A Theory of Gravity

by Wycroft Taylor

  Chapter 7: Sliding Door

  The ceiling of this new space was about ten feet from the floor. Attached to it were a row of light bulbs screwed into round white porcelain light fixtures. The bulbs cast a curious yellow glow. On the wall on his left as he stood with his back to the door he had just entered were four doors of different sizes. All seemed to be made out of metal. All were painted or dyed different colors. Closest to him was a red door. Next was a blue one. After that was a green one. And the last one was black. Above the second and third doors symbols were cut into the wall. As he watched, all of a sudden, the lights began blinking very rapidly. Different ones blinked at different rates. While some were on, others were off and vice versa.

  He studied the symbols cut into the wall above the second and third doors. The language seemed to be the same as the language of the previous inscription. Some of the combinations of inside patterns and outside shapes seemed even to be the same though the pairings might have been different. There were also some new inside patterns and outside shapes. He took out his notebook and copied everything as carefully as he could. He turned back to the previous page and wrote at the top: “On a Wooden Door.” At the top of the second set of inscriptions, he wrote: “Above the middle two of four colored doors.”

  He worked for a long time because he was determined to get everything right. He was very meticulous because he knew how crucial his exactitude would be if such symbols were ever to be deciphered.

  He worked so hard and was so absorbed in what he was doing that he hardly noticed that, as time went on, the row of overhead lights that had been blinking so crazily seemed to become more and more synchronized as time went on.

  The time came when they went on and off all together. Then, the blinking slowed, meaning that the time the room grew dark lengthened. He got scared and tried to open the door through which he had come and get out of there but it was locked. It would not open. Because there was no handle and the space between the door and its frame was so flush, he had no way to open it unless he wanted to risk using the explosives which he still did not want to do.

  Then the lights blinked out and stayed out. He was alone in pitch blackness. He dared not move. He listened for stray sounds and thought he heard a series of scraping sounds as of a four- or six- or eight-legged animal galloping down a corridor that lay on the other side of the wall on his left.

  He stood with his back to the door through which he had entered this place when suddenly the lights came back on. Though the room lit up was really no more comforting than when the room was utterly dark, he still felt a little bit relieved. He decided to pick one of the four doors on the wall of the room he had entered, the one with the inscriptions cut into the wall above the second and third doors. He decided to start with the first of the doors on his left (the red one) and try to open it. Then, if that one did not open, he would try a second door and then a third and then the fourth door. He hoped one of them would open.

  He was about to turn the handle on the red door when the lights went out again. He heard, in front of him and to the left, a sound like that of metal sliding across stone. Might that be a door opening, he wondered, not by rotating on a hinge but by sliding across the floor and into a recessed hollow?

  He got down on his hands and knees and began crawling towards the sound. The lights went on while he was crawling and, with the aid of the lights, he was able to see that the red door was opening, not by swinging on a hinge, but by sliding to the left into an opening that existed in that part of the wall.

  The door stopped where its handle hit the edge of the recess through which the door had slide. He crawled through the opening into still another room the floor of which seemed to him to be slightly damp and clammy and cool. He took a breath. The air was very musty and cool and damp.

  A very weak yellowish light came on. It came from recessed openings high up on both walls of what seemed to be a long corridor. He saw two rows of very dim yellowish lights streaming far away ahead of him at an angle and becoming closer together the farther away they were.

  He wondered what time it was. He wondered if there was enough light streaming from overhead to enable him to tell the time. He pulled back his shirt and coat sleeves and raised his right arm up to his eyes. But there was no watch. He had left it in his backpack which still was bound to his back. He stopped crawling, sat up, removed his backpack and looked for the pouch that held his watch. He pressed a button. The dial lit up. He saw the time. It was 2:45 p.m. earth time. What did that mean here? He had spent two days and one night in this place. He put away the watch.

  Instead of crawling on, he remained sitting on the floor of the corridor with the dim and recessed overhead lights and tried to figure out what to do. He had, of course, no idea what to do. His only choice was to go forward, go back, or stay where he was indefinitely. Going back meant reaching a door that would not open. It would serve no purpose and would make no sense to stay where he was. So his only option was to go forward despite the fact that he had no idea where the corridor led or what awaited him or even whether the corridor dead-ended at a blank wall or locked door.

  While he sat there, pondering, he heard the sound of metal sliding over stone again. He got up quickly and raced back to the sliding red door. He didn’t want the door to close all the way, thus setting up another perhaps impenetrable barrier between him and the way from which he came. But he was a little too slow. When he got to the door, he found it had nearly crossed the barrier. There was only a tiny slit for an opening. He pushed his fingers in there and tried to push open the door, but the door kept closing.

  He pulled his fingers out just in time to prevent them from being squeezed or even severed by the door as it slid relentlessly against its frame. He did not want what happened to the cable back in the elevator room to happen to his fingers here in this room.

  He didn’t know what to do. He sat down on the floor, his back against the door that just had closed. He leaned back against it. He closed his eyes and actually slept for a while.

  He had a strange dream: a woman who looked familiar to him but whose image he could not quite place was handing him a card in the shape of a heart. The card was entirely red on one side and white with strange black markings on it on the other side. Aside from the indecipherable black markings, nothing in the way of letters, words, or phrases meaningful to him was printed on either side of the card.

  One thing he noticed about the card that he regarded as peculiar was its thickness. It seemed to him to be much thicker than any one card could be. He decided that it was either made out of very coarse paper or else it was two or more cards made of thin paper that were somehow stuck together. He turned the card on its side to see if more than one card was there. He tried to find layers but, when trying to do that, he dropped it; and, when he dropped the card, it began to change shape. It bent in half and bent so sharply that the card became creased.

  The card began to flutter. It fluttered open and closed and open again somewhat in the manner of a butterfly slowly flapping its wings. Then it did indeed seem to change into a butterfly, flying up in the air and towards him. On one of its closest approaches, it seemed to hover motionlessly in mid-air for quite a while. A head with little beady black eyes and antennae emerged. The eyes glittered and seemed to be looking at him. Then the heart-shaped butterfly turned around and few away.

  Seeing it fly away made him connect the image of the woman who had handed him the card to someone he knew. The woman was Sylvia Ridgeway. The image was that of the woman he recalled seeing and of the photographs of her he had studied. Making that connection put an end to his dream.

  When he woke up, it occurred to him that he might have been better off just staying where he was when he had his back against the first door he had entered. He could then have banged on the door at intervals of perhaps ten minutes. He could have done that hour after hour until someone heard him or was so bothered by his knocking that they checked on what was going on and, in checki
ng, had rescued him whether willingly or not. But now he was really trapped. Door after door and step after step lay behind him; and he had no idea what lay ahead.

  Sometimes, he thought, you are better off doing nothing from the time you realize you are trapped. Then he realized that ‘nothing’ is never ‘nothing at all’—it is always something. So he qualified his thought to the extent that, by ‘nothing’ he actually meant banging on a door, calling for help, and waiting for rescue. Sometimes, doing those three things and doing nothing else are best, he reasoned.

  He looked around again, saw wisps of light sneaking out from the crevices that existed between the top of the door against which he rested and the ceiling and the bottom of the door and the floor. He realized the lights in that narrow room must have gone back on. He got up and tried shaking and moving the sliding door, but it would not shake. It would not move.

  Then he heard another sound. It came from behind and to the side—to his right. It was the same sound of steel sliding over stone that this door made when it opened and closed only more muted and dull. It wasn’t coming from the door he had his back to because that one was not moving. It occurred to him that it was coming from some other door on the other side of the wall to his right. He wondered if astronaut Ridgeway was there, like him, a victim and prisoner of doors and going through whichever one she was able to open or that opened on its own when he got close to it.

  He stood up and banged against the wall on his right with the sides of both closed fists, asking at intervals if someone was there and if whoever made the noise was astronaut Ridgeway.

  “Whoever you are, help me,” he yelled, “or at least provide me with some company. I cannot stand being trapped in here like this. I cannot stand being all alone.” But he got no reply and first slowed and then stopped his banging and yelling. He slid down to the floor and sat there with his back against one of the doors.

  Chapter 8: Another & Another

  He opened his eyes after a while and noticed that a very narrow corridor led from the room where he was to somewhere else. He was surprised that he had not noticed the corridor earlier. Perhaps the reason had to do with the fact that it was dark earlier but now illuminated. He got up and walked over to the corridor, curious to see what might be down there.

  Rather than walking down the corridor, he sat down in front of it. He crossed his legs and leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs and his hands on his cheeks. He contemplated the corridor in front of him. Tiny recessed lights were set into a groove that ran down the center of the ceiling. He studied the ceiling, the floor, and the walls. He was tired and fell asleep and began dreaming of being in a luxurious bedroom and lying in a huge bed and listening to music. A drumbeat awakened him.

  He had forgotten where he was and what he had been doing. Now he remembered. He had been sitting on the floor at the entrance to a corridor with his legs folded up beneath him—yoga-style. Deciding to get up, he got up by unfolding his legs and straightening them. In that way, he got to the point where his feet were flat on the ground. Then he wiggled his way up the face of the door he had been leaning against until he was nearly standing.

  Then he pushed himself away from the ground and took a couple of staggering steps with his hands out so that he could catch himself if he fell. He was quite dizzy and ravenously hungry. He had his knapsack beside him. He pulled out of it a bag of food and another of water and made himself a little meal. After eating, he felt a little better and was better able to think about what to do next.

  The light was so weak and came from so high up and from such a strange angle that he had a hard time seeing anything around him. He reached out and around with his arms. The corridor was too narrow for him to touch both walls at once but not so wide that he could not, by leaning left, touch that wall and then, by leaning right, touch the other wall. In this way, he staggered forward.

  Wobbling along, he felt like one of those weighted inflatable clowns, which wobbled this way and that, taking a long time to come to rest standing upright.

  The walls seemed very rough. They seemed to him to be made of concrete the surface of which took the shape it had because it had been poured down between flat wooden surfaces. And, though such concrete can seem dateless, he felt the wall had been constructed long ago and had been damp most of the time since it had been built. It felt slimy. In places, it was very slimy, even spongy. He wondered if some kind of moss or fungus was growing on it and if whatever was there posed a danger to him.

  He made some progress going down the corridor one slow and steady step at a time. He took one step and then another and then another. He came to a place where the corridor began to curve to the right. Before going very far along the bend, he looked backwards. He could no longer see the sliding door through which he had entered this place. He saw only two lines of weak and yellowish lights slowly converging.

  He walked down this new corridor but was a little alarmed when he saw, before much more time passed, that it seemed to be coming to a dead end at a wall. Still, he walked on. He had to examine the place. Perhaps there was an opening somewhere. Perhaps there was a chute, a slide, a hoist, a ladder, or a door.

  As he walked, he also kept looking to the right and the left, above and below. But he saw no openings of any kind anywhere and came to the dead end and realized that it was not exactly a dead end. There was a door there. The door was closed.

  This new door, larger than any of the previous ones he had encountered, seemed to be made of steel or else was made of something else but looked to him like steel because of the dim light. Or maybe it was not painted gray but just seemed to be painted gray. It was so big it took up almost the entire space of the corridor. It was just a little shorter and a little narrower than the width and height of the corridor.

  He banged on it and, though it seemed to be (looked like and felt like) metal, his banging produced a solid sound, a “Clunk,” a sound that did not echo or reverberate at all. It was a sound like the sound of banging on a thick piece of very hard wood. “Clunk...Clunk.” He stopped banging. He was hurting the sides of his fists and his palms without accomplishing anything.

  And he wondered if the metal or whatever other material it was might not be just a sheathing that was nailed over wood or some other solid substance. And he did find a place where nails had been pounded into the metal. It was a vertical line of nails which he found by rubbing his hand lightly over what he was now convinced was sheathing of some kind.

  The bottom of the door was even with the ground. The left side of the door seemed to emerge from the wall on the left. He noticed that, though the wall on the right had a recess made to receive the right edge of the door, the door had not quite reached the recess. There was a gap there. It occurred to him that he might be able to open the door by taking advantage of this slight gap between the right edge of the door and the wall ready to receive it.

  He was able, by turning so that he faced to the right, to get both of his hands around the right edge of the door. Then, by putting his feet on the wall at the right of the door and actually climbing up onto the wall, he thought he might be able to get enough leverage to force the door open.

  He tried one time without success. Then, bringing his feet up higher and slightly changing the placement of his hands, he tried a second time. The door seemed to budge slightly. Then, bringing his feet up still higher and turning so that he faced the door and using only his right hand, he tried to move it again.

  This time it slid open a little. He heard a grating sound, the sound of the bottom of the door scraping against the floor. Then it slid smoothly, causing him to lose his handhold and fall down onto the floor.

  When he got up, he saw that he had succeeded in widening the open between the right edge of the door and the wall enough for him to be able to slip through. He did. He slipped between the edge of the door on one side and the grooved stone on the other side and came out into the space on the other side of the door. It was another corridor but much dif
ferent in appearance than the space where he had just been.

  But he wasn’t sure if it would be wise for him to rush forward. He decided it would be better to insure that the way back through this door was safer. He was worried that something he found up ahead might make him want to go back in which case he had to secure as much of an escape route as he could.

  So, even though he had gotten to the other side of the metal-sheathed sliding door and had made a cursory inspection of the new space, he squeezed back into the narrow space that lay between the metal-sheathed door and the stone and tried harder than before, as hard as he could, to get the door to open even a little wider.

  He did everything he could think of to get it to open wider but nothing worked. He couldn’t budge it. It was stuck. So he had to give up on the idea of enlarging and securing this possible escape route. He had to just hope that the gap he had already opened would stay open.

  So he squeezed through the opening once more and came out once again into the space that was on the other side of the door. He brushed himself off and looked around.

  Chapter 9: Cones of Light

  The space he entered, though another corridor, was quite different from the corridor he had just left. The walls were closer together. The ceiling was lower. Everything, the walls, the ceiling, and the floor were made out of tightly bound stone blocks.

  Light came through small round holes drilled through a line of stone blocks that ran down the center of the ceiling. Those blocks slightly jutted out from the surrounding stone-block surface.

  From where he stood, he saw lovely cones of light, coming from the holes and spreading outwards as they fell down onto the floor. The cones were in a line and so perfectly planned that, at their widest, they just barely touched each other and also the walls on both sides.

  He was curious to know what kind of light it was and where exactly it came from. Because the light had a yellowish cast to it, he thought it might be electrical, but he couldn’t be certain.