The Search for Ball Zero

by Tony Dormanesh

  More, Primus, Sevendust, all lined the walls. Beer cans and booze bottles laying around. Long unemptied ash trays, filled with roaches, no smokes. It was a 90s grunge and metal heads sweet rock and roll history museum. In a few places there looked to be dirt thrown on the walls, Perry hoped it wasn’t more poop.

  Perry passed the dutchie on the left hand side and it went around the room, the humans and primates bonded over heavy metal.

  All the primates had similar experiences as the clones, they don’t remember ever

  not being in the forest. Some had been here a long time. The primates laid the story out for the group. Elohssa was trying highly experimental cloning techniques, and instead of killing or storing the extra or wasted clones, they let them loose in the forest and observe what happens. That’s who the clones were, rejects and used, unneeded clones.

  “Is that what you guys are too?” Perry said rudely.

  “Do I look like a reject, human?” Axl said and held up his hands, showing off

  his thumbs. Their thumbs were close to their fingers, like humans. They all had them.

  “Not to mention the talking.” The drummer threw in.

  “Some of forefathers escape. Start this society, mostly underground and in da

  trees.” Jimi added.

  “We winning.” Axl added.

  “Winning what?”

  “War with company.”

  “Elohssa? There’s a war?” The band nodded.

  The group of humans told them stories of the outside. They were amazed. They told the band about humans, about bad humans and good humans. They told them stories about metal shows. The band loved the story of Perry, Tony and L going to Lollapalooza and taking way too much acid. They wanted more details about Rage Against the Machine. They ended talking about the warstores and the first sale.

  “warstores.” The primates looked at each other. “New, big machines! Easy to

  kill.”

  “Easy to kill?” Tony questioned,”You’ve killed one?”

  “No we break in. Steal machines. We kill soon. Easy.” “Tall building?” Tony continued,”Have you been there?”

  “We all come from there.” Les stated.

  Axl continued, “That war we fight. We raided building many times, freeing

  brothers and sisters.”

  “We can help!” Tony pulled the glock out of his underwear and showed it to them, they were amazed.

  “We take humans to King?” Les was asking Axl.

  “They cool enough?” Axl asked.

  “You do the worm.” The as yet to be named drummer said and handed a see-

  through plastic bottle to Axl, who passed it up and towards the group. It looked like a 2 liter soda bottle with the top ripped off. Inside were all white centipede looking creatures. Some an inch or 2 long and some around 6 inches and fat. They weaved through each other inside the bottle, a milky looking weave of centipede.

  “What is it?” Perry asked.

  “Strong drug.” Les said, holding out the bottle.

  Perry grabbed it, that was all he needed to know. “What kind of drug?” He looked deeply at the worms swarming around. He picked out one and held it over his mouth, asking, “Eat it?”

  The band laughed. “Pussy way.”

  Axl said, “Snort.”

  Normally that would be all Perry would need. But snorting a wiggling, living thing was new to him and weirded him out. He put it up to his nose.

  “Bigger.” The drummer told him.

  Perry reached back in and grabbed one of the biggest worms, looked over at Tony and L, dangling it in front of his nose. He held one nostril closed with his other hand and as the centipede legs reached and touched his nose he snorted hard. The worm slid up his nose, each ridge of it’s body bumping along the way. Perry almost couldn’t get it with one snort, but he reached and found more breath and snorted it up. It disappeared in his nose, the tip of his nostril was stretched out and it shrunk as the last of the worm’s body sunk into his skull. He almost coughed, his eyes watered, he looked at the ground, his face showing that he was feeling the worm in his head.

  The monkeys rolled with laughter.

  “Yes!” Jimi yelled in his high pitched voice. “You, big ball.”

  Perry smiled at everyone, looked over at Tony and then his eyes glazed over and he seemed to be looking right through Tony. Sitting there wearing his shitty underwear looking completely out of it, Perry resembled a really high hobo. He held his arms out and put his hands flat on the ground, it looked like he needed to do that to keep his balance. His head moved and drool slipped out of his mouth. He wasn’t unconscious, but he wasn’t quite here. Perry held his hand out in front of his face and drew in the air.

  “You gotta try this!”

  “You took too much man, you took too much, too much!” Axl said, and all the primates laughed.

  “What?” L looked scared.

  “Naw, he’s quoting Fear and Loathing.” Tony assured her. “Give me one.” Les passed the bottle of worms to Tony, he took one, not as big as Perry’s but big compared to all the others.

  “Save at least 3 big ones, for Me, Les and Moon.” Axl said. They learned the baboon drummer’s name, Moon.

  Tony shuffled around the worms, and took the 4th biggest one. He snorted it, it

  was tough to get down, but he got it. He felt the worm wiggling in his sinuses.

  “You big ball too.” Jimi said again and laughed.

  After a few short, but long seconds, Tony felt a wave overcome him, weighing

  down his eyes and filling his soul with euphoria. It was like acid, E, salvia, cocaine and speed, all coming on at the same time. He almost wanted to get up and run, but he was too comfortable, he laid down and colors swam in front of his eyes. He watched sound bounce off the walls as the Primates and L talked incoherently. The room became a painting, a still wet, animated painting. He reached out and pushed his hand across the painting, the colors mixed, shapes swirled around his hand. The painting melted into a psychedelic spray of rainbow particles. He was flying through space. He closed his eyes and relaxed and let the show wash over him. He vividly remembered good times, before the craziness.

  20

  PINBALL DNA

  Today Tony and Perry both took notice of the pinball area, instead of the regular

  stoner in jeans and a leather jacket playing pinball, there was this new guy. He was still an older guy, but he was wearing a windbreaker, maybe a jogging suit or something. Tony wasn’t sure back then what to call it, but he knew it had twin stripes going down each side and it was shiny and looked comfortable. He was playing a new pinball game; it stood out in the line of old, boring, scratched up machines whose lights never worked anyways. It was colorful. Instead of the dull thuds and old bells clanging together like the old machines had, it had crisp, powerful sounds projecting from speakers. You could hear the mechanical power of the flipper when a player pressed the button, and you could hear the ball sliding, racing along the super slick playfield. It even had a narrator, with a powerful voice, that anyone in Treetop Games could hear when he got excited.

  The pinball game was called Caveman. The machine itself was a marvel to look

  at. It had a picture of a big, funny looking caveman on the backglass, and there was a huge volcano erupting in the background of the picture. Around the caveman was chaos on every side, a Tyrannosaurus Rex about to chomp him, lava flowing under his feet, pinballs flying everywhere, and other cavemen being devoured by dinosaurs all over. It was one of those pieces of art with so much going on, you could stare at it for years, and Tony did.

  This new guy playing was doing stuff Tony and Perry had never seen pinball players do before: Leaning, pushing on the machine, standing on one leg and twisting his body sideways, like he was dodging a bullet. They laughed at the time, it looked funny. After he played for a bit, the powerful narrator’s voice inside the pinball machine was getting excited.

  “Ball 2 locked! One more for
Tyrannosaurus Rex multiball!!”, The machine

  yelled.

  “Tyrannosaurus Rex Multiball?” Perry and Tony each thought, it intrigued them.

  They looked at each other and got up to go see what this was. By the time they got close enough to watch what was happening, the game announcer’s voice was nearing a frenzy. The small yellow and black dot matrix screen was showing a caveman running from a T-Rex and all of a sudden the volcano shot out 3 balls. In a deep, awesome voice the machine yelled, “T-Rex… MULTIBALLLLLLL!!!!” The machine screamed with a seriousness to it that was quite engaging. It turned heads in all of Treetop. All of a sudden there were 3 balls on the playfield and this new guy was flipping them around with ease, not losing any. Then from a back corner of the machine, a huge mechanical TRex stomped onto the playfield and the guy playing started hitting it with the 3 balls. The T-Rex let out a great roar with each hit and red and white flashing lights almost blind the player. Finally the T-Rex was beaten and he folded back behind the volcano.

  “Get the T-Rex jackpot!”

  Flashing red lights were pointing at both of the ramps. Tony wanted to yell out, “Shoot for that ramp!”, but he knew not to. He was getting good at this already.

  Tony looked down and the pinball player had caught 2 balls with the right

  flipper. The other ball was bouncing around while he watched it like an eagle, adjusting his weight and almost flipping when the ball zoomed by, but he never actually flipped, he let the machine bounce the ball around, he knew where it was going. The 3rd ball bounced back and forth really fast for a second, then hit a post that sent it arcing towards the left flipper. He waited till the perfect moment and flipped the left flipper once. In what seemed like slow motion, the flipper flipped up, and at the exact time the flipper was at its greatest height, it met the ball, and the ball just sat down calmly on the flipper, all that crazy kinetic energy was instantly gone. It was like he caught the ball and suddenly he had all 3 balls sitting on his 2 flippers. Tony didn’t know you could do that in pinball?

  He looked over at Tony and smiled. That was cool.

  “You wanna see a jackpot kid?”

  Tony thought, “What’s a jackpot?”

  The new guy looked down, took his hand off the left button and let the ball drool

  down the flipper. As the ball rolled Tony thought he should’ve hit it already. But he let it go way past where Tony thought he should’ve hit, almost to where Tony thought he was going to lose the ball, then he flipped and sent the ball off in a powerful vector, diagonal up and to the right. It went over the flashing red lights, and perfectly up the brown plastic ramp, over a hump and then quickly looped back on a track coming back down to the right flipper. “JAAAACKPOOTTTTT!!!!” The machine yelled and posted a huge, bold 4 Million on the display.

  The ball jiggled down and was coming to the right flipper, where he was already holding 2 balls. “What could he possibly do?” Tony’s young pinball mind thought. He hunched over and his eyes darted around the machine, then quickly he flipped the right flipper, sent one ball up the left ramp, which somehow juggled the 2nd ball just above the flipper.

  “DOUBLE JAACKPOT!” The dot matrix display looked like it was going to jump out at you, “8 MILLION” took up every pixel.

  The right flipper still had 2 balls right there; the ball he juggled when he hit the

  double jackpot must have had a spin on it, because it hovered above the flipper for an unnaturally long time. Long enough for the other ball to roll under it and give him a clean shot.

  Perfect shot, “TRIPLE JACKPOOTTT!!” The pinball machine’s voice was at

  the top of it’s lungs, and it even had a tinge of disbelief in it.

  “Go for the Super Jackpot!” The T-Rex came out again. And it seemed

  determined to get in the way of any Super Jackpot attempt. With 2 lightning fast flicks of the flipper, the new guy blasted the T-Rex out of the way and shot for the ramp, but he just barely missed, the missed ball bounced back so quickly, it was gone before he had time to react.

  “Damn! I want to see the Super Jackpot!” Tony thought.

  The new guy made a couple fancy moves after that, but didn’t get the Super Jackpot and lost both other balls. It was weird, he was so amazing one second, and then almost instantly he lost the momentum and it was all over. Tony looked around; a small crowd that had formed behind the machine was dispersing to their regular duties. After it was over, he had gotten the high score and put in his initials “DNA”. At the moment he put in the “A”, there was a loud KNOCK that came from inside the machine.

  “Free game little man, it’s all yours.” The mysterious new guy said to Tony.

  That day Tony found his true passion in dredging through the boredom of the

  society, Pinball.

  Tony saw “DNA” one more time. He came in a couple months later while Tony was playing Caveman. It was one of those surreal Saturday mornings covered in haze. Tony was one of the only people there that day. He came up behind Tony and watched him play for a bit, he was getting to be pretty good. At least he wasn’t a “double flipper” anymore. Tony had even beaten some of DNA’s scores on a few machines. The new guy saw Tony had potential. DNA played the next game, but basically he was teaching Tony the whole time.

  Before he started his game, he leaned over the machine, looking at different places under the glass, squinting, sometimes pointing and mumbling incoherently to himself.

  “What are you looking at?” Tony asked.

  “Just checking it out. Letting my mind take measurements, noting imperfections.”

  “Really?”

  “You may not understand this right now, but you will later so listen, ok?”

  “Ok.”

  “You’ll never be able to think as fast as your brain thinks without you. Don’t worry though, no one can. Even when you walk, your brain is making thousands of calculations per second, like which muscles to use when walking, and adjusting your balance and muscles to each different footstep. You know what I’m talking about?” Tony looked up and scratched his head.

  “Do you play baseball?” He asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When you were being taught how to hit, what did everyone tell you?”

  “Keep your eye on the ball?” Tony said slightly questioning his own answer.

  “Exactly. And why would they say that?”

  “So I could see what I was hitting?” Tony questioned his answer again.

  “Yes, exactly again. They tell you to keep your eyes on the ball because that is

  the best way for you to not over think the situation. You concentrate on following the ball with your eyes and conscious, and that frees up your subconscious mind to do all of the insane calculations needed to hit a speeding ball with a bat.”

  “But what if I just thought about hitting the ball, wouldn’t that work?”

  “When you’re thinking about swinging the bat and trying to hit a moving ball,

  you’re actively controlling the muscles in your arm and not focusing on the target. Too much is going on for you to concentrate on everything. When you are watching the ball, it takes all of your active concentration. While you are concentrating on the target, your brain is subconsciously calculating how fast the ball is flying through the air and how far away it is, comparing the ball to the changing background, sensing the wind, noting spin and light, feeling where the bat is, a million different things. Your brain can do all of that instantly if left alone. You can maybe do one of those things if you try to think about it all. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  “Concentrate on the ball and nothing else?”

  “Well, almost. Focus on your target and know what you want to do with it, let

  your mind take care of the rest.”

  “So, I look at the pinball and think about not losing the ball?”

  “Almost again, kid. Watch the ball and have a plan, just don’t over think it.”

  “So why were yo
u staring at the pinball machine all close and weird like?”

  “All I’m doing is refreshing the parts of my brain that remember where everything is in this machine. You’re probably thinking, “How does he not know where everything is, I’ve seen him play this before?” I do know where everything is, but in the middle of the game, when 3 balls are flying in every direction, this slight refreshing of the brain pathways could make all the difference.”

  Tony kind of got it, but DNA knew he was going too deep, so he changed

  topics.

  “It’s 90% skill, 10% luck.”

  “Are you sure? It seems like I have to get lucky a lot more than that to get a good score.”

  “You’ll see. When you learn a little more, as long as you’re in control you will

  never lose the ball.”

  “Yea.” Made sense to Tony. He knew that he usually lost the ball when the

  bumpers shot the ball around, it was too fast for him to react, and sometimes there was nothing you could do.

  “In pinball, if you never miss a shot, you never lose control,” “..And then I’ll never lose the ball.” Tony was catching on.

  “Right.” DNA said, “Watch this.” The ball came screaming around a loop and

  he did one of those amazing catches with the right flipper. The ball sat there motionless, cradled by the flipper. He sat there, leaning against the machine with his right hand, holding the flipper button down, his left arm away from the machine: on his hip, scratching various itches, fixing his hair.

  “Yea, but that’s stupid, you don’t get any points. And it’s no fun.”

  Maintaining his one handed position, he shot the pinball up the ramp, it scored

  points and snaked its way back to the right flipper. He shot again, this time without catching it, another hit.

  “Combo!” The machine said.

  “Combo 2!” He did it again.

  “Combo 3!” Three shots in a row.

  It kept going around like this and he hit the ramp ten times in a row, all with one hand touching the machine. He was hitting the next shot so quickly, the machine’s voice couldn’t keep up. “Combo-C-Co-Combo 10!” and then he caught the ball instantly. A cartoon caveman came on the dot matrix display and gave a big thumbs up: “Prehistoric combo, dude!”