Foston Slacks - Time's Flies

14

Clara screamed again, much to the consternation of Foston. The tongue of the creature, whose mouth they currently occupied, moved, shifting their feet, almost making them fall. She heard a rush of wind as the creature inhaled, then, a few seconds later, felt the wind blow back the other way as the thing exhaled. She looked around for some kind of exit, though what kind of exit she could find in a mouth, apart from climbing over the very sharp, very pointy bits at the front, she had no idea. She looked again, just to be certain.

"Well, if we're going to die, we might as well enjoy it." Foston tidied himself up, adjusting his jacket, brushing down his trousers and crouched, ready to jump down the throat. "Don't forget to shout 'Wheeeee' as we slide down into the incredibly strong stomach acid."

"Wait! Stop! What's that?" Clara grabbed him before he jumped down the creature's gullet. He looked over his shoulder. "That black thing over there."

"Against the razor sharp tooth? Probably tooth decay. Enormous creatures aren't known for their dental hygiene." He turned back around and crouched again, then stopped. "I'd like to say that it's been an absolute pleasure travelling with you, Clara, but it hasn't, so I won't."

"It's not tooth decay. It's wobbling. I think it's a breach." She glanced at Foston and saw him roll his eyes. "Check your bloody watch!"

He checked his watch. Then he checked it again and his face exploded onto a look of absolute happiness. He turned, grabbed Clara's face and looked like he was about to kiss her, then turned away, looking at the shimmering black breach mere millimetres away from the certain death of the sharp teeth.

"You, my friend, are brilliant! And you say it's black? I can't see the colour of Breaches very well. Lemurs are dichromatic, unfortunately." He began striding towards the Breach, slipping on the slimy mucous of the creature's tongue. "But, black! Oh, you're going to love this!"

"Why will I love this?" Clara struggled to catch up to him, clutching at the flip-flop with her toes, trying to keep it attached to her foot.

"Because this will be like nothing you've ever seen before." He stopped before the Breach, then deliberately stepped forward into it and vanished.

"Bastard didn't even wait!" She stepped through, into the inky black wobble.

She'd seen a lot of places like this before. It was a corridor. She'd seen plenty of corridors in her life. They weren't anything to write home about. Admittedly, this corridor was a tad wider than she was used to. And had a road running down the middle of it. And lots and lots of people. And shops. The whole place felt both immaterial and completely solid at the same time. It was a strange feeling for Clara to see it.

But it was a corridor. Above, she could see the ceiling, with bright strip lights running along as far as the eye could see. A very, very long corridor. So long, in fact, that she couldn't see the end of it as it petered out of eyesight far, far into the distance. Behind her, the corridor did end, or began, as it were. A wall. Nothing special about it, but a wall, painted magnolia, blocked any movement that way and, to her left, she could see a door with a big, bronze, number one screwed onto its surface. The first room of the incredibly long corridor.

Outside the door with the number one on it, she could see a small scruffy looking dog, white with brown patches upon its wiry fur. And, she felt certain, the poor thing was almost completely blind. It snuffled up to her, sniffed at her flip-flop and then tried to bite her ankle. It missed, but it tried.

"Here." Foston returned to her, hands holding a single blue flip-flop and a bright, white running shoe. "Flip-flop to go with the flip-flop, or sneaker to go with the sneaker?"

"Sneaker." She continued to look around her. "What is this place?"

"This ..." Foston threw out his arms, turning in a circle, taking in everything. "Is The Corridor. A near infinite corridor where the doors could lead to anything or anywhere. A bit like the Breaches, but not at all like them."

"Did you know we were going to end up here? You seemed a little too pleased that the Breach back there was black. What's the significance of a black Breach?" She took off the flip-flop and put the white running shoe on in it's place.

The shop, where Foston got the sneaker and flip-flop from, sat between two very different doors. One, a huge black, beast of a door, twice as high as a normal door and with intricate, scary looking carvings upon its surface seemed to breathe as she watched it. The other door stood only half as wide as a normal door and seemed to open only in one dimension. She didn't know how she knew that. She just did.

"A black Breach takes us out of normal space and time and into a sort of meta, concept space." When Clara just blinked, slowly, Foston realised he needed to explain more. Or better. Clara knew she would appreciate better explanations. "You see, this, the whole corridor, the people, the doors, the shops, even that strange, wobbly dog, are all an abandoned concept. Once a story that an author dearly wanted to write, but could never quite get to writing it. It was quite sad."

"Like, umm, I don't know, like living on the set of an abandoned movie, or something?" Clara looked at the people walking by, wondering if she saw real people at all. "Or like being inside a video game?"

"Exactly!" Foston spun on his heel, pointed two index fingers at her and winked. "But, no, nothing at all like that. This is a place somewhere in between the realms of imagination and possibility. One that neatly side-steps probability and relativity and dances a tango around accountability and sensibility."

"If you don't actually know what this place is, you can just say. I won't make a big thing of it." The new running shoe fit rather well. On her foot. It didn't fit with the other shoe at all and she wondered why Foston only got one of each. Then she looked at the shop again and noticed it only sold single shoes.

"I do know what it is! It's a place that was created and, in that creation, became its own reality." All the time he spoke, he walked up the corridor, with Clara following. He did seem to find the place fascinating. "In an infinite universe, everything is possible. Most of it is incredibly improbable, but no-one really cares about probabilities anyway. Apart from bookies. They understand these concepts better than anybody."

"Is the universe infinite?" She'd read, somewhere, that some scientists disputed that idea. She probably read it in Hello magazine, or something.

"I don't know, I've never measured it."

"How can you measure something infinite?"

"With an infinite retracting tape measure. Of course." Foston scrunched his face in that way that shouted 'Duh!'.

"Okay. Fine. I don't understand this whole 'concept', 'reality' thing. But you seemed really, really pleased about that black Breach and you haven't really answered my question, 'Why'?" A steam-powered car passed by, driven by a hedgehog. Whoever thought up this 'The Corridor' thing clearly had issues.

"Because, due to the nature of Conceptual Space, it can only be changed by the author, themselves. It can't be damaged, or changed by outside influences, unlike the Breaches. From here, we can finally get to some place, some one, that can help us." Now Clara got it! She didn't, really, but she clicked on to the idea of someone helping them. That sounded great.

"Great! How do we do that?" She clapped her hands. Finally! Progress!

"We walk." He set off, up the corridor, expecting her to follow. She fulfilled his expectation and caught up with him. "It's only thirty-five miles to the right doorway. I just hope he's in when we get there."

"Who?"

"Time."

Clara didn't know if Foston meant the concept of time (all this talk about 'concepts' and 'infinities' and 'probabilities' had rubbed off on her), or if he meant a creature called Time. She envisioned the old drawings of personifications of time, or Time. The old, bent backed man with a long, flowing white beard carrying a scythe and an hourglass. Or the younger version. The baby in a nappy with a sash. And an hourglass. The kind of thing seen on cheap greetings cards people bought to send their friends for New Year's Eve that never left the drawer, slowly getting further and further out of date.

But, he couldn't possibly mean a person called 'Time', surely?