The Arcade

The rest of the school week seemed to go rather uneventfully – at least as far as Cosmo could tell. There appeared to be some surprise amongst a few of his teachers at what they referred to as his “improved work habits” and “substantial improvement.” He wasn’t sure what they were talking about. He always took his work seriously, and did his best to master the material – at least in college, and of course at Dyna-Temp.

He was sitting at the desk in his room doing his homework and pondering all this, when it occurred to him that he was still thinking with a forty-three year-old brain. The next thought startled him: If he – as a fourteen-year-old boy – currently thought as a forty-three year-old man, how would he think when he was actually forty-three? Would his mind stay at this “age” until his body caught up with it, or would his brain continue to develop? The implications were unfathomable.

“How ya comin’ on those quadratic equations, sonny?” At the unexpected sound of Sal’s voice, Cosmo let out a yelp and nearly fell out of his chair.

“Jeez, Sal – You scared the crap outta me! Can’t you wear a bell around your neck – or make some sort of noise before popping into wherever I am? You’re gonna give me a heart-attack sneakin’ up like that…”

“What you would like to hear – the intro music from The Brady Bunch? I don’t do intros, kid. I appear whenever you need me. You needed me, so here I am. I have no control over it.” Sal leaned on his push-broom and smiled. “So, what’s the problem?”

Cosmo blinked. “Problem? I don’t have a…Oh, that. Well, I was sitting here thinking about how the week went, when it occurred to me that even though I have a fourteen-year-old body, I still have a forty-three year-old mind – and it kind of worried me.”

Sal cocked his head and asked “Why should that worry you? You’ve got an edge over everyone under the age of thirty as we speak. Great for college applications, you know – and think of your future job prospects. Then there’s the whole ‘mature driver’ issue – safer behind the wheel, and all that – and…”

Cosmo held up his hand and broke in “No, no, no – you don’t understand! What is going to happen to my mind? If I continue to age physically, won’t my brain as well? What about things like dementia, Parkinson’s Disease, premature senility – stuff like that? I don’t want to be a thirty-five year-old nursing home candidate!”

“Oh, that – ” Sal nodded absently. “Well it’s like this, my boy – you won’t have to worry about any of that.”

Cosmo looked at Sal expectedly “Because…?”

Sal moved over to Cosmo’s bed and, plopping himself down, continued “Because there will come a moment – I’m not sure when, so don’t ask – when you will have made the key decision that will begin to reshape your destiny into what it was meant to be. When that moment arrives, you will no longer remember anything beyond that point in time. Your forty-three year-old life will no longer exist.”

Cosmo peered at Sal. “Are you saying that when that point in time comes, the future as I know it will cease to exist?”

Sal clapped his hands together once and exclaimed “Exactly, my boy, exactly! Everything becomes an unwritten book.”

Cosmo considered this for a moment. “But I thought you said that the reason my life turned out kinda mediocre was because I didn’t ask Holly out – and that when I did, my future changed for the better.”

Sal waved a hand and said “The groundwork has been laid so that it can unfold as it should. However, asking Holly on a date was only one of the decisions that affected your future.”

On hearing this, Cosmo scratched his head and said “Wait a minute, you told me in the beginning that not asking her out was the one decision that affected the rest of my life – you didn’t say anything about there being other decisions. What are we playing here, some sort of temporal shell game?”

Sal sighed and gave a shrug. “Even I’m not sure how it works exactly. I can tell you this: the future – everyone’s future – is dynamic. Time is fluid, and can be influenced for the better or for the worse based on a single act.”

Cosmo frowned. “I’m not sure I follow.”

Sal reached over to the nightstand and picked up a baseball which happened to be lying there. “This baseball, like every other baseball made, starts out with a rubber core. Over that core is layer after layer of twine, and over that is the leather cover and stitching. Ya with me?” Cosmo nodded. Sal continued “Good. Consider then that there are hundreds of thousands of these things made every year – are they all the same?”

Cosmo immediately answered “In appearance, yes – but there are going to be tiny differences which set each apart from the other, right?”

Sal beamed a smile at him and exclaimed “Right! Exactly right!

“Now consider the moment that the baseball is thrown. There are going to be countless factors which will affect that ball’s path from the moment it leaves the pitcher’s hand until the time it reaches the batter. The pitcher only controls how the ball is thrown – and even then it depends on the pitcher’s ability. After that, the ball is literally out of his hands.”

Cosmo was quiet for a moment before speaking. “So the baseball represents me, the pitcher represents my choices, the batter represents my destiny, and everything in between is what, exactly – outside influences and dumb luck?”

Sal smiled at him and winked. “It’s a shame you weren’t this bright the first time around.”

Cosmo scowled at him. “Okay genius – what do fouls, strikes, balls, base hits, and home runs represent?”

Sal gave Cosmo a sly look and replied “The outcome of your choices.”

Cosmo looked away for a moment. Looking back at Sal, he replied “Okay, I think I get it. So the first pitch I got since coming back was the chance to ask Holly out on that date – which I did. So clearly I’ve hit the ball, but is it a base hit or a homer?”

Sal’s wizened old face crinkled up in a wide grin – which made him look like a huge, pale prune. “That’s the unknown part, my boy – but at least you swung at the pitch, and best of all, hit it! Who knows? It might be a four-bagger!”

Cosmo’s brow furrowed “A ‘Four-bagger’? Oh…right. I take it by that you mean a future together – as in marriage somewhere down the road? Wow…I hadn’t really thought about it like that.”

Taking note of the turn in Cosmo’s voice, Sal leaned over and peered into Cosmo’s face. “You do want a future with her – don’t you?”

Cosmo looked up at Sal, and then looked out his bedroom window. After a long time he looked back at Sal and said “Yeah, I do. I really do – but will she want me? If this is the choice, or decision – or whatever – that I was supposed to make, fine. But my decision can’t affect hers, can it? That is – it shouldn’t. Of course I would like to spend the rest of my adult life with her, but what if she has other ideas, Sal?”

Sal sat back and looked keenly into Cosmo’s eyes for a few moments, after which he said to Cosmo, “You seem to have already learned one of the most important lessons of life, my boy: sacrifice. We all must make sacrifices in our lives, at one time or another, and for one reason or another – usually for those we love. If you find that you love her, and she chooses to walk a separate path than the one you are on, you must choose to either remain on the path you are walking, or sacrifice any gains that path may lead to in order to walk with her. Never an easy decision, my boy – never an easy decision.”

Cosmo looked out the window again, and saw an owl scooting out to the edge of the branch it was on, preparing to launch itself into the night. “Sal, what do you think I should do?” Upon hearing no immediate answer, Cosmo turned toward the bed where Sal was sitting.

Naturally, he was gone.