By Chris Maverick

"C'mere, son. Yeah you... get over here! I gots somethin' for ya'..." They were the first words any of us had ever heard Him say. I was astounded when I realized he must have been talking to me. I looked around once more to make sure there wasn't anyone else around whom he might be speaking to.

"I said c'mere." There was no mistaking it, he meant me. Hesitantly, I walked over to the corner where the old man sat on his stoop. It was the closest that I'd ever been to the old man in all the times that I had seen him in the arcade. Sure, sometimes I would watch him play Pinbot, but who wouldn't? This was the first time I had ever gotten a chance to really look at him. His skin was dark and kind of wrinkly, but I couldn't place his nationality. He was a caricature of himself, barely taller than me (I was just over five foot at the time) with a huge nose and a shaggy white beard. He was balding, and what little hair he had left was ragged and unkempt. His clothes were dirty and torn, and they wouldn't have matched even if they were new. He wore several layers of clothing and a heavy long coat,just like every other bum that I had seen in my thirteen years. I thought to myself that he must be very warm. Why did he need all of that anyway? It was spring, and I didn't think he'd ever actually left the building. There hadn't been a single time when I had come to the arcade and he wasn't there. Despite all of his other distinguishing features, there was one that I couldn't overlook. I knew it was rude, but I couldn't help it. I kept staring at the pinned up sleeve of the longcoat where his missing left arm should have been.

"Is dat you?" he asked, calling my attention away from his mysterious missing arm?

"Huh?!?"

"Is dat you? Number five?" he snapped as he pointed across the room.

I spun quickly to follow his finger to the Pinbot machine which displayed the number five score and the initials "MAV" just as I turned to look at them. Normally, I would have been proud of that. I had played the game after school every day for nearly a year, wasting untold portions of my allowance just so that I could receive a place on that scoreboard. The day before, I had actually managed to do it, and in the next 24 hours, I remeber having told everyone I knew. It was the single, proudest accomplishment of my life, and now here I was, scared to death. Afraid to tell this crazy, old one-armed man.

"Y-yes, it's me." I swallowed as I struggled with the words, unsure if I wanted to tell the truth or not. "It's me... sir," I added at the end, thinking that somehow that extra bit of respect might do something to save my life.

"Hrrmph. I thought so. Stick out yer hand."

I was frozen with fear. All I could do was stare into his empty black eyes. They were the strangest eyes I'd ever seen - huge pupils which blended perfectly into the irises. They were deep, dark, black eyes, and no matter how hard I stared, I couldn't see my own reflection.

"Go'head now. Stick it out there." He fished around in one of his pockets with his right hand. I slowly and reluctantly reached out my left hand as I looked at the stump where his own arm should have been.

"Ohmigod!" I thought to myself, "he's gonna take my hand so that I can't beat any more of his scores." I closed my eyes and began to say a silent prayer. An ice-cold shiver shot up my spine as I felt the cold weight drop into my hand. Into my hand? That meant I still had one. I opened my eyes and stared down at the object that I was now holding. It was a small, heavy, perfect, silver, metal ball.

"Ya' know what dat is son?"

"It's a pinball." I said after a moment. "Sir," I added again, remembering myself.

"Damn kids, ya' don't know diddly. It's not a pinball its da' Silverball."

"A silverball?" I had heard the term before. It was an old word that old people used to call pinball.

"Goddammit, no. Not a silverball. The Silverball! Da' first one. It came outta the first Humpty Dumpty machine that rolled off the line back in '31?"

"Why are you giving it to me?" I was relieved that he wasn't going to kill me, and was just barely beginning to regain my senses a bit.

"Why?" He seemed surprised by the question, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Why? Because ya' beat me. Yer the first person to do that in eleven years, since I lost to dat Michael Cerveris kid on Bow and Arrow back in '75. I want ya' to have it to remember today as the day that ya' beat the One-armed Zen Pinball Master of Chinatown," he paused and scratched what was left of his shaggy white hair, "'cuz it ain't never gonna happen again."

I didn't know what to say. I was still scared stiff, so I just stared at my reflection in the... Silverball. I was so involved in the orb that I almost missed what happened next. Almost. The old man did something that I have never seen anyone do before, and haven't seen anyone do since. He walked over to Pinbot and took one last look at the high score list. Grand Champion: "ONE" Number two: "ONE" Numbers three and four: "ONE" Number Five... He pointed to my name as it came up on the screen, and I could have sworn that I saw a spark jump from the old man's hand. I blinked once, and when I opened my eyes, I couldn't believe them. There the scoreboard read, Grand Champion: "MAV." The next four scores were zeros. I never saw the old man play Pinbot again after that day. He walked back past me without saying a word, sat down on his stoop, leaned back and closed his eyes.

---

It didn't take long before I had all the top scores on Pinbot, but the other 4 pinball games were all dominated by the mysterious letters "ONE." Eventually, Pinbot was removed from the Chinatown Arcade in favor of newer games, and as each came in, the One-armed Zen Pinball Master of Chinatown would quickly dominate the high score list. I watched him play for hours on end, and though he never spoke to me again, of the incident or of anything else, I learned a lot just by watching. By emulating him, and with the aid of my new lucky silverball and a lot of practice, the other patrons of the Chinatown Arcade soon began to recognize me as the second best pinball player in the area. With Pinbot gone, I didn't have my name up in the arcade anymore, but I had every high score on every machine in every pizza parlor, drug store, and bowling alley in town. Many would challenge, and all would fall at my feet. Actually, I became quite full of myself. I was very proud of my ability and I was getting better every day. I knew that one day I'd be able to beat the old man again, and reclaim my spot on the high score boards in the Chinatown Arcade.

And then one day it happened. I remember that it was four years to the day that the old man had given me the Silverball, and the workmen had just taken out Black Knight 2000, one of the best games of '89. I waited with anticipation to see what wonderful new machine they were going to bring in for me to conquer. I was ready, I wanted the first shot at it. I would play this game exclusively, every day, until I had dominated it, and removed every occurrence of the letters "ONE" from the board. Imagine my surprise when the machine that the workman wheeled in was The Machine

The Machine: The Bride of Pinbot. I couldn't believe my eyes. I spun around to face the old man who's black-eyed stare I could feel burning at my back. He was as spooky as he'd ever been. Still sitting on the same stoop in the same corner wearing the same ragged clothes that he had been wearing four years previous. The black orbs that served as his eyes peered towards the machine, and then to me. We hadn't spoken a word to each other since the day he had given me the Silverball, and he didn't speak to me then. He only nodded his head and stood and walked over to the new pinball machine. I followed.

A crowd gathered. The two of us stood unmoving, studying the playfield of the pinball machine for several moments. It was a very busy game with more lights and targets than I had seen in a long time, and the oddest thing sat near the top of the playfield. A robot's face with a hole where the mouth should have been. I turned to face the old man. The black orbs that were his eyes gleamed, but he was silent. He stood there, motionless, frozen like Greek statue, and yet somehow, I sensed that he was ready.

"OK, let's go," I broke the silence hesitantly as I dropped a quarter in the coin slot. There was a loud KA-CHUNK as the coin hit the empty wooden money tray inside the machine. An electronic bell sounded as a single credit popped up on the display.

The old man reached out with his one hand and gently touched the glass over the playfield. The bell sounded again as another credit sprang onto the machine. A gasp issued forth from the crowd, and the old man removed his hand from the glass.

We played for twenty minutes, racking up point after point as we completed the various modes of the game. It was the best game I had ever played in my life, and I wasn't losing by much. I watched with anticipation as the old man rocked the machine. His hand bounced from flipper to flipper keeping the ball in play. He was an artist. It was like watching Michaelangelo paint, or Beethoven compose. He had the grace of Barishnikov and the power of Bruce Lee. The ball would roll down one outlane, and he would quickly thrust his palm at the base of the machine, sending the ball back up between the flippers. There was something about him, a magic, a glow. He was all that I had ever hoped to be and all that I never dreamed I could. And then... he drained.

When the ball was dead, I looked at the scoreboard, and the old man had more than doubled my score. I began my third and final ball with a fear that I had never known. Not the fear one has when he is afraid of being beaten, but a different fear. It was the fear that soldiers felt as they dropped the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. It was the fear that Neil Armstrong felt as he first stepped on the moon. It was the fear that Moses felt when first he looked into the face of his god. It was the fear drove me. I was afraid to beat this man whom I had come to worship, and yet, I was afraid to lose. I played on and on, not even aware of myself. I felt something new, different, a force that I couldn't explain, as though the hand of God had reached out and grabbed me like a child's puppet forcing me to play on. To slap the flippers. To bounce the machine. To make the correct moves. I was in a trance, a part of the game, and for that moment, I was pinball.

"I AM ALIVE!"

I heard the words in my own head just as The Machine spoke them herself. The robotic face at the top of the playfield flipped over to reveal a human female one, and three balls shot onto the field. I played the best multiball of my life. Three times, I spun the Big Wheel and made the Billion Point shot. When it was over, I had earned more than three times the old man's score.

The ball ended and I collapsed into orgasmic exhaustion. I felt that I had done the impossible, I had challenged God and won. In order to beat me, the old man would have to, in one ball, triple the score he had gotten in the previous two. That was impossible. No one could do such a thing. "But," I thought to myself. "This isn't just anyone. This is Him." What was I feeling, now? Confusion. I couldn't believe what had happened, and I had no idea what was going to happen next.

He spoke not a word. He stepped in front of the machine and launched the ball. He played his heart out, more skillfully than I had ever seen him do so before. The machine rocked and bounced as he pounded it. It screamed with bells and whistles at his every touch. For anyone else, the situation would have been hopeless, but he refused to give up. "I CAN SPEAK!" the machine shouted as he locked one ball. "I CAN SEE!" It screamed as he locked another. The digitized voice would scream and moan as he rocked the machine with the power and finesse of a passionate lover. It was then that I noticed his hand. It was no longer jumping from flipper to flipper in a valiant struggle to keep the ball in play. Instead, it now grasped the button on the right side of the machine. Squeezing it. Caressing it. Pounding it faster and faster. Linked to it as though he couldn't let go, and yet the left flipper continued to operate as if by magic. They moved as one, the man and the machine, charged with a kind of energy that connected them in a way that I can't even begin to explain. There was dedicated look of frustration on his face and his breathing was heavy as they were engulfed by the invisible glow and a familiar voiced echoed three now familiar words, "I AM ALIVE!"

The balls came shooting quickly towards the flippers, and for the first time in what to me had seemed an eternity, his right hand left the flipper button, pulled back and slapped hard the side of the machine. All three balls sailed up towards the top of the playfield making a crashing sound as they rammed into the jackpot sensor. I heard an explosion, followed by a scream and the world went dark.

---

It took less than a minute for the owner to replace the blown fuse. The lights came on, and there was an audible electric hum as all of the video games, pinball machines, and the jukebox powered up and rebooted. The startled customers had been running every which way stumbling over each other, trying to get to the door in the forty-five seconds of darkness and I had been pushed to the other end of the room. I made my way through the frantic crowd back to The Machine, but when I got there, he was gone. The Billionaire's Club scoreboard displayed but two names, second place, "MAV" and Grand Champion "ONE." I don't know how he put our initials on the machine while the power was out, but the scores were there for me to see. He had beaten me by a single point.

When the crowd had calmed, I looked for the old man, but he was no where to be found. I came back the next day and the next, but he never returned. Not to play pinball. Not to sit on his stoop. Not for anything.

If you go to the Chinatown Arcade, the Machine is still there. Our initials are still at the top of the high score list. Every now and then, when I am feeling depressed or confused, I still pull out the Silverball and look at it for a while, roll it over in my hands a couple times, let it slip through my fingers, stare at my reflection, remember what happened and put it away. But, I never played Bride of Pinbot again.