December, 1999
The room looked smaller than James had expected. It was cluttered with equipment; lights flashed from multicolored panels as white-clad men moved from one piece of machinery to another, doing whatever it was that they were supposed to be doing.
Dr. Mansfield stepped up behind him, placing a hand on James' shoulder. "Isn't it just excellent, my boy?" he asked in that annoying British accent of his. He was the kind of man who had a voice that made him sound quite intelligent, and so used it often. Not that he wasn't smart; in fact, he was a genius, perhaps years ahead of his time. But he did talk too much.
He continued without waiting a moment for James to respond to his question. "The room is this way," he stated, and steered James with his hand to a heavy door to the left.
James walked to the door, finding it moving aside with a whoosh as a hidden electric eye picked up his movement. He looked around, taking it all in with his sharp blue eyes.
There wasn't much to take in. The room was simply plated steel, with a thin gap down the middle. The walls had large glass windows, revealing more flashing lights and more busy technicians. And that was it.
"Surprised, my boy?" smiled Dr. Mansfield. He seemed about to continue when an orderly ran up, shoving a clipboard and a pen into James' face.
"What's this?" asked James as he absently signed his name where the orderly indicated.
Dr. Mansfield coolly replied: "Oh, nothing, nothing, my boy. Simple things, really. Next of kin, insurance number, waiver of miscellaneous rights should anything happen…"
James stopped in mid-letter. "What kind of things?" he demanded.
Dr. Mansfield frowned for a shadow of an instant. "Oh, nothing to worry about, my boy!" he then cheerily responded. "Just legal nonsense. Besides, we've tested it all on animals. I have personally tested this operation on a rabbit, a pig, a duck, a cat, two birds, and a coyote."
James suddenly began to have a very bad feeling about all this. He had signed up for the program to earn some money, and so far it had been just that. He had been earning $150 an hour to be spun around in centrifuges, or just to sit and answer questions about his mood that day or his favorite color. But never before had he considered that it would ever possibly turn into anything risky… but either way, he far too curious to stop now.
He signed his name.
Dr. Mansfield smiled big. "Excellent, excellent! Now, my boy, just stand right here, and wait."
James was getting very, very, sick of "my boy". But nonetheless, he planted himself in his spot and stood.
After a few moments, Dr. Mansfield reappeared on the other side of one of the windows. He spoke into a microphone, his voice filtering through some unseen speaker: "Just perfect! Now, in an instant you should see something quite marvelous." And in his obvious excitement, he forgot something, so he hastily added: "…my boy."
James realized that there was nothing to do but wait, just until -
His thoughts were immediately and violently derailed as the room exploded into light, a huge blue wall of energy materializing in the middle of the room, going through the gap around the sides. It stood there, serenely still, yet also at the same time with incredible power, looking like some strange window into a clear sky. James stared, dumbfounded.
"Now, my boy, walk through."
James blinked. "Then what?" he demanded.
"Well, walk through first and we'll take it from there! You wouldn't want to never know what would happen, would you?" And even though he wasn't looking at the window at that moment, James knew that Dr. Mansfield was smiling.
Damn him, he knew James' psychology like that back of his own hand, and undoubtedly better than James himself. He knew that James couldn't possibly turn around and go home. Not now.
So, with no other option, James found himself stepping into the "wall".
There is a feeling, which nearly everyone has felt at least once in his lifetime, which is only found at the start of roller coaster's first hill. That sensation in the very pit of the stomach is perhaps the closest parallel to what James felt as he put his body into the light. He then felt his last leg sucked in behind him, and he was gone from the room.
Back in the side room, an assistant turned to Dr. Mansfield. "Do you really think we were ready?" he asked.
"Why, we had to try sometime," replied Dr. Mansfield. "And besides, I was getting so tired of losing all my animals…" he trailed off, then added: "Alright, shut it down."
The falling sensation intensified, and suddenly James realized that he was actually falling. And it looked like it was a long way down from his spot in the air… so he did the only logical thing. He screamed.
With a sickening thud, he hit the ground.
A cloud of dust…
An accordion noise.
Wait, an accordion noise?! James realized with a start that not only wasn't he dead, he was bobbing up and down like an old-fashioned accordion!
"What the hell is going on?!" he shouted to no one in particular, Then his eye caught some motion off to the side and his question was answered.
"Oh no. Oh, god, no."
For what he saw was a coyote, fork and knife in hand, running across a desert landscape after the blue-red blur of a roadrunner.
James had hated cartoons since that day years back into his childhood. He had been no more than six, perhaps even as young as five, yet he remembered the day as though it had just happened. He had woken up early that Saturday morning, as he had always done, and gone straight for the television, and, as was his routine, flipped to the channel he always enjoyed, and watched cartoons. He didn't know how long he had watched, but it was sufficiently long enough for his father to come home, so it must have been near noon.
James' father was far from perfect. He was a drunkard, unemployed, and James often smelled strange perfume on his clothes. But of course, he was too young to know any of the implications. James did suspect that somewhere, there were better fathers, who cared about their family, for he had friends who spoke proudly of their dads. But he was only six, maybe five, and the subtler points of life and its fairness, or lack of it, eluded him. He was just happy to wake up early every Saturday and watch cartoons.
And so it was that every Saturday, he would wake up early and watch cartoons, until his father came home. At that point, James had discovered that if he could sneak upstairs, he could avoid his father, who was always mean and sometimes violent, as was his routine. James didn't know why his father was like this every Saturday morning, or even where he went Friday nights that he got to be so upset by the time he returned in the morning. All he knew was that it was imperative that he escape to his room before something bad happened.
But that Saturday, when he was five or six, he was particularly involved: this episode featured all of his favorite characters in one big and extraordinarily funny bit. So when his father came home, a mix of grunts and strange smells, it simply didn't occur to James that it would be worth it to give up his show. And so he continued watching.
James' father walked in. "'Ey! Wha're y' doin'?!" he demanded, barely intelligible.
James continued to keep his eyes on the screen. "Watchin' TV, daddy."
The father seemed to pause a moment to absorb this. Then he added, suddenly and inexplicably angry: "Looka' me when I'm talkin' t' y'!"
Young James had no intention of giving up his funny show, so he ignored the ravings of his drunken father.
"Damn i', kid! When I say looka' me, y' better looka' me!" his father screamed, and proceeded to beat the living daylights out of James, while the cartoons mocked him with their happiness.
James had not watched another cartoon in his life. Not since he awoke in the hospital bed, not after he met his new parents, not when he made it to college. He cried whenever he was given a present or toy that in any way reminded him of that Saturday morning, when he had woken up early and watched cartoons.
And now, he had been thrown by some sick and cruel twist of fate into a world that he had hated for nearly fifteen years. He didn't know much about physics, or even exactly what had happened, but there he was. He knew instantly that he would rather be dead than be in this terrible world that still teased him in his dreams.
Then it occurred to him that it was indeed quite possible, perhaps even likely, that he was dead, and that this was all some sort of bizarre Purgatory, maybe even Hell. But he didn't feel dead, as if he could possibly know. Instead, he felt uniquely vibrant, intense, and colorful.
As he looked at himself in a strangely handy mirror, he realized why. His black hair had been reduced to a single mass of black, his eyes just big blue dots, and he in general was a simplified version of himself.
So he wasn't dead. Which was good, at least as a general state of being. But he was in the place he despised more than anything, and it seemed that he was trapped at that. He hated being anywhere with no way out, and if ever he needed motivation to leave someplace, he certainly had it here.
The sound of a falling bomb suddenly stirred him from his thoughts. Looking up, he saw that there was a large brown object hurtling at him. He had just enough time to dive out of the way as the thing hit the ground, leaving a coyote-shaped hole. As James watched, the animal, for some reason covered in bandages and casts, crawled out.
And the two started at each other. But something was very wrong. The coyote was looking at James, and suddenly James felt the sensation that he was a large piece of turkey breast. Again, not a familiar feeling, but somehow James knew that he was a huge piece of food. He put one and one together, and ran like there was no tomorrow.
Everything turned black for a moment.
James had stopped running, and found himself in a spot at the bottom of two cliffs, curving up to the sky on either side. Squinting he saw that on one side, there was a boulder being pushed with great difficulty to the edge, and he knew that it was the coyote.
The boulder reached the edge and rolled down towards James, reaching a colossal speed. James had no time to react in any way.
But for once, luck was on his side. The boulder screamed past, went up the opposite cliff, and - ignoring all laws of conservation of energy, friction, and inertia - curved up into the air and landed with a huge boom on the first cliff, squarely on top of the coyote.
And James had yet another new sensation: somewhere, kids were laughing hysterically, as he had so long ago…
James now had an even more definite urge to get back to the real world. At least there, he could count on things to be nice and secure, not completely ignoring the natural laws that governed the universe.
But how?
Again everything blacked out for an instant, but this time James barely noticed.
He was now walking, trying to figure out how to escape this strange place. He didn't know precisely why he was walking, but continued on, trying in vain to figure out a plan.
Absently he looked back. A road, a cactus, two rocks, and a pair of eyes staring greedily at him from between. James dropped his unformulated escape plan and ran.
After a few moments, he looked back behind him to see if that damn animal was still after him. But the coyote had stopped chasing his prize meal. Instead, he was now angrily jumping up and down on a particular spot upon which James had just stepped. And immediately a huge cone of fire burst forth from the ground and completely engulfed the coyote. Soon all that was left was a charred black skeleton and big blinking eyes, all of which crumbled from the bottom up into a neat little pile. James ran up to the remains, and found only a box labeled "ACME Land Mines".
Again, everything went black.
James was now so sick with the whole thing that he was barely able to keep from vomiting. He didn't like this mixed-up world, he wanted to get back home, curl up with some ice cream, and watch the news. As crazy as the real world was, it was definitely a million times better than this place.
On the bright side, that stupid coyote seemed to have given up, because he was nowhere in sight.
But James rounded a corner, looked ahead, and immediately ducked back behind; for there was that infuriating animal right around the bend, looking dumbly at a cliff face. As James poked his head back around the rock, he saw the coyote reach behind his back, pulling out a paintbrush. From where this tool came James had no idea, but then, nothing made sense here…
The coyote hurriedly painted a tunnel on the cliff, as though the road continued, then sneaked off to the side.
Suddenly with a snarl the beast appeared behind James, and made as though it would chase him! For the third time, James ran, not really looking ahead; only barely registering the tunnel he was running at. The tunnel?! No, it wasn't a tunnel at all, just a pained, rocky, façade! But it was too late to stop, so James just went through the hole, ending up on the other side. At this point James had long given up logic, and so was not surprised at all when the coyote, in headlong pursuit, crashed into the cliff.
Suddenly, as the coyote was sliding down to the ground, it occurred to James that he had been going about the problem all wrong. He had tried using logic and real-world methods of thinking on a completely upside-down world. And now his escape plan stood in front of him, almost too simple to possibly work. He felt as if a lightbulb had suddenly appeared over his head, which he confirmed by looking up.
So James reached behind his back, pulled out a paintbrush, and painted a door on a nearby rock. Above it he pained "Exit", walked through the door, and left this crazy place forever.
And as he returned to reality, he realized that he would very much like to go home, wake up early Saturday, and watch cartoons.