A Theory of Gravity

by Wycroft Taylor

  The last step was so far above the one beneath it that he had to jump up high enough to get his forearms and elbows on the surface of the higher step. Then he had to scoot forward, moving one arm at a time. Then he had to swing his body sideways until, on one swing, he was able to get a foot onto the surface of the higher step. Then he moved that foot along until he got a knee up there. Then he stood up, dusted himself off as best he could, and looked around.

  Chapter 17: Two Round Windows

  Having gotten up the last of the ever larger stairs and having stood up and looked around him, he saw that he was standing at the end of a long corridor that ran for a long while to his right and came to a dead end at the left edge of the stairway.

  Where he stood, the corridor’s floor seemed to be flat but as soon as it reached the right edge of the stairway, it started sloping upwards. It became an inclined ramp. There were only the two lights high up on the ceiling, one at the left edge of the stairs and the other at the right edge.

  For fifty yards or so after the second light, there was no light at all. But then there was another and another and another, making a line of lights running down the center of the ceiling. The line however was not straight. It made a right turn of about 15 degrees about halfway down

  At the very end of the ramp, he could make out a wall with a number of dark geometric figures on it arranged in an interesting way. Also, on his left, where the corridor made its turn to the right, he saw two round windows about a foot apart. They were high up on the wall. One of the windows was on the wall before the turn and therefore parallel to him while the other was set into the wall about a foot after the wall made its turn. The second one more or less faced him; and it was out of this one that a bright light shined.

  Where the wall made its turn to the right, there was also on the floor a little wooden stool. It was lying on its side. He went over to the stool, picked it up, moved it to a place on the landing that was opposite the two round windows and set it down upright. He put the flat of one palm on it and leaned down on it and shook it a little bit. He wanted to see if it was sturdy enough to hold him. When he was satisfied that it was, he sat down on it.

  He had positioned the stool so that both windows were visible to him and both at approximately the same angle in relation to him. It was a little awkward sitting on the stool because the floor on either side of the turn slanted upwards. This meant the stool sat at an angle. He tried to compensate by leaning to right.

  He wanted to spend some time looking through the windows. So he sat on the stool against one wall of the ramp and wondered if the light coming through the windows came from the outside or from just another room.

  He also wondered why the window on the left was so dark while the one on his right was so bright. He noticed a fluctuation of intensity of light here too, with the light coming through the window on the left sometimes being a little brighter while the light of the corresponding window sometimes seemed to diminish. He wondered why that was so. Were there two different rooms? Were there two different skies? Or were his eyes playing tricks on him?

  He noticed too that a lot of dust seemed to be hovering in the air. And the dust particles were lit up by the light coming through the windows, especially the window on the right. The dust sparkled and shook. He felt like he was a giant among the stars and lost among them. He hunched his shoulders up and scrunched his head down while that dust swam and flew and glittered around him.

  It occurred to him that, by standing on the stool, he might be able to get high enough at least to look through those windows. He was curious to know what was out there.

  He sat for quite a while mulling over the possibilities of what he might see. He closed his eyes. He dreamed about the patterns swirling dust might make. He suddenly grew very sleepy. His head drooped. He leaned forward, about to fall on the floor, and then suddenly revived enough to keep from falling.

  He considered taking a nap. He looked around and wondered if lying down on the floor beneath those windows made sense. Just thinking about sleeping on the floor seemed to revive him however.

  He stared anew at the two windows and was surprised to discover that, now, the bright light was coming through the window on the left while only darkness lay behind the window on the right. This was the opposite of what he recalled. Had he gotten mixed up? Or had the light and the darkness actually switched places with one another?

  He studied the windows more carefully than he had before. He saw that each of the windows was set inside of a heavily recessed Baroque-style wooden frame. There would be a curved ring and then a sharply angled ring and then another curved ring and then another angled one. Each frame was painted white. He noticed that, in some places, the paint had flaked off and, where that had happened, a pale blond wood, almost indistinguishable from the faded white of the paint, was visible.

  The two windows were like the cross-eyed eyes of some sort of fantastical creature with a face lacking a nose or mouth (unless the bottom edge of the wall might be regarded as its mouth).

  He sat there and looked at the round windows. One eye was wide open and stared fervently at him. It was the one on the left. The other eye was either closed or perhaps defective. Or was the creature winking at him?

  While he watched, a beam of light appeared. It came from the bottom of the right hand corner of the dark window and shot across the window and into the space where he was. It cast a conical beam on the wall behind him. And the beam was moving from somewhere below and to the right of the window to somewhere below and to the left of it. Its beam moved across the wall behind him from his left side to his right side.

  He kept glancing from the window to the wall behind him. He wanted to understand what was happening.

  While the beam of light still shone on the wall to his right, a shadow manifested itself also. The beam of light was diffuse enough to faintly light up all of the space that the dark window revealed. Consequently, a shadow became visible. It descended from the upper edge of the view to the lower edge. It descended straight downwards. It was very vague and odd in shape. There were a lot of curves and angles, and these changed continuously. He tried to identify it but could find no way to do so. It was darker than what surrounded it.

  About this time he must have fallen asleep because he had no recollection of seeing anything or doing anything after seeing the shadow. Then something awakened him by brushing against him. He felt a light touch like a single finger of a delicate hand brushing against him. So he screamed and opened his eyes and looked around. He expected to see someone present in the space but, looking around, he saw that he was still alone, sitting on a stool, and facing two round windows, one dark and one light.

  The one on his right was light and the other dark. He could swear that it had been just the opposite a little while ago.

  At this point, he decided to use the stool as a footstool. He felt that, if he pushed it up against each of the windows, and climbed up on it, he might be able to get more than just a tiny round glimpse of the sky.

  So he grabbed the rounded edges of the seat of the stool with both hands, picked the stool up, and moved it over to the wall. First, he put it beneath the bright window, the one on his right.

  There were some horizontal rungs in between the four angled legs which he might have used as a kind of ladder to get up there. Instead, he just lifted one leg high and put his foot on the seat and then lifted his body by that one leg while pressing a hand against the wall for support. In that way, he got his other foot on the seat and slowly straightened his body. He put both hands on the wall to help support himself as he stood up straight.

  Not yet able to see, he went up on his toes and put his fingers on the lower edge of the window’s frame. Doing that, he did get up high enough so that he could peek through the window but not at the ground. He still was only able to look at the sky, but now he could see more of it.

  What he did see was an empty blue daytime sky, seen as if at the end of the day, the daylight sl
ightly fading. If it was only an imitation sky, it was a pretty good imitation. He even saw, in the far distance, little wisps of what he was convinced were clouds. If those were imitation clouds, they were good imitations. What the ground was like or if there was a ground, he couldn’t tell from where he stood.

  He wished he could get up higher. He looked around, thinking he might find something that he might use to get up higher. But he didn’t see any furnishings or tools or ladders or anything like that.

  So he carefully stepped down, this time using one of those horizontal rungs between the slanting legs, to make his descent a little easier. He ran one hand along the wall and, when he got low enough on it, he touched the seat of the stool with the other hand, and by that means he got both feet back on the ground.

  Then he moved the stool over to the wall underneath the window on the left which was now the dark one. Again, he climbed up on the stool. Again, he stood up and got on his tiptoes and grabbed the frame of the round window with his fingers and looked out. This time, he saw, not a daytime sky, but a nighttime sky—a nighttime sky that seemed to be brightening—it was as if dawn was just about to arrive.

  This nighttime sky he was looking at had a full moon in it but no stars. Strangely, that moon lay exactly in the center of that round window. It seemed to be the pupil of the round eye he had been looking at for so long. But, if it was an eye, it was an eye seen only in the negative in that everything normally black was white and everything normally white was black.

  As he watched, what was black or at least gray acquired a bluish tint. Also, the shadow on that moon seemed to turn blue. The blue on the shadows of the moon came more and more to match the blue of the sky until the moon seemed to him to be not quite solid but instead more like a wafer that was slowly dissolving.

  He looked towards the left side of this round window to see if there was some kind of wall there. But he didn’t see anything like that. He got down off the stool, moved it back to the first window, got back up on it, and looked to the right of that window, wondering if some kind of wall, not visible in the dark behind that other one would be visible behind this one. But he did not see anything like a wall.

  But, he wondered, absent some kind of wall in between the two windows, how would it be possible for the two adjacent windows to reveal different things, places, and times of day? It didn’t make any sense to him.

  He moved the stool back to where he had put it before and sat down with the ramp behind him and the stairs on his left. Looking up at the two windows, one dark and the other light, he asked himself a question: What does it all mean?

  He wondered if mirrors might explain the illusion. If so, somebody surely had gone to a lot of trouble to create that illusion. Why would they do it? And who did they do it for? Surely, it was not done just for him.

  He looked up at the ceiling and down at the floor. He was wondering if it was possible that a microphone was hidden somewhere around there. On the assumption there was one hidden there, he muttered, “Can you please tell me where Sylvia Ridgeway is? I was sent to rescue her. I now want only to see her and make sure she is alright. If you know where she is, then please for God’s sake put me in touch with her.”

  But there was no answer. And, even after a delay of an hour or so, no one came out of a hidden hatchway to meet with or talk to him.

  He looked again that the two side-by-side windows, the one on the left now showed daylight and the other nighttime. He asked himself his: Wasn’t it just the opposite just a little while before?

  He moved the stool one more time. He moved it beneath the dark window, the one on his right. He wanted to look at that moon again. He wanted to examine more carefully the pattern of light and shadow on that moon. He wanted to see if it corresponded to the pattern of light and shadow he remembered seeing on the moon he knew.

  So he got back up on the stool, clung with his fingers to the bottom of the window, got up on his toes, and looked out but saw no moon at all. What he did see, instead of a moon, was something tear-shaped and translucent as if made of frosted glass. It was suspended high in the sky.

  Chapter 18: White Owl

  He tried to get up higher on his tiptoes. He tried to pull himself up a little bit by means of his fingers. He saw that what he had been looking at, instead of being a translucent piece of glass in the shape of a drop of water, was a little round white bird. It might even have been an owl.

  The bird sat perched on the outer edge of the window frame. With its head upraised, it looked like a tear falling from the moon. When it dropped its head a little bit, it became obviously a bird.

  And the bird stared steadily at him. It too had round eyes. Its eyes too had pupils, except that those were red. Then, suddenly, the bird or owl blinked. He too was blinking. Maybe the bird’s blinking was in reaction to his own blinking.

  He could not possibly stare the bird down. He did not have the same ability to stare fixedly at anything. At some point, he had to blink. And, when he did that, the bird (he now saw that it was either an owl or an exact replica of an owl) lifted its wings, flapped them, and slowly rose up into the air—all the while looking at him.

  In the meantime, the light coming from the overhead bulbs was fading. It was becoming quite dark in there which, by the way, made the light coming from the window on the right seem brighter than before even though, in actuality, that light too was becoming dimmer while the light coming from the window on the left was growing brighter. The owl kept staring at him.

  He got down off the stool and moved it underneath the window on his left, the one that had earlier revealed a pitch black sky but now showed a sky that was brightening. He got up on top of the stool and looked out. Dawn was breaking out there. What had been a black sky was now, at its lowest edge, pale blue. Whereas before he saw a sky full of stars, now there was only one very bright star. While he watched, the strip of pale blue widened and then turned a brilliant blue and stayed that way for a while. Then the sky darkened. Time had speeded up out there.

  Other lights, stars and planets, began to shine and twinkle in this darkening firmament. A grayish-blackened sphere appeared in this sky. It was a new moon. Suddenly, another moon or a cloud drifted over from the right. Or what he saw might have been something other than either a moon or cloud since it moved up and down as well as sideways. It settled on the lower edge of the window and looked at him. He recognized the owl. It had crossed whatever barrier existed between the different worlds of the different windows.

  And the owl was becoming harder and harder to see because the light that was coming from inside was changing. He looked to his right and saw light streaming in from that direction. And, getting down of the stool and walking back to the wall and looking in the direction of the two windows, he saw that now the window on the right was full of light while the one on his left was dark.

  And, just then, while he watched, the lighted window became noticeably dimmer while the dark window became noticeably brighter. Whenever a window became dark, the owl flew over to it, settled down on the ledge outside of it, and then after settling down stared at him.

  At one point, he moved the stool over to the window where the owl was and got up on top of the stool. Though the window was shut, he held up his hands to the owl and called to it. He put his open hand right up against the glass and called to it.

  He pretended the glass was not there. He wanted the owl to come through the space where the glass sheet was and alight on his hand and, once there, make its owl-like sounds.

  Then, as he watched from his low vantage point at the very bottom of the round window, he saw the owl stretch its wings, stand up on its legs, and flap its wings enough to lift itself up into the air. It hovered in mid-air for a while. Then, the owl swung around so that its tail was high and its head low. It never stopped staring at him.

  The owl lifted its legs up against its torso. After flapping its wings a couple of times, the owl came to the window but stopped before hitting it. Just when he was c
onvinced the owl would hit the glass, the owl changed the angle of its wings and swung its body around again and stuck out its legs so that it came feet foremost to the window and, with those, began scrambling against the closed window. Somehow, it actually opened up the window by means of the pressure it exerted.

  There might have been a latch of some kind at the bottom of the window on the outside. That owl might have somehow, on purpose or by accident, found a way to turn it. And, when it did that, the window sprung open a little bit.

  When the owl undid that latch and pushed against the window, the top of the window moved out and the bottom moved inwards. Then the owl rose a little higher into the air and pushed a little harder against the bottom half of the window with its feet, causing the window to open a little more. It came in farther along the bottom half and went out farther at the top half.

  Then the owl flew up high into the air and turned around and flew out and away from him. Then it came back and this time scrambled up on the top edge of the window it had partially opened. It leaned forward and twisted its head so that it could stare at him with just one eye. Then it looked at him straight on and, for quite a while, simply stared at him with its patient wide-open eyes.

  And then, at a certain point, the owl flapped its wings in such a way as to take it up into the air and away from him. Then it swung around to the right, lifted up its legs, and flew so far out into space as to become just a point. Then he lost sight of it completely.

  It had been getting lighter on that side. That was probably the reason the owl took off, he figured. So he got down off the stool and moved it under the other window and got up on it and looked. But, even though night had come to that window, the owl did not. He waited for quite a while in vain for the owl to come; but it did not come during the whole of the time he patiently waited for it to come.

  After a while, he got down off the second stool, moved it across the corridor and against the wall that faced both windows. Sitting on the stool, he merely wondered about that owl. In the meantime, the light kept alternating, with first the light from one window being bright and then the light from the other being bright.