The Space Sieve Read online

YOU MAY BE INTERESTED in what happened when David and Chip first explained the Space Sieve to Sally and to Diane and when they first showed them how it worked, and how surprised, scared, and then intrigued the girls were. And you might want to know all about what was said and so forth. But it holds little interest for me.

  Suffice it to say that after a few hours of explanation, demonstration, shock, fear, surprise, excitement, and delight, the girls had become familiar with the Device, and soon all four of them, atop their stools, headed off to the world that David had chosen. It was another cemetery.

  As David announced proudly the place to which he had taken them all, Chip winced. “Another cemetery David?” he said quietly. But David was committed to showing them around.

  This world was much different than the one that David called “The Graveyard of the Gods.” Here they were in clear sunlight under a blue sky, on a sloping field of well-tended, green grass. All around were small flags measuring about 2 inches square, each on its own little mast, so that the flags were flying about six inches off the ground. Almost all the flags were red or yellow, but a few were blue.

  As they walked along, David explained that each flag represented a person who had “passed on.”

  “Interesting isn’t it?” David asked. “That other cemetery with all its colossal monuments and this one is so simple – no puffery – all the flags the same size, just different colors.”

  Diane stooped and pointed. “Look!” she said.

  Moving down the hill was an apparition that looked like amber glass, half-visible, half-invisible. As it moved, it faded completely from view then re-appeared as its ghostly, glassy form seemed to come in and out of existence. The four children soon realized there were numerous such shapes appearing, moving, and disappearing on the hillside around them. On the whole, it looked like the apparitions were moving in and among the little flags, stopping to look at them.

  “Those are the creatures who live here,” said David, almost casually, motioning toward the transparent, reddish-brown creatures. “I don’t know for sure what they are, but they’re harmless.”

  And so the children spent much of the day exploring this place, as the fading, glassy beings moved among the little flags.

  As they eventually came back to the Space Sieve, Sally asked, “What time is it? I’m supposed to be home by 5:00.”

  David and Chip smiled knowingly. Chip said, “Don’t worry – we have time – as much as we need – as much as we could ever need.” Chip smiled and looked at Diane, hoping to get some kind of response out of her. But he didn’t get any.

  “Well,” continued Sally, “I wonder if next we could go someplace with animals. You know – animals that we can see or maybe even play with – like little dogs and cats or something.”

  It is interesting how various humans will have such divergent interests. Sally’s request seemed pedestrian to David. David smiled weakly at Sally. He did know of such a place however, and after giving Chip a look of resignation, he plotted a course for such a reality.

  You will recall that while Chip and Sally are brother and sister, that Chip is not related to Diane by blood, nor is David to Sally. So in that look of resignation that David gave Chip, the two boys communicated more than words would, or could. The last thing either boy wanted to do was to take the girls to a place where they would have something they would be able to play with, independent of the boys. Although neither boy said it, they had both been hoping this outing would lead the girls to being interested in them, and in doing things with them, not with a bunch of animals. But such was their luck, both in terms of the girls’ expressed wish, and in terms of the two boys acceding to it so quickly.

  A spot appeared, and a hoop swept around them, taking them to yet another world.

  But this particular transit across vast tracts of time, space and reality using the Space Sieve was unique, inasmuch as it was the last one that the two girls would ever experience. This was the last time either girl would ever travel again using the Space Sieve. And because of this, it would be one of the last journeys using the Device that the boys themselves would ever take.

  Now inside a forest of thin, tall trees, a canopy spread overhead as though they were inside a vast, dark cathedral. A trail led away from them over a large log and into the distance, where it exited the forest and went out into the light.

  “There are a lot of animals here,” said David. “And all of them are harmless. They’re pretty interesting and some are fairly cuddly too.” He smiled, gratuitously.

  The girls joined hands and looked at David. “Where are they?” Sally asked. David pointed in the direction of the light. The two girls began to run off, then stopped, turned back to the boys, and asked, “Well, aren’t you coming?”

  But both boys at this point could tell that the girls really had little interest in either of them. Here they had taken the girls past multiple universes and through multiple dimensions of reality. The boys’ hope was that this would awe and impress the girls into having a great deal of interest in them. But here they all were, and all the girls seemed interested in was playing with animals. “Couldn’t they have done that at home?” Chip thought, and as he and David looked at each other they both knew what they would do. Let the girls stay here and have their girl fun. They would go have their boy fun someplace else.

  And they both decided too that the next time they went somewhere they would leave the girls home. But of course, they never got the chance to make that decision, ever again.

  “No,” said Chip politely, with a wave. “Go ahead – we’ll go do something else. See you in what – say an hour?” And with that, the two girls nodded, and ran off down the trail.

  Strange isn’t it? Here are these four, in possession of a Space Sieve – in possession of power and capacity that your species cannot begin to comprehend – and all the girls wanted was to see playful animals. And all the boys wanted was for the girls to pay attention to them. It is also strange that the girls (as well as Chip) trusted David’s assertion that this world was completely safe – which indeed it was – at least at that time. Having traveled so far, and in such a remarkable manner, the girls nonetheless felt at home here in this strange world. It’s just as well that they did. And David had no doubt they could return and retrieve them at will.

  And so, while David operated the Machine Chip watched as Sally and Diane ran off, climbed over the log then scurried into the distance. And as they bounced away through the forest, silhouetted by the light in front of them, their hair flinging back and forth and the sound of their voices and their laughter echoing among the silent trees, David paused and looked too, and he and Chip thought that those two girls just then were the prettiest image that they had ever seen.

  And then as the hoop formed behind the Device and swept over them taking David and Chip away, Chip had a strange and terrible feeling, and appropriately so. For this would be the last time either he or David would see Diane and Sally for the rest of any of their lives. But none of them knew that yet.

  With a few strokes of the keys the boys materialized inside a spacious structure. David had taken himself and Chip once again to the reality he called “Skylia.” From the ground floor the two looked up at the interior space that stretched upward for several hundred feet and was entirely empty except for numerous escalators that rose to various interior platforms that stretched out from the walls. All of the surfaces they could see were made out of glass, except the various floors, which were made of red felt – at least this was what the boys thought when they saw them. Some of the escalators began at the ground floor and traveled up several to stories overhead, while some began at upper floors and traveled to still higher levels. There was a great deal of chrome ornamentation on the walls of the ground floor - some walls were almost entirely vertical bands of the gleaming metal. And while neither boy was cognitively aware of it, each somehow realized that this was like nothing
they'd seen before, in the sense that all the shining metal was perfect, without smudge or blemish of any kind.

  At this point you may be wondering why I am going to the trouble of describing some of the places that the boys are visiting to such a degree as I am. The reason for this is because my sense is that these worlds are unusual and are not anything like your kind has ever experienced. You may recall earlier in this account that at times I declined to give details of the surroundings in which the boys found themselves, such as when they were in a home or when they were visiting family members and so forth. In these cases there was nothing unique or worth mentioning, unlike the place in which they currently are. Therefore in some cases, such as this one, I take some effort to describe the surroundings for documentary purposes.

  At this point David operated the Space Sieve and as Chip watched, the Device lowered itself into a spot on the floor and disappeared. This is similar to what David had done previously when he had seemed to place the Device within a wall where it would presumably be safe. He then immediately strode across the plaza and stepped on one of the escalators, Chip at his side. As the two boys traveled up the escalator they noticed something unusual: The escalators, which were several hundred feet long with glass sides had no support under them, except at their two end points. As the boys began to reach the floor to which they were traveling they noticed that the floor itself seemed to have no support either, except at the outer edges where it connected to the external walls of the building. Indeed, the various floors extended out from walls, hanging out into the open space as it were, without any support, except at the outer edges. Even more strangely, these higher floors did not have any barricading walls around them to prevent anyone from falling off. As David and Chip walked around on the floor to which they had just traveled, all this gave them a very uneasy feeling.

  The people who were on the various floors walked calmly and assuredly around on the floors, embarking and disembarking the escalators, without any care of falling at all. Then the boys noticed something even more strange. Where an individual wished to travel down only one or two floors, rather than use an escalator, he would use slides. The slides traveled down and sometimes curved, to take the person to platforms below. Like the floors themselves, these curving surfaces had no sides on them to keep anyone from falling off of them either. And yet no one ever fell.

  Something else that struck the boys as very unusual was that the slides and the floors all were very thin – almost paper thin. In spite of this, an escalator would start from the edge of a platform and travel up to another platform. In other words, slight as they seemed, the various floors nonetheless had the integrity and rigidity to hold not only their own weight and the weight of the people standing (or sliding) on them, they also had the strength to hold the weight of the escalators that were connecting the various floors and platforms to each other.

  Chip and David did not spend much time traveling the escalators from floor to floor before they found the entire experience frightening without being particularly interesting. Soon, they walked to the back of one of the platforms and through a doorway, stepping into a spacious area. Standing at the back of a wide hallway that curved away from them as it stretched to the left and right, they looked across the open space to a transparent wall. It appeared that the entire structure they were in was circular, for the glass wall had a curvature, such that it curved away from the boys while the middle bulged toward the boys like a gigantic fishbowl. And like a fishbowl, large as it was it appeared this transparent wall – about two stories high, and a hundred feet wide as far as what the boys could see – was made from a single piece of transparent and optically perfect glass. Behind it the boys could see a large classroom comprising chairs for one hundred attendees, and people entered and exited the classroom as well as mingling around hall. At some distance the two boys noticed an elevator door and concluded it might be a more interesting way to explore the building, as well as being far less frightening than the escalators that they had just been on.

  As David and Chip entered the elevator, two people watched them and turned to each other with questioning looks – not seeming malevolent in any way, just curious.

  Scanning the complex elevator control panel, David moved his hand higher and higher. Then his hand moved down and touched an odd-shaped form near the center of the panel. The doors closed and the elevator began to move upward, and after a few moments the elevator stopped and the doors opened. Two young men stepped on the elevator at this point. They traveled up a few more floors and the elevator stopped again. But this time, there was something unusual. When the doors opened, it was clear the elevator had stopped between two floors. There in front of them was the floor above and the floor below, with the flooring between them. Rather than expressing any surprise, the two men glanced at the boys, and then simply climbed out of the elevator onto the upper floor. The doors of the elevator closed again.

  This time, David’s hand moved higher and higher on the control panel until it pressed the highest button. The doors closed and once again the boys traveled upward. But this time they could feel their speed increasing – faster and faster – and they noticed the walls of the elevator began shaking gently, as though they were only marginally held to the elevator box itself.

  “I'm starting to feel like this thing’s not all that well put-together,” said Chip.

  Nervously, David too noticed that the walls were becoming increasingly loose. Suddenly, the left wall of the elevator – as a single piece of sheet metal – simply slid off with a slicing sound; then so did the right side. At this point only the front and back of the elevator had walls. Then, the back wall slid off too. Traveling upward inside the shaft, the elevator now had only a floor, ceiling, front doors and control panel. Crouching near the floor, the boys could see the dark walls of the elevator shaft rushing past as the elevator continued to travel upward.

  Even more frightening than this feeling of exposure was the fact that it was clear the speed of the elevator was continuing to increase, as they now felt themselves pressed against its floor.

  Fear quickly turned to terror as the elevator suddenly shot out of the finished part of the building into an upper section of building that looked as though it was nothing but steel girders with an open frame elevator shaft in the middle of it. (I say “steel” here, but as you will see this material was not steel, but something much stronger. Nonetheless, I will refer to it as “steel” for the sake of your reference.) As the air roared around them, the girders most near the shaft whipped passed faster and faster with a rapid, tapping sound. The more distant girders passed more slowly than the blurred near ones, and yet their speed was increasing too.

  Although neither of them said a word, the question that began to cross the boys' minds was this: What was going to ultimately happen? Would they suddenly shoot out the top of the building? Or would they somehow come crashing to a halt as they reached the top of the elevator shaft in this unfinished section of the building?

  What did happen was this: just as moments before the elevator had suddenly exited the finished part of the building and plunged into an upper unfinished section of the building, with a sudden change of air, it now left the unfinished section of the building as well.

  Now, they were inside an elevator without walls, roaring upwards into the sky itself, inside a lone, framework elevator shaft, teetering in the wind.

  But the elevator car was not accelerating anymore. The upward speed, while still intense, was constant now. This was noticeable only because the boys did not feel themselves pressed to the floor any longer. As frightening as it had been, there had been a benefit to the acceleration in that it had kept them pressed to the floor. But now even that was gone. Hands flailing for something to hold on to, both boys realized that an elevator cannot travel upward forever inside a single, spindly shaft. Like a fishing rod with a heavy lure on the end of it, the elevator shaft must begin to bend
as the weight of the elevator car traveling upward made the shaft increasingly top-heavy. And if the shaft bent over on itself, what would the boys hold on to then?

  Then it began to happen. With the wind roaring and the girders of the elevator shaft flashing by in a continuous blur, there was the noticeable feeling of tipping from side to side. Lying flat on the floor, fingers spread wide, the boys tried to hold on as the car began to gently drift and tilt as they continued higher and higher into the sky.

  Then, just when their fright began to turn to a blank, hopeless resignation, the situation changed again. Together with the tremendous roaring of the air there was suddenly a high, whirring sound, falling in pitch, and the boys, rigid with fear, floated to the top of the elevator car. With a chillingly smooth precision, the elevator was decelerating now and the boys were once again pressed safely but frighteningly against a surface – this time, the ceiling. From this new vantage point, it was very easy to see downward, and to see just how high the car had traveled. Below, the thin elevator shaft writhed gently as it stretched far below, like a snake that was casually reaching from branch to branch. A final whirring brought the car to a full stop, and the boys were thrown back to the floor.

  Lying numb there, eyes pressed shut, it occurred to both of them to crawl to the edge of the elevator car and peer down at the remarkable view, but racked with fear this was far beyond either’s capability. Nonetheless Chip opened a single eye intending to find the control panel with it, but instead was struck with nauseating terror at the pure field of blue all around. Mustering his fortitude he forced his view to the controls, and raising a strangely rigid finger pressed the lowest button he could find. He wasn’t going to wait for David to decide this time. All he knew was that he wanted to go down – and down as far as he possibly could.

  The lights on the control panel shifted, but for several seconds the elevator did not move. The terrifying thought occurred to the boys that they were suspended there thousands of feet above the ground with no way to go back into the building except to somehow slide themselves down the spindly elevator shaft.

  Momentarily however, and to their great relief, the elevator began to move smoothly downward inside the shaft. Even more gratifying, this downward speed increased as they went, taking them ever more quickly back to the safety of the ground. The boys felt light, but were not floating up inside the car as they had done when the car stopped before. And as they traveled downward, the shaft began to seem more rigid – there was less of the tipping, leaning feeling. Pushing themselves up slightly, they could see they were approaching the unfinished section of the building. And happily to the boys, the speed of the elevator continued to increase.

  With a change of sound, they plunged downward into the unfinished part of the building. They watched the steel framework flying past, from the framework near them to the distant framework at the building’s edges.

  It sounded like the crack of a whip as they crossed now into the finished part of the building. Although the inside of the now dark elevator shaft was rushing past at frightening speed only inches away from them, relief swept over the boys as they knew that they were back inside the building, instead of looking down at it.

  However at approximately the same instant for both boys, emotions once again turned to concern as they realized that while the elevator was traveling downward, this downward pace was still accelerating – so much so, that they once again found themselves floating up to the ceiling of the elevator, and then pressed against it.

  Then suddenly, instead of the metal framework of the blurred shaft around them there was smooth concrete – they had passed the ground floor and were now rushing rapidly into the basement section of the building, still accelerating, still pressed against the ceiling.

  When the elevator had been traveling upward, the boys had anguished to think how an upward journey in an elevator at high speed might end. But now, traveling downward at accelerating speed they had no need to wonder what the worst outcome might be.

  As fast as the air had been rushing around them, now it suddenly increased. They began to feel as if they would drift back to the floor, but just as they did, a panel opened on the floor of the elevator. Blasting through this hole was a gale of air so strong it felt more like a wall of water and it kept them pinned to the ceiling. Then the panel closed and the boys were rapidly, but not painfully, thrown once again to the floor. There was a loud roar with a falling pitch followed by multiple whirring sounds also falling in pitch, as they were pressed harder and harder to the floor.

  And then, with a noticeable precision, the elevator stopped. Heads bowed, eyes closed, neither boy moved. Then the doors slid open. With only a momentary glance, two young men, who apparently had been waiting for the elevator to arrive, stepped into it, and with difficulty, trembling as they were, David and Chip drug themselves out. As one of the men leaned over and pushed one of the buttons, the other gave they boys a curious glance. Then the doors closed and the elevator left.

  This floor had none of the opulence the boys had seen on the upper floors. The minimal lighting made the bare concrete around them appear cold and lonely.

  As they looked around in the dim light they saw no stairs, and so having little other choice, they resolved they must board the elevator once again.

  Chip silently walked over to the elevator control panel and pressed the “UP” button, and he noticed there was no “DOWN” button – they were at the absolute basement of the building.

  After standing silently in front of the elevator doors for several minutes, a small stream of air began whistling out of the crack between the elevator doors. Ordinarily, such a tickling flow of air might have caused the boys to wince and move away, but after what they had just been through, neither boy bothered to move. Soon, they heard the same roaring and whirring, and then the doors snapped open to reveal the familiar elevator with the ceiling and floor, but no walls except the front.

  Neither boy looked at the other, and they paused only briefly before stepping inside.

  Chip reached for the panel of glowing buttons. He paused, turned to David and for the first time in this dark place, their eyes met. “Which floor do we need?”

  There was no answer.

  “David?” he asked, with a strange, calm formality in his voice.

  David stared into nowhere, thinking and distant, then reached over and pointed at a button. “This one,” he said. “It’s the one that was lit when we started.” Chip numbly raised his eyebrows, nodded, and pressed the button. The doors slid together.

  A stiff acceleration of the elevator car followed, but not nearly as extreme as before. Both boys wondered whether this acceleration was less, or whether it simply seemed less because they were getting used to it, but it was less. As they neared their selected floor, both braced themselves for the expected deceleration, which came, but only mildly. The doors opened and they staggered torpidly out.

  As they did, there were a number of people waiting to board the elevator. Looking at David and Chip, the people (all appearing to be in age of about their mid-twenties) seemed amused – the way experienced people would look when watching two frightened children disembark from a thrill ride for the first time.

  And actually, some people in this world use elevators for that purpose, in buildings that are under construction. It just so happens that in this world, when they build a tall building, the elevator and its shaft are the first structures they build. And every once in awhile, somebody rides to the top or the bottom, for a little fun. Of course, it’s fast. The boys never knew, but they had never been in any real danger.

  Without speaking, they instinctively returned to the Space Sieve, and retrieved it from its location in the floor where David had left it. As a crowd began to collect around them, David operated the Device, and the two boys – with the Machine – disappeared.