This story was written for the the Fictionistas April prompt: “In the United States from 1942-1976 pinball was outlawed in most major cities. Write about an illegal underground pinball club.” My story isn’t set in that era as I wanted to put a speculative spin on it, but its still about an illegal underground pinball club.
Lifeline technology was illegal. It was also everywhere.
Days and weeks were sold in capsules on half the street corners, and crooked doctors would surreptitiously snatch months from car crash victims and cancer patients to sell on to anyone with too much money and not enough time.
Sammy had watched the lifeline on his palm shrink before his eyes. He had given a perfect sob story to a little old lady, and squandered the cash she gave him on slot machines and poker games. Once she found out the truth, she told her grandson, a jittery thug who broke into Sammy’s home and threatened to “sic the Deep Ones” on him. After an hour-long paranoid rant, one of his men pinned Sammy down and placed the LineTech on his finger.
It was such a simple-looking thing. The same size as a finger-pricking glucose meter, but instead of measuring sugar, it sapped life from him. Whatever cancer or heart issues had been in store for him many years in the future were now looming on the horizon.
Lacking both money and a future, Sammy came up with a scheme to acquire both. There was an underground pinball club in the basement of a record shop where you could gamble your life away. He had never been there, but knew plenty of people who had, nearly always coming back with several weeks knocked off their lifespan. Unlike Sammy, they had never dared to cheat the system.
He picked a Saturday night to try his luck, hoping it was busy enough that no one would pay much attention to him. As he entered, the noise and flashing lights were almost overwhelming. Everyone's eyes were glittering with hope as they mashed the flipper buttons and watched the balls bounce off the bumpers and whizz up ramps.
Sammy marched up to the exchange counter as if he had visited a hundred times before.
“Two weeks, please.”
The attendant frowned.
“That’s only two tokens, sir. Are you sure? You’re unlikely to hit the jackpot with only two tries!”
“That’s all.”
The woman placed a LineTech machine on his finger, and Sammy tried not to recoil. His plan was nerve-wracking enough without having flashbacks to the thugs barging into his home. Once two weeks had been extracted from him, the woman handed him two tokens.
“Fingers crossed!” The woman grinned a little too widely. Sammy idly wondered if the attendants shared in any life profits.
Security guards slowly patrolled the floor, but Sammy noticed one of them spent more time chatting to female customers than paying attention to any ne’er-do-wells, and the other only patrolled half the room. He selected a pinball machine on the other half, near a group of haggard men too transfixed by their games to cause a ruckus. The men dressed as though they were in their twenties, but their drooping cheeks and the liver spots on their hands indicated they had wasted years gambling.
Sammy’s pinball machine was vampire themed, featuring blood red bumpers and painted bats on the field. The machine would spit out tokens based on a person’s score, and as every bumper was worth a few hours, people could delude themselves into believing they could profit from playing.
Sammy rummaged around in the bottom of his bag and pulled out a handful of identical looking tokens. He put one back to back with the real thing - they were the same size and had very similar grooves on the sides. A friend had saved a token from his disastrous outing the week before and made copies, but Sammy was the only one brave enough to give them a go.
He slipped a fake token in, watched the ball pop out, then pulled the plunger.
The next hour was a whirlwind of sound and colour. Sammy was so mesmerised by the machine he forgot he was using fake tokens. He forgot he was playing for life. All that mattered was the rewarding thumps and dings and flashing lights.
In the middle of his tenth game, a heavy hand gripped his shoulder. Sammy tried to squirm away, but didn’t take his eyes off the machine until he was yanked away. He could hear gasps from a player nearby, but no one else had even noticed what was happening.
“Think you’re so clever, don’t ya?” growled the security guard, his hand firmly clasped around Sammy’s arm. He marched Sammy across the room at such a pace he stumbled to keep up.
“I don’t, I don’t know what you…”
He trailed off as the guard pushed open a black door leading to a grey, unadorned corridor. Sammy could still hear the sounds of the machine, and some part of his brain tried to figure out if he could bounce the man off him and score more points. Instead, the man thrust him into another room with such strength he tripped and landed face first on the rug.
There were no bright lights or noise here, only a low chandelier and the ticking of a grandfather clock. It looked like a study, walls lined with weighty tomes, and a globe-shaped minibar beside a broad desk. Once Sammy pushed himself upright, he saw the figure seated behind the desk.
He assumed they were a man from their clothing and broad shoulders, but their face was unlike any adult’s face he had ever seen. Their plump cheeks glowed with youth, and not a single spot or freckle blemished their skin. Their whole body looked like that of an oversized baby; only their lusterless grey eyes aged them.
The person stretched out an arm and pointed at him. Sammy noticed the one thing that did mar their skin: a deep lifeline that ran down their palm, all the way along their arm and disappeared beneath their clothes.
“You.” The weary, raspy voice didn’t match their appearance. “You stole from me.”
What are your thoughts on Timeball? I’d love to hear what you think works and what doesn’t, or how it could be improved. The setting is rather out of my comfort zone as I prefer to write things that are more fantastical. Is the ending still satisfying, even though what happens to Sammy isn’t resolved?
Eekk! The oversized grey baby thing at the end. What is it going to do? And betting your life/time and the "casino" taking it in payment. That puts a different feel to gambling. Betting your life to play pinball. Good stuff. Thanks for writing and sharing it.
Wow! This is a super neat concept! Technology that saps your life to give to someone else, and a pinball mafia that lets you gamble for weeks of life? Never would've thought of this in a million years, I think this was great.