Albert's Doorway
© 1998 by Jerry J. Davis
When I walked over to Albert's that fateful day, I noticed
something was different. The house looked much bigger than I
remembered, especially the part where Albert's room was. It
appeared ballooned out, just that one room. Odd that I'd never
noticed it before.
There was a new sports car in the driveway too, a model that
both Albert and I had been drooling over in magazines. A red
Viper. Man, it was hot. It was also very expensive. I wondered who
owned it, because it certainly wasn't anyone in Albert's family.
When I rang the bell, it was Albert who answered. It appeared
he was the only one home. Like myself, Albert is a kind of scrawny
geek-looking teenager, with thick glasses, pimpled face, the
works. Albert wasn't wearing his glasses that day, though, and it
looked like his face had cleared up. As a matter of fact, it
looked like he'd had a nose job. And his build, the way he stood,
he seemed a bit wider, more muscular, like he'd been working out.
Odd, I thought again. I should have noticed the difference when I
saw him the day before.
"Hey, Brad! Boy do I have something to show you," he said.
"Where is everybody?" I asked.
"They're all on a cruise boat heading toward Hawaii. Come on
inside."
"But---"
He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me through the door. As
he pulled me past the dining room toward the stairs, I saw that
there was a huge pile of green twenty-dollar bills stacked on the
table. "Take some, if you want," he said, pausing just for a
moment. "But hurry, I've got to show you what I've been doing."
Not wanting to be greedy, I only took a few. Then a few more.
Then, well, there was so much a handful wouldn't be missed. My
pocket was bulging as I finally followed Albert up the stairs to
his room.
His room, I noticed, had been remodeled. There was no denying
it, it was much bigger than it was a few days before. And instead
of just one computer sitting on his desk, he had several
computers, nice new powerful ones.
"Remember I was showing you how I'd converted my Dad's
satellite dish so that I could use it as a radio telescope?"
Albert asked.
"Yeah. Did your Dad get mad?"
"No." Albert had a unbelievably huge grin stretched across
his face. "It was the best thing I've ever done in my life."
"Okay."
"I was listening to the background radiation of the universe
night before last, and it struck me. It sounded an awful lot like
a modem carrier wave. Silly me, I went and piped the antenna into
my modem. Well, nothing happened of course. The hertz cycle was
way off. So then I got out this old 4800 baud piece of junk my dad
got from the phone company and I tinkered with it, adjusting here
and there, and guess what happened."
"What?"
"I connected."
"With what?"
"The background radiation of the universe. Or at least what
everybody thought was the background radiation of the universe.
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