by Ian Williams
Alex was having none of it, she tried her best to guide him away from temptation. “Graham, you’re going the wrong way.”
“Just hang on a second, please. I need to go through this door on the left. It goes to the server room.”
“No!” Alex took two steps at a time until she was close enough to grip his arm. Even yanking him in the opposite direction could not break him free. He was unable to resist this more convenient of realities.
“Luke should be just behind this door.”
“Don’t go in there. This is what it wants, can’t you understand that?”
“I only need a quick look.”
It was too late. Without any consideration at all of the possible punishment he might face, Graham was through the door and walking the long hall that passed the glass windows of the server room beyond. There, he found what he could not stop himself from seeing; him and Luke, both inside the room filled with banks of computers. Even though he knew it had happened for an important reason, he could not understand or remember what that could have been. A plan had been put together to break in at night, but why? There was more to it than that, he knew.
Maybe if he stayed longer he would eventually retrieve the rest of the memory?
“Now you’ve done it! We’re right back in the middle of the maze,” Alex said behind him. She slapped her arms across her chest in irritation.
Graham did not react to her. He had found somewhere he felt safe. Without knowing for sure what was coming next, he remained resolute in his desire to stay. Was this his subconscious finding comfort or another part of the maze’s design? For the time being, he could hardly really care. He was not completely sure he had the strength to leave this place anyway. At least not until he could remember what may have been at stake in the first place.
He watched as Luke disappeared suddenly, while the other Graham became fixated on something in his direction. Stepping away from the glass, and with his back against the wall, he stared ahead in disbelief. A strange red haired woman then snuck past him, bringing something else to his mind. A name he had also forgotten.
“Phoenix!” he shouted out.
This made Alex much happier. He found something to tie him to the real world. What anchored him to this timeless and random world had been worked loose just one tiny bit. Cracks were forming, albeit microscopic ones. A few more of these recent memories and he was confident he would find a way of breaking down every single wall of the maze.
The exit was one step closer now. They may have accidentally arrived back at the beginning, but he could almost see a clear path out. He had no intention of stopping this time, regardless of what was thrown at him. His real daughter was out there somewhere and he was not going to rest until he saw her and his wife again.
“I know the way,” Graham said, after deciding enough was enough; he would lead this time.
“Finally,” Alex replied. “I’m starting to hate this place. I’d still like to meet the smarty-pants who made it though.”
“Again with the grand designer thing? Whatever this place is, it isn’t well designed. It’s a mess, and one I intend on tearing down piece by piece.”
His first decision as leader of the group was to kick-in the emergency exit door at the rear of the Simova building. As expected it did not go where it was supposed to. With his head clearer than ever since being awoken from his mindless wandering by Alex, he felt no surprise by this. Whatever was beyond the door felt right and that was enough for him.
“Follow me,” he said before stepping through.
Chapter 8
Sanctuary 2.0
The puzzle was unravelling right in front of Graham’s eyes. He and Alex had fought to stay ahead, while behind them the scenes switched desperately to try and keep up. They were beating it at every turn now and were quickly approaching the end. Along the way the world around them had descended into mayhem. Nothing was acting correctly anymore. Doors were vanishing and then reappearing, walls were moving, even the sky above had struggled to keep itself in place. During one outside scene the illusion had fallen apart altogether.
Facing them was yet another strange mixture of memories, dreams and nightmares. He had a choice of doors, hovering in front like they were not attached to anything, not even the floor. The surrounding area was made up of a distorted assortment of parts from his parents’ garden. A small stone water feature in the shape of a clam trickled crystal clear water peacefully in the centre, while to their left was a two-seater bench that his dad had crudely painted pink for the sake of his mother’s girly tastes. Above, there was no sky, only a star studded blanket moving far too much to ever be considered realistic.
The lie was falling apart.
“Which door is it?” Alex asked beside him. She had given up trying to lead and was stuck following for the time being.
Graham quickly decided which way to go. His intuition had been his guide in a way he knew was not real, or at least would not have been in the real world. He was slowly starting to understand what had happened to him. He was in the Sentient world. Despite not understanding how, he knew his mind had somehow been put inside the giant crystal tower. Except he could now remember that very tower being destroyed at some point. So he could not be sure exactly where he was in the real world.
“This way,” he said after choosing the middle door for no reason other than it felt like the correct one. They took it in the same way they had all the others, with speed and no consideration of what might lay beyond.
The door slammed shut behind, bringing them both spinning back around to see. Graham was surprised to see it still hovering in place and the two either side of it. They appeared washed out and faded on this side, like they were made of glass and he was peering back through. It had not been like this with the other routes they randomly picked. He considered for a second whether the whole driving force behind their escape was in fact randomness. Keeping logic and reason out of the equation had possibly been what broke the puzzle in the end.
Beneath their feet was a stone path that stretched out across a vast and foggy landscape. He was sure he could make out tall trees just beyond a dense veil of damp air, as well as a thick layer of snow on the ground. Frost had formed between the larger stones on their path, yet he did not feel cold. They walked tentatively along the path, each step crunching underfoot. The fog appeared unwilling to clear around them.
“Look!” Alex said with a tug on his shirt.
He looked back at the place they had left behind, in all its horrific glory. Every room and memory they had ventured through was still sat in place; a theme park of his previous existence. Their stone path had taken them up a small hill, which now gave them enough height to sneak a peek back inside the puzzle. From their outside view the whole thing was easy to see. It had not stopped changing either. Walls were sliding about as the trap tried its best to recapture the escapees. Little did it know it had already failed.
“Are we out?” Graham said, staring in disbelief at the puzzle’s reaction, as if an external intelligence guided it.
“Yep, we are. You’re not as smart as you think, Mr. Maze. Nothing can stop us!” she shouted back down the hill with a joyous giggle.
“So what now?”
“Now we go see Stephen.” She clapped excitedly. “Oh, he’ll be so pleased to hear about all this. He’ll love the maze. He loves a challenge, he does.”
“Seriously? Surely it has to be destroyed, Alex. Otherwise it could trap some other poor bastard.”
His daughter’s face said it all, she did not understand his concern. She simply shrugged his comment off and began along the path into a white cloud of nothingness. Her walk then became a skip, which became a hop-skip-and-jump. Such a way of acting only angered Graham, who was still unhappy with his daughter’s image being used by an imposter. If not for her help in escaping his prison he would have insisted she choose another. While things were going well he decided not to rock the boat. He would just go along with it for now
.
Again he noted the way his feet cracked and crushed the compacted ice beneath. It was far from perfect, just like everything else about this new and strange world, but it was close. The way of this existence was simply something he would have to get used to. So far it appeared nothing more than an imitation of his own reality, yet it was something very different underneath. He considered that coming to terms with this must have been a part of the same process the Stephen that existed there had gone through. He wished this to be true. Having someone who had already made it through such a mind altering experience at least took the unknown out of it.
Keeping up with Alex was easier now that she decided to have some fun while wandering the uphill route. Looking ahead still gave him no idea where they were. All he could say for sure was that Alex appeared to know where she was going.
“It isn’t far now,” Alex called back to him, before scooping up a handful of snow and letting it fall through her fingers. “What’s all this cool stuff? It’s cold.”
“It’s called snow. I loved playing in the snow as a kid. Although I don’t remember enjoying it as much as an adult.”
After a short while they made it to the crest of the snowy hill and stopped to look over their journey. To Graham’s surprise they had travelled much further than he had realised. Covering such a distance – what looked like miles – in only a few minutes was impossible. But they had. Time and distance were changeable things in the Sentient world, it appeared.
“Look, over there.” Alex tugged at his arm to turn him around. “That should take us straight to Stephen’s laboratory.”
The fog had lifted since he had turned to look back. Where only an unbreakable white cloud had hidden their route, now another hovering door had appeared. Except it was not an ordinary door at all, but one with an odd glow around its wavering frame. He caught up with Alex and had to slow her down to ask her.
“Should that be shining like that?”
“This is the way to find Stephen. He doesn’t like strangers.”
Not quite what I asked, he thought. “So how do we get in?”
“Stephen knows me. He helped me…” She stopped before following up with any more.
He watched from a distance as Alex stood before the entrance, held her arms out in front and then lowered her head. There was no time to enquire further. Seeing her perform such an act had him in two minds; regardless of the fact that the little girl was not really his daughter, he still felt an almost uncontrollable urge to protect her from harm. He wanted to pull her away from the glowing doorway and hide her behind him. As was the case with the real Alex, he could never imagine letting her out into the world alone. She was now six after all – the last time he had seen her at least – and was growing up fast.
After a quiet moment, which Graham found he greatly needed, the door vanished and a narrow corridor replaced it. As with most of the more extravagant mistakes he saw within the puzzle, this one also made little sense; dark wooden floor panels extended along a hallway lined by trees. It extended into another dimension altogether. He could see the same white fog continuing behind the door and out the other side. They were stepping into yet another world.
“It’s OK, Graham.” Alex held out her hand to reassure him. Their roles had been reversed once more. He was a lost little child being led out of the wilderness.
Reluctantly he took Alex’s hand and followed her into the corridor. The sound of crunching ice had gone and instead his feet were causing the occasional creak from the panels beneath. He very much preferred this place over the snowy hill of before. This place felt safe and possibly even homely.
Their corridor then began to branch off in other directions, with a few intersecting paths meeting suddenly. The place was a mess of different routes, but it still felt more human than the other places they had been. He was getting the distinct feeling it was like this by choice. In the same way he always told his wife, Jane, that his usual mess was an organised one. The strange corridors appeared to be this way too.
He began to realise that he knew this place. It was not exactly as he remembered Stephen’s hidden complex had looked, still it was close. Possibly the same rooms after a huge renovation. For starters he never remembered so much fancy wood around. Concrete and metal, yes, but not rosewood and oak.
When he spotted a ship style door ahead, he knew for sure this was the same place. Although the polished rosewood circular handle was definitely wrong. He would let that go for now. After all, this Stephen was not entirely human. He found this out while he and Alex had been trying to escape his puzzle-prison. She had told him that this Stephen had had to fill the gaps in his consciousness with Sentient code. He was in fact from two separate worlds.
Alex spun the lock with ease and then forced the heavy door open – also made, rather unrealistically, from rosewood. What resided on the other side of the door was not quite what Graham expected. Stephen’s new home was much, much bigger. He appeared to have been busy since arriving there too, as his clutter was almost endlessly piled up around the place. In the centre of the room there was no sign of the large glass cube the real Stephen had used to store the many MARCs he had tried to save. In its place sat a two-meter-long table with toy soldiers in Napoleonic era uniforms, positioned across a miniature war torn landscape. Fallen trees and tiny cannons had been added too.
As for Stephen himself, he was nowhere to be seen.
“Stay here,” Alex told him. Not a request either, but an order.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back soon, with Stephen. Don’t touch his toys, he hates it when people do that.”
Through the same door the other Stephen had once used to enter his small kitchen area, Alex left the room and Graham behind. His nerves had ceased their fretting finally, allowing him to think clearly for once. He took the chance to look about himself, in more detail this time.
The piles of clutter all around were mostly made up of stacks of old paper, some reaching almost to his head height. Each stack leaned precariously and threatened to topple over entirely. This much paper would swamp a tiny soul such as Alex – he began to worry again. On second consideration, he realised he too would probably not have a very good time trying to avoid the domino setup he saw the paper stacks resembled. What he could not decide was exactly why Stephen would have use for paper at all.
Not only was this rough approximation of Sanctuary much longer than the original, it also reached much higher. Peering through the darkness above him did not reveal its final height. What he did spot were wooden ladders, like those found in some libraries, scattered along the walls and almost disappearing above. These gave Stephen access to an enormous bookcase that made up one of the walls. Everything around him looked real, but only to a point. Where it deviated from reality, it still made sense to him. Why not keep records in a giant sized bookcase, rather than a boring old wrist computer?
He was thankful to spot at least one thing that benefited from the limitless possibilities of the Sentient world. The tiny rest area he first saw in the real Sanctuary was now a comfy kingdom fit for any king. One of the chairs even looked similar to a throne. He wandered over to the collection of high-back, leather studded chairs and at first marvelled at their workmanship. His perusal was not long though, as his only real concern became to try one out. Which he instantly felt better for.
Though comfortable, his wait was still a tough one. His unexpected free-time only allowed his apprehension to grow further, as well as his impatience. For the better part of an hour, he rested his aching muscles – ones he could not be entirely sure even existed anymore – and let them twitch automatically in time with his heartbeat. When Alex finally entered the room again, he was startled and immediately jumped out of the chair.
“Did you find him?” he asked.
Alex smiled at him. The reason became clear a second later when, stepping through the door with authority and confidence the likes of which the Stephen he knew did not poss
ess, came the man he hoped could help him.
“Hello Graham,” Stephen said, his white hair tidy and his clothes as clean and smart as ever. This version, of a man he had only really known briefly, was dressed not in old and worn clothing, but a gleaming white lab coat. His hands sat in its large pockets.
Once the shock had settled, Graham spoke. “You look … so different. I can’t believe you’re here.”
Stephen let out a short laugh, then looked away, his eyes portraying more emotion than he was letting reach his face. “I expect the other me is struggling with so much missing? Tell me, what is he like? Is he anything like I used to be?”
“To be honest I didn’t know him for long,” Graham said without taking his eyes off the upgraded Stephen. “The man I knew was like a child trapped in an old body. He could still work the tech. Then when he wasn’t, he would sort of shuffle around in his own world.”
“As I feared, he hasn’t been able to adjust like I have.” Stephen took his left hand out of his pocket and shook it at Graham. “Now, Alex has told me all about your predicament. It seems you’ve managed the same as me, by placing your consciousness inside the Sentient world. Very clever. Although you’ve come at a rather difficult time.”
“Difficult, why?”
“First tell me what you know about how you got here?”
The question had caught Graham by total surprise. He had been only moments away from asking the same question. It filled him with little hope to hear it asked of him. The man he expected could end his struggle to complete his memory of the past, did not appear to know everything after all.
“I have no idea,” he said with a heavily deflated tone. “I woke up in the past, like nothing had happened. If Alex hadn’t found me and shown me it wasn’t real, I would still be trapped in that maze thing.”