Goblin Gulch - The Curious Story of Milton, Nevada

[JayRay]

Chapter 1: Before I fly away...

As most stories go, it was a dark night, as often such spun tales go, and as often as most nights do. I was on my last European vacation. The reason why it was my last... well, I know when I'm to depart this dusty orb to my celestial hereafter, but a-more about that later. I was to meet with someone of historical significance, in the fields of mathematics and physics - two learned disciplines which I'm sure will unlock great human achievements in the centuries to come, and unravel mysteries of the universe.

Why him you might ask? Well, when someone so deeply entrenched in the tall tales of Americana comes across such a grand tale as I had the privilege of witnessing for myself, one finds himself reaching desperately for someone, anyone who might understand my plight, and bring some sort of logical providence into such a far-fetched menagerie of the fantastical.

So here I was, outside the University of Zurich, Swiss cigar in my hand; an icon, I must add that pales in comparison to a fine-rolled Jamaican or any rolled in Hispanola or Mexico. His papers, which I were privy to; Brownian motion, special relativity, and the photoelectric effect would seem like grandiose science beyond my grasp, if it weren't for a colleague of mine speaking such babble in an event that... well for this 'young' author, borders on the fantastical fiction; an event that took me all the way from the tiny beleaguered town of Milton to San Francisco, around the Orient, up into the cradle of civilization itself, around the romantic Mediterranean and up to this bastion of high learning on the other side of the world.

I found the door to be quite imposing, huge Rhine Oak doors with wrought iron borders, but found the subsequent hallway within warm and inviting. It didn't take long to locate his office door. It was the only one in the hall open, alight, and alive with some activity. As I doused my acrid cigar against a outside brick, I sojourned inside, slightly intrigued by the 'click-click-clacking' that emanated from within.

What I had at first perceived as an office was instead much like a lecture hall, with eight large slates affixed to the walls, and a lone figure clacking a piece of chalk steadily against the surface, scribing out a mixture of Greek symbols, numbers, lines and mathematical symbols with the efficiency of a San Francisco telegraph operator.

"Dr. Einstein, I presume?" I spoke, thus realizing exactly how dry my throat was at that particular moment, revealed to the world as my throat cracked out the words with a cough. 

The figure, perched amid a ladder mounted on a track above the chalkboards slowly looked down upon me and smiled. Rather comically, and not to detract from the interaction, the tails of his coat made him and his lantern-diffused shadow appear as a murder of crows or ravens across the slate.

"Ah, Mr. Clemens... or should I call you Twain?" 


Chapter 2: A Good ol' Yankee in a Swiss Doctor's Court

His words while heavily accented with the Germanic-Swiss vernacular still held great regard for the English language. It was a relief that I didn't have to scour through my booklet of translations to at least speak with a man, because, well, some of what I was about to tell him, I wasn't entirely sure they had created a German word for it.

"Samuel will be fine, sir. I... I'm also glad that I didn't outrun my correspondence. It would be awkward, me being here before my letters announcing my intent arrived."

I searched his eyes to be sure that my letters actually HAD arrived first.

"Oh, ves, the letters came. I didn't quite know what to make of zem. You have a flair for the longwinded spin, sir, and in some parts of your letters, I truly, and I mean no offense, would have hoped you would have been more direct."

I nodded in personal reflection at the fact that I can go on and on, even in inner monologue. However, such long spins HAVE netted me a small fortune in my literary works. So, I lend myself to a greater power to judge my idiosyncracies. 

"Well, with what I told you, what do you make of it?" I asked, unsure if he considered the whole diatribe of emotional editorial I sent him a bunch of hogwash, or if there were any parts of it that caught his curiosity.

"Well..." Albert stepped down from his ladder. "First, let us go to the study, I dont zink I can focus on it with all the math on the boards, it's distracting me for a time now. Please..."

Albert led me straight away to a small parlor. As I stepped in, and smelt the faint odor of pipe tobacco, I smiled, pulling my cigar back out. Two small decanters of schnapps, two large cushioned seats, a fireplace, a pipe in one man's hand, and a cigar in another's; yes, this was the perfect scene for such dialogue. After a long draw from the pipe, Albert spoke first. 

"Well, I had ideas before of how one could move from one place, in space and time, to another. Zis event would be highly difficult. Even now, the math eludes me, but, theoretically, Space and Time MIGHT be traversed in such ways. Your letters said these... Emissaries? They simply arrived in a flash of light? Like a faint thunder of sound? Interesting. As I read the words, I thought 'Are ve sure he has ze right doctor? Dr. Freud would be most intrigued."

I laughed amidst a choke of a wrongly inhaled puff of cigar. "Yes, I'll admit, Even I questioned my sanity as the events unfolded. However, I'm a man of humanity, always excited by the technologies and advances of my fellow man, and I can't fathom how he did it, or if he didn't do it, what manner of illusion or charlatan's trick allowed us to BELIEVE he did it. But I saw it with my own spectacled eyes, The man flashed his hand wildly, and drew a scepter, waved it at a copper mine wall, and opened a doorway to another place."

"Interesting." Einstein spoke. "Ze doorway, did it have form? or was it like a curtain, a plane as thin as paper, with an emanation of light from its canvas?"

"Exactly." I extorted "Flat as a bedsheet, you could even walk around it, as though someone had simply cut a hole out of the world and hung the hole out to dry on the line."

Albert took another puff. "A bridge... A bridge of space, possibly space und time."