The Space Sieve Read online

DAVID WHEELED AROUND, and saw standing near them the figure of a young man. The creature, Actio (pronounced AK-tee-o), although fully mature, had a face and features that were very mild - his skin very smooth, with boyish qualities to his appearance. He wore a simple, white robe that while very sheer was completely opaque. As the two boys looked at him, Chip, for one, found him strangely compelling, even beautiful perhaps, although Chip had never associated that word with anyone but a girl before.

  They also noticed that Actio glowed with a pure, white light that seemed to radiate from his person. And then they noticed that they, and the Space Sieve, seemed to be glowing too. In spite of the fact that most of what they could see around them emanated this whiteness, it was in fact not so much “white,” as simply “bright.” And in spite of the fact that this radiance was essentially monochromatic, it was nonetheless, a strikingly beautiful light.

  And now in the interest of time, I will stop referring to the perceptions that the boys had of their situation, and I will instead for the sake of efficiency simply describe to you some things that you have no doubt begun to wonder about, to the extent that your minds have the capacity to assimilate it.

  You may perhaps wonder why it is that almost all of the worlds to which David and Chip have traveled have been occupied by beings such as yourselves and why virtually all of these beings have appeared to be, in affect, young adults of your kind. The reason for this it is twofold. First of all, most of the beings within the sphere of existence that are similar to your kind have an appearance of being young adults of your kind. And is this really so surprising to you? Ask yourself: Had you great enough power to take any form you could choose, what would it be? The second reason is simply that those are the sorts of worlds to which David chose to travel. As far as Actio is concerned, and the question of who he is and the reason he bears such a striking resemblance to your kind, is because he is indeed a being after your kind. However, he simply exists in a different reality than the one in which you presently do.

  Chip looked around and marveled, but David got straight to business.

  “You’re the one who built this Device?” David asked. “If you are, I need your help.”

  “Indeed, I am the one who created this Device,” Actio said, with a smile in his voice. “And I have been observing you David, from time to time. Your ability with my Machine is remarkable.”

  Chip looked at Actio then at David, and then Chip smiled. David was his friend, after all.

  But David continued, “If you've been watching us, have you been watching us in the last few minutes? It's the last few minutes that we need your help with.”

  Chip joined in, “We've lost our cousin and my sister.”

  “We took two of our cousins to another world, another dimension, and we don't know where it is,” said David a little incompletely. “We need you to help us find them.”

  Actio smiled knowingly. Then he said, kindly, “No, I haven't been watching you recently but as far as helping you find someone you've misplaced using the Device, yes, I can certainly help you with that. You can put your fears to rest regarding it.”

  A great sense of relief swept over Chip. “At last,” he thought, “we can find them. If this being can't find them, then no one can.” (But of course, his last sentiment would prove to be the correct one.)

  David, for his part, was not so sanguine about being able to find the girls, at least, not yet. At this moment it was only David after all, who knew the full extent of the problem.

  But Actio was as confident as he was radiant and charming. He motioned toward the Machine and David stood up from his stool.

  Actio smiled. “A stool?” he asked. “It's a good idea. It's a lot better than standing up while you operate my Machine, isn't it?” Actio walked over to the Space Sieve and sat down on David’s stool. “But I prefer,” he continued, “something a little more ... shall we say ... elaborate.”

  And at that moment Chip and David both saw someone operate the Space Sieve with more dexterity and skill then even David himself had shown. The Device leapt to life as it responded to the touch of its master and creator. Instantly, the small black stool that David had created turned into an elaborate chair, almost throne-like. It was clear, as if made entirely of glass. It resembled what you would call a “recliner” in the sense that it had a high backrest with armrests to either side in addition to a small slope upon which Actio rested his feet. As it formed under Actio, it tilted back, and the Space Sieve rose off the floor and tilted in the air over Actio, in precisely the most comfortable position.

  And then the boys noticed something else. It was music - a kind that was fantastic and ethereal, unlike anything human ears had ever heard. Indeed, a sound both blissfully comforting yet exciting – a sound that your kind could never independently imagine, much less create – flowed from the Device. And here, in Actio’s presence, in spite of the fact that this was clearly a being of great intelligence and power, Chip felt very comfortable. So much so, that he reached out his hand and felt the material out of which Actio’s chair was made. Although it appeared to be made of glass, its surface was soft and smooth, and it had an exciting, energetic quality to it as well. In fact, it reminded Chip of something. The only time Chip had ever felt something that interesting was when he had momentarily brushed against Diane at the Thanksgiving party, when they had first found the Space Sieve.

  Within moments, several auxiliary keyboards and screens appeared to then left and right of the Space Sieve. As they did so, Actio turned to the boys. “I bet you've never seen anything like that before have you?” he said as he gestured to the auxiliary panels.

  “Oh yes,” replied Chip immediately, “David’s done that.”

  Actio looked a little taken aback by Chip's comment. “Oh,” he said, “I guess I missed that.” And then he turned back and continued to operate the Device.

  As Actio continued to operate the various keyboards of the Device, his gaze passing across the various screens as he did so, the music continued to rise.

  David’s eyes drifted to Chip, and he saw Chip’s gaze had once again fixed on something off to the side. David spun around and he and Chip saw another being.

  While Actio’s features and been very fair – his eyes were blue and his hair blond – and while Actio had been wearing a simple robe that was entirely white, this being had hair and eyebrows that were brown, and this being’s robe was an intense blue color.

  And although Actio was appealing and even beautiful to both boys, now both were looking at a being whose beauty and appeal far exceeded even that of Actio’s.

  For this being, was female.

  Actio turned around for a moment, smiled, and then returned to his work on the Device.

  “Oh ,” he said, “I see you've met my wife. Introduce yourself to the boys, Sapentia.” (Sapentia is pronounced, “suh-PEN-shuh”)

  As the two boys stood transfixed, both with their mouths a little open, Sapentia spoke.

  “How are you boys?” she asked kindly. She turned to Actio. “Are these the ones you told me about?”

  Actio turned his head briefly for moment, and the two boys looked at him, noticing that Actio’s formerly blithe, cherubic face was slightly less so now. In fact, he seemed a little worried. He smiled briefly – with what to the boys seemed a somewhat feigned assurance – then turned back to his work, and said, “Yes ... yes. Why don’t you get to know them?” He waved his youthful hand and then continued to work on his Device.

  “Well then,” said Sapentia, and to the boys it was as though her voice was the softest, most evocative, and most dreamy sound that either of them had ever heard. And when she smiled, without knowing it both boys beamed glowingly back.

  Feeling strangely confident, Chip spoke first. “I ... I didn't know God had a wife.”

  David glanced at Chip, somewhat surprised, then, with a sense of realization on his face, he glanced back at Sapentia.

  But Sap
entia seemed taken aback by the question. She turned to Actio. “Did you hear what he just said?” Actio didn’t respond, being too engrossed in his work on the Space Sieve. “Actio,” she said more clearly, “Did you hear what he just said to me? He said that he didn’t know God had a wife. Actio, did you tell him . . . ?”

  Actio spoke this time without turning his head. “I didn’t ever tell either of them that I was God. I don’t even know where they would have gotten that idea.”

  Sapentia turned back to the Boys. There was a note of sarcasm in her voice. “Well,” she said, “I just can’t imagine why, faced with the presence of a powerful, glowing – and if I may say, attractive – being such as yourself Actio, that they would think they were in the presence of God. No,” she continued, now growing concerned at Actio’s distracted manner, “I can’t even imagine that at all.” And she turned back to the boys.

  But it went over both of their heads. Somehow, whether or not they were standing at the feet of deity was not what was most on their minds. (And obviously they were not in the presence of divinity. Neither Actio nor Sapentia are God, and of course, neither am I.)

  Rather, the only thing on the boys’ minds, was their sensation of Sapentia’s beauty, and the feeling they had at the sound of her voice.

  Actio was still energetically operating the Machine. When Sapentia asked him when he would finish, she received no response. So she decided to take a few minutes to explain who she and Actio were.

  “Actio,” she called, and then she spoke in her own language to Actio. To the boys, the sound of her true language more evoked a feeling than a mere listening to words – like a calm, summer evening when suddenly you hear the comforting song of a mourning dove. She had asked Actio to give her and the boys something to sit on.

  With an only partially-interested glance from Actio, three soft objects materialized behind Sapentia and the two boys. The objects then pushed gently forward and up while slipping their feet from under them.

  The three were seated. But as Sapentia spoke, she could see that neither boy was listening. Each was sitting in his chair, looking upward, seemingly stunned, mouth open. For Chip and David the sensation was not so much sitting in a chair as something much more compelling – perhaps the feeling of a baby has when in its mother’s arms on a calm, cold evening. It is difficult to describe such feelings and events as these using your words and your limited experiences. I must be content simply to say that it is difficult to describe the comfort, the security, and the scintillating pleasure the boys felt when sitting in these chairs.

  “Actio, not these sorts of chairs for these boys,” she said affectionately. “It’s too much for them. Give them something more like they’re accustomed to. I wanted to talk to them, not enrapture them.”

  And then under the boys, in the place of the chairs they had been on, appeared two large, very overstuffed recliners of the sort your kind has developed and which you find comfortable. And yet, compared to what they had been sitting on, these two chairs seemed more like they were sitting on burlap bags filled with pumpkins.

  But now indeed, Sapentia once again had their attention. And so, she briefly described who she and Actio were, where they came from, where they lived, and so forth. This information would no doubt be interesting to the reader of this document, but it will serve little purpose in my relating it, as it is not pertinent to the narrative. Perhaps you will forgive me if I say only that these two beings come from a reality very different from you own. And yet, there was a time when they were much like you are now.

  Once Sapentia had finished her brief account, the three noticed that Actio had also completed his work, and the Space Sieve was resting on the floor once again, its single screen and keyboard flickering eagerly. Actio’s chair had become a small ottoman, and he was sitting on it and had been listening to Sapentia as well.

  “So,” she said to him, “Are you all done? Are you ready to reunite these little boys with their little playmates – their relatives? Where are they?”

  Chip looked at Actio very expectantly. But David didn’t. David looked off into the distance, and his teeth were clenched. For David didn’t eagerly await the answer. He dreaded it. He already knew what it had to be.

  “I . . .” Actio paused. “I . . .” and he didn’t say any more. His face was grim and his youthful visage somehow was considerably dimmed.

  Sapentia’s face grew a little stern. “What’s the matter?”

  Actio then began to speak in his language. The sound cannot be described to you, but it made the boys feel like the first sound of rustling leaves in the fall, when the joys of summer are gone, and a definite chill is in the air.

  Sapentia shook her head, and she spoke in English. “I don’t understand, Actio. And I know it’s unpleasant, but please speak in their language. They deserve to hear what you have to say.”

  “Sapentia, listen to me,” he said, in a low, quiet voice. “Somehow – I don’t know how – it’s virtually impossible – somehow they . . .” he looked over at David, who continued to stare off into the distance. “Somehow he cleared the memory nexus. He erased the Machine’s memory.” He looked at her. “Sapentia, I don’t know if even I could have done that.”

  Sapentia’s face puzzled for a moment, then began to grow grim with realization.

  “Without knowing where the girls are,” Actio continued slowly, “and without the central memory nexus that tracks all activities of this Device, we cannot – there is no possible way to – know where they are. Dead or alive, they are lost. They are truly, and irretrievably, lost.” Then he spoke to her in their own language again. It made one feel like the sunset on the last day before you were leaving your own home, never to return.

  As he spoke, Sapentia held her perfect hands to her mouth, and a sparkling tear quickly formed in the corner of each of her ethereal eyes. “Oh Actio!” she said, “but you assured me. You said that if I let you make something like this Device that it would never irreparably harm anything – that if it did, you would always be able to change things back. Oh, Actio,” Sapentia did not know as much about the Device as Actio did, but she knew enough. “How could this have happened? What have you done? And her glance fell to the boys. Chip’s face now had changed to a state of disbelief. David was breathing heavily.

  “You see,” Actio began a relatively useless explanation, “It’s not that they no longer exist, but that they’re lost. Imagine if you took a grain of sand. Imagine if this tiny particle had certain distinctive features that you could recognize – it was unique and valuable to you. Now imagine that you put this tiny grain of sand into one of your flying craft – one of your airplanes – and you flew around your world.”

  As Actio spoke, Chip listened, still clinging to hope. But David’s head felt like a watermelon. And he was getting dizzy. He was hardly listening. He already knew everything Actio was saying anyway.

  “Now,” continued Actio, “suppose that when you got home, you found that your precious sand particle had fallen out of the airplane, but you had no idea where.”

  “Do you see why you could never find it again?” he asked, now turning to Chip, who seemed to be the only one still listening to him. “Of course, if you looked at every grain of sand on your planet, you could find it. But do you see that to do that – to look at every particle of dust – would take so long that essentially it’s out of the question to ever find it? It would take what you call, ‘forever.’ Do you see why it would be impossible to find the little grain of sand?”

  “But,” asked Chip with his usual optimism, “even though I don’t remember anything about it, David does. You remember where we were, don’t you David?” He looked over to David with his trusting face. They all looked at David.

  Chip continued, “You’re the smartest person I have ever known, David. You remember something about where they are, don’t you? We can use that, can’t we?”
<
br />   David straightened himself up. He sniffed, and wiped a tear from his eye.

  Actio shook his head. “While it might help to remember which ocean you were over when you dropped the grain of sand, still, there is no possible way . . .”

  “Actio, be quiet.” Sapentia interjected. “Let David speak. Darling, do you remember which universe or galaxy you were in? Do you remember the planet?” But even as she heard herself ask the question, Sapentia began to realize the futility of it too.

  “I do remember,” said David, suddenly a little confident and hopeful. “But it wasn’t a planet or a universe,” he continued. “It was what I called an extra-dimensional realm.” He looked at Actio, and back at Sapentia, plaintively. “It had no planets, suns, or any of that kind of thing. It just existed in and of itself. Another thing I called it was ‘boundless reality.’”

  Sapentia quickly took a breath and began talking rapidly to Actio in her own language. The sound made one feel the way one does when looking out over the rolling waters of a cold, dark sea.

  When she had finished, Actio appeared to have been seriously chastised. “You said to speak in their language,” he reminded her.

  Sapentia looked at the boys with her head bowed, and briefly repeated what she had said as she motioned toward the Device: “Actio, you created this Device such that beings like them could go into the upper realms – into the alter-worlds?”

  “Sapentia,” Actio said plaintively. “It was protected. Yes, I used it to go into the alter-worlds.”

  Chip interrupted. “They were different from our world. A lot of things about them were different. David called one of them ‘Pathia,’ and the other, ‘Skylia.’”

  Actio nodded, a little condescendingly. “Yes, well, I used the Machine to go there – into the alter-worlds. But it was prohibited to beings like them, and it was protected by codes. How could he have gotten past the codes?” He shook his head in disbelief.

  Almost interrupting, Sapentia followed up. “I thought this Device was intuitive for their kind? How can you predict what he could do, if it was intuitive?”

  And then Sapentia spoke to Actio again in their language. When she spoke, the sound of her voice made the boys feel the way one feels at the end of a crucial battle lost, when a lone bugle slowly plays out the defeated army’s anthem for the last time.

  You see, Actio and Sapentia have the ability to look backward and forward in time where time exists, to see events that have, and will, happen. She asked Actio why he could not simply look back and watch David operate the machine when he took the girls to that world – why he could not simply watch the strokes of David’s fingers and the images on the screen and repeat them. When Actio replied to her, it made the boys feel the way they felt at scout camp, when they stood at the gate of the camp surrounded mostly by strangers, and watched their parents drive away. Actio told her that he had already tried to do that, but the operation of the machine is so intuitive that simply watching David perform a function was of no use. For you to understand this, imagine watching someone execute an expert water skiing trick, then going and doing it yourself. Even if you knew how to ski yourself, it is unlikely you could execute the trick precisely the same way, no matter how many times you tried. You are after all, a different individual than the one who did the trick. And the operation of the Device is far more varied and complex than any sport. Actio could never have duplicated David’s keystrokes no matter how exactly he observed them. And unable to duplicate them, he could not have followed David to the correct location, among the countless possibilities.

  Then, for awhile they all just sat there. As the moments passed Chip looked around and thought. As his hopes slowly faded, his eyes filled with tears, and he cried.

  Then, for a moment, they all did. David and Chip cried for the loss of Sally and Diane. Actio cried for his errors that had led to their terrible loss. And Sapentia cried because of her empathy for them all.

  After awhile, she spoke. “Actio, I want you to tell these boys that you will fix this.” “But,” he pleaded, “I can’t, you see, it’s just imposs . . .”

  “Actio,” she reiterated quickly, “I want you to tell them you will try – you will do all you can. Actio, you must.” She looked at him, sternly.

  He looked back at her, then at the boys. “I will,” he said. “I will try to find a way to recover the girls.” He paused. “You have my assurance.” Then he looked at Sapentia, and back to the boys, took a deep breath, and nodded authoritatively. “And I am a being of some abilities. There is a lot I can do that you haven’t seen. You can trust me.”

  Chip smiled at this assurance, but when he saw David his smile faded. David didn’t smile at all. He knew so much more than Chip, and as such he believed Actio’s assurances were empty. He was confident that they were made for the same reason people in your world sometimes make assurances – simply to make people feel better for a while. (And for what it is worth, as we will see, Sapentia was just as convinced that Actio’s assurances were insincere as well. But she too felt that at this point that even a false assurance would be better for the boys than the alternative, which was complete and utter hopelessness.)

  And at this point I will reiterate that both David and Sapentia were correct in thier estimation. Actio had no idea of what to do. In agreeing to make all things right again, he was essentially doing only what Sapentia had told him to do, in spite of the fact that he felt certain he was just giving empty words to the boys to spare their feelings.

  Without going into any further detail, David and Chip returned to David’s bedroom with the Device. And after that, David, for the rest of his life, never operated the Space Sieve again.

  And, for the most part, this outing was the last one the two boys, Chip and David, would ever have together again. Other than for a few brief interactions that would occur from time to time, it was also essentially the end of their friendship.

  As an aside, you may be wondering how it can be that nobody could find out where the two girls were, given the fact that I must surely know, and since indeed, I have produced this document. The reason is that while I happened to be present when David took them all to the place where he left the girls and I could therefore follow, and thankfully could also follow him when he returned to what were familiar surroundings to me, I did not have any way to track or re-trace our course through so great an expanse either. While you may think I am a being of infinite power, I am not. That is something relatively few beings attain.

  But of course, you cannot be in any suspense at this point. For, as I have said, Sally and Diane never traveled interdimensionally again, and neither Chip nor David ever saw either of those two girls again, for the rest of their lives. I have said this many times already. If it is difficult for you to understand, what more can I do?

  Naturally, Chip, his brother, and especially his father were horribly distraught over the loss of Sally, as were the parents of Diane. Strangely, for your kind, the burial of a person’s remains gives you some kind of comfort – in the case of Sally and Diane, their loved ones did not even get this opportunity. Their two beloved girls had simply vanished. Chip for his part, had tried to explain to his father and brother what had happened. But this had resulted only in an abundance of tears with no one believing a word of it anyway. Chip’s father, having previously lost his wife in years past, had now lost his only daughter. Suffice it to say that this final blow was sufficiently disabling to Chip’s father that after this, of necessity, Chip had had to take over a somewhat larger portion of the family responsibilities than one of his age should have to do. Yet, he bore it ably, and it made him a stronger man in his later years.

  David never tried to explain what happened, to anyone. He never even brought up the subject of the Space Sieve again. And while David’s parents somehow suspected the strange Device had something to do with all of it, they never asked him about it again, either.
<
br />   David and Chip saw each other only rarely after that, even though Chip’s family had moved into David’s neighborhood years later. It wasn’t that they avoided each other; their lives just took different paths.

  The last time David ever saw Chip in their youth was many years later, when each boy was nineteen.

  David was working on his father’s car. It was parked in the street, and he was leaning in under the hood. It was a clear, late summer afternoon.

  In recent years, Chip had taken to going around much of the time wearing only a pair of shorts, and nothing else, and that is what he was wearing on this occasion. In that time and part of your world, for someone to dress in that way was not considered unusual. Naturally, he was very tan.

  He and Chip talked politely for awhile as David worked, and the substance of their conversation is unimportant. After a few minutes, the conversation ended somewhat abruptly, if politely.

  Then Chip walked off down the street to the west, with the sun in the position of late afternoon. As David looked up from his work, he watched Chip as he walked away. As he did, Chip jumped onto a low, brick wall and padded along the top of it with his bare feet. Chip outstretched his arms and fingers to balance himself, and he tipped slightly from side to side as he went.

  David’s gaze fell back to his work, but suddenly realized how much he had missed seeing Chip over the years, and he thought how evocative it had just been seeing his onetime friend, Chip, walking along that brick wall like a child, with his arms out and balancing himself as he went. While Chip and David both were almost men on the outside, there was still much of two little boys on the inside.

  And so David looked back down the street again to catch a last glimpse of his boyhood friend. But as David looked first down the street, and then scanning from side to side, to his surprise he found that Chip was already gone. And in that moment, David realized that something else had perhaps vanished as well.

  As David looked back to his work, he realized that time had passed without him really noticing, and in the process, his childhood had disappeared – like Chip had just disappeared – suddenly, and unexpectedly. Chip was gone for good when David looked back up, and David’s boyhood was probably already gone for good too, now that he had noticed. And in the same fleeting moment that he wished Chip would come back, David wished his own boyhood could somehow come back too.

  The decades passed, and both Chip and David lived out the rest of their lives as your kind does, largely apart from each other, except for a final meeting between the two of them that happened late in their lives. Or, perhaps I should say, after your manner of reckoning, they will live out the rest of their lives, and they will have a final meeting at some point in their future. It is difficult for me to get used to your language and in particular, to get used to how constrained you are by time. For you see: your past, your present, your future – it is all the same thing to me.

  And yet, while past, present and future are all the same to me, it is not the same as knowing all things. That is something few beings attain.

  This final meeting between David and Chip happened fifty-seven years later. Both Chip and David had married and divorced. At this point in their lives, each had lost virtually everyone they had known and loved (other than their own children) to old age. David was living in a small room of a complex of dwellings that looked out over the China Sea.

  Chip had arranged to visit his boyhood friend and part-cousin, for what he assumed would likely be the last time.

  We take up the conversation at this point: David and Chip were sitting on David’s porch, looking out over the ocean. They had already gone through the typical pleasantries. When Chip had arrived it had been late afternoon. Now, it was twilight.

  “You know I remember,” Chip said wistfully, “that we used to be pretty good friends. What ever happened to that?” And his lined, pallid face still had an impish quality that sparkled beneath his bald head

  David looked back at Chip. His face too, was aged; his skin was lined, spotted, and gray. His hair was white, and lifeless. But unlike Chip, there was no sparkle in David’s face. “What do you mean, Chip?”

  Chip smiled and his eyes twinkled. “You know, nobody’s called me that for years. Everybody calls me ‘Charles’. Well, my business associates call me that. My friends call me ‘Chuck’. It’s kind of nice to hear you call me ‘Chip,’ David.”

  David looked at him witheringly. “Well, in that case Charles, just what the devil are you talking about?” (That last time just then, would be the last time David would ever call him “Chip.”)

  Chip was taken aback, but then he smiled again. He looked up. Colored characters and figures were being drawn on the dome of the sky overhead. I say “dome” here to refer to the fact that while it appeared the lasers being shined up from the ground were writing on a dome overhead, in reality there was no such dome. Beside the figures being drawn in the sky overhead were the stars, which were very bright on this particular night.

  “Look at that – kids shooting their lasers up, drawing up there in the sky.” Chip shook his head. “It’s amazing the talent kids have – no training at all.” Then he looked back at David. “I remember a boy once who I thought had a lot of talent. When we were kids, I always thought you were the smartest person I had ever known. And I still do David.”

  David looked back at Chip and clenched his teeth. Then he looked back toward the horizon. In the twilight could be seen two large creatures, flying over the sea. They were about the size of a man, with large, fleshy arms, tipped with feathers. Strips of loose skin hung behind them and flapped in the breeze. Small, colored feathers dotted the strips. Flaps of skin like a chicken’s comb but red, blue and green, protruded garishly from their heads and also flapped as they flew.

  “Sickening creatures,” David said, changing the subject, motioning toward the flying creatures, “genetic mutants. Never should have existed. They should have killed them all. Now we have to look at the disgusting things.”

  “Well,” countered Chip, “I guess the thinking was that whatever we may think of them and however they may look to us, to themselves those creatures matter a great deal, and however they came to be, they’re alive. And I guess to most folks it just seemed wrong to wipe them all out, although I suppose some have tried to, before it was illegal to kill them. I guess some still do try to kill them. Of course they go to jail for it now.”

  As the mutants flew into the distance, the sound of the surf dominated the evening once again.

  There was a long pause.

  “Well . . .” said Chip. And the two sat there for a few moments.

  Then David broke the silence, taking up the question Chip had asked him previously.

  “What happened to our friendship?! What happened to our lives?!” David looked at Chip with eyes that looked like they were ready to hurl hot embers at Chip. “What happened was that Infernal Contraption ruined them. Or maybe I should say I ruined all our lives with it!”

  But Chip looked back at David with only affection and concern. “Oh David, come on. You don’t blame yourself for that, do you – for Diane and Sally – do you?”

  David’s sour expression – it was engrained into his face – turned even more so. “Well then just whose fault did you think it was? Yours?” His voice became more hoarse, and his words sounded like he was trying to fire them out of a cannon at Chip.

  Chip looked back calmly, with a feigned cheerfulness, and he studied David’s face. As he began to realize the extent of David’s psychological problems and the vexation and trauma that had plagued him through the many years, Chip tried to shift from mere conversation to an attempt to help. He became more firm. “David, you’re not serious. You haven’t blamed yourself for that for all these years, have you?”

  David didn’t say anything. He just blew some air between his aged teeth.

  Then, with the rea
lization, Chip slumped back in his chair. “Oh David,” he said dolefully. “I had no idea – no idea you blamed yourself for it all these years. If I had known . . .” and his voice trailed off.

  David turned and looked at Chip. “What the devil are you talking about, Chuck?” he commanded accusingly.

  Chip looked out over the ocean, a sad expression creasing his face. “David, you blamed yourself for it? You were only . . . and it’s been so many . . . Listen, you know in a way it is my fault. Here I’ve left you for all these years wrestling with guilt and remorse. I never knew. I should have visited, David. I should have tried to help you with it. I should have tried to have been there for you. But I didn’t know. I’d never imagined you’d been blaming yourself for losing them, all these years.”

  David shot back, “Been there? You should have been there - for what?” “What the devil are you talking about, Charles? It was my fault. I'm the one who did it. I'm the one who should have suffered for it: not you, not Sally, not Diane, not your family, and not Diane’s family, and not any of the other people who lost those two girls.”

  Chip looked away, then back at David, and then he said, a little harshly, “You were a little boy. You were what, fourteen, fifteen? David, do you realize that had most people gotten into possession of that Machine they could have turned themselves into dictators over our entire planet – they could have destroyed out entire world! David, all you did was take two little girls someplace you thought that they would enjoy. And when something bad happened that you thought was best forgotten, you did what you thought you had to do to make everything all right. There was no meanness in you, no selfishness, no greed, no avarice. All you did was make some mistakes. David, we all make them.”

  David bowed his head. He closed his wrinkled eyes, and after a few moments it was clear to Chip that his old friend was crying. At that moment, Chip remembered that the last time he had seen David cry was when he himself had been crying in the presence of Actio and Sapentia.

  Chip put his hand on David’s shoulder and they sat there in the quiet for a moment. “You know,” Chip said. “It almost seems like it was all just a dream. And David, I suppose it’s all been like a dream to me for at least the last 50 years. Things have changed a lot since then. It was a long time ago.”

  David pulled away, turned and looked at Chip, and when he did, he looked to Chip like some kind of red-eyed animal. “Well let me tell you something,” said David fiercely, “It hasn't been like a dream to me. It's been reality to me every day of every year since it happened. They were my cousins. Sally was your sister, Charles. I took them away from the people they loved and who loved them. I took their lives away. And the worst of it is . . .”

  Chip looked at him but said nothing as they sat there in the gathering darkness.

  “Let me tell you something,” said Chip. “I’m going to tell you something. You know they say you never forget your first love? Well, I know we were all just kids, but I’ve wondered if that could have been one of the reasons for my divorce – heaven knows there were enough of them. But you know I could never forget Diane. She meant something to me too. Not just my sister – Diane did too. It’s kind of funny, really. I know we were all just little kids then, but I always remembered her running off into that forest with the light in the distance. It seemed so simple, so pure. I didn’t know what it was about it. I knew I liked her but I didn’t really have a crush on her. There was just something about that that I always . . .”

  David interrupted. “Same for me,” he said. “I liked Diane too. And I liked your sister. When they ran off with their hair all flinging back and forth . . . I always remembered that too.” He snorted. “It’s stupid. When my ex-wife’s lawyer heard me talking about Sally once – he used it in court against me in my divorce. He said I’d never really loved my wife – that I pined for Sally and that I never showed affection for my wife. He said that was the reason she wanted to divorce me. What a load of nonsense – that I was pining for a girl from when I was fourteen. Jeez. Shows you how many girls I’ve known – the divorce lawyer had to go all the way back to when I was fourteen. But he said I never loved my wife. He said that was good enough reason for any woman to divorce a man.” His voice trailed off. “Who knows? Maybe it is.”

  “But it’s stupid,” he continued. “She was just a little girl.”

  They both slowly shook their heads. A few moments passed.

  Then Chip looked up and cocked his head toward David. There was a harshness in his voice. “What in the world ever happened to that . . . crazy Machine anyway?” he said.

  David’s head tilted back, and he became distant. Then he turned to Chip and for a moment he was his old, lively, energetic, intelligent self. “You know,” he said, “after we left those two – Actio and Sapentia – I never worked the Machine again after that, and it’s funny I ended up with it. You’d thought that Actio would have wanted it back. And to tell you the truth, I lost track of the thing. My parents put it in the attic for awhile, and after that I went away to college. After they moved I never asked about it – to tell you the truth I have no idea what happened to it. Maybe it’s still in that attic; maybe it got thrown away. Who knows?”

  (For your information, when David’s parents moved, they threw the Space Sieve away and it was hauled off and buried under tons of garbage in a landfill.)

  Then David looked over at Chip, smiled wryly, and said, “But I guess it all turned out pretty good for you, didn't it, Mr. Millionaire?”

  “Yeah, it did.” Chip replied. “When I was a boy, I never would have imagined I would've gotten into the furniture business. You know it took me 20 years to figure out how to make those chairs. But once I had the secret recipe for how make them, it was a goldmine.”

  “You know,” said David, vigorously, “I still remember when we sat on those chairs when we started talking to Sapentia. I’d never felt anything like that in my life. I have to admit, your chairs – the chairs your company makes – they’re not quite as good, but they’re pretty darn close.”

  Chip chucked. “Yeah, the chairs felt so good the government even thought about making them illegal. The politicians and corporate types thought that if people had chairs like that to sit on they would never do any work. The tax revenues would fall off. The whole economy might collapse with everyone just sitting around in the chairs. But then, in the end, the government bought a ton of them.

  “Now, it seems like they're everywhere. It turns out having a comfortable chair to sit in isn’t really such a bad thing after all,” Chip quipped.

  They sat there for a couple more hours watching the children draw their art work in the sky with their lasers, and listening to the sound of the sea in the distance.

  And that was the last time David and Chip ever saw each other. A few years after this meeting David came to the end of his life and died, and five years after that, he was followed by Chip.

  And so, my account of David, of Chip, and of the Space Sieve – for all practical purposes – ends here.

  But when the two men died, neither Sally nor Diane had died yet. Indeed, neither girl had even aged from the time they first entered their new world. But during the interim, a great deal had happened to them there.

  And you may recall that I mentioned that my desire to document David’s experience with the Device was my secondary reason for writing this document, and that there was another, primary, reason. The events surrounding the experience of Sally and Diane in their new world comprise that primary reason. Within their experience in their new world was an event of such importance that it is something that is spoken of and remembered not only by my kind, but by all creatures in existence that know about it.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE LAST OF THEIR KIND