Read Pinball for Free Online

head first in something white and unimaginably cold after the nothingness of the vortex.
    Snow. It was snow! He was buried head first in a gigantic snowdrift.
    He jerked to his knees and gasped for air. Although it hadn’t seemed as if breathing was necessary in the vortex, now he hungered for air like a drowning victim. He scrambled to his feet, glad that he had changed into his hiking boots.
    He looked around, realizing that he was in the middle of nowhere — literally. There was nothing but snow and ice as far as he could see. No lights, no civilization, just blowing snow and the fading light of what seemed to be an Arctic sunset.
    He knew immediately that staying here would mean freezing to death, so he made sure the rope was still secure around his waist and dove back into the vortex.
    Once again, he floated in a green hurricane of confusion, unable to guide himself. He began to wonder if his family would ever get around to attempting to haul him out of here.
    As he spun around, he watched the vortex he had just left recede in the distance, and wondered where the original one was that would lead back home. He tried to catch sight of the rope as it trailed away, but he found himself unable to focus on it.
    A pair of figures tumbled by; two men in Civil War era uniforms, one in Union blue and the other in Rebel grey. They held rifles with bayonets affixed, like statues come to life and yet still frozen. He made eye contact with the Yankee as he floated past and realized that the eyes were alive and aware. They’re lost in here, he thought, just like me. He wondered if they had stumbled upon a vortex while in the heat of battle. Perhaps they had the misfortune of having one of the green portals rip open around them.
    As he tumbled through the green space-that-wasn’t-space, he saw a myriad of things pass before his eyes. Gradually, he began to realize that he recognized some of them; a group of five World War II vintage Navy planes, torpedo bombers, which he realized must be the famous lost Flight 19 that disappeared in 1945 off the Florida coast. The planes were tumbling end over end and yet remaining in a rough formation as the entire flight passed by him.
    Steven watched as hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, vehicles, animals and more passed by him. He had been floating in the green void for days, it seemed, and the longer he remained, the more paranoid he became. He felt certain that something had happened on the other side of the vortex; perhaps another BirdBrain had emerged and killed his family, or perhaps the rope had somehow been severed. Whatever the reason, he felt coldly certain that he was destined to spend all of eternity here.
    Then, abruptly, he saw the rope that was around his waist go taut in front of him, and far off in the distance, in the direction that the rope led, he saw the now-familiar orange light. He saw the whorl edge closer and closer to him, over a period of what seemed like hours, and then all at once he found himself emerging, tumbling out onto the dry, spiky grass, surrounded by his family. He gulped the fresh air and stood weakly to his feet, clutching his wife close in a bear hug.
    “Oh, God, I thought I was trapped in there forever!” he cried, “Why did you wait so long to pull me out? Where have you been?”
    “What are you talking about?” Lynne asked incredulously. “You were only in there for ten minutes. ”
     

Chapter 8
    Back at the house, Steven sat on the sofa, staring into space. According to what his wife and all four kids had told him, he’d been in the vortex only ten minutes, but it seemed to him as if he’d been lost in there for at least two days. How must the Navy pilots on those torpedo bombers feel after nearly 65 years? Or the Civil War soldiers he’d seen, or the Roman? His mind reeled.
    What in the hell had he stumbled across?
    He went to his computer and Googled “dimensional vortex.” 441,000 hits, but almost all of them seemed to be about a