Azarias reached out his hand to stop Aleksi, but Aleksi had already grabbed the crank handle and pulled hard. Luckily, the door didn’t open, which gave the others time to grab him. He fought as he continued to crank the handle with impressive strength. After a few cranks, there was a big click, and the door started to swing open. On the other side, there was a hospital room. There was a desk with a computer and a long cushioned table. There was a bag with IV fluids and a monitoring machine that was turned off, as well as drawers by the walls. On the floor, there was a trapdoor.
Aleksi was finally pulled away from the door and shoved to the ground. “You idiot.” Then that person changed their mind. “Actually, you know what? If you’re so confident, let’s have you go in. Who knows, maybe you’ll be a prodigy.”
He shoved Aleksi into the room. Then he slammed it shut and shrugged at the rest of us. “Hey, don’t look at me like that.”
I sighed and pulled the door open again. I wanted to watch what would happen. Luckily, it wasn’t locked. This seemed to surprise Azarias, though. “That’s strange. They’re supposed to be solitary while it’s happening. Maybe the process hasn’t fully started yet…”
We all watched as Aleksi tapped away at the computer. “What’s on it?” I asked. “Well, there’s no internet connection here,” he said. There’s a login system, but no other text.”
He walked over to the trap door and lifted it up, but it was locked. Next to me, I saw Azarias’s eyes light up. “What are you thinking?” I asked him. Without replying, he strode into the room. A few people protested, “Hey, I thought it was supposed to be only one person.” Azarias said, “I don’t think the trial will start automatically. Hold on, I want to try something out. Do you all remember earlier when I said that six of the doors are anchored to reality while five are not? I was only partially telling the truth. It’s actually five who are anchored to reality, and five are not, and then one that’s somewhere in the middle. I think this is that one.”
He squinted like he was trying to look through the wall and matched up the angle of the trapdoor with the outside of the room. From the outside, Azarias dug down with his hands. We watched him do this furiously for about 30 minutes. His head disappeared from view entirely. From inside the hole, Azarias shouted, “Yeah, that confirms it. I’ve met up with the trapdoor shaft. You see, this hospital room does not exist in reality, but what’s underneath that trapdoor does. It’s half and half.”
Meanwhile, Aleksi was still furiously tapping at the computer. “Come on, I want to do the trial. How can we get this thing started? Come on, Azarias, don’t you have any more information?”
A glint lit up in Azarias’s eyes. “Well, I don’t know. I doubt I have the information you’re looking for, but now that I think about it, I might come in useful here. Let me look at that computer. I’m no hacker, but I do have memories. Basic computer skills shouldn’t be a problem.” He took a look at the computer and said, “This wasn’t the login for the computer itself. It was for this application, which doesn’t have a name… The computer itself is already logged in. I should be able to take a look around.”
For a few minutes, he found himself disappointed. “This operating system is really sparse; I don’t know what it is. It’s definitely not Windows. There is this one text file, though.” Aleksi stole the mouse away. “Come on, let me look.”
The message said, “The boxes will fall.”
Azarias and Aleksi looked at each other cluelessly.
Aleksi said, “I’m ready to go; let’s get to the action already.” He grabbed the trap door handle, which was now unlocked, and flipped it open before jumping inside.
Azarias shook his head. “There’s no helping him. Hopefully that fly trap will protect him.” He walked out of the hospital room and slammed the transparent door. I looked on in disbelief as the black wall could be seen once again through the door. The hospital room was really gone.
“Hey, what are you doing? Are you just going to leave him in there?”
“It’s a trial for one, so he has to explore it alone first, but I’m sure that area is going to be useful to us. It’s convenient; I was just talking about building underground.”
We waited for about twenty minutes. Finally, the door flew open, and Aleksi crawled out uninjured.
“So, did you complete the task?” Azarias asked.
“I couldn’t figure out what the task was. I ran around and got lost for a while, then I found a fountain. It’s weird; it’s like the opposite of the fountain up here; it’s all soft. Then I found a big vault, which was completely empty, sadly. It had a bunch of places to store stuff, so maybe we can use those. There was nothing that related to crossing the Chasm. Maybe one of the other handles would lead to a clue about that.”
Azarias nodded. “Looks like it’s not so easy to get a role. I hope there aren’t limited attempts. Yes, one of the other handles should be tried, but not by you. Let’s let someone else try, to be fair.”
“How about you?”
“No, it would be embarrassing if I failed. I’m sure there are other volunteers, right?”
Nobody was raising their hands. Then, at that moment, a voice came from behind us. “Where’d you get that door?”
I whipped my head around. It was Athalia. Azarias immediately tried to cover the door with his body, but he wasn’t large enough. “Oh, it’s nothing, I promise.”
“I’ve been listening in from outside the whole time. I heard it all.”
Azarias rested his face in his palm. “Come in here fast. Before anyone else notices anything’s up.”
Athalia walked right up to the door, ignoring all of us. She spent a long time standing in front of it. Then she said to Azarias, “It’s not fair for you to hide this from everyone else, assuming it contains great rewards. Also, I doubt this just appeared here naturally. You must have put it here; how convenient would it be for it to appear right in your building. It’s not like the creation of this building in this spot was predestined somehow.”
“We don’t have enough social structure yet to resist more huge commotions. The hourglass is already a big enough deal. Trust me, I want nothing to do with the roles this door represents, and I have no reason to create problems.”
Athalia had stopped listening to him. She had her eyes closed, and she was spinning her arm like she was picking between the handles at random. Her hand landed on the handle that looked like a guiding hand. She grabbed it and shook it. The door swung open hard, and Athalia was sucked inside by an unknown force. The door swung shut behind her immediately.
Azarias looked annoyed. “I wish we could watch. There has to be some way to spectate…”
His eyes lit up, and he opened the room with the crank handle again. It opened right up to the hospital room, even though Athalia should have just disappeared into that same part of three-dimensional space. He walked over to the computer, and a smile grew. He turned the screen to face us. It was grainy, but the image was clearly Athalia.
A thousand hands were all swarming her, pulling her in different directions. She was shouting in pain in the fetal position, in a dense fog.
I ran to the door and tried to grab the guiding hand, but Azarias said, “Hold on, I don’t know if people can exist in multiple rooms at once safely.” I didn’t care and tried again anyway, but the door Athalia went through was locked. Azarias gazed at me. “There’s no point. That door isn’t anchored to reality.”
“What do you mean, not anchored to reality? None of these doors seem very real at all.”
“The way it closed right behind her, and the fact that we couldn’t clearly make out anything inside, is the very evidence of it. She didn’t get pulled into a room; she got pulled into an idea.”
I couldn’t understand what he meant as I stared at the screen. I felt bad for her. “That state she’s in can’t be a good sign for the trial, right? It looks like she’s losing.”
Before Azarias could reply, Athalia suddenly stood up on the screen. She began walking in a circle with her face in her hands, saying, “I was wrong. I was wrong. I was wrong. I lose, I lose, I lose. I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored.”
A second later, the door popped open, and her body shot out, propelled by an invisible force. She lay on the ground shivering. I grabbed her and pulled her to her feet. “Are you okay?”
She wasn’t responding. Her eyes were glazed over, then she suddenly awoke and stared at me. “Hey, why are you grabbing me? Get off me!”
“What did you see in there that we didn’t?” I asked her while not letting her go. “What happened to you? Are you all right? Did you get any clues?”
She coughed. “What’s it to you if I’m all right or not? Same goes for a clue. I don’t have to tell anyone here anything. Remember, I’m the one with the collateral here. I can have a clue to myself if I want.”
If she’s acting this calm, it seems like she doesn’t remember anything that happened. Is she just bluffing about a clue? Maybe you don’t get the privilege of remembering what happens unless you pass the trial.
Athalia got to her feet and walked out without saying another word to any of us. Azarias called after her, “How do you want to come exploring?”
Without turning around, Athalia shook her head and said, “Forget it.”
Azarias chuckled. “I’m sure she’ll be back.”
“I can still hear you. And no, I won’t be back. I want nothing to do with the lot of you or anyone else.”
Azarias rubbed his hands together. “As for what to do now… We’re still going to need that clue. That last scene makes me a little worried, but trying another door is the only way forward, especially with the appearance of that hourglass. I couldn’t tell with just my eyes how long it’ll take to run down. Enza, how about you next?”
I shook my head vigorously. No. “You think I want what I saw on that screen to happen to me? You think I’m forgetting that you pushed me into that tunnel earlier and blocked me off?”
The others turned to look at Azarias. “You did what?”
“Let’s forget about that for now. Enza, I promise it won’t be that bad. How about this: if I open one, you have to go in.”
“What kind of logic is that? You aren’t even saying you’ll go in yourself.”
Azarias reached for the handle that looked like a mountain and started pulling at the door. He winced in pain; the door’s weight was incredible, and he could barely move it an inch. “Come on, help me out here!”
The others helped him out as I watched the crack in the door slowly expand. There was a flash of white, and then… I don’t know what came over me, but as soon as I saw the snow falling gently from the sky, I felt an urge to run toward the door. The last thing I saw before feeling the cold on my face was Azarias’s gentle smile.
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