The Bender

 

Two men sit at an antique table in the midst of a small antiques shop sipping espresso and talking. They are old friends, obviously and deep in conversation.

 

“You see, a few weeks ago one of my regulars who was an almost daily browser, but had never bought a thing brought me a Gruen Curvex wristwatch and wanted to sell it. Things like that have been through my hands so many times, I knew the value immediately. I gave him the usual spiel about the consignment terms, made him sign the disclaimer that it was not stolen and that he had the authorization to sell it. A business relationship was born”

 

“As the days went by, he brought more and more items for consignment into my shop: Watches, money, coins, a small Stereo Realist camera once, all manner of things, but always something that could be carried or pocketed easily”

 

“I was a little doubtful that he had come by the items honestly and got up the nerve to just ask him about it” Something about the newness of it all struck me in a way that I could not put a finger on, like being in the 1930’s and looking at something in a store window. As an antique dealer, I, and all the others on Meeker Street here in Kent City had the same fantasy: to be able to go back in time and bring something back that was brand new.

 

“I said “These things you bring to me are on the level, right, Jim”, I knew he had signed the disclaimer and my butt was covered legally, but I was starting to like this customer and I didn’t want to lose him. I guess there was a chance to lose him anyway, but it was better to know now, rather than later. He assured me that they were his grandfathers and he had just kept them very well over the years”

 

“It wasn’t so much that they were nice items, they were as if brand new. Most had never been unwrapped and he even brought things in vintage shopping bags that looked brand new as well. I gave him a cup of espresso and we talked about old things, my favorite subject. When I handed him his check for that month’s auctions, he looked me dead in the eye and said something I still wish I could unhear”

 

“He claimed that he and his partner had been to 1927, 1937 and 1947 and brought something back, the suitcase that sat on my counter at the moment, a perfect 1930’s Louis Vitton. I could see from the look on his face that he was not kidding me. It was a breakthrough with his research at the University concerning time-space, he claimed. I stood there at my counter and listed in numb shock as his tale unfolded. Before going public with what they had achieved, he and his partner had taken over 300 trips to various points in history, bringing back some artifact that could be dated to a specific time as a means of verifying what they had done. I asked him why he was having me sell them, then it dawned on me why. The research I do on an item before putting a price on it and putting it up for sale qualifies as a kind of Carbon-Dating for recent antiques. In fact, the whole act of identifying an item is the same kind of work as what an anthropologist does, just with newer things. He was using my shop, experience and reputation as a way to help validate what he and his colleague would later go public with.”

 

“Outstanding, what did you do then?”

 

“To say I was doubtful of him would be an understatement, Jonas, not so different from what you must have felt when you met Bob face to face for the first time.”

 

“Okay, I see your point” His friend frowned a little at that.

 

“I thought he was a crackpot, but I was pretty greedy and, making about three-grand a week from the stuff he brought me, there was no way I was about to let a cash cow like that go: not just for being a nut. I just let him talk and let me tell you the story got thicker as he went”

 

“In what way”?

 

“He said that “they” were after him and he was in a lot of trouble for violating some kind of agreement about his work. Well, he finally choked it out that he was doing research into bending light for the purposes of creating some kind of invisibility for vehicles and buildings and ultimately, people, I suppose. The money was endless and the leash was long so he and his assistant used the unlimited resources at their disposal to do just that. Invisibility was achieved in a way but when the time came to test their baby on a human, something when wrong, he said.”

 

“Went wrong how”?

 

“He said that he and his partner played “short straw”. A child’s game, of all things to see who would go first, because neither was very eager. He told me how some of the inanimate objects they had used in earlier testing, while they did became invisible, when the light bender was turned off, some parts of them were missing”

 

“Missing like how”?

 

“He said that a steel workbench they had used became visible again when the bender was switched off, but was missing a leg. It was gone like it was never there. They couldn’t believe it, he said, finally man could perform real magic tricks. The time came in their research that a living subject would be used and they obtained a rabbit from a colleague in animal testing across campus. It went in its cage onto a table between the two larger bender screens they had constructed for testing larger items and the bender was fired up”

 

“What happened then”

 

“We, he said the exact result as with the table and several other things they had destroyed around the lab, it reemerged to visibility missing one side. Where there was a screen of wire mesh, now was a neat-edged gaping hole through which the test rabbit now hopped and moved to the opposite end of the table, turned and stared blankly at its former prison. He then told me that they grabbed up that poor bunny and ran from their lab and across campus to the animal research building to confirm the result. Their colleague who had worked with both of them before and knew not to ask too many questions did indeed confirm what both knew already. Nothing at all was remarkable with the rabbit, still perfectly healthy if not a little shaken”.

 

“Remarkable, so they did it”?

 

“They did, and at that point his story got a little technical with a lot of scientific jargon I don’t remember, but he did make it clear that soon they were putting themselves into the Bender’s field. He said that when the Bender was powered up, he thought nothing was happening at all but then the familiar lab was replaced with grass and an open field and what appeared to be gas lights where electric streetlights should have been could he see through the walls of their lab building. He said it was as if the lab was not there and he was where he was standing before the building was even there in the first place.”

 

“Amazing, why did he say that”?

 

“I think it was the gas lights on poles across the grass where the lab should have been or maybe the shape of the landscape he saw that told him it was the same place, sans buildings, he didn’t make that part clear. He did go on to tell me that he and his partner adjusted and tweaked the Bender until they were finally able to keep the scene he described constant to the person within the Bender’s field. He told me then that he did the boldest thing he had ever done in his life up to that point and took two steps forward. He said he was on grass now and outside though he knew the place he was standing just three feet behind him was where he had started. He and his assistant had agreed to switch off the bender after thirty seconds if he was unable to give the order and his watch told his it was nearly time to go back. He took two steps back, being careful to step exactly back to the same starting point about 2 seconds before the field was shut down.”

 

“Wow, talk about a “eureka moment”, huh”?

 

“That’s exactly how he put it. Well to make a long story short, the two tweaked and experimented and those two geniuses made it possible to both step out of the field once on the other side and find it again when they wanted to come back, he didn’t really go into how but I suppose it doesn’t matter because the stuff he brought to me is proof enough. The last time he was in here was last week and he brought me something different”

 

The shop owner gets up from the table and walks to the rectangle of glass display cases a few steps inside the front door. Upon the one facing the front door was a beautiful brass cased mechanical cash register, the sort of thing you would expect to see on the counter in an antique store. He reaches over the counter and beside the register to grasp a manila folder, recovers it and walks back to the table to sit down with his old friend.

 

“It was this he said goodbye with, I never saw or heard him come in, in spite of the bell on the door, I only turned away from that cash register for about 5 seconds to get a fresh roll of paper for it and turned right back to pop it in. Instead of the electronic I’ve used every day for the last 5 years I was facing a brand new 1920’s vintage Standard Model 3 cash register with the price tag of $25 still hanging on a string from the “Tab” key with the name Haggarty Industrial Supply printed at the top. On top of that flawless brass-cased beauty was this folder”

 

He slaps the manila folder on the table and his friend greedily opens it. Inside is not at all yellowed copy of the Seattle Times dated February, 9, 1923. On the front page is a story about a fire at a local warehouse on the waterfront but it seems to be unremarkable except for its newness.

 

“The note, that’ll really bake your noodle, its under the paper” the antique dealer tells his friend sliding a magnifying glass across the table.

 

The dealer’s visitor and friend flips the paper over, revealing the handwritten note on Hotel Excelsior stationary and bearing the same date as the newspaper.

 

 

 

 

The End

 

 

 

A story By Tom Summerson