Schrodingers Maze

Part IV - Inside the Box the Truth is Absolute But We May Not Know It

Schrodinger becomes aware that he is at rest, although he cannot remember being in motion other than the feeling of the phone slipping from his hands. Nor can he place how much time has passed. It could be a second or it could be years. It is as if time itself has been given form, stretched into a shape that Schrodinger is lost inside of. He has not awoken from a sleep either but come into consciousness where before only a void existed. If only this were a dream.

Finding a sudden impetus, a shot of fear echoing from the past, he rises to his feet and turns a slow circle, hands by his sides, taking the scene in. He cannot recall a place so absent of sound and smell, or so otherworldly and unkind. His skin burns from the sun, if it is the sun, this scolding light pouring from the sky. His mouth is dry, the sticky taste of his own gums and dried salty saliva catching in his throat as he swallows.

He is surround by walls stretching into the distance, high and stout, encased by their solidity. His body is driven forward not by will or choice but by thirst. He must find water. His head throbs, his feet shuffle. Surely, he must perish if he doesn't drink. Yet after hours, it must be hours thinking back on the distance Schrodinger has travelled, he has not crumpled lifeless to the ground, as he reaches a juncture. A crossroads where the path he is on splits in three. Each is as indistinct as the next, and he stands for a moment in the middle trying to divinate the right path. Resigned, he realizes he must give in and choose at random. Embrace serendipity or misfortune. He turns right and drags on.

Distance stretches further into time, and repeats. Crossroad after identical crossroad. Is he going in circles? He thinks not, yet he only has subtle changes in feeling to go by. A homing instinct or sense of direction. And then as the swelter is replaced by a bitter cold more searing than the heat, it dawns on him that this is not a path he finds himself on, but a maze he finds himself within. He shivers violently, quickens his pace to generate heat, and then for the first time since finding himself here, he speaks. Shouts to the sky.

"What do you want?", he calls out, not knowing who he is addressing.

And then he thinks back to what the man said as he stuffed the slip of paper into his mouth. "Dial this number if you want to understand what is really going on."

"I don't understand," he calls out to the same numb sky, his voice crackling with frustration.

For what must be days, many miles at least, he continues. A hungered, thirstful existence. An infinite loop of fire and ice, of left, right and middle, of decisions that lead nowhere. And then just as his body collapses him to his knees, unable to propel himself another step forward, he raises his head for what he is sure will be the last time.

In the wall, not two meters away, he sees through the shimmering heat a small door open. Within, it looks peaceful, a haven from the hostility around him. With what feels like his last breath he throws himself toward it, full of fear, not for what lies within, but that it might close.