The Gravity Myth

Purpose

"Where are we going?" Evan asked, his shirt up over his nose. It seemed to him they had been walking for miles across the arcs that made up the never-ending series of pits he had crawled out of. Sticky heat caused sweat to leak from his pores several doors back. He'd lost count of how many. The smell of rot mixed with the exercise he wasn't used to caused him to swoon now and again.

"To your cell, by which I mean your first cell," Bekoe answered. "If I am to plead your case and win you a second chance, I will need to know the hows and whys of your escape."

Evan could hear and see the occasional person through the floor grates as they passed over them, unhindered now by the racing pulse, the heavy footsteps, and the labored breathing of his mad getaway. Voices called, begged, and cursed him, much as he had done when he was trapped.

Bekoe finally stopped, then turned to Evan. "This was you. Six, twenty-five, eleven, Ico-nineteen." He held a hand towards one of the holes in the center of the curved room.

"I'm sorry, what? I just hiked across a whole state, so I'm not at my best."

"X-Y-Z coordinates with an icosahedral face value." Evan stared blankly, so Bekoe tried again. "It's a grid section on a twenty-sided, three-dimensional structure."

Evan walked around to the neighboring pits, examining each one through the grates. They had been cleared of even any human waste. "I don't think this is my cell. There was a girl in the cell next to mine. Her name was Callie," he spoke her name like a question. "These are empty."

"The girl was removed from the sector. She will have a trial as well, and the two of you may meet again, depending on your verdicts." Bekoe stooped down to look closer into Evan's hold. The stench coming from it seemed to have no effect on him. Maybe it was the missing nose. "Ah, a roommate... lucky you."

"That reminds me, we passed a few empty cells on the way here. Why did you, or whoever, put me in a hole with another body?"

"Honestly, we generally try to house captives in unoccupied cells. But you look a bit heavy, and the journey here from the surface is already quite long, so I'm sure you were simply dumped into whatever was the closest." Bekoe pointed across from the pit to one of the locked doors in the curve of the wall.

"The surface?"

"No. That is enough questions from you. Now it is your turn to answer questions. First, tell me how did you get out of the hole? Describe as much of it as you can remember."

"I had to use Boyd as a step-stool. And to prop open the grate. Oh, and his buddy was a knife."

"Boyd?"

"My, uh, roommate."

Bekoe's peered at the dismembered body in Evan's hole. His eyes slivered as he grinned. "Very resourceful of you! That is not usually a quality of the people you would find down here. But please, as your counsel, it is up to me to tell the truth of your story, so I must know everything."

Evan detailed all he could think of since waking in this hell. The confusion, getting to know Callie, the failed attempts and the final escape. He hesitated when he got to his struggle to save Callie, but Bekoe urged him through it.

"And then I woke up next to your ugly ass."

The old warrior chuckled. "It is good that your sense of humor has survived as well. You will need it when being judged by His Honor, Mr. Logan. He is of an unusual mirthy spirit, so even if you don't understand at the time, I suggest you play along. Also, I assure you, for a two-hundred year old man, I am very handsome."

A million questions raced through Evan's mind, most of them about this Mr. Logan, but he remembered Bekoe's warning about more inquiries. He did not want to piss off the one person on his side in this place.

"Now for the real examination," Bekoe said. "It took a titanic effort to crawl from this dungeon. How did you achieve the will to execute such a plan?"

Evan walked to the side of Callie's dungeon and stared into the stone hole. The sweat brought on by the muggy heat turned to a cold sheen on the surface of his skin.

"It was the girl, Callie. I wanted to save her. To give her another chance. She was sweet, a better person than she gave herself credit for, and she didn't deserve to die starving in this pit."

"So you wanted to be a hero?"

"No, not like -- " Evan reconsidered. "Yeah, I guess in a way. I wanted to be somebody's hero for once. Her life seemed so terrible, but she wanted so badly to live. It was kind of inspiring."

Bekoe joined Evan at the side of the pit. "There is a difference between inspiration and to be moved by pity or guilt. Regardless, it is good to know that there is charity in you. But in the end, you did not save her. You dropped her, leaving her to the fate you say she inspired you to rescue her from. Why?"

Evan's mouth was dry. He frowned and swallowed hard, softly rubbing at the deep scratches on his forearm. "I froze. I saw those guys, with the faces like yours. I didn't know what they were, or what they were going to do to me. The only thing I could do was get away by any means necessary. My body just reacted, I wasn't even thinking about it."

"That, Mr. Miller, is survival instinct. Everything you did was based on survival, sometimes they just need the right impetus to trigger them. Pity or altruism, the need to feel like a hero... fear? They were all servicing the same goal of making it out alive. Fear for the safety of another made you act heroic, but it was fear of the unknown, these strange men whose motives or even their pure existence you could not comprehend, that made you a villain."

"Am I a villain for wanting to live? I guess to Callie, I am." Evan sighed, "I knew one thing, though, the unknown had me in prison, so I had a reason to be afraid."

"Fear of the unknown does that to us all, Mr. Miller. In our minds we build walls, so that we do not have to see or address those fears., and we react. We run or attack. So few are willing to stand their ground and brave what the unknown brings. To get a close enough look to define what it is, rather than what we imagine it could be."

Evan did not know how to answer that, so he kicked absent-mindedly at the edge of Callie's pit. "So what do I have to do to win my case?"

Bekoe stared into Evan's eyes. "Answer me one last question. What is your purpose to continue living?"

The banality of Evan's entire life flashed in his memory. The dead-end job, the non-existent relationship with his parents, the total lack of any describable excitement or experience.

"I can't say I have one, but I'd like to find it."

A slow smile crept up on Bekoe's ruined face. "Sometimes, that is the best we can do, Mr. Miller."

The metal drain at the bottom of Callie's cell slid open, and although nothing filled it, Evan could hear that evil sucking sound. The sewage of death funneled and fed to God-knows-where.

Or God-knows-what.