Flashback

Nick paused about where home plate used to be and peered up into the stands. The backstop and net were right where they used to be before this felon-inhabited state began parking its captured felons here. The reality of the place surprised him since he was so used to seeing the digital version in the Rockies games he followed during the summer. Most people had thought that the death of public gatherings would be the death of professional sports, but televised 3D digital-virtual games, in all sports, were more popular than the original live versions. One reason was probably the better players: the new Colorado Rockies team boasted such players as Dante Bichette, Larry Walker, Andrés Galarraga, and Vinny Castilla, who had all played for the team more than forty years earlier. The only rule now in major league baseball was that the virtual player on the roster must have played with that team sometime in the past (and could only be digitally resurrected to play on one team), thus the joyous return of the Brooklyn Dodgers with Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, and the rest. Those Dodgers faced a New York Yankees lineup that included Derek Jeter, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris (tuned to his best year), Lou Gehrig, Dwight Gooden, and Babe Ruth.

There was endless bitching about the fairness and accuracy of the virtual MLB players and teams, but baseball fans loved the resurrection era. Few would go back to the steroid-riddled players of the last, scandal-ridden decades of the live game.

Nick, like the Old Man before him, loved boxing and often watched Friday Night Fights, where a young Cassius Clay could be found fighting Rocky Marciano or Jack Johnson…

“Bottom-san, are you paying attention?” whispered Sato’s voice in Nick’s ear. “Man approaching from your right.”

Nick whirled.

The man coming out of the tent-and-shack village toward him was tall, thin, white-haired, black, and old. The old man wore baggy khaki shorts, sandals, and a spotless white shirt. He walked slowly but almost regally, stopping about seven feet away from Nick and opening his hands to show that they were empty.

“Welcome, sir, to our modest world of Coors Field, sans baseball, sans fans, sans hot dogs and Cracker Jack, sans Coors beer, sans everything but incarcerated felons, myself included, sir.” The old man bowed slightly but very gracefully. His voice was rich, full, deep, mesmerizing, in the way those of some Shakespearean actors and old-time sports announcers used to be.

Nick nodded slightly but looked around, his gaze flicking everywhere, wondering if this was the setup for some trap. Move on, his brain told him. Move on, idiot.

“My name is Soul Dad,” said the old man. “Soul with a ‘u.’ May I inquire as to your name, sir?”

Move on. Move on. Nothing good could come from Nick’s giving his name to some senile old felon.

“My name is Nick Bottom.” Nick heard his own voice as if from a distance. Something about his early-morning conversation with K. T. Lincoln had distracted him at a time when he couldn’t afford to be distracted. It was as if all this—the hovels and felons and sunlight and ravaged old ballpark, even the crazy old man with the amazing voice—was part of some flashback session and Nick was hovering above it all.

Hovering will get you killed, asshole.

Soul Dad chuckled in the same resonant, rich tones. “Well, Mr. Nick Bottom, you left your ass’s ears at home today, sir.”

Nick glanced at the old man and moved slightly to his right, keeping the same distance between them but putting the old man between him and anyone with a gun in the stands straight ahead or to the immediate right, without blocking Sato’s shot.

When Nick didn’t reply, Soul Dad said, “I’ve always thought that when the awakening Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream says, ‘It shall be called Bottom’s Dream, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the Duke. Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death,’ the ‘her’ he’s talking about is Juliet from Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare wrote the two about the same time, you see, Mr. Bottom… perhaps at the same time, although that would have been very unusual for the Bard… and I believe he allowed one reality to bleed over into another in Nick Bottom’s line there, just as flashback users often let one of their realities seep into another. Sometimes until they can’t tell the difference.”

Nick could only blink. It was odd that the Israeli poet Danny Oz had also brought up the question of who the “her” was in the “sing it at her death” part of that quotation.