Young Writers Society

But my triumph was disturbed. The time-crunch was left to beat.

“I’ve got it!” I exulted. “Now what?”

As if to answer, there came the sound of a million buzzing wings. And a horde of angry bees filled the room. I crumpled into a ball and instinctively covered my head. My foot connected with the box in the process, and it tumbled over the railing with an explosion of pearly special effects. When there was no sting I realized it was just a steady humming. A mechanical sound.

I opened my eyes gingerly. The flamethrower now sat precariously, protruding beyond the guard rail like a splintered bone thrust through the skin. I crawled towards it and made sure to wrap my fingers tight around before dragging it close.

Malibu gave a fist pump. “Sounds like the real deal!”

We had to shout over the ongoing motor of whatever it was that Gutterson was testing. A test we couldn’t retake.

I looked down upon him. “So that was you!”

The object of interest was pointed away from me in the portal’s general direction. Were it a person it would have been in desperate need of medical attention. It had three main pieces. The chunky centerpiece was the size of a washing machine and the replica of a jet turbine. Most likely the deafening generator. From underneath it, came what looked like inflatable tubes, though they couldn’t be picked up at the local depot. 

The tubes supported pyramids of mayhem. There was something akin to lightning going on within them. Perhaps they did the channeling. The pyramids, odd as it was, appeared bubble-like because the edges were blunt. They might have been inflatable also, but it was hard to tell at this distance. The two inflated tubes, vaguely arm-like structures, waved as if a frantic castaway signaling to a search plane, and made the pyramids look unwieldy. Wires of different heritage formed a thick web at the back; this tangled mess of coils attached from one arm to the other like mutilated limbs lodged in the bed of snakes Medusa claimed was hair.

The Gutter beamed. “Not me, that was the Magneliohasetrop!”

It lived up to the name.

“Wicked cool! Is it windy down there?” I poked at him. “All I care about is if it can save our ass, so I hope you have figured out how to work the damn thing.” I was curious as to how it worked, but it wasn’t worth knowing if I had to trade my life for the knowledge. At least I would get to see the results of the unidentified gears playing off one another.

Gutterson inspected an area upon the centerpiece. I thought I could make out a keypad. “It has eight settings!” he called. “Do we want to distort, transport, align, collide, supervise, levitate, dispel, or collapse?”

Collapse stood out as a definite NOT among that boatload of options. It seemed like he skipped a step somewhere.

I grilled, “Are there instructions? Did you even properly aim yet?”

I drew in a sharp breath. It was amazing the Tap was still open, given how fast its two brothers had vanished. I was too far off to discern how tiny it was getting, which may have been a blessing because I might have gone raving mad gnawing at my nails if I could have seen how far it had dwindled away.

But I could see the flashes. Quicker than a literal second. I stood up. I knew I wouldn’t have near enough time to go back the way I’d come. Life is like that; sometimes you have to move on, find an alternate route. Certainly can’t go back in time.

“Get me down from here!” I yelped like a small child that climbed too high into the tree and was afraid to come down.

“Don’t do anything stupid!” came advice from below. “All I have to do to aim this is adjust the space between the two front wavy things there, close to the approximate size of the target.”

That would involve a lot of guesswork at best. He should’ve got the Magnifier out too, so we could view through the lens and become as keen-sighted as eagles.

“Well that blows, cause it is a moving target if you think about it!”

“Ehhh!” he waved me off with a hand. “We forgot the staple gun too. Shut yer yap! I’m closer than you and I can make it out okay from here. I’ll aim a little smaller than the current position the Spine is now, taking into account how fast it’s diminishing!”

We were butting heads again, this round more serious than the last.

I shook the flamethrower over my head like a savage. “Fire solve this one, chief! Fire sacred, always do trick!”

He snickered. “Oh, primitive man.” He fiddled with the knobs, and the arms moved correspondingly. “We do our best to follow the instructions. And we make progress, at times lots.” The arms gradually moved closer, until they came within inches of touching at the closest point of their entire range, their empire of motion. 

“But i get situated, and i think i have it all figured out.” He twisted another knob. “All too often, we see it as we’d like to see it. We get cocky and refuse how things really are, lie to ourselves, dash in excuses here and there. The prevailing preference of the mainstream, the sweet tooth of the Day becomes law. But true law is set in stone from Day one; it never changes. We forget that our “authority” is subjective, and never realize how delicate it is.” He cocked a lever. “Until we get reminded: Still we are, Primitive man.”

I raised a hand. Then I screamed, “Time to choose a setting, Teach?”

He listed them again, “Distort, transport, align, collide, supervise, levitate, dispel, or collapse.”

I should have been chewing it over while I’d had time. I had just been sitting here. I hadn’t been making anything but wisecracks at Gutterson from the rooftop, while he was slaving away down there. Now the time was so limited, I was so pressured, but it was better late than never.

Collapse is out. Dispel? No, that sounds weird, evilish. Levitate. I don’t see that helping. Supervise, yes, supervise. Wait, even though it seems we’d be getting more control, would we know how to pull the right moves during the supervision? Were we that crafty, that adept, that prepared? No way, we’re inexperienced with this machine. 

Collide...I’ve had enough of that today, let’s go for something more peaceful, if possible. Align…Okay, stand by, so far it’s you. Transport, that doesn’t sound like what we’re going for here. Unless we are the things being transported…Probably not safe to experiment with that thing on ourselves though.

“Throw me a line please, I’m leaning toward dispel!”

I’m getting there! Okay so Transport would just make things more confusing, and we might lose the Tap or ourselves to some unknown location. So, last is distort. Well if that doesn’t sound underhanded or deviated in some manner. But, hey, maybe we need to alter it in a good way. Yeah, then it fits our best interest! 

Okay, between Align and distort. Align sounds nice, but it seems pointless now. There isn’t anything to line up. Wouldn’t we need multiple targets to line something up? Errrggh! It’s probably distort. But then again, look at Align, such harmony to distort’s discord. But distort is still appealing. I mean, just listen to that last syllable and the funny sound it makes. Almost like a seal, ‘tort, tort.’ Distort should be able to manipulate the shape, even if that’s only one aspect of the portal, it’s the only aspect we care about in these demanding circumstances: keeping it open. That’s all that matters.

“Distort sounds good.” I offered.

“Whatever you say, no time to argue.” His hand rested lightly on the trigger switch. “Sounds misshapen to me.”

I kind of wanted to take it back. It didn’t sound like I had won his approval.

At all.

I heard the cold, hard click as the switch was flipped.

All the lights went out. There was only one pinpoint of light and it came from the far side of the room, the glow of the gateway. Made aware of the darkness, I could see it clearly now. It was a slit. A mere fraction of the crescent it used to be. It couldn’t have been more than the average width of a baseball bat, and it appeared disgustingly slender since its height of ten or twelve feet had not fallen. It didn’t look inviting like it had when I first saw it back at Gutterson’s place, not even comfortable. But we were gonna grin and bear with it.

After a few moments of the whirring growing louder and louder, there was a concise flash of classic blue. They moved too fast to truly glimpse, but I can say I did see the two blue streaks burned into my retina as it detonated. They arose out of nothing. Obviously somewhere from the main hub of the Magneliohasetrop, but they showed no origin. Each bent only at one point, but each was straight as a tightwire. And I could’ve sworn they hovered for an imperceptible moment before striking.

They struck both pyramids squarely at the same time. I’d never seen anything timed so precisely. And I must have been in the zone, because I was able to tell where they planted their blows. One hit the tippy-top of one pyramid, halting it stock-still, and the other slapped a bottom cornerstone of the other pyramid, sending it whirling faster than the eye could catch.

The blue continued to stream, though it wasn’t the form it began as. They were going to meet in the middle. The string that had hit the crown was absorbed by the unmoving pyramid before being promptly spit out on the warpath for its counterpart who had been deflected straightaway from the spinning pyramid onto an exact collision course. Neither were the strings of blue as condensed. After being redirected, both streams had scattered a little and appeared a lighter blue.

Yet, their clash was averted. They mirrored each other as they swirled, accelerated together against their will. The force driving them together was so intense that it almost brought them together. And they did reach the place where they could have conflicted, but one rose atop and one diverged below as they lingered, swirling, as if doting upon each other from afar, afraid to unite. And then, as if rediscovering their purpose, they were revived, propelled forward, wrested from their fondling somersaults, divided to the left and right of the now thread-like passage resting on the wall, as both those last glints of light pooled resources to ward off the storm clouds rolling in to devour them.

And then all light was gone as if absorbed by layers of smoke. It was as if the light from the portal was the evaporated memory of a dream. Poof. Snuffed out like the flame of a candle left susceptible to the slightest puff of air.