Pinball Read online

  So where was I? Steven thought to himself. Oh, yes. “O writing project, O writing project, you are a cruel bitch,” he sang quietly to the tune of “O Christmas Tree.”.

  I wish I had a cheeseburger. Or a taco, despite the fact that I had tacos for dinner last night. Am I rambling? I suspect that I am. But you know what? I don’t care.

  As it turned out, they were, not surprisingly, having ham for dinner, which was just fine as well.

  After dinner Samwise began nagging Steven for time on the computer, but he was determined to finish the day’s quota, though he still didn’t have any idea what he was going to write about.

  The youngest had gotten on this kick that she wanted her own laptop. He let her know that the computer hierarchy went by seniority; the oldest gets dibs. Nicolette, however, didn’t want a laptop; she wanted a cell phone. A purple smartphone, no less, with a QWERTY keyboard, and web browsing capabilities, and instant messaging. Sort of a sub-micro laptop. He figured she would need an unlimited text plan. It was always something.

  So it was back to business. What could he write about? Writing a novel isn’t like writing an essay, which is what this project seemed to be turning into. Maybe he needed to be attacked by another mechanical monster; maybe one that had wings this time, for variety. He sat staring at the screen, willing words to appear as if by magic, but no words came.

  He began to despair of ever getting past the first page of the project when a shimmering light appeared in the corner of the room. It reminded him of the transporter effect in the Star Trek movies. It swirled and twinkled and resolved in the corner of the room near his desk. Within a globe of light that filled the room was the figure of a young woman in a silken robe. She reminded Steven of the actress Joey Lauren Adams — pug nose, big smile, stylish blonde haircut.

  “Are you an angel?” he asked, eyebrows furrowed, half expecting to hear the chimelike voice that one too many old Bible epics had taught him to anticipate.

  “Naw,” she replied in a broad Midwestern, almost Chicago accent. “I’m the Writing Fairy.”

  Wide eyed, he stared at her. “The writing fairy?”

  “You got it. You seem as if you might just be in need of some inspiration.”

  He nodded. “I could sure use something to get me going. I’m definitely not making much progress.”

  She gave a crooked grin and said, “Oh, I know. I wouldn’t be here now if that wasn’t the case.”

  He smiled and suddenly had a warm, comfortable feeling that everything was going to work out just fine. “So… how did you get this sweet gig as the… er, the writing fairy?” he asked out of curiosity.

  “Well,” she began, popping her gum, “I’ve been at it a long time. I mean, a really long time.”

  “Like, how long?” Steven asked.

  “Well,” she said, checking her nails, “Let’s put it this way… there ain’t never been another writing fairy. I’m the original!””

  He was a little taken aback by her response. “So… do you help all struggling writers?” he asked.

  “Once in a while I find someone who’s a natural,” she replied, “Someone who can just open up the tap and let the words come gushing out. But that’s really pretty rare. Most people need a little push now and then, a little friendly guidance, d’ya know what I mean?”

  Steven nodded. He knew exactly what she meant.

  “And, y’know, some people just aren’t cut out to be writers. They think they are — oh, they love to read, and they think to themselves, ‘Hey, I can make up stories,’ but when it comes right down to it, it just ain’t gonna happen. I can’t really do anything about those cases. But when somebody has a reasonable amount of talent and a decent imagination — or indecent, as the case may be,” she grinned, “That’s when I can step in and sprinkle some writing dust on their pencils.”

  “Uhm… I don’t use a pencil,” Steven said with a frown.

  “Figure of speech. Pencil, pen, computer, it don’t make no difference.”

  “Oh,” Steven said, still in a bit of a daze. “So why have I never heard of you before?”

  “You have,” the fairy replied, “You just don’t realize it yet.”

  Steven looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  She smiled and began to sing a familiar melody.

  “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a… well, OK, I’m not a man of wealth and taste. I need to get around to figuring out some new words for that song,” she smiled. “Let’s put it this way: I have always been around, as long as creative people have tried to write stories, even though I usually don’t show up face to face and talk to ‘em like I am you. You’re kinda special,” she said. “And I have some sisters that do the same sort of thing as I do, only in other fields of the arts.”

  “Sisters? You mean there are more of you?” Steven asked.

  “That’s right. There are nine of us girls. I come from a big family.”

  “Nine?” Steven’s mind boggled as he imagined being confronted by nine of the little winged creatures. Number nine, number nine, number nine…

  “Yup. I deal with creative prose; fiction, if you will. My sisters’ areas cover music; poetry, including song lyrics; dance; comedy; tragedy; history; astrology — she don’t get all that much work these days, it’s all computer generated crap for the most part; and political commentary. You may have heard us referred to as —” she paused, as if for a trumpet fanfare — “the Muses.”

  “The Muses? You’re one of the Nine Muses? And wait a second — there’s a muse of political commentary?”

  “Well, they used to refer to it as ‘Choral Poetry.’ It’s not very poetic any more, I’m afraid, but the commentators on your news networks — CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the like — pretty much fill the role that the Greek Chorus used to serve.”

  Steven sat in silence for a moment, digesting this. Somehow, in some weird way, it made sense. “So what should I call you? ‘Writing Fairy’ just seems so… impersonal.”

  “No one’s called me by my real name in about a thousand years, but back then it was Calliope. These days I just go by Callie. It’s way easier to spell.”

  “Callie. Of course,” Steven said with a shrug. “Well, hello, Callie. So… how does this work? Do I just put my hands on the keyboard and you… er… animate me?”

  Callie laughed, a low, smoky laugh, as though she’d spent the last four thousand years in juke joints and taverns. “No, nothing as simple as that. You still have to put some effort into this, buster.”

  She waved her hand over his head and… nothing happened. He was expecting pyrotechnics, maybe a shimmering rainbow-colored curtain of light, but there was nothing. It was all very anticlimactic.

  “That’s it?” he said, an uncertain note in his voice.

  “Yup. You have just been zapped by the Writing Fairy. So what’cha gonna write about?” she smiled, arching one eyebrow.

  “I still have to think for myself?” he choked. “I thought you’d, you know, inspire me.”

  “I’m not a literary puppeteer. You still have to get your creative juices flowing. I just kinda… grease the wheels, you know what I mean?”

  Steven sat quietly for a moment. “Well… I had this thing going about this giant mechanical monster that attacked the house earlier…”

  “Mmhmm?”

  “I guess I could expand on that?”

  “That’ll work. Get after it, bucko. I’ll be around.” She poofed out in a halo of light.

  Steven turned to the keyboard and tentatively began to type, slowly at first. Then the pace began to pick up, as ideas seemed to fill his mind from nowhere. This is what the Muse’s inspiration feels like, he thought to himself. This is, like… magic.

  He gazed out the front window of his house at the remaining pieces of the skeleton of BirdBrain the House Eater. He was somehow unsurprised to see that a flock of mechanical birds had descended on the carcass, most of which had been scavenged to form the kids’ new playhouse, but s
mall cawing creatures like dark tinfoil ravens were hopping around on what remained, plucking the fried remnants of wiring and circuitry out of the seared chest cavity which the kids had left behind.

  He blinked and the tiny scavengers were gone. His imagination was in overdrive now.

  All four of BirdBrain’s limbs were gone now, and of the head, only the melted red lens of the eye, now covered in scorched apple residue, still remained. It was cracked nearly in two, and he made a mental note to remind the kids to haul the rest of the junked remains to the trash bin.

  A thought struck him, however, and he began to wonder where the creature had come from to begin with. No police or other emergency services had turned up to investigate, despite the fact that he could see a trail of destruction leading away from the house for at least a quarter of a mile to the northeast. If there had been one of these monsters, might there be more on the way?

  He wandered into the kitchen where Lynne was laying out the pattern for a new quilt design. “I’m going to take a walk and see if I can figure out where that robot thing came from,” he told her.

  He put on his jacket and walked into the living room, where the four children were engaged in a fierce video game battle. “Be sure that you finish taking the rest of that junk out to the trash before dark,” he said. They did not respond, which was not wholly unexpected since they were busy attempting to either destroy or rescue the planet, depending on which team they were on.

  He went out the front door, shooing away the two cats that insisted on attempting to go in the house, and crossed the yard to where the still-smoldering remains lay. There was a stamped metal tag affixed to the side of the thin metal shell of the crushed chest cavity; he bent to peer at it in the dimming light and saw that it read:

  North Central Positronics Ltd

  Granite City, Northeast Corridor

  Design 1 Mini-Guardian

  Serial number: ZZ 35712 CZ 785367235 Q 12

  North Central Positronics… why did that seem familiar? He knew where Granite City was — it lay on the opposite side of the Mississippi from St. Louis, Missouri; he’d been there a number of times — but why did the tag say “Northeast Corridor” instead of “Illinois”? It all still seemed to ring a bell despite the discrepancies. He worked it back and forth until it broke off and slipped the tag into his pocket.

  Steven decided to follow the trail of destruction that the thing had left in the soil and see where it led. He picked up a sturdy applewood branch of the sort that had served him so well during his battle with the BirdBrain, this time selecting a long, staff-length branch about the diameter of his wrist. He snapped a few smaller branches off of it until it was suitable to use as a walking stick and set out to the northeast.

  Crossing the front yard, he found where the thing had left off chewing up the ground to lunge for him and began walking along the trench it had dug. The groove was four feet wide and at least two feet deep, which was no mean feat considering how hard the packed Montana soil was. In spots the bedrock was exposed, and that was scarred with deep gouges from the BirdBrain’s huge parrotlike beak. He continued walking, wondering just where the thing had begun its rampage and exactly what had sparked it.

  The sun was beginning to disappear behind the hills to the west, and long purple shadows were crawling across the landscape when he saw something odd up ahead. He had come at least a half mile, perhaps more, but now, at the crest of a rise perhaps 300 yards ahead, there was a shimmering green light like the iris of a massive eye. He peered at it in the distance, trying to focus on it, but it seemed to blink in and out of view like a candle flame flickering in the breeze.

  He hurried toward it, halfway expecting something to leap out of it and devour him the way the BirdBrain — that is, the Mini-Guardian — had attempted to do. When he got within 50 yards or so of the thing, he saw that there was a small, scrawny shrub in front of what he had now come to think of as a portal and the stiff evening wind was blowing its sparse branches back and forth, which accounted for much of the flickering effect.

  When he was within ten feet of the portal, he circled around to see it from behind and realized that he could see into it; it was a vortex measuring six or seven feet in diameter, standing like a doorway in midair, and it looked as though all manner of objects were swirling inside it, like debris inside a tornado. He saw vehicles both recent and vintage, various pieces of furniture, farm animals — he was reminded simultaneously of the cow that mooed its way past Dorothy’s house in The Wizard Of Oz and the “We got cows!” scene in Twister — and, now and then, human beings as well.

  Steven stared in horror as quite a number of people, some in modern attire and others in clothing from every era of history, tumbled past his view like rag dolls. How had they become trapped in there? He felt no suction or other force drawing him into the vortex.

  He edged closer to the swirling, emerald-colored eddy and saw that it seemed to have depth; that is, some things he saw swirling around seemed to be closer as he focused on them and others farther away. He became aware that, for the first time in many years, he was very much afraid. He had a sudden, incredible urge to step into the vortex, to see where it would take him — perhaps to Granite City, Northeast Corridor, wherever that was — but what if he could never return?

  Picking up a fist-sized stone, Steven tossed it toward the portal. Just as he expected, it disappeared. No flash of light, not a single sound; it simply winked out of existence as if he’d tossed it into another world, and he suspected that, indeed, he had done precisely that.

  Chapter 5

  “Come on, everybody,” Steven called into the front door of the house, “There’s a project I want us to work on as a family.”

  A collective groan went up from the young group of gamers clustered in the living room.

  “No, I’m serious. Come on, it’ll be an adventure,” he said as he walked into the house. Five pairs of eyes stared at him in utter disbelief. Who is this stranger who looks like Dad?

  Finally Samuel asked, “Can I bring my sword?”

  “You know what? I actually think that might be an excellent idea,” he said, grinning at the shocked expressions on their faces. They knew he’d never cared much for the sword.

  Steven had his wife put together a care package with several ham and cheese sandwiches and six bottles of water. He sent Samuel to retrieve a hundred foot coil of rope that he had stored in the back of the garage. Steven then went to the storage shed out back and found the old combat knife and scabbard that had once been his father’s. Placing it on his belt, he looked around. What else might he need?

  He went to his bedroom closet and traded the worn tennis shoes he wore for a pair of practically new hiking boots that he recalled having worn only once before. Then he realized that wearing the boots with his khaki shorts made him look as if he should be singing The Lumberjack Song, so he changed into his favorite pair of worn denim jeans and a chambray work shirt with his favorite tee shirt, a brilliant blue one that read MONTANA: BIG SKY COUNTRY underneath.

  For the final touch, he took his son’s schoolbooks out of his backpack — a bright yellow one which had assured that Samwise would at least be visible to approaching traffic — and put the food and water inside. Then they all set out walking the mile and a half or so to where he’d found the portal.

  The children made the noises of typical kids, complaining about the distance and asking how much farther it was — Are we almost there? — all during the hike, but they grew strangely quiet as they neared the strange vortex. Steven glanced at them and realized they were as scared of the vortex as he had been earlier. No, not just scared — terrified was the proper word, or more accurately, scared shitless. He realized that even now, he still felt exactly the same way.

  He walked over to a nearby tree, one of only a few in the area, and tied one end of the rope around its trunk with the only knot that he still remembered from his days as a Second Class Boy Scout nearly three decades before. Then he ca
rried the rest of the coil over to within ten feet or so of the vortex.

  He saw in their faces as he looked around that they knew precisely what he had in mind.

  “Dad…” started Nikki, “You’re not actually going in that thing, are you?”

  “Yeah,” said Samuel, a tremble in his voice. “What if you can’t come back?”

  He paused a second to collect his thoughts. “Well, then, as Peter Pan once said, to die shall be the greatest adventure of them all.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Steven,” Lynne snapped. “You can’t possibly be serious.”

  “I’ve never been more serious. That metal bird would have eaten the house and me with it if I hadn’t managed to bash its electronic brains out. I need to make sure there aren’t more of these things coming.”

  “But —” she started.

  “But nothing. Something weird’s going on here. I don’t know what it is, but I’m gonna find out.”

  “Even if it kills you?”

  He stared at her silently for a moment, and without a word began to tie the other end of the rope around his waist.

  Chapter 6

  As it turned out, entering the vortex wasn’t as difficult as Steven had feared, either physically or emotionally. When the rope had been tied tightly around his waist, he walked up to it, put his hand up near it, and tentatively reached out to touch it. It was actually a little difficult to tell just where the surface of the vortex was since it had a peculiar three dimensional depth to it, but when he finally encountered it, moving his hand gingerly toward it, he knew it. The sensation reminded him of the feeling of reaching down into a sink of lukewarm water, but one that was swirling as if it were going down a drain, constantly. It wasn’t painful, as he’d feared; it didn’t pull him in, or rip his arm off, or any of a dozen things he’d imagined might have happened. It was just a warm, flowing sensation. He reached farther in and saw first his forearm, then his elbow, then his upper arm, tinted green by the light of the vortex, take on the green shimmering quality shared by everything inside it.