Pinball (7 page)

Steven sat at a table and realized for the first time that he was exhausted.

The silver-haired man came toward him carrying a plate, mug, and pitcher on a tray and placed them before him.

“Please, enjoy your meal, and feel free to ask me anything and everything that is on your mind.”

There was no silverware, just a large slab of crispy bread which had a curious pinkish color, along with a wedge of sky-blue cheese and a generous portion of some sort of meat which looked normal enough. He picked up the meat, tore a strip off, and began to chew it. It was good, if a little…
different
tasting.

“What kind of meat is this?” he asked.

“It’s from a large bird that is native to this world. We call them
zobi
. They’re a sort of wingless, four-legged chicken — the size of a cow.”

“It’s good. Has sort of an aftertaste, but not unpleasant.”

“They have a mating season, and sometimes the meat is a little gamy, similar to venison on Earth.”

“You’re familiar with Earth?”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” the old man smiled. “I was born there, my boy. Most of the residents of Centra were. My apologies once again, I have not properly introduced myself. An old man forgets things.” He smiled. “My name is Randolph. I was born, as I said, on Earth, in Hartford, Connecticut, to be more specific, in the year 1842.”

“1842? But that would make you…?” Steven gasped.

“As I am sure you have deduced, time does not flow normally when you are within the Gatespace. What year was it when you left your home?” Randolph asked.

“2013.”

“So according to your reckoning, I am 167 years old. However,” Randolph said with a crooked smile, “I believe you will be interested in discovering what today’s date is, here in Centra.”

Steven’s brow furrowed. “You mean…?”

“I am sure you noted that while you were in the Gatespace, you saw persons and objects which clearly were from various periods of time. Time flows differently within the Gatespace, indeed, but in addition to that, the gates connect not only to other locations, but to other
times
as well.”

“So what are you telling me? What day is it here?” Steven asked.

“Today’s date, relative to the normal flow of time on Earth, is June 22, 2769.”

Steven sat back in his chair in shock. Nearly 760 years had passed since he left home. His wife, his children, all were dead, their bones crumbled to dust.

Chapter 14

Steven sat stunned, staring at the floor. His family was gone? He couldn’t believe it. What had he done? He’d been such a fool to attempt to explore the void — the Gatespace, as Randolph called it. His mind whirled and his stomach churned. He felt sure he would lose the few bites of
zobi
he had eaten. Randolph reached over and put his hand on Steven’s shoulder.

“Don’t be alarmed. I know what you are thinking,” he said. “You are under the impression that you have lost your loved ones. But you don’t yet fully understand how the Gates work, my boy.” Steven looked up at Randolph, waiting to hear more.

“If you traverse the Gatespace again, and exit the Gate that you originally entered, which leads back to where you are from, you will be back in your own time again. The Gatespace permits travel through time as well as space,” Randolph explained. “However, know this: time does flow at different rates within and without the Gatespace, so you may discover that more time has elapsed than you are aware of, but generally it is not of a sufficient difference to cause any real harm.”

Steven took a bite of the pink bread; it was be quite good, as was the sky-blue cheese. When he took a sip of the mug, he discovered it was a golden wine of some sort, with a sweet fruity tang, quite delicious. He realized he was extremely thirsty and drained it dry. Randolph smiled and took the mug to refill it.

“I think I know what you mean about the difference in time,” Steven said. “The first time I went into the… the Gate, I felt like I was in there for a couple of days, but when I finally came out, my family said only ten minutes had gone by. The second time, it seemed like I was there twenty minutes, but to my family, I had been missing for two weeks.” 

Randolph nodded sagely. “Time ebbs and flows in the Gatespace like the ocean tides, or like the weather. Time does not actually pass for you while you are inside, however — that is why you sometimes see beings from millennia past in there, and were they to emerge from a Gate, they would be as alive and well as the day they entered.”

Steven frowned. “Can’t something be done to rescue them from that void?” he asked.

“Many of us have debated that very question for years,” Randolph replied. “They’re not in any danger, as I said; it’s as if they are simply stored away,”

“In cold storage,” Steven interjected.

“Precisely. The overriding question is, were we to attempt to, as you ask, rescue them, how would we ever get them back to their own place and time? We have no way of knowing which Gate is the correct one, and while I see that you have come up with what I perceive as a rather ingenious way of propelling yourself through the Gatespace,” he gestured to the cans of compressed air which Steven had set on the table, “normally, persons who venture into the Gatespace are ill-equipped for the journey, often stumbling into a Gate unexpectedly. I understand that there is a group of what I believe you would call aeroplanes that has been floating in the Gatespace for decades of their native time. They flew into a Gate while on some sort of military excursion, I gather.”

Steven sat in deep thought for several minutes. “So where do the Gates come from? Are they natural phenomena?”

Randolph sat back in his chair. “Most of them are simply tears in the fabric of what I believe scientists of your day call space-time. We had a visit from a physicist a few years ago who hailed from considerably further into the future than we are, even here in Centra, and from what he was able to teach me — and my understanding is severely limited — there are a number of civilizations that have learned to create Gates on command by means of technology, but they take a huge amount of energy to create, let alone maintain. The naturally occurring ones, however, last for indeterminate times, sometimes mere minutes.” He saw the alarm on Steven’s face, and hurried to reassure him. “I wouldn’t worry, my boy. You mentioned that this was your third excursion into Gatespace, and that your family said you were gone two weeks the second trip?” Steven nodded. “If a naturally occurring Gate lasts more than an hour or two, it generally will remain for months or even years.”

Steven breathed a sigh of relief. “Clearly, this isn’t Earth… do you have any idea where we are?”

“A very good question,” Randolph said. “It’s difficult to say, because the constellations we knew on Earth don’t exist here, so clearly we are a great distance from our home world. Whether that means the other side of our galaxy or another galaxy altogether, I do not know.”

Steven shook his head in wonder. “It’s just so hard to imagine. A couple of weeks ago, I was just a struggling writer trying to work on a novel, and then…” He suddenly remembered the Mini-Guardian. “Does the name North Central Positronics mean anything to you? Or Granite City? Northeast Corridor?” He pulled the Guardian’s tag out of his pocket and showed it to Randolph.

Randolph shook his head. “I can’t say that I have ever heard any of those names.”

“I’ve heard of Granite City,” said Steven. “But it’s a city in Illinois; I don’t know what ‘Northeast Corridor’ refers to.”

“Where did this object come from?” said Randolph.

“The day I found the Gate,” Steven explained, “My house was attacked by something… well, it was like a mechanical bird, a robot… do you know what I mean by robot?”

“Yes,” said Randolph. “You might be surprised at the things I have learned during my time in Centra.”

Steven smiled apologetically. “At any rate, it had torn up the landscape for nearly a mile before it found my house, and after I defeated it, I followed that trail to see where it came from, and at the point where it began…”

“There was a Gate?” asked Randolph. Steven simply nodded in reply. “That’s quite unusual,” said Randolph, “but not unheard of. All sorts of things blunder into Gates. It’s entirely possible that it entered a Gate in the Granite City of the distant future.”

“Maybe it’s stumbling into a Gate right now, back on Earth… wherever that is,” said Steven sadly, reminded of the fact that he was technically now over 800 years old.
I feel pretty good for my age,
he thought to himself.

“That may well be,” said Randolph with a smile. “Now eat your meal, my boy. You must be hungry. And then we shall talk more. ‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said, ‘To talk of many things.’”

Steven grinned widely. “‘Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings.’
The Walrus and the Carpenter
,” he said. “That’s one of my favorite poems. Lewis Carroll.”

“Quite right,” replied Randolph. “That was published the very year that I entered the Gate — 1872.”

“You were thirty years old?”

“That’s correct. And I have been here in Centra for nearly 40 years. So as near as I am able to calculate, I floated in the Gatespace for over eight centuries before I encountered the Gate that you came through a mere hour ago.”

Chapter 15

Steven walked slowly down the dusty main road of Centra with Randolph by his side. As they walked, the old man pointed out various people that they encountered and explained the details of their particular experiences to him.

“That is Mrs. Coulter, who was hanging laundry on her clothesline one day in 1957 when a spontaneous Gate appeared and she fell in. That lovely family which you see taking an evening stroll are the Robinsons, who arrived here when their motor vehicle went through a Gate as they traveled down the highway on holiday, and the unusual looking gentleman with the golden eyes and deep blue skin is Vraath; he arrived here from a world his people call Vek’rath, which, as near as I can understand it, circles a star in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. As I said, most of those who choose to remain in Centra are from Earth, but not all.”

“So what’s your story, Randolph? How did you get here?” Steven asked.

Randolph smiled as they turned a corner and walked down another long dirt lane toward a small lake. “It’s nothing terribly fascinating,” he replied. “As I said, I was about thirty years of age, a rather cosmopolitan bachelor of New England, having served as a Lieutenant in the Union Army for four years during the War Between the States — Lieutenant Edwin J. Randolph, at your service — and rather proud, I’m now sad to say, of the fact that I had managed to avoid seeing any actual combat the entire time, ensconced as I was at a desk job in New York City,” he said with a twinge of sadness.

“I was in the countryside one beautiful spring day, riding my horse, when I came over a rise and saw a peculiar green swirling light of the type with which you obviously have become somewhat familiar.” He smiled and paused as if remembering. “I dismounted, curious as to what this phenomenon might be. It emitted light, but no heat, and when I ventured to touch it, my gloved hand seemed to pass through it, into… somewhere
else
. Well, I am certain that I don’t have to explain to you what happened next, as you clearly were adventuresome enough to do what I did, though you obviously came somewhat more prepared than I. Perhaps I was simply in a spontaneous mood, I don’t know, but I walked through the Gate and, as I said, found myself in Gatespace, unable to propel myself about, for what was apparently the better part of a millennium, until I happened to encounter another Gate which deposited me here in Centra.”

“And you’ve been here for 40 years? Was there already a town here when you arrived?” Steven asked.

“Yes, indeed. There were a dozen or so people living here at that point. Since then, many, many people have arrived through that portal; some elect to remain rather than attempting to find their way home. There are fifty or so living here in Centra at this point.”

A flash of light caught the attention of both men. They looked up as a brilliant meteor streaked across the sky and disappeared beyond the horizon. Steven thought of wishing upon a shooting star, and silently hoped that he’d be able to see his family again.

“Do you ever wish that you had tried to find your way home?” Steven asked.

“I had no family,” Randolph replied, “No wife, no siblings, and my parents were both gone. It’s been a grand rollicking adventure living on another world, son, like something from H.G. Wells.”

Steven cast a sideways glance at him. “H.G. Wells was well after your time, wasn’t he?”

“Indeed, this is true,” Randolph chuckled. “However, you’ll be surprised what a well-stocked library we have here. As I said, we have had many visitors over the years. Would you like to see it?”

Steven nodded, and Randolph led the way to a small building near the center of town. Inside there was a single large room, lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves filled with hundreds of books and magazines which appeared to be from every era since the invention of movable type.

Much to Steven’s amazement, there was also a small desk, upon which sat a small device that distinctly resembled a laptop computer, although it was definitely in the category of “concept design.” It looked like a translucent grey clamshell standing open, the lower half housing a keyboard that he was relieved to see bore the usual QWERTY layout. The upper half, however, didn’t seem to have a screen as such, which puzzled him.

Randolph saw the confusion on his face. “I’m sure this unit is probably somewhat more advanced than what you are familiar with, although the concept will be much the same,” Randolph said. “The typewriter, for example, was an entirely new invention in my time, but over the years I have seen a number of people come through Centra with various types of portable computing devices. This particular one was left to us by a gentleman who was here but six months ago, and who happened to hail from nearly the same timestream that we are in. This device was manufactured on Earth, I believe in the year 2764.” He pressed a recessed button on the side of the device, and a halo of rainbow-colored light appeared in midair in front of the upper half of the clamshell. It swirled like a tiny globe spinning for two or three seconds, and then resolved to a rainbow-shaded cascade of text that made Steven smile.