City Of Phase

by George Willson

  After a few more open cabinets, she located a microwave hidden in one of them, and a little more digging allowed her to come upon a microwave safe bowl to cook in. Five minutes later, she sat at the table in the living area munching on her impromptu dinner, wondering what would come next. There were other doors in the hallway, and it seemed to go on forever, but what was the point? Blake said they were in the Maze to do things, but what? Where did that elevator go? What were they doing without her? Did they actually leave this place and go somewhere else, or are they still in the building somewhere? She had no way of knowing whether that elevator went up or down, even where she was or how she got here.

  Once she finished, she went ahead and put her dishes as well as the ones that Blake left behind in the dishwasher and went to the elevator to see where it might go. She looked around the perimeter of the doors, but the elevator had no call button. Whoever was in charge had to be the one summoning it only lending more credence to the idea that they were captives since there was no real way out. When it had arrived earlier, the others just trusted it without question and left her without any hesitation.

  Unable to work the elevator, she went back to the hall. She entered the first door past the library hallway and found a slew of workout equipment to rival the gym down the street from her house, but interestingly, everything was present in threes. Three treadmills, three elliptical machines, three sets of weights, and three sets of equipment to work each part of their bodies, which made her recall that in the Maze so far, she had seen two other people, meaning there were a total of three. Perry mentioned two other women who had come and gone, but each was here separately for a total of three at a time. Was that part of the design?

  She walked back to the main living area and noted the four doors at the back of the room, one of which they had identified as her room. If the Maze were set up for three people, then what was the fourth door? She opened the first door along the same wall as the door that led to the never-ending hallway, and it was a bedroom, much like hers with the hotel furnishings and bathroom, but nothing personal. She skipped the next room for now since she had awakened in that one, and checked the next room, which was just another bedroom in the same layout. Blake and Perry had been here for some time, and yet, their rooms did not have any kind of personality to them. She went back into her room and checked the bathroom, which maintained the fully stocked personality of the place with toilet, sink, tub, shower, and a cabinet loaded with towels, soaps, shampoos, and anything else she might need.

  She went to the door on the kitchen side of the living area, and found a room with a variety of equipment that appeared to be medical in nature. She was no doctor by any means, but everything she saw reminded her of machines she had seen in hospitals, and there were a couple of beds set against walls that had panels that were probably attached to them somehow. She laid down on one of them, and the panel behind it lit up although the only thing she could distinguish was her heartbeat. She could gather that one of them, probably Blake, had medical training to deal with injuries in the first part of this room, and it would stand to reason that if people, like her and Perry, came into the Maze hurt, they would need someone who knew how to deal with it.

  She walked back into the hallway where she had found the wardrobe and gym and looked down the corridor. There were doors, but no windows. She started opening doors. One was a theater room with a projector and the moment she opened the door, a menu of movies popped up on the screen. This was nice, but she was more interested in an exit. She checked several other rooms: a fourth bedroom, a swimming pool, a bowling alley, a mini-golf course, a beach, a fifth bedroom, a Jacuzzi, and to her surprise, a driving track. Door after door showed some of the most impressive indoor rooms she had ever seen in her life, but none of them had windows, and none of the doors led to what she thought was outside. One of them led to a room that looked like a meadow complete with an artificial sun and sky along with wind that felt like outside air, but it had walls and she instinctively knew it was not outside.

  The only thing she had learned for certain was that there was no escape.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Time did not exist in the Maze. There was a standard 12-hour clock that measured it for the sake of measuring the hours, but it did not have AM or PM, so she had no idea of how much time had passed. At one point, she decided to go to sleep, and without an alarm or purpose for one, she awoke when her body was done sleeping. Without knowing whether it was morning or night, she was unsure how long she had slept.

  She spent the hours browsing through the books, the clothes, and the movies they had to offer which was beyond extensive. She had never been one to sit through the credits of films before, but she did this time just to see the copyright date on one remake of a movie she knew well to find that the version she watched was made twenty years after she had left. She had read a book by an author she liked that was due to release a few months after her time, and not only had it been available in the library, but three others past it.

  She decided that since she was actually living here for some time, she should help herself to the clothes in the wardrobe room, finally changing out of the loose jeans and purple blouse that still smelled of cheap liquor as well as finding herself some pajamas which she left in her room. She decided not to dress in sweats or lounge pants, but in jeans and a blouse, so that she was presentable for whenever her houseguests returned. She was uncertain about what to do with her dirty clothes however, and figured she would ask Blake and Perry about this later.

  Both the pajamas and her blouse had the spiral clock logo on the left side, and she ran her fingers over it. It was always black unless the color was too dark when it was white. It appeared to be more than just an applique, however, and she thought it might have some kind of advanced technology in it since she knew she was at least in her future. She had no idea what it was used for, or why it was necessary to be on every piece of clothing, but like so many other things, she assumed it would be something she would be told about later.

  After the second time that she slept, which she decided was the end of her second day, she sat at the table in the living area aimlessly eating from a container of cottage cheese that she had found in the refrigerator while waiting for Blake and Perry to return. Not only was she lonely, but she was trapped in a place that she did not know, waiting for people she also did not know, and eating food from an unknown source. She had taken social interactions for granted all her life, and never realized how much she needed the company of people until she found herself as alone as this place made her feel.

  The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. She put down the cottage cheese and stood up, spoon still in her mouth, overjoyed to see these people who were still little more than complete strangers to her. Blake and Perry stumbled out of the elevator and plopped down on the couch, wheezing for breath.

  “No, seriously,” Perry said, very annoyed, “what was that supposed to accomplish?”

  “She survived,” Blake indicated. “That’s all that matters.”

  “To what end?” Perry looked very concerned, and Michelle obviously had no idea what they were talking about. What could possibly have happened to them on the other end of that elevator?

  “She was able to return to the resistance and lead a force against the insurgents,” Blake said. “I imagine we can look it up.”

  “Maybe later,” Perry said, leaning back. “I really hate it when we end up leaving in the middle of a war zone.”

  “War zone?” Michelle piped up. Perry looked at her as if he had completely forgotten she was there. “Where did you go?”

  “We told you before we left,” Blake said calmly, as if he clearly had not forgotten about her, but was simply discussing what had happened with Perry. “We left and went to Mondaise. There, we met with the one remaining survivor of the royal family who we assisted in escaping the insurgents who had taken over her country. She received no help from the other governments on her planet and was on her o
wn. We helped her team up with other pockets of loyal resistance so that she could reclaim her country.”

  “And did she reclaim her country?” Michelle asked.

  “Eventually, I would hope,” Blake said.

  “What?” Michelle appeared confused.

  “Sometimes, we don’t see things through to the end,” Perry explained. “We only fill a small piece of a larger puzzle.”

  “I don’t understand,” Michelle said. “You did all that in three days?”

  “Three days?” Perry asked rather shocked.

  “I guess it was three days,” Michelle said apologetically. “It’s really hard to tell time here. I fell asleep twice based on the clocks and I couldn’t tell whether it was AM or PM, but I’m guessing it was three days. Or at least two nights.”

  “We were gone for over a week,” Perry said.

  “Not possible,” Michelle said.

  “More is possible than you think,” Blake said, averting the inevitable argument. “The Maze transgresses space and time. We leave here at one point and end up at another. When we leave that point and return here, we do not necessary leave it with the same passage of time that we experience there.”

  “I never thought about that before,” Perry said.

  “I don’t understand,” Michelle said. “Were you outside?”

  “I suppose you could say that,” Blake responded.

  “What kind of an answer is that?” Michelle asked, indignantly. “You were either inside or outside. You can’t have it both ways.”

  “Well, we were in the out of doors on Mondaise, but really, we never left the Maze,” Blake said.

  “What?”

  “That’s as good as it gets sometimes,” Perry explained. “If you try to get straight answers on certain topics, he’ll show you just how good a dancer he really is. You’ll never find your topic again if you give him long enough.”

  “So you were outside on Mondaise, but inside the Maze?” Michelle pursued.

  “Well, on Mondaise, we were both inside and outside a variety of structures,” Blake said.

  “Are we on Mondaise now?” Michelle asked, not knowing what to think and never thinking she would ever question a planet. Deep down, she still thought she might be dreaming, since this was ridiculous.

  “Of course not,” Blake said with a chuckle.

  “Then where are we?”

  “The Maze.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Where do you want it to be?”

  “What kind of an answer is that?”

  “What kind of an answer are you looking for?”

  “Are you trying to piss me off?”

  Blake stared at her blankly. He shrugged. “I’m trying to understand the purpose of your questions. Will knowing your physical universal position give you some kind of solace?”

  “I…well…” Michelle stumbled over her words, not knowing how to respond. “How did I get here? And don’t say the Maze brought me, because you know that answer doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “And you think a detailed answer will?” Blake inquired. He was right, of course. What sort of explanation could he provide that would satisfy her? She would not understand any of the scientific mumbo-jumbo that he could probably relay to her, nor would she gain anything from knowing that they had taken the second star to the right and straight on till morning. Blake was right in that the answers she was looking for were meaningless to her situation. She had taken a celestial elevator from her apartment to here, and nothing he could say could make sense of that for her.

  “So basically, this elevator car somehow decided to pick my drunk self up one night, drop me here, and we take that same elevator to other planets or something,” Michelle said, trying to say it in such a way that she would understand.

  “That’s exactly right,” Blake said with a smile.

  “I am dead, aren’t I?” Michelle asked.

  “I’ll say no, but you’ll ultimately have to decide that for yourself,” Blake answered.

  “Will I ever go home?” she asked, not knowing at all what he would respond. After all, if she were dead, then she would never go home, but quietly pass into the night. If she were alive, she was their prisoner and still might never return to her hopeless mess in the real world. At this point, she supposed she did not care in the least and was just game to go with it.

  “Yes,” Blake said simply. “When you’re ready.”

  “And when will that be?” she asked. Blake only smiled again.

  “When you’re ready.”

  “You can ask all you want,” Perry said, “but you’ll never really find your answer. I told you I’ve been here for six months, and neither Blake nor this place really makes any more sense now than when I started.” Michelle opened her mouth to say something else, but Perry held up his hand to stave her off. “The bottom line is that you’re stuck with us until the Maze decides you’re ready.”

  “How will it know?” Michelle asked, worried that she might be stuck here forever.

  “It always knows,” Blake said with a shrug. “And that is all we know.”

  * * * * * * *

  Michelle slept her third night in the Maze trying to make sense of this place. Blake and Perry claimed to have been gone for a week, but she knew she had only slept twice making it only three days. Could she have lost track of that much time? They said they only take a rickety old elevator to emerge on another planet at another time, which also made no sense to her. They helped someone on the other end, and came back without knowing the full resolution to the problem, and to top that off, they were apparently in some kind of war zone. This place could not be for real.

  It felt like a prison. A prison with no doors or windows to show her where she was, and with no possibility of leaving until whatever was in power allowed them to go. And where did all this stuff come from? The food. The toiletries. The water. The power. So many unanswered questions about this place and what she was doing here, but when she thought about it being a prison, she realized that to an extent, she was in a prison of sorts before. Despite the idea that she was supposedly free, her life had her just as trapped as she was here.

  Her life was a torrent of legal woes, bills, harassment, and the thought of actually returning to it, regardless of her current situation, made her ill. She could not cope with it before. That was why she tried to bathe it in alcohol. She could not imagine ever getting to the point where she could return, since the problem before was not necessarily with just her. She had problems with everyone else. People were out to get her for everything she had been tangled up in, and she had only gotten into all of that to get herself out of other trouble she was in. Before she knew it, she was hopelessly trapped.

  And what about her kids? Everything she had done to try and help them had come to absolute ruin. During the nightmare her ex-husband created, her kids had ended up in foster care just to keep them out of danger. She had agreed to that willingly and promised them that she would be back for them. She had promised, and yet, she had left. She had truly abandoned them. If this were a dream, they might find her on the floor of her apartment or in a coma in the hospital. If it were real, she would have just disappeared without a trace. They would eventually declare her dead, and her kids would be given up for adoption and separated from each other to live with other families. Even if she did go back eventually, her kids would still be out of her reach, she would owe every creditor and worse every penny, and with the extra time when she could not account for her whereabouts, she would be worse off by returning than she was before she left.

  She could never return. No matter what sort of benevolent entity lay behind this Maze thing, it could not help her. She would never be ready to return, because her situation would never get better out there. Time would only make it worse – much, much worse.

  After a fitful night’s sleep, she heard someone shuffling around in the living area and decided to join whoever it was. She found Perry standing in the kitche
n in loose jeans and a black T-shirt that read “Keep Calm and Don’t Blink” with that spiral clock logo in white looking through the refrigerator for something to eat, and she noticed she had not bothered to change out of her pajamas. So shrugged to herself and figured it did not matter at this point. He apparently heard her and looked up, closing the refrigerator door after snagging a hot dog.

  “Hey,” he said in a quick greeting before following it up with, “Good morning.”

  “Is it morning?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he shrugged taking a bite of the cold hot dog. “I stopped asking a while back. I figure we sleep at night and get up in the morning, whenever that is.” She nodded.

  “So how much do you know about this place?” she asked. He shrugged.

  “This and that. What do you want to know?” He took another bite.

  “Well, I was thinking about what you guys said about being ready to go back. I was just wondering what the point is of being here to get your life together when the time away from your life will just make it worse.”

  “What do you mean?” He took another bite.

  “Well, I’ve got debts and kids and an ex out there that made my life a waking nightmare. Getting ready, whatever that means, here won’t fix what’s out there. Especially my kids. They’re in the system. If I’m here and declared legally dead, they could end up split up, or even worse, they could end up with their father.”

  “Okay,” he started, popping the rest of the hot dog into his mouth and momentarily talking with his mouth full as he chewed on it between words, “first, this is a really weird place. I have no idea how it works, but you heard Blake say it can drop us anywhere in time and space.” He paused to swallow, and she nodded.