For the past forty minutes, Leon saw only the rolling hills of sand dunes and the occasional jagged line of protruding rock. Now, off in the distance, at the very edge of his ability to see, a new shape rose up along the horizon. Leon could not make out what it was at this distance, but it was different enough that he knew they would soon be leaving this arid wasteland behind.
Hiss increased his pace and the others accelerated to keep up. Whether it was an intentional act or merely a reaction to the Many’s own desire to move on to the next landscape, no one questioned it. They were all more than ready for a change in scenery.
The sun continued to roll along overhead, picking up speed as it raced for the edge of the sky to their right. Leon watched his shadow lengthen and elongate to his left. The shapes ahead of them grew taller as well, taking on more distinct forms. It wasn’t trees or shrubbery they were approaching; the edges were too sharp, too regular. The horizon was covered with boxy, artificially made constructs with the occasional triangular point at the top. They were…
They were houses!
Leon spotted a row of tan and brown, one-story homes laid out in a straight line before them. There seemed to be fifty or more of the little square tract homes, each one identical to its neighbors on either side. It was a residential oasis growing out of the rock and sand of the surrounding desert, and their current path would take them right through the middle of the oddly located neighborhood.
The group closed on the buildings as quickly as the forest had faded behind them when they entered the desert. Each individual step seemed to carry them a hundred paces forward, until they were only a hundred yards away from the first of the small residences. The sun dropped behind the edge of the desert horizon and darkness claimed the world around them. Leon welcomed the sudden shade and cooler temperatures. There was no moon in the sky, but for the first time there were stars overhead. Billions of tiny pinpricks of light glinted down on the weary group of travelers, twinkling merrily as though nothing out of the ordinary was occurring.
Reality stabilized around them. Each forward step felt normal again, and the sky stopped shifting over their heads. Their path led them between two of the small houses and they were quickly swallowed up by the artificial neighborhood.
Leon half expected the path to change from hard clay to black, asphalt road as they wandered into the heart of this artificial suburb, but it remained as it always had. The edges of the dirt trail butted up to concrete curbs, narrow swaths of manicured lawns and rectangular, concrete driveways. Each house was identical to the next in size and shape, and across the street it faced its mirror image. Only slight variations of color ranging from darker brown to a pale tan distinguished one home from another.
Windows faced the street on every house, but the glass panes were all shuttered and dark, with nothing to suggest that any occupants resided inside. There were no lights on, inside or out. Leon saw no cars in any of the driveways, and there was not a single toy on a lawn or an out of place piece of debris anywhere. The entire street was much too quiet as well. There were no sounds of cars zipping along nearby roads, and no voices emanating from any of the houses, whether live or broadcast by radio or television. No dogs barked in the distance. There wasn’t even the expected background hum of frogs and insects calling out to one another in the late evening darkness.
The final, yet most dramatic, oddity took Leon a few moments to recognize. He knew the houses looked slightly wrong the moment he saw them, but it was only when he found himself debating if he should march up one of those paved walkways and find out if anybody was home that he realized what was missing. There were no doors on any of the houses. Each home was a blank face of wood and brick where an entrance should be. Other than perhaps breaking a window and forcing entry, there was no way in or out.
The houses weren’t real. They were merely a clever facade, he decided, designed to do nothing more than mimic reality and fool the eyes. This was somebody’s impression of what a suburban neighborhood on Earth looked like, but that somebody did not have any true understanding of what a neighborhood like this represented. It reminded Leon of a movie set he had toured a few years ago in southern California. The set had been for a western, and carpenters had erected a large wall that looked like a series of wooden buildings from over a hundred and fifty years ago. Although it looked realistic from the front, there was nothing behind the wall except a few wooden planks to hold it upright during filming.
“Can we stop for minute?” said Annie, interrupting Leon’s examinations of the surrounding buildings. “I … I just need a minute to rest.” Annie did not wait for a response from anyone else before slumping to the ground in the middle of the pathway.
“Hiss, hold up!” Leon called out. The entire procession ground to a halt.
Annie was flushed red from exertion and panting shallowly. Leon placed a hand against her forehead. She was warmer than she should be, but more alarming was the fact that her skin was dry. She had stopped sweating. Not a good sign.
Annie batted his hand away. “Get your hands off me, you pervert. I’m okay. I just felt like I was going to throw up, so I wanted to sit down for a bit.”
Leon understood the feeling. He too felt the headache and nausea that came with constant exertion and dehydration, but his body was at least still properly regulating its own temperature. Annie was too hot, and her body was under too much stress to do anything to compensate for it. Fortunately for her, they had found their way out of the desert, and the temperature of their new nighttime surroundings had plummeted at least thirty degrees in the past few minutes. Hopefully, Annie had escaped the punishing heat soon enough to recover on her own. Leon suspected there would be no hospitals or medical care of any kind coming to their aid.
“You again, to go dormant, require?” asked Hiss, who had come back to see why Leon called for the stop.
“No. She doesn’t need to sleep. She needs to rest and let her body temperature come back down to normal. If she tries to keep going much longer, she could make herself sick. Maybe even die.”
“Curious. To you, moving great distances, harmful, is?”
Leon shook his head. “Not normally. But too much activity when the temperature is too high can be hard on human beings.”
“I see. Us, the heat, dangerous, is not. Quite pleasant, is. However, us, cold temperatures, the enemy, is. Internal circulation, slows. Too cold, then circulation stops. We stop.” Hiss tapped his chest with a small hand.
“Too cold isn’t all that great for us, either,” Leon admitted. “But heat is much more dangerous.”
Annie pushed herself to her knees, preparing to stand, but Leon put a hand on her shoulder and held her in place.
“Lie down, flat on your back. Just be still for a minute and let your body cool down.”
With a reluctant glare at Leon, Annie rolled onto her back and stayed put. Leon slipped off his backpack and placed it under her feet.
“Damn it, Idaho. Still trying to look up my dress?” she muttered, but a smile pulled at the corner of her lips.
The rest of the group took the opportunity to rest as well. They sat down on the path and let themselves recover from the oppressive desert heat. Malcolm and Michael took a seat on the curb at the edge of the road a few feet apart and did their best to pretend that the other person did not exist.
Although it was nighttime and the moon had failed to make an appearance in the sky for illumination, there was plenty of light by which to see. Along the edge of the path, the yellow-white glare of sodium-vapor streetlamps shone down upon the rows of homes. Thirty feet in the air, and spaced out in intervals of about 75 yards, the lamp posts provided more light than the travelers had experienced in the twilight woods.
“Shouldn’t there be some water around here?” asked Sofia. “I would think where there are houses, there should be water.”
Leon agreed, but during his earlier inspection of their location, he had not seen any water faucets or garden hoses. There
was nothing in the yards or along the smooth, painted fronts of the homes that even hinted at where they might find water. The lawns looked healthy and well cared for. Perhaps, if they waited long enough, they would see a few sprinklers pop up and begin to water the grass. It was a nice thought, but Leon doubted it was at all realistic.
“Normally, that would be true,” he told Sofia. “But these houses aren’t real. They only look like houses to … I don’t know. Maybe to make us feel more comfortable? Maybe the Apex think we aren’t smart enough to know the difference. Or, more likely, they don’t care if we do or don’t. That isn’t the main point of this test.”
“So, what is the point?” Sofia persisted.
Leon shrugged. “Hiss has no idea, and the Many have been going through this for years. I could make a few guesses, but that’s all they would be. Guesses.”
“Are we going to get out of here?” Sofia’s voice was small and defeated as she voiced the question they had all been thinking.
“Of course,” Leon told her with more confidence than he felt. “I think we know the pattern now. We just have to repeat it until we’re allowed to move on to the next stage. Whatever comes after this, we will figure it out and keep moving forward until they send us home.”
“What if all we’ve done is figure out how to change the scenery?” asked Michael from his perch on the curb. “What if we aren’t actually making any progress at all in this challenge?”
Leon had no answer to that question, so he kept his own thoughts and fears to himself.
“We, progress, make,” Hiss assured the group. “Each change, the successful performance of test, represents. Change, progress, equals.”
“You’re sure of that?” Michael asked the alien.
“I, certain, am.”
Annie abruptly sat up. “Okay. I’ve heard enough. I’m the one dying in the middle of the street, but I’m the only person that isn’t crying into her skirts. Since the houses aren’t spinning around me anymore, we should get moving.”
Leon put his hand on her forehead again. She allowed it for a couple of seconds before she lightly slapped him away. “Handsy bastard,” she told him, playfully.
He stepped back and let her stand up. She didn’t feel as feverish as she had before and seemed recovered from her earlier wave of fatigue. Annie’s skin was still dry, however, and Leon knew that even in these cooler temperatures, they were all at risk of similar problems if they didn’t find water soon.
Leon scooped up his backpack from the ground as the others stood to join Annie. With a nod from Leon and a gesture from Shoo, Hiss returned to his position at the front of the pack.
They walked on. The houses rolled by one after another in identical, cookie-cutter rows. It wasn’t long before the humans noticed another odd facet of the neighborhood: it was a single continuous line of homes. There weren’t any side streets to divide the residences into city blocks. Correction, Leon thought, there were going to be side streets, but they would appear about a mile apart from each other. This was another setting, but it was a continuation of the pattern challenge. The dirt path at their feet confirmed as much.
As predicted, the group eventually found the first of the intersections in the neighborhood. The perfectly duplicated houses now ran out in perpendicular rows in four different directions. There were no street signs at the intersection to mark their location and, adding to the alien feel of their surroundings, the houses at all four corners showed two duplicate faces on each of the roadways they fronted. It made each structure appear as if it might actually be a box with four identical front sides, complete with perfectly symmetrical lawns, driveways, and shuttered windows.
Annie sketched her arrow into the pathway and the group continued forward.
They were moving noticeably slower. Leon did not know if Hiss was being considerate of his human companions, or if there was some other reason for the change in pace, but he was grateful for it regardless of the cause. In addition to her possible heat exhaustion, Annie had developed a slight limp as well. She seemed to be favoring her right leg. Leon wondered if the old injury to her knee was beginning to bother her.
Five minutes crawled by. Then ten. Then twenty.
At just shy of half an hour, they found their intersection and Annie’s arrow in the dirt. The group reversed direction and headed back the way they had come. Leon and the others watched the sky carefully for changes, searching for any indication they were either leaving this scenario or that they had gone the wrong direction.
Nothing changed. The stars did not shift above them indicating they had chosen an incorrect direction requiring a subsequent readjustment, but neither did the temperature or time of night alter. The sun did not reappear. There wasn’t even a new moon peeking above the rooflines of the houses to suggest they were about to exit this portion of the challenge. The houses did not alter or reform along their path to indicate the party would see the end of them anytime soon. This lack of change was in itself a new development, but Leon had no idea what it might mean.
Good or bad, they were committed to this course of action. Changing direction now would only extend their journey in the long run so, on they walked, each keeping their own council. Leon hoped that something positive might be about to happen, but he was also afraid of jinxing them all by speaking.
A new obstacle appeared at the end of the road. Hiss was the first to notice it.
“Curious,” he said, not slowing his pace, but his comment had everybody looking to see what had caught his attention.
The road ended, but not with an intersection or any noticeable change of scenery. The dirt path led into a cul-de-sac, surrounded by a widened loop of the same bland-featured houses. The hard-packed clay path butted up to the concrete curb line and stopped. Their journey had ended.
But now what?
Hiss brought them to a stop at the terminating edge of the path. He glanced around at the others, his posture and fidgeting gestures with his hands indicating his confusion and uncertainty. Shoo, however, gently brushed him to the side and pointed toward the final house with a delicate, small hand.
“We, our way out, have found. I think.”
For the first time since they had entered this bizarrely elongated neighborhood, they found a house with a front door. The paved driveway led to a narrow walkway which meandered to the front of the home. The walkway, in turn, terminated at a white, wooden door with a brass doorknob. This was also the only residence they had seen that wasn’t colored in some variation of brown or tan. The house was painted a glossy white with a bright yellow trim.
“Somebody is going to get in trouble with the homeowner’s association,” muttered Annie as she noticed the color discrepancy.
Ignoring the walkway, the tired travelers tromped across the manicured lawn to the door they hoped would lead them out of the twisted puzzle they had been stuck in for the past several hours. Shoo reached for the door, but Kack intervened. He blocked the smaller female from touching the doorknob, then pointed at Hiss. Hiss immediately complied by stepping between Shoo and the potential threat.
Hiss grasped the doorknob with one large hand. It turned easily under his touch. With a light push, the door swung in and away.
CHAPTER 11
Hiss released the doorknob and let the door swing inward. The opened passageway revealed only darkness behind it. With no light emanating from anywhere inside the house, it was impossible to see what threats might be lurking in the gloom. The surviving members of the group exchanged glances with one another; none of them wanted to be the first to enter the black interior. They had no idea what they might be stepping into but choosing not to go in at all was also not an attractive option. When this door disappeared as all the others had before it, if they were still on the front porch, they would remain forever stuck in this hamster wheel of pseudo-houses they had fallen into.
Shoo gestured brusquely at Hiss. The reluctant escort for the group ducked his head and dutifully, if hesitantly, disappea
red inside. A few seconds passed, and Leon could hear the sound of Hiss scrabbling with all four hands against a wall as if searching for something. A light switch, perhaps? Nothing changed. The interior remained pitch black.
“It, empty, appears,” came Hiss’ voice from the invisible recesses of the house. “It, safe, seems. I think. You, before the door losing, should enter.”
Kack stepped through next, followed by Shoo. Leon and the rest trailed behind. The dim light of evening outside the doorway did not penetrate further than the entrance itself, and the group was plunged into inky blackness as soon as they crossed the threshold. A loud bang announced the house’s front door slamming shut behind them.
The darkness enveloped Leon, draping over his body with an almost physical presence. Although he had never been claustrophobic, the imagined sensation of pressure on his skin left him panting for breath and his heart racing. Leon turned, disoriented, but trying to figure out which direction would lead him back to the door. He wondered if he could force it open again. He suffered a sudden desperate need for fresh air, for freedom from this oppressive emptiness. Moments before the panic could send him running, he became aware of an almost imperceptible glow emanating from all around him. The walls became suddenly visible to Leon’s light starved eyes. Slowly, steadily, the glow grew brighter, as though someone had found a rheostat and dialed it up in increments that would not leave them painfully blinded. As the interior of the house came into view, the group found themselves once again in one of the featureless white tunnels that signified the brief safety between one challenge and the next.
At the far end of the hallway, as expected, was a door. The door that would lead them to their next test.
Testing Grounds (On Dangerous Grounds Book 1) Page 15
