A Theory of Gravity

by Wycroft Taylor

  Thus he had two different fears. The two fears sat at opposite ends of a seesaw. When one rose, the other fell and vice versa. He did not know what to do. He did not know where to go to hide or even how to hide. He didn’t know how to stand up to whatever beast or combination of beasts might come to destroy him.

  He closed his eyes very tightly out of fear even though, as he did that, he knew how senseless it was to close one’s eyes in the darkness.

  He counted slowly to ten, thinking counting might be a way of counteracting one or another of his fears. He breathed deliberately, and, when the fear of what was behind became magnified, he turned the knob quickly and pushed on the door, causing it slightly to open. Then the thought of the giant waiting for him up ahead came to mind. He became paralyzed with fear again and pulled the door shut.

  But during that fraction of a second when the door was slightly open, light streamed in. He was sure of it. He decided he would have to risk the confrontation with the giant he imagined up ahead, reasoning that it would be better to fight in the light than in the dark—at least in the light you know what you are up against.

  Then he had another idea, one which maybe he got from reading a comic book while on Earth. He figured if he could stand along the side of the door where the hinges were and, with his right hand, open the door a little way, the giant would rush right in and past him and into the open maw of the drooling beast coming from behind. A struggle would ensue; and, while the two beasts fought, he would run through the open door, pull it closed behind him, and be safe (provided, of course, that the giant that ran through the doorway was not one of many—but, he figured, he must take his chances with that possibility and just hope it was not true).

  At least that was his plan. He put it into effect. He got behind the door, pulled it slightly opened with his right hand, gave the giant enough time to get past him and the door. When he was convinced he had given the giant beast enough time to get to his side of the door and, past that, to the corridor where the drooling beast waited, he slipped through the doorway and, once on the other side, pushed the door so that it closed behind him. Then he leaned against it, not wanting the two beasts to discover that the one thing they had in common was that both had been in pursuit of him and that he had tricked them. He did not want them, after they both realized what had happened, to combine their forces, push down the door, and come after him.

  He didn’t think they’d have enough finesse or intelligence to figure out how to use the doorknob. He figured that, instead of turning the knob, they would just attack the door that stood in their way. They would claw at it and rush at it and bite at it.

  He leaned back against the door, holding it closed against the imagined onslaught. He was breathing very heavily and sweating very profusely.

  Did he hear the noise of barking and sweating and screaming behind him, through that heavy door? Did something pound on the door? Did something make it shake and shiver? He thought it was possible that all of that was happening. It was also possible he was imagining everything. Either way, he was determined to stand his ground and, in so doing, keep those monsters at bay.

  And, during all of the time that that of that rushing from opposite directions of two great monsters and of that rushing past the suddenly opened door and of that battle and of that joining of evil forces and of that attack against the door, he had not dared to open his eyes.

  At a certain point, all became quiet. He decided that the monsters either never existed; or, if they did exist, they had found something else besides him and this door to direct their fury at. They had perhaps run back in the other direction or gone through a wall and entered another corridor or dematerialized out of this place and rematerialized elsewhere.

  With that thought, he was able to relax a little bit. Relaxed, he was able to open his eyes and was surprised to discover that this new place had light in it.

  Chapter 30: Triangle of Light

  Yes, this new place was lighted. The light was in fact painful to him. His eyes had adjusted as much as they were able to the darkness; now they had to adjust again, this time to bright light. It was not an easy thing to do. He was momentarily blinded by the light. Looking around him with eyes open, he felt as if he might as well have been looking into the heart of a star. It seemed to him as if the world was on fire.

  He reacted by closing his eyes again, only more tightly than before. He made loose fists and rubbed his eyes with the fists turned sideways. He kept rubbing softly, rotating his fists as he rubbed. He felt as if his eyes had been burnt by that light. His eyes had also watered. He tried rubbing the tears away.

  After a while, his eyes having gotten somewhat adjusted, he let his hands fall away from them but the light proved to be still too much for him. He had to close his eyes again and then he just stood still with his back against the door through which he had just come.

  He knew he needed to find a way to calm down. He had to get his bearings somehow. He did not know where he was. He did not know where this place was in relation to any other place. He had to calm down.

  To become a little calmer and more self-composed, he began counting to ten. He had done that before. The counting was one of the things he did whenever he felt that things were slipping outside of his control. He also forced himself to inhale very deeply and then exhale. He thought filling and emptying his lungs would help. It did help a little bit. He did that a few times. It did work a little bit to make him calmer. He felt better.

  He opened his eyes a little and immediately closed them because the intensity of the light was still too much for him. After waiting awhile for the burning inside his head to go away, he opened his eyes again. By using his hands as shields against the glare, he was able to tolerate the light. It took a little while but eventually his eyes got adjusted enough to the light to make possible keeping them open. He looked around.

  He saw a well-lighted corridor lined on both sides with windows that began at about the height of his shoulders and continued up to the ceiling. Daylight blazed. The sky was white. That sky, if sky it was, was so white and so brilliantly lit up that nothing like a cloud or the sun or the moon or a star could be discerned.

  Also, looking out into what he supposed was the distance or down at an angle that he hoped would show him the ground, he saw nothing that indicated ground or foliage in any way. He saw only the white light. He tried lifting himself up on the narrow ledge beneath the windows in order to look more directly at what he hoped would be the ground outside. But doing that didn’t change anything. He still only saw white light everywhere.

  He began to wonder if he had really regained his sight, after all, thinking that maybe only the nature of his blindness had changed. But when he directed his gaze to the inside of the corridor and saw clearly the floor, walls, ceiling, window sill, and glass panels, he knew he was not blind—that the problem lay with whatever lay on the other side of the glass.

  He saw dust particles in the corridor, streaming at an angle of about 45 degrees from the windows to the floor of the corridor. There were two streams of dust particles intersecting and crisscrossing a foot or two above the floor. Where the illuminated dust particles from both sides met, he saw a triangle of very brightly lit and very densely packed dust particles. The dust particles moved downwards towards the opposite corners of the triangle. It was very magical. To move through the corridor, he had to walk through this magical triangle.

  The triangle was translucent. He could see things through it other than the dust particles. He saw his own legs and feet and thighs and forelegs through it, for instance. He saw also the walls and floor of the corridor through it. He also saw, after a while, something (not him) move through the corridor.

  The thing he saw seemed to be alive. It crawled. It was crawling on the floor and next to the wall on his left. Because it was too small to be human, he did not call to it or call for astronaut Ridgeway for it could not possibly be her.

  Strangely, rather than feeling fear or horro
r, he felt feelings of tenderness well up inside of himself. “Something besides me is alive,” he said to himself, “and that something is in here with me.”

  Perhaps its small size lulled him into thinking it was not a source of terror. He walked up to it, with a strong desire coursing through him to take it into his arms and comfort it and maybe, if all went well, to be comforted by its presence. He wondered if it was that bird of long ago or that other bird he saw more recently or something else entirely.

  As the distance between him and it closed, he saw that it was white with a yellowish sheen (the yellowish sheen probably caused by the light streaming through the corridor) and also with red stains on its paws and nose, as if it had walked through red powder and, when in that place where the powder was, also sniffed at something on the ground.

  Coming closer, he saw that it was a rabbit or something that looked very much like a rabbit. Whatever it was, it had the fluffy fur of a very hairy rabbit. It had relatively short ears that lay flat along its back. It was facing away from him but still he noticed from the way its body alternately swelled and contracted that it was breathing rapidly as if terrified.

  When he got very close to it (about a yard), it began moving away from him. It made the ambling hopping motion that rabbits make when they are not in much of a hurry. He followed slowly behind.

  It stayed close to the left wall of the corridor for a while and then suddenly angled towards the center of the corridor and then took a more or less zigzag path.

  He wanted to pick it up and cradle it in his arms. He wanted very much to do that. He stooped over and reached out with his arms and hands. When he did that, the rabbit speeded up a little bit, and he, to keep up, began running a little faster than before while still bent over and reached out towards it.

  The faster he moved, the faster the rabbit also moved until, finally, it began alternately to run and to hop. When he straightened up and began to run after it, it began running so fast that he was utterly unable to keep up. He came to a stop and just watched as the rabbit zoomed ahead and disappeared around a bend of the corridor. He began running then. He still wanted to catch up with it and hold it in his arms and caress it and make a pet out of it.

  When he got up to that bend in the corridor, however, he was so out of breath that he had to stop and rest. He leaned against a wall while he caught his breath. He looked down the whole length of the section of corridor ahead of him that he could see. There was no sign of any rabbit. It had disappeared.

  Chapter 31: The Pole

  He looked around and ahead of him. He noticed that, when the corridor down which he had been running bent to his right, it changed. There were no windows at all. What illuminated it was the light coming from behind where the windows with the white light were. Also, the corridor widened and got a little higher. Not too far away, it opened out into a room. From where he stood, he could see parts of two doors in that room.

  But between himself and the room, something leaned against the wall on his left. It was a pole that he estimated to be eight feet long. It leaned against the left wall at an angle of about eighty degrees.

  There was a steel collar wrapped around the top edge. Out of the steel collar came a steel hook. He came up to the pole and circled around it. It was an interesting object. The fact that it was one of the very few free-standing objects he had seen since entering this place made it all the more interesting. He wondered why it was there and, even more, what purpose it was supposed to serve.

  Close to the bottom edge of the pole were three horizontal bands of color. First, there was a red band; then a blue one; and finally a black one. He touched the pole and then tried holding it as one would hold a spear.

  He tried grabbing the pole at a point which he thought might be the center of gravity. He did that but, when he turned the spear sideways, found he had grabbed the pole at a little bit too high a point. He shifted his grip downwards and found he now had it exactly at its center of gravity.

  He lifted it up above his shoulder and then, after making slight adjustments, raised and lowered it above his shoulder and pushed it forward and backward as if it was a spear.

  Then he began rotating the pole lengthwise while also shifting his grip towards the part with the hook. Supporting the pole with one hand, he put the end without the hook against the palm of his other hand. He tried then to balance the pole, hook-side down, in his hand. It didn’t quit work. The pole wobbled from side to side so wildly that he had to keep supporting it with his free hand.

  He actually did balance the pole for a few seconds at one point. But then it began leaning so far over to one side that, despite his efforts to support it with his other hand, it fell out of his hand and clattered to the floor.

  The pole fell on the floor. It bounced first up at one end and then down on that end. It made a clinking sound when the steel hit and a knocking sound when the wood hit.

  He picked the pole up again at its center of gravity with one hand and leaned it over his right shoulder. In other words, he held the pole in the same way soldiers hold their rifles—in the same way people who march in front of brass bands hold batons. He began twirling the pole a little bit. With one hand holding the pole out in front of him, he spun the pole with his other hand held a little bit above the hand that held the pole.

  The next thing he did was to take hold of the pole about two thirds of the way towards the top with one hand and about half way with the other hand and just banged it up and down against the floor.

  Then he put it back over his shoulders, holding it like soldiers hold rifles again, and, pretending to be a soldier on parade, marched with it through the corridor and into the room that the corridor opened out into.

  The first thing he did was to place the pole against the back wall of the new room he had entered. He then leaned it in such a way that the bottom end rested on the floor about two feet from wall the while the top end (the end with a hook attached) rested near the top of the wall.

  He then turned around and surveyed the room. He looked again for the rabbit but did not see it. He wondered where it might have gone. Unless it figured out a way to open one of the two doors that faced him, he didn’t see where it could hide. Maybe one or both doors were open when the rabbit got into the room and maybe the rabbit ran through one of them. And maybe, by going through a door, the rabbit triggered some sort of monitoring mechanism connected to a locking mechanism that caused the doors to close.

  The room was about 14 feet in length and width and also in height. All the walls, the ceiling, and even the floor were white, plain and very smooth. The surfaces might have been made of sheet rock with the pieces of sheet rock perfectly joined.

  Inside of a depressed rectangular space, he saw as many as twenty symbols carved into the wall about as deep as the rectangular edge that outlined the symbols was depressed.

  The two doors were quite narrow and very close to one another and were centered beneath the rectangular depression inside of which the symbols had been carved.

  The doors seemed to be made of very thick pieces of black Plexiglas. Each door had a small symbol scratched on it. The symbols were very similar though not identical.

  Also the doors had holes, one on the right side and the other on its left side. Concentric circles of color, matching the colors at the tip of the stick surrounded the holes, surrounded the holes. First there was a red circle; then a blue one; and then just the black of the Plexiglas onto which a circle had been scratched made what amounted to a third circle around the hole.

  He pulled his notebook and pencil out of their respective pockets and began copying all of the symbols. On the doors were small squares with rounded corners. Inside of the square scratched into the first door on his left was a motif like the letter “y” standing upright. Inside of the square scratched onto the surface of the second door was a motif that was exactly like the motif on the first door except that it was upended.

  The inscriptions above the doors were different fr
om those he encountered earlier. There were no surrounding geometric shapes. There were instead shapes or symbols that might easily have been taken to picture things found on Earth, either when he was last there or at some earlier time.

  There was a diamond, a heart, a little blue bird, a rose, a steamboat, and a circle inside of which two lines crossed at right angles. There were also some more abstract symbols: a square with a line drawn through it that angled from left to right; another square with a line going the other way; a third symbol with a line going straight up and down. In all of these, the line extended beyond the square.

  Later on, after some symbols of triangles filled with lines and dots arranged in an assortment of configurations, there were some more squares with some more lines running through them though these lines, unlike the others, stopped at the line made by the squares.

  After copying all of the symbols and labeling them well enough, he thought, so that he might recall the room where he found them, he put away his notebook and pencil in their respective pockets, backed away from the two doors, and randomly chose to go through the door on his right. Once again, he had no basis on which to choose. He had to make random choices.

  He remembered the pole. He went back to it and grabbing it from the hooked end, pounded with the other end on each of the walls and on both doors, yelling in between pounding, “Sylvia, can you hear me? If so, make some sign.” He stopped pounding and yelling. He listened carefully. He heard only what seemed to be the sound of a tiny tinny bell ringing far, far away. Was that an answer? Had Sylvia Ridgeway found a bell and now was ringing it?