by Hickey, Greg
They walked to the tarnished silver stream that wound through the middle of the colony and sat and dipped their feet into the cool, murmuring water. She leaned against him, her shoulder pressed tentatively against his, and he felt the still serenity of the meadow sweep over him. Samuel briefly recalled the previous day when he had watched the two men in the meal hall nearly come to blows, the fear he had seen in the older man’s face, and the muted reflection of that same fear in hers. But that thought seemed a distant memory, and though he felt a faint reminder of the nausea bubbling in his stomach, he suppressed it willfully now. He felt as though he could slip easily into sleep here on the cushioned grass, despite his seated position and the heat from the sun high in the sky. He thought of her smile now as he floated in and out of full consciousness, her lips a soft and slowly unraveling blanket. How easy it would be to crawl into a blanket such as that, to wrap himself in it, to roll over just once so the fraying cotton would caress him front and back, then to drift off into dreamless sleep…
The sound of bells emerged smoothly and yet unnaturally from the whisper of wind and water. Samuel and Penny watched idly as the other colonists began their half-hearted scurry toward the meal halls, drawn by their hunger, driven away by their fear.
Penny gestured to her mouth and asked, “Do you want eat?”
He decided he was hungry, and together they stood and began to stroll toward the nearest hall. He thought rather lazily that this was a different meal hall than the one in which he had spent the morning in concentrated thought, and he decided it was not so bad after all that there was no furniture in the halls, since they would now be encouraged to take their meals outside to eat in the shade of a spreading tree. Then, as they neared the hall, a current raced through his body as though he had just emerged, near-drowning, from a pool of icy water and inhaled a deep breath of fresh air. He left Penny behind and took off running toward the meal hall, racing to catch up with his thoughts, which cried out in a mixture of self-shamed disbelief and wild, joyous excitement, until he burst through the doorway of the hall and skidded to a stop inside.
The other halls! Why had he not thought before to investigate the other halls? Samuel fought to catch his breath as he stood at the entrance of another near-empty meal hall. The few colonists inside hung close to the walls and eased toward the door as he entered. Samuel ignored them. He went to the wall and inspected those seams, then turned his attention to the floor. Everything appeared to be identical to the first hall. His enthusiasm scarcely dampened, Samuel rushed to a third meal hall, then a fourth. They too were empty and clean. But in the fifth hall, he found what he had been looking for.
Against one wall, under a row of windows, lay a narrow piece of metal about the length of his hand. It was part of a window latch that had apparently snapped off and fallen to the floor. Yet the windows were about four meters above the ground, well beyond the reach of the people of the colony, and few colonists in recent memory had possessed either the desire or ingenuity to even attempt to open or close a window in any of the halls. Moreover, the latch showed no signs of rust or any other wear that might have led to its breaking. Yet there it lay, snapped off by some mysterious force, clearly broken rather than cut, as indicated by the rough edges of the metal. Samuel sat against the wall and weighed the latch in his hand, feeling the cool, smooth surface of the metal and the jagged, broken end. He ran a finger over the tip and realized it was sharp enough to slice his finger if he were to apply a bit more force.
The pressure of the broken latch on his finger triggered some connection in his mind, and he turned and crouched facing the wall. He ran the same finger along the seam in the wall, feeling its two edges under his skin, so close together they almost produced the same single sensation. But there was space between them, albeit only the very narrowest and shallowest of gaps, and at this moment Samuel made the distinction between emptiness and extension, nothing and something, zero and one. The broken latch was one thing, one entity, while the seam itself was not a thing, not an entity in and of itself, but an absence of entities, a gap in the wholeness, the oneness of the wall.
Furthermore, these states of oneness and nothingness were not fixed, but fluid. Space could be filled by bodies with extension, and such bodies could also be removed or broken to create empty space once more. In this way, the latch, which had once been part of a single intact window, was now separated from the window by a certain region of space. And the wall, which may have once been a single continuous panel, was now divided in two by the space of the seam that ran along its length. And perhaps most importantly, this space could be filled once more. Though he lacked the words to articulate this realization, Samuel nonetheless felt as though he had come to understand something of great significance. He studied the latch for a moment, then turned and pressed its pointed edge into the seam in the wall.
The latch fit snugly into the seam. Samuel wiggled it a bit, not entirely sure what he expected. He turned it over, reinserted it, wiggled it some more. Nothing happened. He stepped away from the wall, stared at the latch in his hand, then again at the seam. He turned and walked to one of the squares on the floor, crouched and inserted the latch into the seam and wormed it around. As he did so, he felt the latch catch in the floor with the broken end pointing toward the center of the square. The end of the latch seemed to have slipped underneath the floor itself, underneath a square panel bordered by the seam. He levered the handle of the latch downward and felt the edge of the panel nearest to him lift ever so slightly. Then, with a metallic clank from the opposite side of the square, it stopped. He pulled on the latch with all his might, but the panel, the edge nearest to Samuel a few millimeters above the plane of the floor, refused to move any farther. He relaxed his hold on the latch and felt the square sink back to the floor.
Samuel shifted the latch to make sure its grip on the underside of the panel was secure. He lifted the section again but once more it stopped in the same place. He lowered it, gathered all his strength and pushed the latch to the floor as hard as he could. Again the square rose a few millimeters, at which point there came a much louder clank from the side opposite Samuel and the panel threw the latch from the seam as it slammed back into the floor. Samuel picked up the latch, walked around to the adjacent side of the square and inserted the tool into this seam. He pulled on the latch, but despite all his efforts, the panel did not budge. He shifted it to a different position along the length of the seam and tried again. Nothing. Undeterred, Samuel walked to the third side of the square, the side opposite where he had started. He inserted the latch and pulled, and the edge of the section began to rise, a few millimeters, then a centimeter, then just high enough for him to slide his fingers into the gap. He heaved at the underside of the panel, but he could not lift it alone. It fell back to the floor, nearly crushing his fingers.
Samuel bolted from the hall and out into the meadow. He spotted Penny strolling across the empty field and raced up to her.
“I looked for you,” she said.
“Come with me,” said Samuel. He turned back to the meal hall and gestured for her to follow him.
She started after him, struggling to catch up. She found him inside the meal hall, crouched on the floor, using the window latch to hold up the edge of the panel.
“Come here,” he called. “Come and help me.”
She went to him and slid her fingers into the gap between the floor and the edge of the square as he showed her. Together, with all their combined strength, they managed to lift the edge. Bit by bit they raised the panel, and as they did so the entire square section of the floor began to rotate with repeated clicking noises about a fixed axis, so that as they lifted their side, the side opposite them sunk into the floor. And as the panel turned, there came from the depths of the newly exposed space beneath the floor the thick slopping sound of some liquid being agitated. Soon they had turned the section far enough to see what lay underneath. Bolted to the underside of the square, and now rotating toward th
em as they lifted this panel, was a table surrounded by chairs, one complete set of the meal hall’s furniture.
X
Frozen in place, Samuel and Penny stared dumbly as the furniture emerged from the depths of the floor, dripping with some unknown liquid. Their momentary hesitation, coupled with the weight of the whole apparatus, caused the panel to slip from their grasp. It slammed into the floor with a crash that resounded through the silent hall and shook the ground beneath their feet. They looked at each other and their eyes locked.
As one they crouched to the floor. Samuel pushed the broken latch back into the seam and raised the square just far enough to give their fingers purchase. Together they lifted the panel, not watching or speaking to one another yet perfectly aware of what the other was doing, trusting the other’s mind as much as they trusted their own. As the section rotated away from them, they struggled to lift it any farther from the end where they stood, so they stepped around the corners of the hole and continued to rotate the panel as they walked along the edge of the square toward the central axis. The section balanced in the middle, having been rotated ninety degrees from its initial position. One side of the panel was bare and on the opposite side was the furniture, a bolted-down circular table surrounded by a set of equally well-fastened chairs, all glistening wet in the midday sunlight. Half a meter below the floor the dark liquid splashed about softly.
For a moment Samuel forgot the whole purpose behind opening this door. That all the furniture in all the meal halls throughout the entire colony could be rotated into the floor, that someone or something had presumably done so, that below the surface in which he and the other colonists ate their meals three times each day there existed this veritable lake of unknown liquid—the whole thing was unbelievable. He tried to imagine how far this space must extend under the floor, what else might lie down there, what might lie beneath the floors of the other meal halls, the sleeping halls… And then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, he stepped to the edge of the hole and began to lower himself inside. Penny gave a short shriek and grabbed at his hands as he hung from the edge of the hole.
“What are you doing?” she cried. But he had already dipped his legs into the cool liquid and was now dangling at arm’s length from the edge. He felt his toes scrape a surface at the bottom of the pool.
“It’s all right,” he told her, letting go of the floor. As he did so, the thrill of exploration was replaced by a millisecond of sheer terror. But then his feet landed safely on solid ground and the exhilaration returned.
“I can stand,” he said, chest-deep in the fluid. He stomped on the floor for good measure but the noise was muffled in the black depths.
Penny knelt at the hole and stared at him with pursed lips. Her hands gripped the edge of the opening, palms to the floor, fingers curled beneath it. The early afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows of the hall threw an eerie glow into the underground chamber and reflected off the liquid and wet furniture that hung from the bottom of the floor, kaleidoscoping obliquely between this inky sea and low sky. In the half-darkness, the liquid seemed to flow on forever in all directions. The spectral tables and chairs cast long shadows through the weird orange-gray light and into the blackness, shadows that overlapped upon one another and shimmered with the slow undulation of the murky liquid, the empty sloshing sound only serving to reinforce the isolation of this place. The chamber had the look and sound of hollow death but the smell of freshness, of life. For the liquid was not purely water. It foamed slightly as Samuel moved, and when he put a finger to his mouth, he found it had a faintly bitter taste.
From up above the meal hall floor came a swift, dull thud. Penny glanced over her shoulder and when she turned back her face was creased with confusion and worry.
“The door,” she said. “The door…” She raised her hands and clapped them together once.
“It’s fine,” said Samuel. “I’m—we—are fine.”
But he began to make his way back under the hole nonetheless. Penny crouched at the edge and stared down into the liquid gloom, biting her lip. Her knuckles were white where her fingers wrapped around the floor, and she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. A low rumble began out beyond the darkness. The liquid started to splash about more urgently. Samuel half-walked, half-paddled through the growing current. He was about to leap up and grab the edge of the hole when the floor below him erupted.
The jets of water stung his feet and propelled him upward until his head scraped the bottom of the floor. By the time he fell back under, the liquid had begun to foam violently. It scorched his eyes as soon as he submerged and he clamped them shut. The pure white suds exploded through the hole above him and Penny fell back with a scream. Samuel heard her muffled cry but could make out nothing else. The jets seemed to come from all directions. They cartwheeled him through the stormy liquid before he had a chance to do anything and peppered his body with the force of a hundred tiny fists. The bitter fluid surged into his nose and mouth and burned as it ran down the back of his throat. He coughed and gasped and inhaled nothing but liquid. He flailed his arms, kicked out his legs. Thousands of invisible eddies flung him about without mercy. He could not decide if his lungs would burst or collapse. He kicked out again. His feet struck something solid. He kicked and pushed and threw his arms overhead and his knuckles cracked on the unforgiving metal of the floor before the whirling current caught him again. But he righted himself this time and hit the bottom and jumped with searching hands. One found the edge of the hole but began to slide immediately under the film of slickery liquid. He threw up the other and grabbed with both hands and pulled as Penny caught him and hauled him out by his arms.
Samuel rolled onto his back and rubbed his eyes and coughed up a lungful of the vile liquid as Penny shook him and slapped at his chest and shoulders. It was not until he had partially cleared his eyes and she started to come back into focus that he realized she was not attempting to revive him. Her eyes were wide and her mouth flapped open and closed but no words emerged. Then the sound faded back in and he could hear her screaming “Up, up, up, up, up!”
He looked past her. His vision reeled as he shifted his gaze. As best he could tell, there was something moving toward them along the ground from the long wall behind her. He pushed himself up to a seat and vomited a little in his mouth. Penny dragged him the rest of the way to his feet. The ivory foam continued to bubble through the divided hole in the meal hall floor. He stared at the wall behind her as she started to push him backward. The seam was gone, replaced by a half-meter opening at the bottom of the wall. And through that hole, attached to several unfurling metal arms, crawled a flat rectangular mop that stretched the entire length of the meal hall.
It advanced toward them steadily. There was nowhere to go. They could not get around it and it had already passed the door of the hall and cut off their only exit. Neither Samuel nor Penny had ever seen such an instrument in their lives. But it did not appear dangerous. They waited until it almost covered their toes and then simply stepped over it. It continued on to the opposite wall. The section below the seam receded up into the wall and the mop ventured all the way inside the exposed chamber, paused and then drew back across the floor, hovering a few centimeters above the ground.
The mop moved faster on its return, but they stepped over it easily once more. It retreated into the wall and the lower partition slid back into place. The noise from beneath the floor stopped. The foam that had pushed through the hole shivered and whispered and began to subside. The half-turned section began to rotate back into the floor. Samuel and Penny recovered their senses long enough to catch it and hold it in place. Something near the panel’s axis ground and screeched in response, but they managed to keep their hold. All around them a series of muffled clanks sounded from below the floor. Then the force on the panel ceased, and Samuel and Penny righted the square back to neutral.
The door to the hall swung open and a slight breeze swept in. Sam
uel dropped to his back and closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. His eyes stung and he could still taste hints of the bitter liquid. His tunic was soaked and his skin slick and he felt like diving into the river to wash this feeling from his body. And with this thought, he realized the acrid, slippery liquid below the floor must clean the furniture. He could think of no other explanation. And since no one in the colony realized the furniture never grew dirty, no one thought it must somehow be cleaned. Even Samuel had to admit he had never noticed that the furniture in the meal halls—in fact all the furniture in all the buildings in the entire colony—was never really dirty. He sat up. Penny glowered at him, unable to speak.
“Come. Let’s turn it back,” Samuel said.
They walked to opposite sides of the hole, their movements efficient and tense. Together they rotated the platform about its axis and returned the furniture to the meal hall surface. The square stopped abruptly just centimeters before settling into the plane of the floor. They gave an extra push, but the final few degrees of rotation had been blocked at the side where they had first lifted the door by a metal bar sandwiched between the underside of the floor and the furniture-side of the door.