A Theory of Gravity

by Wycroft Taylor

  Just beyond astronaut Ridgeway was an archway on the other side of which was a large room filled with chairs arranged in a series of semi-circles. The chairs faced a large screen next to which was a creature on a motorized cart. The creature on the cart held a stick in one of its upper limbs in such a way that the hook faced downwards.

  The creature with the stick sometimes stood still and sometimes moved about. Though he could not see all the chairs from his position, he could see that beetle-like or tick-like creatures exactly like the ones he had already seen sat in some of them.

  He was very curious to know if the space suits were intact and if one of the backpacks was his and, if so, if his backpack still held everything he put in it especially the notebook with the drawings.

  Though curious about all of that, he was most eager to meet the woman who looked like and probably was Sylvia Ridgeway. Just seeing her and just thinking it might be her filled him with such relief and joy that he barely could contain himself.

  Still, he forced himself to contain himself enough to adhere to what he thought might be rules of etiquette in a situation involving royalty. He had picked up some knowledge of some of this from his reading and video-watching back on Earth.

  He figured he’d assume that the kind of etiquette people exhibited on Earth when confronted by royalty would be appropriate here too; so he forced himself to turn his eyes away from Sylvia Ridgeway. Instead of feasting his eyes on her, he faced forwards towards the central creature on the raised platform. Then he bowed before the creature sitting on the high throne and said, “Thank you for taking care of my colleague.” The creature looked at astronaut Ridgeway, made a brief series of sounds, and was rewarded by her sounds which amounted to translating what he had just said. The creature then made more sounds.

  Then, turning to him, Sylvia translated for him what the creature jus said, “It says: Some we allow to survive the ordeal of the maze and come here; others we punish by directing them to a door that returns them to the surface of this celestial object we have colonized. They return to the mode of transportation that brought them here without ever seeing any of us. They go home no doubt full of memories of what a horrible place this is.

  “But the two of you survived our tests. And, having done that, we welcome your presence among us and, after giving you some time to get acclimated, we tell you of three possibilities for your future life and give you time to choose which of those you prefer.”

  Having bowed (not being sure if etiquette demanded that he approach or genuflect in some other way than by bowing and not being sure if he was expected to lie prostrate on the ground for a while), he decided he would not do anything except bow; and, having bowed, he would take his chances of turning away from the king and addressing the woman who he believed must be Sylvia Ridgeway.

  He turned to face the woman and said, “My name is Peter Philby. You are, I believe, Sylvia Ridgeway. I was sent to find and, though it seems peculiar now to say this, to rescue you.”

  He added, “I ended up being the one most in need of being rescued.”

  “We both are or were,” she answered, her voice cracking. “You are right. I am Sylvia Ridgeway. I know you. I hoped you would be the one sent to find me. Of all the ones I met during my training and afterwards, I believed you would turn out to be the bravest, most ingenious, and truest to your calling. I believed that you, more than any of the others, could be a friend of mine. And, now, here you are.”

  Philby looked at her long and hard, hardly able to contain himself—her words touched him so deeply. He wanted to stay where he was and cry; instead, he started walking towards her.

  Though worried that he might be doing something that would be interpreted by the creatures as a severe breach of protocol meriting severe punishment, he threw caution to the winds and just walked towards her. The closer he got to her, the easier it became for him to see that the woman in front of him was indeed Sylvia Ridgeway. She was alive. Though he did not know what ordeal she had had to overcome during her first few days on this planet, she had obviously survived the ordeal and had been treated decently since.

  She was not some robot designed by the creatures to look like astronaut Ridgeway. She was the real thing. She really was astronaut Ridgeway. She was the one he had seen in the photographs he had so carefully studied before leaving Earth. When he got close to her, he said, “Sylvia Ridgeway, is that you? I have looked for you for so long and dreamed so long of finding you. Now, here you are, alive and well. I was sent to rescue you. I feared you had died.”

  At some point, she made a series of sounds unintelligible to him but directed at the creature on the raised platform and, when the creature responded with sounds of its own, she got up out of her chair and began running towards him.

  They got closer and closer to each other; and, though it seemed like it took forever, they finally got close enough to press their bodies together and put their arms around each other. “Oh, it is so good to see a fellow human being again,” she said.

  “I cannot express the joy I now feel,” he said and, while saying that, he squeezed her a little tighter and kissed her on her left cheek. She kissed back.

  “I was so alone and so frightened and so confused,” he muttered while continuing to hug and kiss her. “So was I,” she said. He felt the tears falling from her eyes onto his cheek.

  While this was going on, a creature on one of the moving carts carried a chair, put it beside Sylvia Ridgeway’s chair, and quickly moved off in the direction of the archway behind which the room that he thought of as a classroom was.

  In the meantime, a ramp rose up off the floor next to the raised platform, a moveable cart like the other carts but much more ornate and decorated with gold came up from the floor of the platform, the creature on the throne, aided by its two assistants, scooted onto the cart, and used it to move down the ramp and then, accompanied by its two assistants, over to a double-wide pale green door which opened seemingly automatically just as the creature approached. The line of creatures that stood in their carts against that wall, moved to one side or the other of the door and made two separate lines that ran from the edges of the door to both sides of the creature riding the ornate cart.

  The creature in the ornate cart rolled smoothly through the doorway. All of the other creatures followed. The pale green doors closed smoothly. Though some sounds of talking and some noise associated with moving about continued behind the arched opening. Sylvia Ridgeway and Peter Philby were now left essentially alone together to reflect on what they had been through and on what their present options were.

  They sat side by side holding hands for a while. They looked at each other with shining eyes because they were so glad not to be alone in this strange place. Both felt that, together, they might work things out much better than would be possible if they still had to struggle alone.

  While each one was curious to know what the other had gone through prior to coming to this large chamber where the creatures presented themselves, Philby was especially curious to find out how astronaut Ridgeway managed to learn the spoken language of these creatures in so short a time. After all, she had arrived there just two years before.

  He wondered how, in so short a time, she learned the language. He wondered also if she had learned how to read the creature’s symbolic language in which case he would ask her about inscriptions she had seen and show her what he had drawn and ask her if she was yet knowledgeable enough to be able to decipher any of the inscriptions.

  Chapter 38: Some Time to Be Alone

  Sylvia Ridgeway looked around the room and, seeing no one there except for the few who kept to themselves on the other side of the archway, she said at last, “It looks like they are giving us some time to be alone—some time to choose.” Before he had a chance to ask her what she meant by “choose,” she said, “But first tell me what happened after you arrived on this asteroid. I knew a rescue mission would be sent but I hoped my rescuer would figure out a way to avoid gettin
g trapped.

  He told her, as well as he could remember, about the elevator not working until he cleared an obstacle he put in front of the door out of the way. He told her that he suspected he might get trapped if he did that but that just the chance of reaching her and of at least providing her with the solace that might come from the company of another human being were reasons enough to risk being trapped.

  Then he told her how, as soon as he moved the rock out of the way, the panel of buttons next to the door lit up. Though the symbols printed on the buttons made no sense to him, he pressed a few at random which in turn activated a motor which in turn caused the elevator car to descend which in turn led to the elevator’ door opening into a corridor.

  He told her how he went from corridor to corridor and from room to room and how he had at one point found a rubber ball and played with it and how at another time he found a rabbit or something that looked like a rabbit and tried hugging it but, failing at that, ran after it and how at another time he saw an owl or something that looked like an owl perched behind a round window and then come sailing through the window frame after the window had blown out and how at another time he came to a large circular room where a spiral staircase lined the walls and moved one way when you tried to climb it and another way when you tried to descend it.

  He told her about the soup he had found and drank. He told her about sleeping on the floor. He told her about being inside of a corridor lined with glass or windows and seeing her or an image that he was sure was based on her walking through a desert-like landscape. He told her how she or that image took notice of the structure he was in and approached it and peered through the windows. He told her that he thought she or the image saw him and of how the light changed into a strobe light and then went dark.

  He told her about finding inscriptions on doors and walls and about taking the time to copy them so that, if he ever returned to Earth, he could turn his drawings over to experts who might be able to decipher them. He told her about the loss of his backpack that had his notebook with the drawings in it and about finding another notebook and pencil shortly thereafter that someone or something had carefully placed leaning against a wall where he was likely to find it.

  All the time he talked, she was leaning back against the wall with her eyes closed as if trying to visualize what he was saying.

  When he stopped, more out of exhaustion than out of having run out of things to say, she opened her eyes, looked at him, and said, “I know already a lot of what you just said. They showed me videos. There were hidden cameras in those rooms and corridors. They watched you the whole time and let me see some of it during breaks in my classes.”

  He ran his hand through his hair. Not knowing for sure what she saw, he was embarrassed because of what she might have seen. He blushed and looked away for a moment. He was thinking of the times he cried and of the times he curled up into a ball and lay helplessly on the floor and of the times he talked about Despair (though he could not quite remember whether or not he ever spoke out loud to it).

  He reasoned: She might not have seen anything so embarrassing or, if she did, maybe she excused it because she had behaved the same way.

  He said, “I figured I might have been watched. I figured my actions might have been taped. Every once in a while I shouted out to what I supposed might be a secret audience, thinking I might get some kind of acknowledgement that they were there.

  “Did I say that I got desperate some times? Did I say that I was terribly lonely and that I visualized Despair as a real, living creature that had come with me to this place and delighted in adding to my torment whenever it felt like doing so? I was sure it sometimes came through a wall and sat with me and laughed at me and filled my mind with horrors that went far beyond what I actually experienced?”

  “No,” she replied, “You did not tell me any of that until now.” Seeing that he was embarrassed, she said, “But don’t feel bad. Whatever you did and however you felt, the fact remains that you passed their test and got in here. The fact remains that you survived. You didn’t go insane. You are here—with me.”

  “Tell me, Sylvia,” he asked, “about your experiences after your descent in the elevator. I particularly want to know how long it took you to get through the maze, if you went through the same maze as I did or a very different one, or if you went through any maze at all. Also, I am curious to know what awaited you once you came out into this room and how you managed to learn these creatures language.”

  She leaned back against the wall again and closed her eyes again as if reviewing everything that had happened to her since she came to this asteroid. While doing that, she reached out a hand and clasped his nearest hand and he partially turned to face her and put his other hand on her hand.

  She said, “I’m trying to pull my thoughts together. Realize that it will be harder for me than it was for you to summon up all these memories especially memories of the first few days. Imagine. That was more than two years ago and unpleasant—something I preferred to forget and tried very hard to forget.

  “But I didn’t forget. Let me see. Let me go back to the time when I got trapped inside of the little room and saw some buttons and began pressing them and felt a motor go on and felt that the room I was in was descending. That happened more than two years ago!”

  “I spent about a week going through, not a maze exactly, but what seemed to be to be an endless spiral like the inside of a giant snail, a spiral that curved around and around, always in the same direction and always descending. At one point, I found something that looked like a ladder. But I let it be because I could not figure out why it was there and what I could do with it. At another point, I found something that looked like a giant snail moving very slowly inside of the space I was in that I thought of as the hollowed out interior of a much larger snail.

  “I tried to ride the snail I found and then, for a while, I walked alongside of it, and finally I followed it for a while. I got very sleepy and ran ahead of the snail so that I might find it crawling up to me at the end of a nap, but, when I woke up, the snail was gone.

  “Also gone after my nap was my knapsack the loss of which caused me much suffering. I suppose I had come to regard the knapsack as a kind of companion or friend. With its loss, I felt I had lost a friend, my only friend.

  “Aside from my clothes I wore, the knapsack was my only connection to the world I knew. Besides, inside of the knapsack, there was a change of clothes, some tools, a flashlight, a notebook, a pencil, some spare food, and a tool I could use as a weapon if I had to. I missed all of that terribly.

  “I spent a lot of time crying after that knapsack disappeared. But, of course, I know that you experienced much the same thing. One of the videos showed you fighting a strong wind and being blown backwards through one door while your backpack went through another door. That was not by accident. They wanted to see what we would do after being deprived of our possessions.

  “I am sure now that they also took our knapsacks away from us so that they could examine the contents and better control what we ate and drank.

  “There were times when I had no light and had to grope along like a blind person. I think you experienced something similar. At least, they showed me videos made by the aid of night vision technology that showed you groping along in some of your rooms and corridors. So I supposed you too experienced the darkness.

  “I spent more time moving along my ramp with lights shining from the ceiling high overhead than I spent groping along in darkness. So I suppose I should be grateful for that at least.

  “Every once in a while, I found windows that might have been (probably were) screens on one side or the other of the ramp’s walls and sometimes very bright light shined from the windows. I remember sometimes going up to these, thinking of them as windows, and peering into them and banging on them with my palms and closed fists and asking if anyone or anything could see or hear me. There never was an answer but sometimes I heard strange sounds, sounds like
feet scurrying, bells ringing, asthmatic wheezing, and clicking.”

  Philby interrupted her at this point. He said, “I frequently banged on surfaces and yelled to see if anyone heard me or might take pity on me. I often called your name. I’d say, “Sylvia Ridgeway, are you there? Can you hear me? I’ve come to rescue you but now I stand in as much need of rescue as you. If you hear me, say something or do something that will show me that you are somewhere nearby and can hear me.”

  She said, “I know about that. I saw your pleas play out on the videos they let me see. But, of course, I was nowhere nearby and in no position to answer you because, by the time you entered your maze, I had long emerged from my ramp and was living down here. I could only watch with pity as I saw you endure the pain of loneliness and the dreadful sense of being alone.”

  She added, “At times, seeing the suffering you were undergoing, I got terribly sad out of empathy for what you were going through. More than once, tears came to my eyes. Though I tried to seem stoic in front of these creatures, I wasn’t’ always able to carry it off. Once I put my head down on my lap and began sobbing, an outburst that seemed to fascinate the creatures. They crowded around me and watched and pointed and poked and made sounds that I could not then understand.

  “I could hear motors revving and creatures crawling all around me. They looked up at me and touched me with their various appendages. There were also wires attached to parts of my scalp and chest and wrists during this time. No doubt instruments attached to the other side of these wires measured some of what I was feeling. Still, I sobbed. I felt so sorry for you. I wished I could just leave here and walk through one of your walls and try to comfort you.”

  “How I longed to have you do just that,” he said to her. “Yes, to have you materialize in front of me would have been a great comfort to me. In fact, I frequently dreamed that that would happen. I dreamed of that happening more than once, many more times than once.”