by David Smith
PROGRESSIVELY MORE AND MORE FILAMENTS attached to the bubble around Chip, David, and the Space Sieve.
But David was not perturbed. “Oh, now this is interesting, you see all these filaments that are connecting to the bubble around us?”
Chip didn’t say anything.
“Well,” continued David, ignoring his friend’s silence, “It’s kind of neat. They’re basically a weapon. Sort of like a spider wrapping its prey in silk, except a lot more powerful.” He operated the keys on the Space Sieve. “You know what?” he asked rhetorically.
Chip didn’t answer. What was he supposed to say?
David continued. “Once they have completed this web of filaments they are placing around us – all those sticky dots that are on the outside of our bubble – this is something they do to an enemy when it sits still long enough – once they complete their ball, well, let’s just put it this way. Their enemy will not be going home, ever. See, when this ball is done it’s completely impenetrable. It’s like . . .”
“Hey!” Chip interrupted, and spoke tones that had clear sarcastic notes. “I know. Why don’t we just sit here and find out some more interesting stuff about this? Yeah, let’s just sit here while all these powerful ships try to kill us, and study it! That’s a really good idea, David. Or maybe here’s a better one: How about we get the heck out of here? How about that, David? What do you think? Think that might be another good idea?”
It was getting harder to overlook David’s arrogance, particularly since it kept threatening their lives. David was confident he could save them at any time, but Chip now knew he could be wrong.
“Sure,” David shrugged, “Yeah, we can go. I just thought it was kind of interesting.”
“Let’s just go David.”
“Yeah well, okay Chip, Ready?”
“Please just do it,” said Chip.
As David operated the keys, a spot began to appear behind the Device, just as had happened in David’s bedroom, but as the spot grew and swept over and behind them, it did not reveal David’s room, but the same place in which they already were. They had gone nowhere.
“Well that was different,” Chip said, now feeling more nervous than anything else. “So David . . .”
“Shut up,” said David, who was operating the Machine frantically now, and who was beginning to exude fear that Chip picked up on immediately.
After heatedly working the keys for several minutes, David suddenly leaned back and glanced frantically at the ball of filaments that had almost completely formed around them. “It’s too late.” And then he looked at the glowing symbols on the screen of the Space Sieve. “Oh no,” he said.
Now the emotions that Chip had been holding so admirably in check began to take control of him. He put a hand on David’s shoulder, then suddenly spun himaround to face him. “What’s too late?”
But David didn’t say anything. He turned back to the Device and slumped, and watched as the ball around them continued to be completed.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said slowly, “I think we’re trapped here. I don’t think we will ever leave this place, Chip. I’m sor . . .”
“What?” said Chip, “What do you mean we’re never . . . ?”
David shook his head. “I . . . I don’t . . . oh my gosh, what have I . . . .”
“What do you mean?” said Chip, and his voice had that strange, almost laughing quality that sometimes happens in the face of true horror. And his pitch was rising. “You mean we’re going to have to stay here? For how long?”
“No, I don’t mean we’re going to stay for a long time. I mean we can’t leave, ever.”
“What? Can’t? What, you mean we’re going to stay here until we die?”
David sounded distant, if he was in a daydream. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if we can die here.”
“What?” Chip entreated, and he was almost yelling now.
“It’s as I said,” David explained. “Nothing can leave this ball from the inside. It’s impossible.”
As the thought of being trapped there rapidly grew, suddenly a worse thought gripped Chip. He waved his arms at David. “You mean our spirits when we die won’t even escape this ball? Our ghosts will just stay here looking at our corpses – and at this black box – forever?”
David didn’t directly reply to Chip’s question, yet he seemed strangely resigned to it. “No,” he replied. “Nothing can leave this ball, according to the laws of physics as I as I have learned them, from this Machine.”
Suddenly they felt a lurch, and they were once again moving. “That was weird,” said David, still dazed. “We shouldn’t have been able to feel that lurch just then.”
In the gaps that were still present in the ball that was forming around them, they could still see the stars. But on one side of them, they were growing red and fainter, and on the opposite side they were growing purple and brighter. And all of the stars seemed to be moving toward the red stars, some more than others. When most of the stars were clustered with the red ones, the red ones faded. Then, the few remaining purple stars seemed to tear away and there was only darkness around them.
David glanced at the screen of the Device. “It appears they just now pulled us to the brink of light speed, and thence into an inter-dimensional rift. They’re pulling us off to, I would say, their home world.”
In contrast to David’s calm resignation, Chip was seething. “Well, it didn’t take long to run into somebody out here! I thought you said the odds were pretty low for us to run into somebody. And it didn’t take long to find out their technology is totally superior to this – this box!” And then he kicked the side of the Space Sieve. But he didn’t feel sorry. In fact, he almost kicked it again.
David’s brow furrowed. “What?” His eyes narrowed.
“I said . . .” Chip started.
But David interrupted, suddenly, seeming to snap out of the lethargic state he had been in. “I heard what you said!” An angry, accusing tone flashed in his voice. “Listen, Chip! Listen to me! I told you that the odds of us running into somebody out here were remote, and they were remote. It’s math Chip! You can’t argue with it!”
Chip shot back: “Oh yeah sure! Sure you did the math right!”
But David interrupted again. “The problem wasn’t the statistics, I just did them wrong. I figured the odds of running into somebody in any particular place in space. And those odds are vanishingly remote – vanishingly remote, Chip. But I should have figured the odds of finding somebody around a previously-inhabited planet – a ghost town, basically. The odds of running into somebody in a ghost town are usually a lot higher than the odds of running into somebody in the middle of nowhere!”
Chip started to say something again, but David interrupted again. “And as far as this Device,” he said, pointing a trembling finger at it. “This thing is infinitely – infinitely – more powerful than these beings. If I only knew which buttons to push, I could literally . . .”
“What? Get us home?” This time it was Chip who interrupted, and his voice had a dry, snide tone. “Well I suppose when they get us back to their home planet, they’ll be the ones figuring out which buttons to push on that thing. I’m guessing your button pushing days on that thing are about over.”
David’s eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”
Chip leaned forward and spoke again, as if trying to be clear, “I said . . .”
But David interrupted him. “Shut up! I heard what you said!”
And he pushed Chip away and whirled back to the Machine.
Then Chip showed an emotional restraint that would serve him well throughout his life, because he wanted to hit David just then, and he almost did. But in the same instant, he realized that it would do no good, and besides, he didn’t really want to hurt him anyway.
David was concentrating now, and was regaining his strength again like an old lion
defeated by an upstart rival, rousing himself to battle anew. “No,” he said in a low voice. And he looked at the ships, still visible in the few remaining holes in the enclosure forming around them. “NO!”
Chip reached for David’s shoulder. “ Calm down, David. There might not be a whole lot we can . . .”
But David pushed his hand away. “NO!” he shouted. “NO! They cannot get this Machine!!” And he started operating the controls again. “There’s no telling what they would do with it!”
I would like to comment now: Here we see two more interesting examples of human behavior. First, we see that David’s handling of the Machine has been hardly what one would call “responsible.” And yet, in spite of this he thinks that he is far more competent to control it responsibly than anybody else is. When in fact the Kex would probably have been much more responsible with the Device than David has been, or that he would yet be. (Incidentally, this is how the beings in the ships to themselves: “The Kex.”) Indeed, it would have been better for David had the Kex taken the Machine away from him and returned him and Chip to their home world as they would have done.
The second example we see here – once again – is the power that emotion can have on your kind. But in this case, David’s emotion – anger –paradoxically gave him the power to focus himself sufficiently on the task at hand to solve the present problem.
I say “paradoxically,” because like most of your emotions, this one – anger – has the power to create as well as destroy. Love, anger, desire: all of these have great creative power – as well as great destructive power in your lives. Whether they are one or the other – whether creative or destructive – is sometimes a function of circumstance. But more often, whether your emotions are creative or destructive is more a function of the ability of the person to control those emotions and to use them appropriately.
In any case, due to his anger, David plied the Machine with skill and focus that he had not applied before. Indeed, in his anger, he operated the machine with a talent and determination at which even I must marvel.
In moments, Chip was startled to see that in addition to the screen on the Device itself, another screen had appeared to the right of it, as if floating in mid-air. Then, below this phantom screen materialized a transparent keyboard, and David began to operate it with his fingers. (By the way, have you wondered why, in order to operate this Machine, one must have fingers, and why it has a screen at your eye level?) Soon, another floating screen appeared in mid air, this time to the left, together with another keyboard below it with ethereal, colored buttons. And David was, in turn, operating all three of them.
Soon he looked up, and an angry smile crossed his lips. Several of the filaments tore violently away from the bubble around the boys, and the colossal ships to which they were attached went hurtling off into space. Seeing such massive objects hurled in that way gave Chip a feeling of vertigo, and he grabbed David to steady himself. David looked back at the screens and the keyboards. Chip noticed that David’s lip was flinching, and each time it did, it seemed like more filaments were torn off the bubble, and more of the Kex ships were sent careening away.
“Too slow!” said David, his voice angry, and triumphant.
Now, Chip saw an image of a sun, growing larger on the screen of the Space Sieve, together with strange symbols he did not recognize. When he noticed that David and the Device were becoming cast in stark contrast by a bright light behind them, he whirled around and saw a blazing sun, rapidly approaching. An instant later, David, Chip, and the Device plunged into the sun’s corona, traveling deeper and deeper into the solar flares and then flashing through the photosphere. Waves of plasma savaged the remaining Kex ships and ripped their filaments away, forcing the ships to veer away in panicked retreat.
In moments, it became totally black around the boys. Although the temperature inside the bubble they were in had not changed, it felt hot to Chip.
David was breathing hard (so was Chip), and David was smiling now, wickedly. David gently slid a button on the machine, and Chip, David and the Machine were illuminated with a dull light.
“Does it seem a little hot?” David asked. “We’re at the center of that sun we dove into.” He waved his hand. “Our ‘mighty’ friends out there can’t seem to come after us in here.”
Chip wondered why it should be that it was completely dark in the center of a sun, but he didn’t ask David about it. There was something of greater importance in Chip’s mind.
Then, suddenly, David swung around and faced Chip. For an instant, Chip felt relieved that David appeared to have saved them from the Kex. But now the look on David’s face was beginning to scare him as well.
David clenched his teeth as he spoke, and Chip noticed his fists were clenched too. “Those ships are all hanging around the outside of this sun that we’re inside of right now, with others joining them.”
He turned back to the Machine, and then pointed to each of the three screens in turn, but did so without looking at them.
“This screen,” he pointed angrily at one of the ghost screens, “will destroy all of the ships in space around us. This one,” he pointed to the other ghost screen, “will destroy those creatures’ home planet – they call themselves ‘Kex” – and it will destroy all of them wherever they are – all of them, throughout their entire galaxy.”
Then David pointed at the main screen – the one of the Device itself. “And this one will now take us wherever we want to go, right now.”
David was angry, yet excited, but Chip was horrified. He looked at David, eyes wide. “David, are you crazy?”
David looked back. His eyes were also wide, and frenzied. He replied, “What . . . you mean because we’re inside the core of a sun? It’s not a problem, we . . .”
“David, why would you do that?” Chip didn’t touch David. It was a though he had realized something terrible about his friend. This was more important to Chip than anything else that was happening. “Why would you even think about that – about killing them – David, about killing all of them? What have they done?” He shook his head. “What is the matter with you?”
Interesting, isn’t it? With all the power of David’s intuitive mind, Chip was right. Now was the time for David not to feel, not to act, but rather, to think. Let there be no misunderstanding. While your kind has an intuitive mind that has great (and I would say, unappreciated) capability, you also have the ability to think, and you could use both of these abilities far more than you do. It was time for David not to act, but rather, to first think about what he was intending to do.
Chip continued. “David, for all you know these people thought we were going to harm some of their children. All they may have been trying to do is stop us. Maybe they just buttoned us up to where we couldn’t do that anymore. So now, what, you’re going to kill all of them for that?”
David looked at Chip with a shocked expression, then his brow furrowed. And then he turned back to the Machine. The two ghost screens disappeared. Then, a spot appeared behind the Space Sieve. It instantly grew larger as the boundaries of it swept over and under, then behind them, and then they were in another place. Once again, it was dark.
Chip looked around. They had traveled. They were someplace else. He smiled for a moment, relieved. Then he shook his head. “Why do you always take us to places that are dark?” he asked.
Running along to their right was a range of black cliffs over a mile high, and vast craters stretched before them. Everything appeared to be knife-edge sharp, and had a shininess to it, to the extent that it could be seen in the faint light. A white sun blazed far in the distance, and set the features in stark relief.
“This is where I like to go to think,” David said quietly.
As Chip swung around, he could see something was different. The horizon was closer than it was at home – this planet was smaller than the Earth. Also, everything looked very hard,
as if the entire planet was made of metal or glass. A tiny spot of light passed overhead. As Chip looked up, he saw a jagged, tiny moon.
“Don’t worry,” David said. “That really is an inert object. It’s not a ship this time. I’ve already looked. There’s nobody here – nobody for light years around at least – nobody in inter-space either.”
Chip’s expression was blank. He didn’t know when to trust David anymore.
“Nobody’s going to pop in on us through an interdimensional rift,” David clarified. “There will be no unexpected visitors this time. If any of that changes, we’ll immediately leave.”
Still breathing hard, Chip had forgotten all about the fact that he and David had already been gone a long time, and should be getting back home. In the over-stimulated and somewhat dazed excitement of the moment, his fear became curiosity as he looked around the strange world. In terms of curiosity, Chip was not that different from David. “Let’s just take a break here for a minute” he said.
“Yeah,” said David. “I’ll just put a skin . . .”
“Wait,” said Chip. “This time could you just put air all over on this planet so we can walk around and, you know, touch things this time.”
“Yeah,” David shrugged. “I guess so.” And without thinking, he operated the Machine.
Suddenly the surface of the planet turned white like a giant flash bulb, and in the same instant the bubble around them turned a brilliant white. It appeared as if they were once again inside the outer layers of a sun. Fearing they had again made a major mistake, the mood switched once more from excitement to trepidation. Chip bowed his head and looked at David. The unspoken thought was: “Here we go again, another problem.”
But David was already operating the Machine. As he did, the light collected to one side of the bubble, and then like a wall it moved away. Then the light formed into a ball, and then the shining ball moved off to their left. David looked unhappily at the shining ball in the blackness of space.
Then he said, “That’s the planet we were just on,” and it appeared they were looking at a small sun. “Look,” he pointed, “there’s the little moon.” And Chip saw the same, small, jagged moon still in orbit. Chip looked to the side and saw the planet’s distant sun was still there too.
David leaned back and took a deep breath. He closed his eyes then after a pause said, “I wrecked it. Now I’ve wrecked my favorite thinking place. I never walked around here. I never tried to put out at atmosphere here before. But I should have known.”
This time, in the interest of economy, I will explain what happened: They were in an antimatter universe. When David placed an atmosphere – air – on the planet’s surface, that air – consisting of matter – immediately reacted with the antimatter of the planet’s surface, destroying both the matter and the antimatter, and releasing a vast amount of energy that turned the planet’s surface temporarily white hot. As David and Chip moved off to a suitable distance in space to see it, it looked like a small sun burning where the planet had been. It is not a tribute to David that he did not anticipate that this would happen.
Unlike David, while Chip found this world interesting, its destruction caused no sentimental feelings in him. Nonetheless, in making his next comment, Chip had the answer to the problem. “You know,” he said, “it’s too bad we didn’t go home when we said we would. How many times don’t we wish we could go back and do something over – to do something different the second time? But I guess that’s just something we can never do.”
David looked at Chip, thought for a moment, and then he operated the Machine.
“Why not?” he asked.
Moments later, the blazing orb beneath them had become a black ball once again – the planet was restored – together with the little moon, and the distant sun. Everything had been returned to the way it had been.
Then, a brown spot appeared behind the Space Sieve and it rapidly grew, sweeping over and under, then behind them, and Chip instantly recognized David’s bedroom. The brown spot had been the front of David’s dresser. They were home.
“Thank goodness!” thought Chip.
“Look,” David said, pointing out the window, and then he pointed at the clock.
As Chip looked, to his surprise he could see it was not afternoon, but was still morning – the same time it had been when they left.
“Everything looks like it was when we were here,” Chip said. “We were gone a long time but it looks like we came back at the same time as it was when we left. What, is it a whole day later?”
David paused, and then he spoke quietly, expressing a just-found realization. “I know when I’ve been gone to some places I can come back here at about the same time. But I think this Device can actually move things back through time, including us.” And then, while studying Chip, David raised one of his eyebrows, and he said, nodding, “not just back, forward too.”
“You mean . . . that black planet . . .?” Chip asked.
“I just reset the time index to prior to the time we arrived there. In effect, we had not been there yet. So we never destroyed it.”
Chip pondered, then said, “Well great, so you mean this thing can change the past? So I can go back and undo all the bad things I ever did? I can do everything different – the way I would have wanted to do them if I did it over?”
“Well,” replied David and he continued rather incoherently, “it could, I mean I could change that much of it – enough to fix my thinking place – the planet we destroyed. But it was in a non-time-constrained antimatter universe. I don’t know if . . .” his voice trailed off. “But the thing is Chip, we did move it back through time. I mean, I’m not sure how it does it, but I come back here close to the time I’ve left, even when I’ve been gone awhile. That much we can do – I do it all the time. But I never thought I could actually go backward or . . .”
“So, doesn’t that mean we could . . .” Chip began.
“Yeah,” David continued, “I mean, I think you could be right. Maybe we can go backward and forward in our own time, ourselves.”
They looked at each other for a moment. Now back in David’s bedroom, it seemed they were safe once again. Everything was back to normal; all was well. In their minds emerged a fanciful notion that perhaps while frightening, all that had happened had been entirely safe and unreal after all, like a thrill ride.
As the thought of being able to travel through time began to distill on them, the boys’ eyes aimlessly searched the room. Then faint smiles slowly appeared on their faces.