A Theory of Gravity

by Wycroft Taylor

  Because the stairway had the shape of a spiral spread across the wall of a cylinder and because the speed and even direction of rotation varied with whether, where, and how fast he climbed and because there was a delay between the action of the stairs and his own actions, it was virtually impossible for him to predict with any accuracy where he’d be at any given time. He’d reach a door he didn’t expect to reach. He’d miss whatever door he aimed for.

  He resigned himself to being in a situation where he would probably not get where he aimed to go. He decided instead just to stop climbing whenever he saw a door approaching. Hopefully the stairs would stop before it was too late for him to grab onto the door. If not, he’d climb or descend or stop climbing some more. Eventually, he was sure he’d get to a door.

  He played at running first up and then down the stairs. He wanted to see how fast he could make the stairs rotate. When he got it going really fast, he began to wonder about what anchored these stairs to the walls of the cylinder and wondered if making the stairs rotate too quickly might cause it perhaps to get detached from enough of its anchor to lead to its tipping over or even collapsing. He began imagining disasters such as those happening. He imagined himself being smashed against the wall and then being crushed beneath piles of steel.

  Worrying more and more about the stairs collapsing, he leaned forward, farther and farther, until he ended up lying down across two or three stairs. He grabbed whichever one was closest to his arms and wrapped his arms around that one and clung to it for dear life. He laid his head around the next highest stair and closed his eyes and whimpered.

  In the meantime, the stairs slowed and eventually stopped altogether. He felt like he had to wait for a very long time for it to stop. He began wondering if only his movements controlled the stairs. What if something else also controlled it? What if sometimes it rotated on its own? What if there was some hidden observer who, by turning a dial, could make it go this way or that way at any speed and just happened to be making the movement of the stairs correspond to his motions as joke or a game? What if a timing mechanism existed?

  By staying where he was, holding onto one stair for dear life, letting another stair cradle his head, and letting time pass, he succeeded in getting those fears to subside. When they sufficiently subsided, he got up on his feet again. Perhaps an hour had passed in the meantime.

  He moved more cautiously after that. Whenever he moved, he also clutched the rail tightly. He’d take a couple of steps and stop and, when the spinning stopped, he’d take a couple of more steps and stop again and so forth. He also moved very slowly when he did move. That way he made progress without causing the stairs to spin too fast.

  After a while, he managed to get the stairs to stop next to one of the blue doors. It stopped at a place where, when he turned to face the wall, he would find the blue door on his right and close enough so that he could examine it fairly easily from top to bottom and from side to side. He could do all of that without having to go up or down a stair.

  The door closest to him had an inscription along the top. He felt that, given the precariousness of his position on the stairs and the unpredictability of their exact movements, he dared not take the time to pull out his notebook and pencil and make a drawing. He looked with his eyes instead and vowed to make the drawing later from memory even though he knew that doing such a thing would greatly increase the chances of his making a mistake. He figured he’d get around the problem by admitting to it. He would label the drawing: “inscription of most accessible door in circular chamber, drawn from memory.”

  He tried opening the blue door but found that the knob did not turn. He tried pushing and pulling on it but it would not budge. He pounded on it and yelled, “Sylvia, Sylvia Ridgeway, are you there?” But there was no answer. There was not even a hint of a reply in a sound.

  So he gave up on the blue door and resumed climbing the stairs. Again he walked slowly. Again he stopped frequently especially when he saw a door at about a distance that, if he stopped climbing, should come close to him.

  He reached a row of rose-colored doors. The door closest to him had an inscription on it as did all the other doors. Again, he felt that he dared not pull out his notebook and pencil. He tried though to plant the memory of the inscription in his mind, realizing full well that by doing so he was increasing the chances of later making errors greatly. There was a chance that his memories of the two inscriptions would get mixed up, that he would remember something belonging to the second inscription as being part of the first and vice versa.

  Because of the chances of making a mistake when later doing a drawing were now so great, he contemplated not even trying to remember and not even attempting to draw what he saw later. He hated to do that though.

  “Oh, well, so much for good intentions,” he sighed and, at the same time, pulled out of their respective pockets his notebook and pencil. He figured he could risk doing a quick sketch. He also made a quick sketch of the last inscription. He labelled the inscription he committed to memory as he had intended. The quick sketch of what was right in front of him he labeled “Quick sketch of inscription on most accessible rose-colored door, circular room.” He then put away his notebook and pencil.

  He leaned forward and tried the handle of the rose-colored door. It turned. He tried pulling and then pushing on it. When he pushed, the door opened. He figured that this was his chance to escape the circular room and that he better take advantage of this chance. But, because the staircase was not directly underneath the bottom of the door, he had to do some fancy gymnastics to get to the door, open it, and get inside. He also had to do what he had to do without causing the stairs to move very much.

  What he did was this: He leaned over the railing far enough until he caught hold of the knob on the rose-colored door. Then he climbed up on the railing and jumped to the sill beneath the door. The climbing and jumping made the stairway jerk backwards and away from him. He saw the spiral circle clockwise around the room, getting ever farther from him.

  Because the sill beneath the door was not very wide, he was left in a very precarious situation. He had to press his body against the door. He tried with one hand to clutch the left edge of the doorframe while with the other he held onto the knob for dear life. He heard some cracking down below and saw that the sill on which he stood was bending downwards and cracking which meant that he did not have much time to act before the sill gave way and left him clinging to the doorknob with one hand while dangling unsupported. He doubted if he could manage to open the door and get through it under those circumstances. He figured he would have to act now. It was a case of now or never.

  So, while the sill held, he turned the knob and pushed the door open, groaning, “Oh, Sylvia, help me,” while he did so. He jumped into the space on the other side, rolled over onto the floor of the new space, and listened while the rose-colored door swung slowly back and forth behind him.

  The sound of the door swinging out and then inwards did not last long however because on its perhaps third or fourth swing, the door closed. He heard first a clicking sound and then a scraping sound. He figured that was the sound of the locking mechanism falling into place and locking the door. He figured that, if he was in the circular room now and trying to open this door he had just entered, he would find that the knob would not turn and that the door was locked.

  He would then have to give up on getting that particular doo to open and would instead have to ascend or descend the stairs once more and, when the stairs slowed near a door, he would be able to try that other door. But fortunately he did not have to go on doing that now that he had gotten through an open door. He was out of the circular room at last.

  He was about to stand up and explore his new space when a terrific noise filled his new space. It came from the direction of the circular room, however. The noise was so loud that he had to cover his ears to muffle it a little bit. He figured that the stairs that had gone backwards behind him had now completely circled the ro
om and had swung by his door on its way to a possibly second circuit of the room.

  The noise, however, receded once the stairs moved away from the door so he took his hands away from his ears. He just lay where he was, turned away from the opening behind him, curled up into a fetal position and put his thumb in his mouth. He began shaking. He moaned. He tried to calm himself down by rocking back and forth and moaning. Despair was on him again. He was its plaything. It was rolling him about.

  He was out of breath. His heart beat very fast. Sweat was pouring from his brow, and his skin was clammy. He closed his eyes very tight. He listened to the sounds of the revolving stairs on the other side of the door. After a while, he became aware that they were slowing down. Eventually they stopped turning altogether. All was silent at last.

  He closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep. He realized he had not eaten for a long time. He remembered that hot bowl of soup that was put out for him once. He wished they’d do that again. He was very hungry. “I am so hungry,” he said aloud. “If you want to treat me like an animal in a cage, feed me,” he said. Shortly thereafter he fell asleep.

  He slept. The ever-diminishing sound made by the revolving stairs while they still spun around the inside or the circular chamber might have played a part in putting him to sleep. Once the stairs slowed, the sound became somewhat soothing and even musical.

  He awoke to the sound of the stairs spinning madly again. He wondered why. What made it go? Was someone or something walking on it?

  Was the rabbit he had once seen running down a corridor now running up and down those stairs? Or had astronaut Ridgeway entered that circular room and was now running on the stairway, perhaps not yet having figured out how it worked, yet looking desperately for a door? Was Despair frolicking about on those stairs while he slept, knowing full well that he was where he was but not deigning for the present to come to tantalize and tease him?

  After some time passed, the stairs became quiet again. Then it started up again. And, while he had slept through the last spinning (perhaps only dreaming that the stairs moved and perhaps being aware at some level of consciousness that it did move), this time the sound of the stairs’ turning woke him up. His eyes snapped open. His body shook as if in spasm. He got up and looked around.

  Chapter 35: Curved Corridors

  He discovered that he was lying on the floor of a corridor but he could not make out the dimensions because of the absence of light. He got up and groped along a little way in the direction opposite the door and found that the space he had entered was about five feet wide, so high he could not reach the ceiling, and curved. He was reminded of some subway tunnels he had seen. T-shaped steel or iron bars with the roof of the ‘T’ uppermost ran along lengthwise across the walls and floor. He came close to tripping on the ones that were set into the floor. His hands bumping against the bars set into the wall sometimes got hurt because of how unexpected the appearance of the bars was. He supposed that (but could not know if) iron bars were also set into the ceiling.

  When he jumped through the doorway to get away from the revolving stairs, he had fallen into a space that lay in between two of the bars but he didn’t realize then what there was. Now, because of the little walk he had taken in the dark, he realized that the bars were there.

  He did not want to venture too far from the door so, after groping his way through the darkness a little way, he returned to the door, leaned against it, and pondered what to do next. He got an idea after a while.

  To test whether it was still locked and also to test to see if anybody or anything capable of relating to him was on the other side, he pounded on the door and pushed with all his might against it (there was no knob or anything like a knob on his side). He pressed his mouth against the door and whispered, “Is anyone there? Astronaut Ridgeway, are you there? Can you hear me?” He thought perhaps someone, given the fact that the stairway had spun around a couple of times at least since he got through the rose-colored door, might have found the same door and was crouched on the other side, possibly on the ledge and possibly on the stairway.

  When no one answered to his whispering, he pounded against the door as forcefully as he was able and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Astronaut Ridgeway, are you somewhere nearby? If so, make a noise: pound on a door, yell, beat metal against metal, or stomp your feet. Do something. He heard nothing however; then, after waiting in the silence a few minutes, he heard a sound like gurgling, clicking, buzzing, and sputtering, the different sounds divided by brief breaks in continuity, the different sounds varying in volume, and the different sounds following one another in different sequences.

  The sounds puzzled him. He did not think it was a response to his banging unless the alien presence in charge of this space finally had decided to try to communicate with him. But they would have to know, he reasoned, that he could not possibly understand such communication if that was what it was.

  He figured that, if they were intelligent enough to build this structure and toy with him as they had, then they would be intelligent enough to understand that he would be as much mystified by the sounds as by the inscriptions he so diligently copied.

  If he had a way of copying sounds, he probably would have copied the sounds he just heard; but, because he had no idea how to copy sounds, he did not even try. He was sure astronaut Ridgeway did not make such sounds. He did not think she or any human would be capable of even making such sounds let alone communicating by means of them.

  Despite not being able to comprehend the sounds or even to connect them with his pounding and yelling, he still stood leaning against the door and now noticed something new. More light than existed earlier seemed to fill the cylindrical chamber—enough light that some light now streamed through the sides and holes of the door he pressed his ear against.

  The light streamed into the corridor where he now was. There was a surprisingly large amount of light, enough to provide him with illumination enough to let him see more clearly than before what was around and behind him.

  In front of him and not very far away from where he now sat (about five feet away) and opposite the doorway through which he had come, was another door. It was set into another concave curved wall. Not only was that wall in front of him curved so too was the door that was set into it. Unlike the doors in the circular room, this door was curved to fit the wall perfectly with every part of the door’s surface flush with the surface of the wall.

  The door seemed to be made of some kind of metal or something that looked a lot like metal. There was a short handle on his side in the shape of a wheel. The curve of the door combined with the handle in the shape of a wheel made him think of the door on his space ship and also of doors on the inside of submarines he had seen in old war movies.

  He noticed that the light coming into this place from behind him was not the only light there was. There were also three recessed white and orange lights set into a flange above the door. The white light was directly above the center of the door. The orange ones were above each of its edges.

  A horizontal line ran across the center of the door he faced. It started at the right edge, met a circle that surrounded the handle (which was centered on the door) and continued to the left edge of the door from the left edge of the circle that surrounded the handle. Above the horizontal line to the left of the handle was a set of inscriptions.

  He pulled out of their respective pockets his notebook and pen and quickly drew the inscriptions. One had as its outer motif a cloud-like shape. Inside of that shape, there were small circles seemingly randomly arranged with lines of different lengths running through them at different angles. He was careful not to regard anything as random. He drew the circles exactly as they were and the lines exactly as they were.

  When he finished drawing the several inscriptions and labeling them “first door encountered after entering curved corridor,” he put his notebook and pencil away and sank to his knees. Then, turning around, he turned around so that he could sit befor
e the door with his back to it.

  Now that the idea that the beings who inhabited this place communicated by means of the kinds of sounds he heard being made that came from the circular room, he was more respectful of incomprehensible sound than he had been. He wanted to listen for a while in case other sounds of the same kind or of any kind might get into or even emanate from this new corridor. Perhaps, he thought, I might even here through the static sounds that I can comprehend such as the sound a woman might make when laughing or whimpering or calling for help.

  His patience paid off. At one point, he heard a loud noise come from behind him. There was a banging followed by a whistling. The pair of sounds came without prelude and ended abruptly. Silence followed.

  He had no idea what the origin of that pair of sounds might have been. He could not even picture in his mind a cause for this combination of sounds at first, but shortly thereafter some possibilities came to his mind. The banging sound reminded him of a pair of cymbals being struck together. The whistling was like that made by gale force winds sweeping past an open window. The sounds lasted just a few seconds. What could be the explanation?

  Then the sound of the stairs moving returned. Then silence returned. Then the stairs started up once more. It made a slightly different sound this time than the sound it made when revolving before. There was a swishing rather than a grating sound. The sound also rose and fell in pitch and volume according to a very steady rhythm.

  The only analogy to that sound that came to his mind was the sound of an old motor revving up and then going into idle and then being revved up again.

  He listened to the mechanism slide and squeak and click and rattle. He listened to it slow down gradually and come to a halt. He listened to it spin again, race, and get alternately loud and quiet.