The Tragedy of a Pinball Wizard

Oliver's Explanation

Hey, it's me again. Oliver. I'm running this chapter; I figured it would be the easiest way to fully explain to you all what just happened.

It all started a few years back when I was on a bigfoot hunt by myself in the woods. I was hot on the trail of a huge break in the sasquatch case when I stumbled into a clearing in the trees.

In the middle of the clearing, there was a light shining on a tall cabinet. It was a porta-potty! I couldn't believe my luck, I had the largest bowel movement of my entire live fighting with my sphincter for the opportunity to see the light of day. I darted over to the porta-potty and threw open the door. I did my business and went to wash my hands.

Suddenly, I realized that there was nowhere to clean up in this porta-potty! Where the soap or hand sanitizer normally would be, there was a great panel with all sorts of buttons and dials on it! So many lights and noises really grabbed my attention. I started fiddling around with the controls when a screen lit up in front of my eyes!

It flashed a date on it, December 8, 1980. It also had a question to ask of me. Continue? It gave me the options, Y or N. I answered Y for "Y don't you tell me more?", but it did not work out the way I thought it would. The porta-potty started to violently shake and deafening mechanical noises filled the air!

It went on for about 30 seconds before the motion finally stopped. I was a bit hesitant, but I worked up the courage to exit the porta-potty. As I stepped out, nothing seemed to be different. I looked at my surroundings and everything was in order, just as I had left it.

I gave my shoulders a shrug and decided to move on. After that experience, I didn't have much appetite for bigfoot hunting anymore, so I decided I would call it a day and head home.

I hit the streets and began working my way back to my apartment building. Once I made it back to town, the first thing that caught my eye and got me thinking that something may be amiss was walking past the old movie theater. It looked nicer and cleaner than I remembered it being. I took a look at the movie poster hanging outside displaying proudly their new big upcoming movie.

It was a poster for the live action version of Popeye starring Robin Williams! I glanced to the release date at the bottom of the poster and it read 'December 1980'. How could that be? They must have just left the poster up by accident or they were doing some sort of nostalgia night at the theater. That porta potty couldn't have been an actual time machine, right? There's simply no way that I'm actually in the year 1980.

I kept moving forward. As I kept walking, I found a bookstore. Now, I'm not usually much of a reader, but I figured smart people hang out in bookstores. Maybe I would be able to find someone in there who could explain what was going on!

I entered the store and looked around for someone to talk to. In one of the aisles, I found a man who seemed to be of reasonable intelligence, so I wanted to try to strike up a conversation with him.

"Hey, how are you doing today, man?" I asked him.

He turned to me with a warm smile on his face. He greeted me back. "Hey! How are things going for you?"

"I'm doing pretty good, I can't complain. Hey, I was just wondering if you could help me out with something." I told him.

Like most people, this man didn't want to give out his help for free. He wanted something from in return. "I could actually use some help too. Do you think maybe we could help each other?"

"I suppose I could do that. What do you need, sir?" I obliged.

"It's not hard, I promise. All I want is some help picking out a book to read. There are so many options, I just don't know what to pick!" he scratched his head as he explained his plight.