Yestermorrow

by Ray Bradbury

  It follows that your uncommon tourist, wandering these territories will stumble upon not only uncommon times but uncommon foods, moving down through history or across continents.

  At dinnertime, why not climb aboard the largest locomotive in the world to find that its interior is really a kitchen with stoves, ovens, and preparation tables. The steam from its kitchen would plume from the locomotive stack, of course, to be ventilated off. Behind the locomotive with its hidden bakery would be a procession of flatcars sporting, as it were, tables positioned in the open. An illusion of travel would run past them on surrounding film-projection walls as they felt themselves ride through an endless tunnel of images. As the dining flatcars rocked gently on their gimbals, and the silverware chimed sweetly, the diners would gaze out at Irish meadows, French vineyards, or the Indian buttes or mesas of Cheyenne or Taos. A different travel view every hour, a different journey, considered and ticketed in advance, every day. And the menu, prepared to fit the scenery: gazpacho nearing Catalonia, foie gras leaving Paris. Or, hell, why not an art history tour? The gourmet locomotive steaming through Provence and the multimillion sunflower fields to track-measure Van Gogh. Or an endless excursion sideswiping Monet’s oil or watercolored Giverny flower gardens and lily ponds? Or El Greco’s electric-fire-green-blue mountains, capable of birthing taffy-pull-elongated Christian saints? What a train, what far-travelings, what real and unreal remembrances!

  Those who shun that special dining-seeing train (what a loss!), can board the Tea Trolley just beyond. It would resemble a San Francisco cable car or one of those smaller red bread-box-sized trolleys that used to sail the streets of Los Angeles. At four in the afternoon, how fine to see the Tea Trolley nested with three dozen ladies, or gents, sluicing the Indian brew over their teeth and devouring crumb cakes, yes?

  Along the way, in the heavens above the Maze, a Zeppelin or Blimp shape, suspended, into which, if you wish, you can be hauled straight up by a harnessed-seat-rescue-device into a floating, soaring—or so it cinematically projected seems—restaurant where you can eat as you fly over New York, London, Paris, or Rio.

  On through the maze, we have, finally, four to five dozen cafes, restaurants, soda founts, which we can add or subtract to infinity… including… yes?…

  The Longest Soda Fountain in the World… a grand long parade of stools, one hundred in all, count ’em, all the way down the line, duplicating sweetly, succulently, the Longest Bar in the World in Tijuana. Faced with mirrors, of course, so you can fatten your eyes with the grand sight of yourself or your chum in the reflecting glass while you fatten your stomach. Then up and out and around, to the end of the Energy-Restoring-Restaurant Maze, to the entrance of: The Experiences!

  Are you ready for this? Still with me?

  TIME MAZE TWO!

  Where Anything Can Happen, And Always Does!

  The Second Time Maze is across an Abyss of Stars, separated from the First Maze, straight down, and, seemingly straight up, by a billion light years of stars in all directions. In order to cross over the abyss, there are a number of game stations where the head of any party of two, three, or four or more would play a laser beam game which, if won, totalling up to some particular sum, would cause a bridge to jut across from one side of the First Maze to the Second’s side.

  The Second Maze, as seen from a distance, would be like a small City, seemingly suspended in space, turning slowly. An illusion, of course, the outer wall might circle about, with light patterns on the other walls giving a semblance of motion. The entire structure, perhaps like a double pyramid, one upright, one upside down, would have a series of doors in the various faces, and every few minutes, or every thirty seconds, a new door would be presented, with a different date on the facing, representing a different age, Past or Future, or, for that matter Far Away and Mysterious Present! What we are playing here, for the moment, is a variety of Time Roulette.

  The facade of the Fantoccini Great Electric Time Maze Two gives one an immediate idea of the wonders that lie waiting, and humming inside.

  Across the front, in giant metaphorical symbols, some electric robots, others in mural form, are representations of all the Times that wait within the portals. Here a great dinosaur lurks, there Jupiter rises as Saturn sets, up here an Egyptian pyramid looms, while below is a thermonuclear lab, an AC-DC electromagnetic Mechanical Hound spiders its eight legs until, like the wings of a hummingbird, they almost vanish!

  Each Adventurer (customer) is given a computerized card or a small computer with which to give options for action within the Maze.

  The Adventurers are led, 20 or 30 at a time, into a chemical-nuclear-electronic laboratory of immense size and incredible flexibility; it is all storms of electric power, and great screens on which Past, Present, Future thrive in images. At the center of the Lab is the Time Centrifuge. One of the Adventurers is asked to Volunteer to get into the Spinner to be Spun off into Time.

  Someone volunteers… a boy or a girl preferably, though it could be an older person. The Volunteer (a real customer or an actor who is a permanent employee of the Maze) enters the Yestermorrow Centrifuge and the Physicist-in-Charge then asks the crowd to vote via magnetic card or computer device, on where the Volunteer Voyager shall be sent.

  The vote is taken! It totals up on the screen—dinosaurs perhaps, hound Maze maybe, Alpha Centauri, could be! Lost in the pyramids, why not?!

  Bang! A switch is thrown. The Yestermorrow Centrifuge whirls, groans, explodes with energy and breaks down! “My God!” cries the Physicist. “Our machine has miscalculated! Our Volunteer has vanished! See! But to what planet, what place, what time, where, how, why?”

  And, indeed, the Machine has slowed and is empty. The Volunteers are now asked to vote, where to go, how to find, in what place and time to search for the lost Time Traveler!

  They vote! They choose—perhaps—the Future! The Cosmic Reaches, the Star Deeps!

  “Enter!” cries the Physicist. “Off you go to find our lost child!”

  They enter the Centrifuge, which holds one person or 30, depending on need and use. Bang! The switch is thrown! As they vanish off in time they hear the Physicist cry: “I hope this time it works, and we don’t get lost somewhere else!” Whoommmmm! They lurch, spin, accelerate, travel! And… arriving by misadventure, or by computerized selection in a time roughly a billion years back of beyond, the Travelers are given kopi-helmets and electronic guns and sent out on paths through the jungle where, at one time or another, they will encounter varieties of prehistoric beasts and must be prepared to fire their electric rifles at the creatures to frighten them off. The beasts rise and attack from different positions in different ways and at different speeds every time a new mob of Hunters runs through. They must be hit in the eyes, of course, with the electric guns. Failing to score a hit will cause the monster beast to tilt forward and, with magnetic claws, seize the rifle away, thus “disarming” the Adventurer. The last Hunter to be disarmed, or who makes it through the Prehistoric Maze, having scored all hits, is the Winner, and gets to choose, for all the rest, where they will continue their Hunt for the Lost Child, Lost Man, or Lost Woman—who can be heard screaming, incidentally, from time to time, as they hunt through the Maze.

  During all of the above adventures, of course, some of the Yestermorrow Travel Guides who accompany the Hunters, are snatched off into the sky and carried off by Pterodactyls, or grabbed and plunged down, sinking into quicksands by the Thunder Lizards… so that the Customers feel a true sense of danger as they blunder through the Jungle Maze toward Survival.

  At the finale, with all the Hunters disarmed, save one, the Survivor, the Victor, hearing the cry of the Victim, off in another Time, punches the Computer, the Hunters rush from the jungle and—the next option is Space! Where, from a long way off, falling deep into Space we hear the voice of the Lost Hunter, the Time Abandoned Child, the Boy, the Girl, or the Man or Woman spun in the Time Centrifuge and ricocheted off Saturn, Pluto, and Beyond!

  The
Adventurers pile into a Space Pod or Rocket Module, 20 or 30 per Pod or Module, and blast off! Right up along the Statue of Liberty, by God. We have taken off from the base of the Statue and now zoom-fire up the Lady’s body to her arm and along her arm to her torch and the torch points at the universe, so—we GO THERE!

  Bang! And drop into the Star Deeps.

  The Pod may well be controlled by one Volunteer amongst the Adventure Mob, who has a minute or less at the controls. If he is hit, if he allows the Pod to be hit, by a meteor, or lets a Comet glance off and spin the Pod, he relinquishes the control to the next in line. We circumnavigate the Universe, move through meteor clusters, follow Ghost Comet, fly by Saturn, plunge toward the Great Bloodshot Eye of Jupiter, clockwheel around the huge spiral of Andromeda and—come home.

  On the way we hear the Voice of the Doomed Lost Hunter crying, “I’m falling into the Sun! I’m going to hit the Moon. Save me! I’m being carried away in an Asteroid cluster. Help!” We run to follow and catch.

  Whichever pilot comes through with the least hits from meteors, opts for the next Encounter, the next Game!

  A variation on this would be to place 30 people in 30 individual pods, or suspend them in flying belts, which fire off with great lovely rocket noise from their backs! Suspending individuals in dark space would enable us to convince each Hunter that he or she was actually being flung into the Sun or was about to band the Moon! Or drown in the tidal waves of Andromeda’s vast shorelike seas of stars. The Hunters would see their friends flying all about them, suspended of course by invisible black extension rods, and the sense of excitement and lonely terror would be—for the most—exhilarating! Again, who ever maneuvers best, alone or in a group, gets to make the option for a New Hunt, when all have landed.

  Moving right along… we arrive in…

  The Mechanical Hound Maze… where…

  The Adventurer, as he or she enters is given a computerized belt, which is worn around the midriff of each fleeing person. Nearby, as the belts are being put on the various members of the “Expedition,” the electric Mechanical Hound waits in its computerized kennel, now and again making fairly dreadful noises, fairly ominous sounds.

  This is a Maze through which the Adventurers run to escape the Hound. Only one of the Adventurers has a belt, which is computerized to fit the numbers fed to the Hound. The Hound then runs in pursuit. Not knowing which of them is the Victim, the people in the Maze flee in all directions. Screaming Furies, bellowing dire electric storm threats, the Hound seeks, searches, races, runs, and at last, finds!

  When it zeroes in on its running victim, it seizes him or her by fastening, magnetically, to the back side, the metal side, of the belt, thus stopping all flight. In the moment of capture, the Hound shrieks with accomplishment, gives its victim a mild electric shock perhaps, nothing that can hurt, and the game is over. Or it continues after the Victim is dispatched through a secret door into another Area, where it waits for the other Adventurers to catch up. Out of 30 people involved in each Chase, perhaps three might be thus Captured before the Hound herds everyone out of the Game Maze Field, and the next adventure begins…

  We step forward and find ourselves in…

  An area between the great Lion Paws of the Sphinx where we are confronted by hieroglyphic doors that caw and purr and growl, each symbol making its own death sounds and noise—the Raven, the Jackal, the Alligator. Ra speaks here from his Sun. Anubis whispers. All the Egyptian gods, standing in ranks near the Paws, speak and promise: Darkness and Light, Light and Darkness.

  We enter the Sphinx Tomb and are told that a passage leads from it to the interior of the Pyramid nearby where—maybe—our Lost Hunter has been buried.

  The doors of the Sphinx fly open. We hear a far shriek, wail, cry, like someone falling down an elevator shaft—the Hunter being carried away. We must follow. We must find!

  We enter and are truly lost in a Tomb Maze. We confront sarcophagi inside, which the Lost Child hammers to get free, weeping. Or we meet up with mummies stashed along the way, with the sound of desert sands whispering behind their linen wraps. Or we traffic-stop in mid-catacomb to see a royal pharaoh’s funeral procession. We watch Egyptian priests and courtiers trek a golden king into the mortuary deeps. Or we collide with a Mirror Maze in which our images deflesh themselves, becoming unwrapped mummy skeletons. Or find ourselves trapped by a burial sand avalanche as the tomb slams its door, grinds shut its granite teeth to lock us in—forever.

  But then, at last, we reach the heart of the Pyramid, to stare up and down air shafts, which rise to great heights and plunge to great depths. So we have puzzled our way all through this Maze. And the first Hunter to reach the far tomb Exit gets to option further travels, farther places.

  Other Options to be considered and built as we go, would be:

  The October Country!

  Where the Hunters move through graveyards, ride on a Halloween Tree Carousel, a merry-go-round in which, on every other brass pole, a skeleton horse is hung, and riders resembling witches, sorcerers, headless horsemen, skeletons, Hamlet’s father’s ghost, slide up and down out of the upper reaches of the lit Pumpkin tree as the carousel spins to Ghost Pavannes… and… perhaps, the horses take off from the carousel and fly over October Country, passing, on the way, the upper reaches of Notre Dame, where the gargoyles speak to us with dust blowing from their mouths to make the whispered words, or rain making their stone tongues speak, or wind rustling their teeth to annunciate Time… then back to the Carousel Base… and off on another adventure…

  What next…?

  Perhaps, moving along through October Country we encounter a great dark Haunting Place on the Half-shell, at various levels… as we enter we see the Running Runaway, the Lost Boy, Girl, Man, Woman, the Hiding One, racing upstairs to Hide somewhere in this vast Hide and Seek Place.

  The other Hunters must now investigate every area of the Half-shell House, every closet full of night, every basement full of dark, every attic full of grotesque junk, which… moves.

  This may well be the Last Hunt, the Last Adventure of our circuit. When the final picture is pried open like a door, or a clock is popped wide to reveal, the Hiding Hunter is Found, and the finale is at hand. The Half-shell House shakes with an earthquake of clocks, and we are invited to… leave.

  It follows that in all of the encounters and adventurers and hunts described herein we can mix and match as we please… the adventures will never be quite the same each time through… the dinosaurs will rise at different intervals, the ghosts will arrive and depart on different schedules, the Egyptian maze will never repeat itself exactly. Varieties of tapes can be used, and varieties of projections… and varieties of lights and sounds… And, in our opinion, we will arrive at these Places in different sequence, with perhaps a fall through Space first, then the October Country adventure, followed by the dinosaurs, in any order that the Hunter wishes.

  Other options that come to mind, to be built and locked in over the months or years:

  A Storm Maze, where, amongst hills and mountaintops we watch the Weather of the World being formed and sent out in raving hurricanes and dreadful lightning winds, clamoring about us as we watch and listen.

  A Maze of Shadows and Sounds where we wander in the voices of 1920 and 1030 and the musics of 1910 and 1039, and with shadow puppets and shadow marionettes rising and flying and falling all about us… and so on and so forth and so on and on and… on. Name Your Poison… We’ll Build It!

  ***

  Had enough? Hold on! Let’s move out into the final, the Third Time Maze!

  And what is it?

  After Time Maze One, the restaurants, and Time Maze Two, the Wild Adventures, we now have time for—Shopping!

  Getting lost for the third time!!! In a maze of Shops From All Ages, from the Past, the Present, and the Future.

  Everything we remember from eating, everything we remember from Living in the past few hours, we now apply to the adventure of shopping and taking home reme
mbrances of the two first Maze experiences.

  So, at our leisure, remembering all this, we shop, we buy, we take home bits of London, Dublin, Pre-History, Far Centauri. We wander in a Maze of shopping even as we wandered in a maze of eating and wild journeyings.

  A veritable museum of shops is here, a Maze attached to a Maze attached to a Maze…

  So we now enter the Great Victoria, East India and Far Orient Book Shoppe, where we find a solid escarpment, a vast cliff of books reaching up, up, up into the intellectual heavens about us, on three grand layers. It is probably the longest bookstore on Earth, stretching for as far as the eye can see! This, accomplished, of course, by the fact that the bookstore not only runs for some 90- to 100-feet-deep, but when it reaches the far terminus of reality, is taken up by a trompe l’oeil painting of the same stacks, which stretch off towards what might be Bombay, could be Tokyo, are most certainly leaning toward Shangri-La.

  Similarly, looking up, the stacks that neatly climb the escarpment, continue on into the heavens as far as the eye can see in that direction! Endless ladders and rungs of books to be climbed by bright, seeking apefolks—us!

  What calls us there? On occasions, shadows of trees and monkeys scurrying from branch to branch, limb to leaf, in soft chattering excursions, along with the faint echo of Tarzan summoning us—high!

  Or, on occasion, Apollo’s chariot may pass over that endless heaven, followed in good time, by an image of Ra, a Persian god of fire, or a flying carpet. Surprise-surprise-surprise—a flock of birds heading south—clouds moving north—bombers on their way to a war—rockets taking off for Far Centauri—all projected on that imaginative sky.

  At either end of the bookstore is a circular stairway up which we can ascend to the three levels. Perhaps the children’s level is at the very top?… For wouldn’t children, above all, wish to climb circular stairs more than anyone else? And, anyway, up there Tom Swift and Nancy Drew and Buck Rogers and Tarzan and Mary Poppins would be calling (softly, please) with rocket voices and the muted clamor of space wars. Perhaps the top floor would also be inhabited by the science fiction and fantasy books, where the still young humans come—from age fourteen to twenty-four or thirty. Again, motivation is important here and s-f/fantasy is read by climbers, reachers, wanderers—the most popular fiction in America today, especially among young adults and adults not yet ready to admit they have hit forty.