I; Labyrinth

3; Room D12

Adrian

There's a strange sensation of the absence of essences. There's nothing.

'Watch your step, mind where you go, don't let yourself be led by anything suspicious,' Jack tells me.

It's so dark, how can I possibly know where I am going?

How can he know? He's so irritating sometimes!

I attempt to raise my right leg and push myself forwards. I know I am doing so, but I just can't feel it and I suspect Jack can't either.

Best to keep walking in this dark tunnel. Since that's what it is - a tunnel; meaningless for its slithering inhabitants that lurk about in the dark filling it, yet of a great importance for its wandering visitors, like us two, for instance.

'Jack...' I call, stopping in the nowhere of this senseless tunnel, 'what's the point in going this direction? We should never have left that other room we stopped in.'

'You're out of your mind', he replies, 'We risked being trapped forever in Limbo, so we did right to leave. We've done this before. Just keep on walking; we'll eventually find something, the human mind isn't infinite, Adrian.'

True, I think in response. However, it is immense, therefore extremely difficult to find what you want to look for, I deduced.

Even though I cannot feel anything as I walk, I can still hear my footsteps and those of Jack echo in the distance, but Jack is so close to me... how can his footsteps sound so far off? Yet even mine seem as though they come from faraway, and I'm the one creating them as I pass in this eerie cemetery of a mind.

Everything is black and darkness surrounds us both, blocking out our sight, our wisdom, consciousness... I can barely think. It seems as though the pitch-blackness of this zone is attempting to confuse us, as though it wanted to seize us like its prey. But darkness isn't a predator... is it?

I realize I'm breathing more rapidly than earlier. Time doesn't exist, however, in a human mind, or at least that is what I've always known.

I can't even remember what it is I want to think about. Neither memories, nor wishes, concerns, worries... even love. Nothing appears to rear its head in my mind.

Suddenly, I remember something important Jack had told me many times before entering Xara's mind; never think too much whilst in the dark areas, in other words, the affected zones. Since we are both science partners and apparently gifted with a form of the rarest intelligence in existence, of which name is (to me at least) unknown, we have been summoned to explore this labyrinth in the hopes of retrieving something lost, hidden, dangerous...

Out of all my thoughts of concern, the most unnerving thing enters the blackened-out scene: fragments of music can be heard in the distance and are quickly increasing as we continue walking.

'Jack,' I whisper, 'do you hear that?'

Silence. My heart skips a beat. But I don't have a heart. I'm only my own conscience, travelling around one of the three segments of a human mind. Yet fear has penetrated me so utterly that I can no longer move.

My left brow impedes a drop of sweat from entering my eyes.

 I don't have any eyes, though!

As I said, I'm a figure drawn from the inside of somebody else's mind, and in this mind I am in a painting, an image, surrealism...

I try to squint - nothing. I try to blink - no use. I am gazing at only darkness in front of me, around me, underneath me, behind me and above me.

Finally, with a short breath, Jack answers the question I seem to have asked what menacingly feels like over a decade ago.