Рэй Брэдбери - Yestermorrow - Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures

At the finale, with all the Hunters disarmed, save one, the Survivor, the Victor, hearing the cry of the Victim, off in another Time, punches the Computer, the Hunters rush from the jungle and—the next option is Space! Where, from a long way off, falling deep into Space we hear the voice of the Lost Hunter, the Time Abandoned Child, the Boy, the Girl, or the Man or Woman spun in the Time Centrifuge and ricocheted off Saturn, Pluto, and Beyond!

The Adventurers pile into a Space Pod or Rocket Module, 20 or 30 per Pod or Module, and blast off! Right up along the Statue of Liberty, by God. We have taken off from the base of the Statue and now zoom-fire up the Lady’s body to her arm and along her arm to her torch and the torch points at the universe, so—we GO THERE!

Bang! And drop into the Star Deeps.

The Pod may well be controlled by one Volunteer amongst the Adventure Mob, who has a minute or less at the controls. If he is hit, if he allows the Pod to be hit, by a meteor, or lets a Comet glance off and spin the Pod, he relinquishes the control to the next in line. We circumnavigate the Universe, move through meteor clusters, follow Ghost Comet, fly by Saturn, plunge toward the Great Bloodshot Eye of Jupiter, clockwheel around the huge spiral of Andromeda and—come home.

On the way we hear the Voice of the Doomed Lost Hunter crying, “I’m falling into the Sun! I’m going to hit the Moon. Save me! I’m being carried away in an Asteroid cluster. Help!” We run to follow and catch.

Whichever pilot comes through with the least hits from meteors, opts for the next Encounter, the next Game!

A variation on this would be to place 30 people in 30 individual pods, or suspend them in flying belts, which fire off with great lovely rocket noise from their backs! Suspending individuals in dark space would enable us to convince each Hunter that he or she was actually being flung into the Sun or was about to band the Moon! Or drown in the tidal waves of Andromeda’s vast shorelike seas of stars. The Hunters would see their friends flying all about them, suspended of course by invisible black extension rods, and the sense of excitement and lonely terror would be—for the most—exhilarating! Again, who ever maneuvers best, alone or in a group, gets to make the option for a New Hunt, when all have landed.

Moving right along… we arrive in…

The Mechanical Hound Maze… where…

The Adventurer, as he or she enters is given a computerized belt, which is worn around the midriff of each fleeing person. Nearby, as the belts are being put on the various members of the “Expedition,” the electric Mechanical Hound waits in its computerized kennel, now and again making fairly dreadful noises, fairly ominous sounds.

This is a Maze through which the Adventurers run to escape the Hound. Only one of the Adventurers has a belt, which is computerized to fit the numbers fed to the Hound. The Hound then runs in pursuit. Not knowing which of them is the Victim, the people in the Maze flee in all directions. Screaming Furies, bellowing dire electric storm threats, the Hound seeks, searches, races, runs, and at last, finds!

When it zeroes in on its running victim, it seizes him or her by fastening, magnetically, to the back side, the metal side, of the belt, thus stopping all flight. In the moment of capture, the Hound shrieks with accomplishment, gives its victim a mild electric shock perhaps, nothing that can hurt, and the game is over. Or it continues after the Victim is dispatched through a secret door into another Area, where it waits for the other Adventurers to catch up. Out of 30 people involved in each Chase, perhaps three might be thus Captured before the Hound herds everyone out of the Game Maze Field, and the next adventure begins…

We step forward and find ourselves in…

An area between the great Lion Paws of the Sphinx where we are confronted by hieroglyphic doors that caw and purr and growl, each symbol making its own death sounds and noise—the Raven, the Jackal, the Alligator. Ra speaks here from his Sun. Anubis whispers. All the Egyptian gods, standing in ranks near the Paws, speak and promise: Darkness and Light, Light and Darkness.

We enter the Sphinx Tomb and are told that a passage leads from it to the interior of the Pyramid nearby where—maybe—our Lost Hunter has been buried.

The doors of the Sphinx fly open. We hear a far shriek, wail, cry, like someone falling down an elevator shaft—the Hunter being carried away. We must follow. We must find!

We enter and are truly lost in a Tomb Maze. We confront sarcophagi inside, which the Lost Child hammers to get free, weeping. Or we meet up with mummies stashed along the way, with the sound of desert sands whispering behind their linen wraps. Or we traffic-stop in mid-catacomb to see a royal pharaoh’s funeral procession. We watch Egyptian priests and courtiers trek a golden king into the mortuary deeps. Or we collide with a Mirror Maze in which our images deflesh themselves, becoming unwrapped mummy skeletons. Or find ourselves trapped by a burial sand avalanche as the tomb slams its door, grinds shut its granite teeth to lock us in—forever.

But then, at last, we reach the heart of the Pyramid, to stare up and down air shafts, which rise to great heights and plunge to great depths. So we have puzzled our way all through this Maze. And the first Hunter to reach the far tomb Exit gets to option further travels, farther places.

Other Options to be considered and built as we go, would be:

The October Country!

Where the Hunters move through graveyards, ride on a Halloween Tree Carousel, a merry-go-round in which, on every other brass pole, a skeleton horse is hung, and riders resembling witches, sorcerers, headless horsemen, skeletons, Hamlet’s father’s ghost, slide up and down out of the upper reaches of the lit Pumpkin tree as the carousel spins to Ghost Pavannes… and… perhaps, the horses take off from the carousel and fly over October Country, passing, on the way, the upper reaches of Notre Dame, where the gargoyles speak to us with dust blowing from their mouths to make the whispered words, or rain making their stone tongues speak, or wind rustling their teeth to annunciate Time… then back to the Carousel Base… and off on another adventure…

What next…?

Perhaps, moving along through October Country we encounter a great dark Haunting Place on the Half-shell, at various levels… as we enter we see the Running Runaway, the Lost Boy, Girl, Man, Woman, the Hiding One, racing upstairs to Hide somewhere in this vast Hide and Seek Place.

The other Hunters must now investigate every area of the Half-shell House, every closet full of night, every basement full of dark, every attic full of grotesque junk, which… moves.

This may well be the Last Hunt, the Last Adventure of our circuit. When the final picture is pried open like a door, or a clock is popped wide to reveal, the Hiding Hunter is Found, and the finale is at hand. The Half-shell House shakes with an earthquake of clocks, and we are invited to… leave.

It follows that in all of the encounters and adventurers and hunts described herein we can mix and match as we please… the adventures will never be quite the same each time through… the dinosaurs will rise at different intervals, the ghosts will arrive and depart on different schedules, the Egyptian maze will never repeat itself exactly. Varieties of tapes can be used, and varieties of projections… and varieties of lights and sounds… And, in our opinion, we will arrive at these Places in different sequence, with perhaps a fall through Space first, then the October Country adventure, followed by the dinosaurs, in any order that the Hunter wishes.

Other options that come to mind, to be built and locked in over the months or years: