of the guards seemed to have noticed the Guardian’s arrival. He climbed into the first seat and peered at the remote. Pressing the navigation arrow keys seemed to scroll through a list of locations, each of which he assumed were accessible through a Gate. Some were accompanied by a descriptive phrase, while others were not:

  001 *HOME GCNE 2666

  002 10795975 2769

  003 22985733 2769

  004 *EARTH ALPHA BERMUDA 1945

  005 *EARTH BETA VANCOUV 2184

  006 080398059800 1872

  and a seemingly endless list of others. Steven puzzled for a moment over the various choices, but he had no time to be choosy. He heard the sound of voices shouting and glanced up to see a group of guards approaching through the grove of gildtrees. The element of surprise was gone. He chose the first option and stabbed the green GO button.

  Chapter 36

  Wilkerson felt as if he had leapt into an icy Arctic sea. The sensation would have taken his breath away, except there was no breath to take. He mentally gave thanks to whoever might be listening that he had entered the anomaly with both hands on the triggers of the cMMU.

  He calculated the trajectory he would need to take to reach the coordinates specified by the spreadsheet for the vortex which he wanted and squeezed the triggers of the cMMU, gently at first, getting a feel for how the unit would respond. After he had boosted himself along for a minute or so, he thought, I feel like an old hand at this interdimensional travel stuff already. He let go a long blast of propellant and raced through the void like a motocross rider.

  Soon he approached the rippling orange swirl which was the vortex he sought. He edged up to it, peered into it to recheck his destination, and stepped through it.

  He looked around and found himself in a grassy field. If the information in the database was correct, he thought, I should be just outside Hoboken, New Jersey, and the date should be February 26, 1860.

  He looked up at the stars twinkling brilliantly in the sky, so different from the dark, overcast one he’d left behind.

  Wilkerson prowled through several yards, helping himself to clothing which he found hanging on clotheslines. Selecting items that looked as if they would fit him. By the time dawn was beginning to break, his 21 century clothing was completely obscured by a frock coat, overcoat, and a pair of spats worn over his combat boots. He passed up some clothing items that were more colorful in favor of a basic black wool fabric; it wouldn’t do to be too noticeable. He concealed his M4A1 under the overcoat. He also stowed his helmet in his pack and donned a stovepipe hat which he found drying on the back porch of a house. He decided he looked fairly normal for the times and began the long hike east.

  Chapter 37

  There had been a brief burst of green, the sense of being in Gatespace just as Steven had remembered it from his previous excursions, but it didn’t seem to last more than two seconds before he realized that, while they were still sitting atop the Guardian, the grassy floor of the open area, the grove of gildtrees, the forest surrounding, all were gone. The Guardian was now resting on what appeared to be a concrete floor inside a massive warehouse. White uniformed workers swarmed around the Guardian, examining it, apparently for maintenance purposes.

  A man stood near the head of the bat and looked up at Steven, calling to him in a cheerful voice. “Good morning, sir, and welcome back to North Central Positronics! ‘Ow are yer t’day? Everything functioning properly with your Guardian?” He spoke with a Midlands British accent, and had a pencil-thin moustache and swept back brown hair. He was evidently a supervisor of some sort, and carried a rectangular device in his hand which seemed to be some sort of hand-held computer.

  “Uh… yes, everything is working fine,” Steven replied uncertainly.

  “Did you bring ‘er in for unscheduled maintenance? The records show she was ‘ere not a fortnight ago,” the man said.

  “We…” he looked at Samuel. “We were in kind of a tight spot.”

  “Ah,” the supervisor smiled. “Well, that’s what the RESCUE button is for, but of course you’re al
ways welcome to come ‘ere as well. You certainly are entitled to use the facilities whenever you’re in need of ‘em.”

  “I’m afraid I’m still rather unfamiliar with many of the things you can do with the Guardian,” Steven said. “I’m not the original…”

  “What he means,” Samuel interrupted, shooting his father a look, “is that he’s not very technically oriented.”

  “Not a problem, sir! I can set yer up with Michael, our training steward, and ‘e’ll be ‘appy to review all of the uses of the Guardian. I’m Nigel, by the way. If there is anything that either of you should need — anything a’tall — you have but to let me know.”

  Steven and Samuel smiled at him, then at each other. They knew they were in the right place.

  Chapter 38

  Lynne Denver sat alone in her little house, staring out the kitchen window at the rolling hills that faded into the distance, a bluish mist obscuring the horizon.

  Steven and Samuel had been gone only a single day, and already she knew that she had made the biggest mistake of her life letting Steve go. So what if he was now thirteen years younger than her? He was still the same man she’d fallen for three decades before. Why should the fact that he’d found the fountain of youth, so to speak, change that? It obviously didn’t change how he felt about her; he’d been crestfallen when she told him that it wasn’t going to work between them any more. She could have kicked herself later that night, lying in bed alone, remembering how it had felt the night before, lying next to him once again, feeling the warmth of his body. She’d been without him for fifteen years. She didn’t want to be without him any longer.

  After spending the entire day thinking things through, she knew what she had to do. She wrote Christopher a note of farewell, got in her little Toyota and headed for Samuel’s house.

  Chapter 39

  Michael led Steven and Samuel into his office. He was a spindly young man with a dirty blonde ponytail, John Lennon glasses and a thin goatee. He reminded Steven of a grasshopper in a lab coat.

  His office was a glass-walled corner suite with a view of the surrounding countryside. In the distance, jutting up from the horizon, was the grayish form of the Gateway Arch. “Are we in Granite City?” Steven asked. He’d passed through the town a couple of times, but didn’t remember the Arch as being visible from anywhere in town.

  “We call it GG, really,” Michael replied. “Greater Granite. There used to be a dozen or so little towns in this area… what’s your home year?”

  “Home year?” Samuel said.

  “Yeah, the year you were originally from,” Michael smiled patiently. Obviously these two hadn’t paid attention during their Guardian orientation.

  “Oh,” said Steven. “2013. We’re from 2013.”

  Michael punched in some information on his computer’s touchscreen. Immediately, a large secondary display built into the wall lit up with a map of the area, like a 25 century Google Earth. He punched in the year and the topography was overlaid with the boundaries of towns that Steven recalled from past visits to the area; Granite City itself, Madison, Venice, all the way down the east bank of the Mississippi to East St. Louis and Cahokia, and then St. Louis itself on the western bank. “Here’s the area as you probably know it,” Michael said, and pressed another key, “…and here it is as it exists today.”

  The map shifted, and Steven saw that the area labeled as Granite City now appeared to extend all the way from the boundaries of Alton in the north to Belleville in the south, and from the Mississippi eastward to Carlyle Reservoir. Michael touched something on his keyboard and a red dot appeared on the map, just across the river from where Steven remembered the St. Louis metro area as having been. “This is where we are now. As you can see, the Gateway Arch is visible from my office window. Kind of fitting, I think, considering what we do here.”

  “Very,” agreed Steven.

  They spent an hour or so reviewing some of the many ways the Guardian could be used. Aside from the obvious ability to use it as a vehicle to travel through Gatespace, Michael explained, Guardians could be set to serve as semi-autonomous sentries on a particular parcel of land, as defined in their Location setup menu; they could, depending on which particular Guardian was being used, be assigned to harvest certain types of materials — wood, stone, or whatever the owner needed; they could be sent to retrieve items from a different location in space-time, theoretically anything at all, from the British Crown Jewels to the Holy Grail. “Of course,” Michael smiled, “There is the distinct possibility that someone could use that function for purposes that might be considered unethical or illegal, so we are rather careful about who Guardians are sold to.”

  Steven glanced at Samuel and nodded. “Of course.” Sheesh.

  Chapter 40

  On December 5, 1945, a group of five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger torpedo bombers, designated Flight 19, took to the skies east of Florida on a routine training exercise. The mission was intended to evaluate the pilots’ navigation and combat skills in aircraft of this type.

  The flight leader was Lt. Charles C. Taylor, who had some 2500 hours of flying time under his belt. The trainees were not as experienced as Taylor, but they had recently completed other training missions in the same area where the exercise was scheduled. The region was not an unfamiliar place to them.

  The flight took off at 1410 hours. Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale reported conditions as “favorable,” with the ocean “moderate to rough.” Lt. Taylor was assigned to supervise, not intending to take a leadership role unless there were problems. Instead, one of the trainee pilots was actually leading the exercise; it involved the flight negotiating a triangular course, flying east for 56 miles until they reached Hens and Chickens Shoals, where they would practice dropping their ordnance. They were then to continue east for another 67 miles, then turning to the north-northwest for 73 miles, which would take them over Grand Bahama Island. Then they were to set a course southwest for 120 miles, finally arriving back at NAS Fort Lauderdale.

  Radio communications between the planes were routinely monitored by ground stations; the records show that the practice bombing operation was completed successfully. Around 1500, one of the pilots requested permission to drop his last torpedo and subsequently indicated that the flight was proceeding on to their first turn.

  Forty minutes later a radio transmission was heard as follows:

  Ground Station: What’s your compass reading?

  Pilot: I don't know where we are. We musta got lost after that last turn… Both of my compasses are out, and I’m trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I’m over land but it's broken. I am sure I'm in the Keys but I don't know how far down and I don't know how to get to Fort Lauderdale.

  At 1545 Fort Lauderdale tower received a call from the flight, but the flight leader sounded confused and worried. “Cannot see land,” he said. “We seem to be off course.”

  The air traffic controller asked, “What is your position?” For a moment, there was no reply.

  Finally, the flight leader said, “We cannot be sure where we are… repeat, cannot see land.”

  Nothing further was heard from Flight 19 for about 10 minutes. Then contact was resumed, but it was not the flight leader who was heard. Instead, voices of the various flight crews were heard, sounding confused and disoriented.

  “We can't find west. Everything is wrong. We can't be sure of any direction. Everything looks strange — even the ocean.” There was another break and then the tower operator learned that, for some unknown reason, the flight leader had handed over his command to another pilot.

  Twenty minutes later, the new leader called the tower, his voice shaky. He sounded like he was nearly hysterical. “We can't tell where we are… everything is… [static] …can't make out anything. …think we may be about 225 miles northeast of base…”

  Finally: “We are entering white water, nothing seems right. We don't know where we are, the water is green, no white…”

  This was the last
transmission ever heard from Flight 19. For five days Naval planes and ships searched almost a quarter million square miles of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, but no wreckage was ever found.

  Chapter 41

  Two hours later, Steven’s head was spinning. He felt as though he couldn’t fit a single additional fact into his cranium or it would explode.

  “Did you have any questions?” Michael asked.

  Steven stared at him dully. Questions? Michael had provided answers for every possible scenario Steven could possibly imagine, and then some. How could he possibly have any other questions? Then he remembered the Mini-Guardian that had assaulted the house on that November day a thousand years ago or so, and his curiosity got the better of him.

  “I understand that there are smaller versions of some of the Guardians,” he said.

  “Yes,” Michael said. “There are four types of Mini-Guardians; the Type 1 is basically an ostrich —”

  “It reminded me of a dodo bird,” Steven said. Michael stopped in mid-spiel.

  “Yes, I could see that,” Michael replied.

  “Is there a history of any of the Guardians ever having gone haywire?” Steven asked. He saw the puzzled look on Michael’s face. “Getting out of control, I mean.”

  Michael thought for a moment and said, “We have lost just two of the Guardian series. There was a leased-sequence Type 1 that was sent to a remote interstellar location by one of its lessees — he didn’t accompany it — and we think it encountered an ion storm which fused some of its circuitry. It began Gatehopping randomly, unresponsive to GRACE commands, and we finally lost contact with it. According to the records, the last three recorded Gate accesses were into…” he checked something on his computer. “157 BC, 3724 AD…” his eyes lit up. “and 2013 AD.”