Pinball

by Alan Seeger

  Steven looked around for a moment, then at Callie. “We’re still here?”

  She smiled. “I grabbed your hand so that my kronostabilizer field would surround you, too. Even though the Gatekeeper’s field is gone, mine is keeping us here.” She reached into her pocket and handed Steven a small silver electronic device. “Put this in your pocket.” Once he had done so, she let go of his hand and he looked down and saw he was surrounded by the same soft golden glow that she possessed. “Now we can go back to my place and figure out exactly where and when to get you back home.”

  A North Central Positronics employee saw them standing there and walked over. “Can I help you?” he asked. They came up with an excuse for being there and made for the exit, laughing as they went. They got into Callie’s car and returned to her condo.

  Steven waited while Callie booted her computer. “Okay,” she said. “Let me verify that things are getting back to normal at the old homestead.” She squinted at the screen.

  She looked up at Steven, her eyes huge. “Uhm… I don’t know why, but the records I am seeing show that as of November 2009, your address is, and always has been, a vacant lot.”

  Chapter 86

  Steven was pacing the room now, frantic with worry as Callie continued to work at her computer.

  “What do you mean a vacant lot?” Steven said. “It’s always been a vacant lot? What the hell did we do? Jimmy Two Eagles’ grandparents lived in that house for, like, forty years before we bought it in 1995. What did we do?”

  “I don’t know, but try to stay calm,” Callie said. “There’s nothing we can do that can’t be undone. Nothing we can break that we can’t fix.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Steven as a chill ran up his spine.

  Chapter 87

  Marcus Aurelius Valens was a soldier in the Legio III Brittania of the Roman Army. His father, Fabius Valens of Anagnia had been the commander of Legio I Germanica based in Germania Inferior, and had fathered a child to one of the servant women in his household. The boy was raised as a Roman, and entered the Roman Army at the age of seventeen.

  He was assigned to III Brittania at the age of twenty, and was part of the force that was sent into the western part of the isle which later came to be the nation of Wales.

  In the second year of his assignment there, Valens was sent to deliver a message from his field commander to the Roman governor of the island. As he rode the long journey from Glevum to Londinium, he stopped near Verulamium for the night.

  Searching for a suitable camping site, he happened across a cave mouth which flickered with a curious green aura. Climbing into the cave to investigate, he encountered loose footing when he stepped on some broken rock in the cave floor and fell into the cave. He fell directly into the vortex which had formed there and found himself trapped in the void.

  Chapter 88

  Callie worked tirelessly at her computer screen for over an hour, muttering to herself under her breath in that Midwestern accent that Steven now found tremendously endearing, although part of him wanted to strangle her for screwing up his timeline. On the other hand, if she hadn’t intervened, who knows how things might have gone? he thought.

  He watched her as she peered intently at something on her screen, then tapped in more data. He didn’t know whether she was typing in text, or numeric codes, or what, and he figured he was probably better off not knowing. Still, he was insatiably curious.

  At one point, when it seemed as if Callie’s mood was lighter, he dared to ask, “Are things getting back to normal?”

  “Not quite yet. But I did find out why the land had always been vacant.”

  “Really?” Steven perked up.

  “Yeah. It was supposed to be haunted,” Callie answered.

  “Haunted?” Steven laughed. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. According to the records I found, the land where your house is — or was, or whatever — lies at what is considered the northern end of the Gallatin Valley.” Steven nodded. He was familiar with the geography of the area.

  “According to these records, none of the Native American tribes in the area, which included the Blackfoot, the Crow, the Bannock, the Nez Percé, and several others, ever claimed the Valley as their own territory,” she continued. “The Blackfeet, however, had a name for the area. They called it ‘Ahkoto waktai sakum,’ which basically means, ‘Many come together country.’”

  “And I’d guess that refers to the joining of the three rivers — the Jefferson, the Madison and the Gallatin — that form the Missouri,” Steven said.

  “Yup,” Callie said. Now here’s the interesting part. There was a legend among the tribes in the area that the Gallatin Valley, which they called the Valley of Flowers, was neutral territory. According to this, there’s a huge variety of wild flowers that grow in the area.”

  “Yeah, Lynne loves to go looking at all the wildflowers,” said Steven. His face fell. “We’ve got to get things back on track,” he said in a strained tone. “I can’t lose her.”

  “I told you, don’t worry,” Callie said. “At any rate, there’s a story I found in a local newspaper from 1944 that may explain the anomaly. It says that a small group of Blackfoot families settled in the area, following the relaxation of some of the stricter regulations that had made most Native Americans prefer to remain on the established reservations. They bought a pretty large parcel of land — about 1100 acres — from a rancher who was retiring. Several of the families built homes up and down the various rivers, but — get this — the area where your house is, or was… there were several times between 1877 and 1940 that people reported seeing a ‘spirit door’ there, described as looking like the entrance of a tipi but ‘shining with the color of grass.’ What does that sound like to you?”

  Steven gasped. “A Gate?”

  “It’s been proven that events that affect space-time can cause echoes of themselves that can show up in other times, usually at or near the same location. You don’t think…?” Callie’s blue eyes were huge now.

  “When the Gate closed that the Guardian had come through, it somehow made a copy of itself that showed up almost a hundred years earlier?” Steven said.

  “That’s what it sounds like,” Callie frowned. “I’ve been trying to avoid this, because the less interaction you have with people from our time, the better, but I’m gonna call in my Uncle Andrew. He’s way better at this kinda stuff than I am.”

  She pressed in something on her computer screen and waited. There was a brief chiming sound, and then a man’s voice. Callie kept her eyes on the screen; Steven surmised it was a video call.

  “Hello, Lulu,” it said. The voice was husky, like that of someone who’s smoked for forty years. Did people still smoke in Callie’s time? Steven had no idea. “What’s going on?”

  “Well, you know how I have been trying to pinball Greatfather Steven’s writing career,” Callie replied.

  “Right,” said Andrew. “I heard that there were some anomalies.”

  “You could say that,” she said, smiling at Steven. “Greatfather… uh… he’s here with me right now.”

  “What? Oh, Lulu, you know that can cause all sorts of issues.”

  “Yeah, I know, but it was kind of unavoidable… and now we have what I think is a Gate echo anomaly causing more problems. Could you come and help?”

  There was a pause. “Yes, I think that’d be the best way to handle it. I’ll see you in 20.” Steven heard a faint blip, evidently Andrew disconnecting the call.

  “Lulu?” Steven smiled.

  Callie sighed. “That’s what everyone in my family calls me. My full name is Calliope Louise. I don’t much care for it, but what can you do?”

  They sat quietly for a while, waiting for Andrew to arrive. Steven became hesitant to initiate much in the way of conversation, after being told twice by Callie that she couldn’t answer questions he posed because it could affect the timeline. You certainly didn’t seem to have a problem telling me about
the future earlier, he thought, but upon reflection he realized that perhaps that could have contributed to their present problems and maybe that was why she was now hesitant to tell him anything more.

  There was a chime and Callie got up to let her uncle in. They returned shortly, and Steven looked at Andrew with the practiced eye of a writer figuring out how he would describe Andrew if he were a character in a book.

  He was short, rather swarthy, with cropped black hair, silver at the temples. His pudgy cheeks bore the scars of what Steven supposed had once been a teenager’s acne problem. They still get acne 600 years in the future, he thought. He wore a burnt orange collarless shirt and pants and a cloaklike garment of a fabric similar to that of Callie’s robe, although his was a metallic charcoal color.

  Andrew walked across the room and bowed to Steven, Japanese-style. “Welcome, Greatfather.”

  “I wasn’t sure you’d speak to me,” said Steven, “Butterfly wings begetting hurricanes as they do.”

  Andrew smiled a thin smile. “The damage has been done, but since the remainder of our family doesn’t seem to have been snuffed out like a candle flame, I don’t think it’s too terribly serious. Let’s see if we can’t get you back to your proper point in space-time and remedy any of the effects all this may have caused.”

  Callie began to detail for Andrew the various events that had transpired: her initial transaction with North Central Positronics; Steven’s excursions to Centra and the subsequent enslavement of both he and Samuel; the auto accident that had taken Lynne’s life and alternate-Steven’s eventual suicide; the efforts they had made to undo everything else that had happened, and finally the apparent echo in space-time that had caused the family that had built Steven and Lynne’s house never to have done so.

  This was the first time Steven had heard many of the details of the past events that had been deleted from his mind by the various recycles of the timeline, and he sat looking a little shellshocked.

  “I’m sorry,” Steven said, seeing the concern on their faces. “I knew about some of this from what Callie had told me, but hearing it all laid out like that…”

  “I understand,” said Andrew. “It must be rather overwhelming.” He smiled again, this time a genuine, warm smile. “I’m sorry, Greatfather,” he continued. “I’ve been distant, and you don’t deserve to feel as though you are an outcast.”

  “I’m curious,” Steven said. “Why do you call me Greatfather?”

  “Uh… that is the traditional term in AmerAsia for a male ancestor,” Andrew said hesitantly. “You are highly honored among our family. I hope that Lulu — Callie, I mean — has shown you the respect you deserve.”

  Steven looked over at Callie, who clearly was hoping he would confirm that she’d treated him well. “Of course she has,” he replied. “She’s been nothing but respectful to me.” Callie heaved a sigh of relief. “I do have a couple of questions for you, though, if I may,” he said to Andrew, who smiled and nodded. “First, you mentioned Callie ‘pinballing’ my writing career… do I dare ask what that meant?”

  “You are familiar with a game known as pinball, which, I believe, would have been popular when you were a boy?”

  “Sure,” replied Steven. “I used to play every Saturday at the bowling alley in the town where I grew up.” The strains of The Who’s Pinball Wizard began playing in his head.

  “We use that term to refer to the practice of attempting to manipulate our present by making changes to past events,” said Andrew. “Many times one change begets another, and yet another, not always resulting in the desired effect, so it is common for those who attempt it to have to repeatedly try making small changes until they either get the result they were after or they give up, much like bouncing a pinball off the bumpers of one of those old machines.”

  “I get it now. The other question I had has to do with how I am related to you?”

  “We aren’t related by blood,” Andrew replied. He hesitated a moment, then said, “You won’t remember any of this anyway, once all of these anomalies are repaired, so I suppose it won’t do any harm to tell you. My name is Andrew Steadman. I am married to Callie’s mother’s oldest sister, Suzanna. They have a brother whose name is Steven — and yes, he’s named after you. Callie’s mother is named Maria. Callie is the youngest of her five daughters, and, according to my studies, the last of our line, unless we get your timeline repaired —”

  “So that my wife and I can produce another child.”

  “Precisely,” said Andrew.

  “Well then, I suppose we’d better get after it.”

  Chapter 89

  The sun rose on a November day in 2013, and shone on a beautiful, green, empty stretch of land northwest of Three Forks, Montana. The tall grass waved in the wind as birds and other wildlife went about their daily routines, searching for food and maintaining their nests.

  Chapter 90

  Andrew was conversing openly with Steven now. “I have been interested in kronophysics — the science of time manipulation — since I was a University student,” he said as he opened a program on Callie’s computer. “Scientists first began to delve into this field in the late 2100s with the discovery of the trifold nature of kronos particles. Essentially, if a kronos particle, which is a type of subatomic particle, is spinning one direction — some people use the old terms “clockwise,”or “right spin,” — it is moving into the future; if it’s spinning in a retrograde direction — counter-clockwise or left spin — it’s moving into the past, and if it’s stable, it stays in the present.” Steven vaguely understood, and tried to follow as best he could.

  “If you create a field of kronos particles that are all attuned to either clockwise or counter-clockwise, that produces the Gate effect. As I understand you have experienced, opening a Gate without further tuning simply means you have a tear in space which leads to what we call Gatespace, or some call it interspace or warp space,” Andrew went on. “However, with the introduction of six intersecting energy fields, each of which is composed of a different type of energy and affects one parameter of the travel in space and time, it’s possible to pinpoint your travel directly through Gatespace, opening a Gate at your destination so that you simply enter a Gate here and come out there, without all the floating in green nothingness nonsense in between.”

  Steven closed his eyes for a moment, still slightly overwhelmed. Andrew spoke of these things as if they were as simple as hopping in a car and driving to town, and Steven supposed that to Andrew, they were. He looked at Andrew, who was still intently working on the computer, then at Callie, who was watching the both of them with a slight smile on her face.

  “What are you smiling about, Lulu?” Steven grinned.

  “I’m just having a great time listening to you two,” she said, smiling at the use of her nickname. “Uncle Andrew, how are things coming there?”

  “Very well indeed, Lulu,” Andrew replied. “I think I am close to having all the echoes suppressed, and it doesn’t seem to have caused any further anomalies. Of course, we won’t know for certain until we actually get the Greatfather back to his proper time.”

  “So I’ll be back home soon?” Steven asked.

  “Hopefully so,” Andrew replied. “Just give me a few more minutes here.”

  Chapter 91

  The sun was at its highest point near noon, crossing the sky in a lazy Autumn arch. The temperature in south central Montana was in the mid-40s, the huge dome of the sky a brilliant, clear blue with isolated cumulus clouds stacking their cotton skyscrapers to the heavens.

  A few miles away, a semi-tractor driven by one Melvin Settlemoir passed by on Interstate 90, on its way to Spokane, Washington. Settlemoir was becoming rather hungry, but decided to push on to Butte, some 55 miles away, before stopping to eat.

  Chapter 92

  Andrew looked up from the computer at last. “I am basically finished here, with the exception of setting the parameters for the Gate that will take you back to your home location
and time,” he said to Steven. “If all goes as planned, you should have no memory of any of this.”

  Steven’s brows arched a little. “Are you doing some kind of Undo thing? That didn’t go so well before.”

  “No, this is a slightly different procedure,” Andrew replied. “I’m going to pass you through a field called a temporal filter as you go into the Gate, which will hopefully erase from your mind all memory of any events that are future to your timeline.”

  “So I won’t remember you? Or Callie? Or even having been here?”

  “I’m afraid not, Greatfather. It could have lasting repercussions if you retained the knowledge you have gained here.”

  “I understand,” Steven said, his face somber. He really had enjoyed getting to know his descendants, if only for a few hours.

  Andrew powered up a small device that, to Steven, resembled a DVD player. It generated a shimmering silvery field that filled most of the room. Then he entered a command on the computer’s screen and the green vortex of a Gate appeared at the far side of the room. Steven understood now; to enter the Gate, he would have to cross through the temporal field, and apparently it would scrub away any memories of these events. He wondered if he would feel anything. “Will it be painful?” he asked.

  “You may feel a tingling sensation, but apart from that, no, not at all,” Andrew said.

  He shook Andrew’s hand and thanked him, and then crossed to Callie and took her hands in his.

  “I’m really gonna miss you, Lulu,” he said. “You’re something special.”

  “Thanks, Grandpa Steve,” she said with a huge smile. “I’m gonna miss you too, but you won’t even remember having met me. Go home and write the novel that will make your career explode… Greatfather.”