Vortex: An Adventure of Cosmic Complexity

Vortex

An Adventure of Cosmic Complexity

by

Jean Stites

Copyright 2012, Jean Stites.

All rights reserved.

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Chapter One

The Unwilling Adventurer

Well this is the story of someone who was sucked through a vortex in time into a future that didn’t—quite frankly—turn out to be so hot. I mean, there was plenty of indoor plumbing and tasty treats to eat, but still—well, it just somehow failed to satisfy....

Go figure!

And maybe we will come to understand it, which—now that I think about it—may just turn out to be the point of this whole thing.

Stay tuned.

***

Now the first person this unwilling adventurer met on the other end of the vortex was one of several public servants who were hovering about—keeping back a curious crowd. The time traveler had lain unconscious for several minutes—having fainted away upon landing—and had attracted enormous attention. This crowd was definitely not used to seeing a person fall from a vortex—super-sophisticated though it was, of course, being from the future and all—and so it was ravenously clamoring for a look.

Lying there, the stunned object of their curiosity noted that the sky above was a clear and brilliant blue, with familiar birds sailing through it, along with little wisps of cloud that looked like God might’ve brushed them in as an afterthought—just for decoration. The temperature was pleasantly mild. It felt like spring. Everyone in the crowd appeared to be human....

Could be worse, thought this poor laid-out person.

Could be worse....

Keep it down! commanded the aforementioned public servant, who extended his hand to that stunned and shaken victim.

Get back! he cried, as a medical vehicle pulled up, and the time traveler was proclaimed to be in one piece.

How do I know all this?

Well, of course, because that unwilling adventurer was me—was I, my marvelous grammar-checker of the future insists on reminding me.

***

"Where am I?" is what I should’ve said, but I was so disoriented!

This way, please, said my rescuer, and then I was passed off through a series of helpful public servants until I ended up in a comfortable room overlooking a lovely swimming pool, with an array of attractive foliage beyond. I was advised to lie down and rest, and didn’t have to be persuaded.

When I awoke, I was visited by another series of helpful people, who fed me and dressed me in the style of the day. Authority figures wanted to know who or what in the world I was; while they could scarcely believe their ears, but there were so many witnesses to my landing that they simply had to.

Plus, it was soon obvious to everybody that I really didn’t have a clue about much of anything that had happened on the planet lately; and then—after what came to seem like an endless series of grueling tests—they also concluded that I really wasn’t bright enough to be faking it.

Meanwhile, opinion in the media was running mostly pro-believing-me, although there were plenty who thought that I was lying and was therefore really an unfriendly alien, demon, or something even worse, while I myself knew exactly what I was, which was a miserable human being who missed the people and things of my past very, very much....

However, as time went by—after an initial period of pain, turning almost into numbness—I became resigned to my fate and resolved to take advantage of it somehow. After all, I was a celebrity—I might as well try to enjoy it; so I went on the road—kind of like a freak show, I suppose—and one lonely night last week, yearning for the folks back home, I got this idea to start writing down my story—especially things that I don’t want to forget to tell people—in case I should ever get home again.

I’ll just hand it to them and say, Read it and weep!

What a timesaver it’ll be!

***

You know, sometimes I think that maybe if I jump off a building—or blow myself up—I’ll wake up in my old familiar bed back home, and this will’ve all been a dream....

But of course I can’t take that chance.

Too slim.

Besides, most of what happens to me here on a daily basis really isn’t so bad....

It’s just this place.

I’m sorry, but somehow it simply fails to satisfy….

So I pray I’ll get lucky and the vortex will come back to take me home, or send somebody else from the past to keep me company, while wondering if I’ve been brought here on purpose to do—or to learn—something before that gift will be mine....

Or maybe the universe is just one big indifferent accident, and I’m merely a doomed moron grasping at the simple human notion that good deeds or deep thought might get me my heart’s desire….

All I know is, I need to talk to somebody—and that somebody, I hope, is you.

Chapter Two

Swell Devices of the Future

Now here in the future, the most obvious difference, of course, is all the spiffy advanced technology, and I just have to indulge myself here at the start by talking about this one futuristic device that has me in its power. If the vortex answers my prayer and sends me home, this luxury item will certainly be a real tough give-up.

I’m not sure when it was invented, so maybe everything would be fine if I managed to get home and gave someone the idea, so they could make me a new one. I wonder if it would even be possible back then?

However, I imagine that from a cosmic, don’t-mess-with-time point of view, I probably should kiss my new toy goodbye. Too bad I can’t carry it in my pocket, so that if the vortex returns this marvel of technology would come along for the ride….

Hey: what if the inventor of this thing is really me—having gone home, cracked, and made myself a new one? It certainly would be tough to live without it, now that I’m so hooked....

Yes, I might want to go look up this miracle-worker—just to see if it’s me!

Wow....

Wait: what am I thinking?

If it had been me, all the people here in the future who spend hours upon hours studying me surely would’ve found out by now....

No—now that I think about it--what I probably need to do is go see if the inventor was once my friend. If he was, then I’d get a clue that I get to go home!

Wow again!

On the other hand, the inventor might be someone I meet after I return to the past. I’ll be a celebrity there too, I suppose—unless I get zapped right back to almost the same moment that I left....

Then there’d be no witnesses—in which case, I picture nobody believing me at all!

As a matter of fact, it's really much more likely that I’ll have to keep quiet, or they’ll think I’m crazy....

They might even lock me up!

Yes, now that I think about it, I’d better have something in my pocket that can prove where I’ve been. For instance, my watch is one of the things that convinces authority figures here in the future that I’m the real deal, and so I think I definitely need to keep something small and futuristic on my person at all times—even when I shower....

A disc!

A disc with this thing I’m writing saved on it!

Then I’ll have the comfort of my security disc, even when I’m nude as a bee. I need to find the oldest type of disc that I can, and then maybe I’ll be lucky enough to live to read this again if I get to grow old back home.

You never can tell!

And perhaps I need to talk to a jeweler about some sort of attractive, shower-proof way to encase it. He or she will, no doubt, be thrilled to help me. People usually are. For instance, the gracious young lady who brought me my first meal is now a minor media darling herself. I wish her all the luck in the world. The meal was delicious. She was comforting. She tells interviewers that I was cute—all spaced-out and overwhelmed.

Well she’s cute too.

Not only that, the public servant who first extended a hand to me has also made a killing doing interviews, and invests it wisely in Midget Robot Wrestling. Lucky for me, I have a lifetime pass. Now, if only I had someone to go with....

While of course I can always go sit and talk shop with my fellow celebrities in the much-coveted VIP seats, but I usually feel out of place, since most of them got there by using their wits or skills, while all I had to do was be the victim of a freak accident.

Go figure.

***

Now when the vortex came for me, I was standing right in the middle of a lovely field of tall grass that grew wild behind my home sweet home, searching for a ball. I remember pausing to admire the astonishingly deep purple twilight all around me and noticing my neighbor call her children into the house; while I’ve often wondered if maybe some sort of premonition made me fall into reflection....

God knows....

All I know is that the mesmerizing twilight also made me decide that it was probably too dark out there to find the ball, and so I turned to leave—when suddenly there were these weird, high-pitched trilling sounds all around me, and little balls of light….

While it all happened so fast that I didn’t even have time to think about running!

Plus, I remember the grass shaking and rattling—stirring up a steaming-hot breeze, as it began to gently bend over in a spiraling wave—while a crushing feeling of heaviness swept over me....

Yes!

I can see it all like it was yesterday....

Frozen with fear, I felt my head pounding between my eyes, when suddenly the shimmering vision of my house and my field and my world went to black—replaced with that of a swirling arena full of music lovers, gasping and pointing at me as I passed out on the artificial turf, bringing their concert to close.

Incredible!

All those astonished witnesses say I materialized out of a clear blue sky—right over the center of the arena. Then I hung up there in the air for a moment, slowly spinning around and around—looking all limp like the rag-dolls of my childhood. Most of them thought at first that I was some sort of advertisement....

I don’t remember that at all!

I only remember the swirling sight of all those astonished witnesses, as I fell from my feet to the ground....

***

On the video you can see me come down fast enough to give most the impression of free-fall—like something had just let me loose—while many are also convinced that some sort of intelligence put the brakes on right before I should’ve gone splat.

Which is why those scientists and authority figures kept asking me over and over during their grueling tests if I saw anything up there in the sky when the vortex came for me, and the answer is no—I’m so sorry to say—because they all seem so sure that there would’ve been something important to see up there, if I’d only been bright enough to look.

So, as you can well imagine, I compulsively look up a lot ever since—hoping for, as well as dreading, the return of the vortex, while also hoping to get the jump on whomever or whatever it was that I probably missed before; and because of this, many of the people here in the future who are afraid of me point out that in photographs I’m frequently looking up, which proves somehow in their almost desperate-to-be-right, twisted logic that I’m obviously in league with dangerous aliens.

Yes, the most conscientiously worried of them all are positive that I really am an alien—or perhaps some sort of dangerous supernatural entity—and feel I ought to be confined somehow.

Better safe than sorry, they so casually say when referring to my life!

Now, in an effort to be fair, I’m willing to concede that I might’ve been taken into a spaceship—or some deep dark hideaway—and had something done to me before I was deposited here, although it sure seemed instantaneous to me. I don’t remember a thing, or feel any different; but I’m ready to give almost any theory about anything the benefit of the doubt after the extraordinary thing that’s happened to me.

Never assume! says the voice of experience like some jovial guru from within.

While the other day in the shower it occurred to me that maybe someone with a time machine was simply passing through my era, and I got caught in the wake; or maybe some junior officer on the Starship Enterprise, scanning the planet on a historical fact-finding mission, pushed the wrong button....

Because I can go on and on and on speculating about the myriad possibilities, while my acquaintances here in the future are often politely bored long before I catch on and change the subject, which is to me, of course, one of endless fascination....

Hey wait: maybe some aliens picked me up by accident or design, and tried to put me right back again, but because of the way time operates for them—or maybe just because they made another dumb mistake—they only came close, and deposited me here!

After all, what seems like a lifetime to us could seem to them just barely time to think; and just because they’d be smarter than us in technological terms doesn’t mean they’d never make any dumb mistakes....

Oops! some repentant star-man might’ve said to himself.

At least I’m still alive! is what I should be saying to myself, of course, as I feel equally repentant about the fact that the future somehow fails to satisfy....

You know, those here that spend their time in the study of me swear that nothing unusual was recorded as happening anywhere near my home sweet home on that fateful day the vortex came, so I guess—if I get zapped right back to the moment I left—I may end up wondering if I’m as crazy as they are likely to think that I am—back there in the past—when I tell them that a vortex took me to the future and brought me back again.

I may be in danger of thinking that all this life I’m living now is just some sort of incredible hallucination unless I start packing my security disc. The container alone will probably convince people....

What they can do with miniaturization here in the future!

I have to say that I’m impressed.

***

Hey: maybe I get to go back, but this time there’s only a couple of witnesses, and some authority figure decides to suppress me—which might be why I haven’t popped up in any history books!

I can see a lot of arguments for containment myself. For instance, if they believe me, I might become some sort of weird prophet or something and screw everything up!

I probably ought to keep my mouth completely shut, when you think about it....

Talk about not messing with time!

Maybe I’ll have to go right on talking to you, my fictional friend, even if I get to go home. Maddening as that might be, it’d still be better than this, I imagine. Would people hate me if they knew I’d seen the future and then refused to tell?

Whew!

I don’t know, but I’m thinking that it might be too hard—never telling anyone at home about everything that’s happened to me here. I might have to tell at least one or two people, or just crack up....

I think I’m entitled to at least that much.

After all, my whole life was trashed by a vortex!

However, I suppose the best thing in the long run would be