The Search for Ball Zero (18 page)

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.

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 3
_rd
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 2
_nd
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 you 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