Paul Melko - The Walls of the Universe

“Are you taking this seriously?” John asked.

“No, are you?” Grace replied quickly.

John couldn’t help himself, and he began laughing. “Good point.”

“What do we call ourselves?” Henry asked.

“I dunno,” Grace said.

John couldn’t help himself. “Pinball Wizards,” he said. There was no Pete Townshend in this universe, no super rock group called the Who. He’d checked. There was no Beatles either, which made John feel a little silly whenever he hummed “Hey Jude.”

“Pinball Wizards,” Henry said, rolling it around in his mouth.

“I like it,” Grace said. “Anything with wizards in it is cool.”

Every place John looked at was too expensive for their shoestring budget. They finally found an abandoned factory on the far side of the river. The neighborhood was decrepit, but the place had strong locks on all the doors. John signed a six-month lease, with a down payment of most of his savings. If they didn’t start bringing in more money, he’d be flat broke.

If it came to that, he’d have to drop classes and get a job. He’d be detoured from his goal of understanding the device. What a mess, he thought as he surveyed the freezing-cold factory floor. He was setting himself up for failure in his primary goal. He should just cut Henry and Grace loose, let them ruin their lives here. Yet the pinball machine was some last vestige of John’s own universe. Pinball didn’t exist here. He had brought it into being, an idea passed tenuously between worlds. A simple, silly game.

An hour later, Henry and Grace appeared with Henry’s truck filled with parts and pieces of pinball machines.

“We need heat,” Grace said, rubbing her hands on her shoulders.

“You want to pay that bill?” John asked.

“No. Maybe we need a trash can fire,” she said. “Or space heaters.”

“We do need electricity,” Henry said.

John moaned. He hadn’t thought of utilities when he’d signed the lease. “Let me call Toledo Edison right now,” he said. “Do you think they’ll turn it on without a deposit?”

“They might,” Grace said. “We are a business after all.”

They hauled two more piles of parts from the lab that afternoon. As they did so, John calculated they had enough pieces to build maybe three more machines.

On their last trip, they stopped by the three bars where their machines sat and the Student Union and drained the coin bins of quarters.

“Sixty-seven dollars and fifty cents,” Henry said. “Plus fifty cents Canadian. I gotta work on the foreign coin rejection system.” He looked up. “But it’s got to wait.”

“Why?” John asked.

Grace chimed in. “The parents want him home for the holidays. Mine too.”

“When do you guys go?” John asked.

“Day after tomorrow,” Grace said. “I have a train ticket to Athens.”

Henry nodded. His family was in Columbus.

“I guess it’s just me for the next three weeks,” John said.

“I bet Steve would help you.”

John laughed. “That’s all right. I have work to do on a couple new features.” His eyes rested on the huge crane hanging from the ceiling. He remembered the scratch on the edge of the device, and wondered how much pressure would be needed to pull the two hemispheres of the device apart. With Grace and Henry gone…

They ordered pizza delivery, but the driver wouldn’t bring it to their neighborhood. Instead Henry went out for it and brought back a steaming pie that they ate in their coats in the dusty office.

Grace raised her can of cola. “To Pinball Wizards, Incorporated. May our balls always roll!”

“Hear, hear!” Henry said.

John laughed but felt a moment’s regret that Casey wasn’t there to share the toast.

With electricity-kindly turned on by two coveralled workers the day after they ordered, no deposit needed-they worked through the night and finished two more machines. Henry drove Grace back to the dorm to pack in the morning but came right back with her, waving a letter.

“We’re official!” Grace cried.

“What?”

“Our articles of incorporation, notarized and accepted by the great State of Ohio,” Grace said. “We’re a company!”

John opened the letter. Inside were their boilerplate articles and a form signed by the deputy secretary of state. It listed Grace as CEO, only because neither Henry nor John wanted the job. Casey would have been a great CEO, John thought.

“Aren’t you two going to be late for the train?” John asked.

“Yes!” Grace cried. “Let’s go!”

“Merry Christmas!” John shouted as they ran from the building toward Henry’s truck.

John turned back toward the machine he had been hips deep in, one of his single-player models. Their first machines were head-to-head, but he’d wanted from the start to build a traditional one, just like he remembered from his universe. He reached in and triggered a credit. He popped the ball into play and bounced it around for a few minutes. John had to admit that the old type of machine that he was used to was not as fun as the competitive version.

They’d gone through six flipper designs until Grace was happy. They had a hundred different bumper configurations that could be built from the simple plastic parts that Henry had ordered. If they could build ten machines a month, if the money came in for each of them the same as the first machines, they could keep the factory and they might even have a little extra for salaries.

John let the ball fall into the slot at the bottom of the machine. He was tired of solenoids, flippers, and ball bearings. He turned to his briefcase, sitting innocently on the table near the crane controls. Inside was the device.

The real estate agent said the crane worked, and to John’s surprise it lowered when he pressed the switch, shuddering as it unrolled the steel cable. The iron hook slammed into the floor, sending a shard of cement skittering to the far side of the factory.

He’d need vise grips to hold the device in place. He’d have to be careful; he couldn’t afford to destroy it. Did he even dare try this? he wondered. What if the device ripped apart? What if it ceased working?

He’d still have the parts. He’d still have his slowly garnered knowledge. The alternative-his own slow experimentation with the physics of multiworlds after ten years of physics study and no guarantee that he would be able to make the breakthroughs necessary-was too daunting. He had a working device right here. The marks on the edge seemed to indicate it had once been opened. He could do it again and have access to the internals.

John took the device from his briefcase. He placed it on the floor near the crane hook. His stomach twittered. If he destroyed it, he might be stuck here forever in a universe where he’d ruined his chances with Casey.

He was suddenly angry at what he had wasted and scared of what he might be giving up if he broke the device. He placed it back in his briefcase and locked it. No, he thought. I’ll not do that yet.

John found two letters in his mailbox when he got home that evening, the first, a letter from the city of Toledo, from the Department of Treasury. He recognized the address, the same one they’d used to apply for gaming licenses for all their machines.

He opened it and read the notice. “It has come to our attention that the game licenses (see attached sheet for a complete listing) issued to Pinball Wizards, Inc., are for gambling devices. Gambling devices are not allowed within the city limits, and as such must be removed within twenty-four hours from their locations. Failure to do so will result in a one-hundred-dollar per day penalty for each offending device.”

They weren’t gambling devices! John thought. But how do we prove that?