Undiscovered Countries

Matt had been gently caressing Kathy’s body for the last half hour, expressing his love for her with his hands. Slow, leisurely strokes across her breasts and nipples, tracing the outline of her defined ribs, and then soft caresses across her flat stomach and abdomen, feather-light strokes with his fingers across her hip bones, and then returning to her breasts and starting anew…

“You’re so beautiful, Kathy…. My heart aches with your beauty…”

“Here, let me show you something…” Kathy said, taking Matt’s hand and placing it near her abdomen. “Push down gently. Feel that? That’s my left ovary. I felt it twitch last night. I think it ovulated. Oh, Matt, I want you inside me so much, to give you my virginity, but it would be wrong to risk conceiving our child in this well. I do love you, though, as much as I love life itself.”

Matt answered her with his eyes and his kisses. Kathy sighed in contentment for a while, then smiled at Matt and said “Well, time to get the moose back on the table?”

“Yeah. What does the moose look like now? I think you have an idea of what this is all about. Does it change our primary goal?”

“No. We still need to descend ASAP. Our food is gone. With the vitamins and our previous body fat, we’re still in fine shape. I think in another week though, it’ll start to be a different story. We must still head down. Let’s also keep glancing at the door signs. I think the current message means there’s no immediate danger ahead.”

“What’s this all about, Kathy?”

“This is all guesswork on my part, of course. But I think that word SORRY speaks volumes. For the last 12 days, I’ve been thinking about this escalator well, trying to frame the reality of it. Is it benevolence, malevolence, or neither, just uncaring, that we’re here? I think now that I’ve been looking at the problem from the wrong direction. My feeling is that perhaps we are being asked for our benevolence, that the well is a distress call, and we’re the ones who answered the call…”

“I dimly see what you mean. The SORRY was both a warning and an apology for the black ink. Whoever or whatever made the distress call doesn’t have full control over what happens in this well….”

“No, it doesn’t… Matt, tell me about this pamphlet you found, describing the escalators. You mentioned it to me during our lunch at the Top Of The Morning. Was it in a large pile of pamphlets? Did lots of other people get to see it too?”

“I assumed so, but I guess I really don’t know. I was sitting in the building’s 75’th floor auditorium complex on opening night, listening to a speech, looked down at my foot, blinked, saw the pamphlet, and picked it up.”

“Wait! You remember blinking before picking it up?”

“Yeah. So what? People blink all the time.”

“Exactly! It’s such a common thing to do, people would never normally remember doing it. Matt, why do you think you can remember blinking?”

Matt was silent for a few moments. “Kathy, you should be a lawyer, or an investigator. Your inductive reasoning is superb! I’m not sure I know why I remember the blink, but I do remember that I was somewhat surprised to find the pamphlet.”

“What happened to it? Do you still have it, in your office or at home?”

“No. I thought I had it with some papers. But when I got home that night, I couldn’t find it.”

“Interesting. Try this idea as a wild conjecture. The entity that linked the escalator well to the MCT also sent the pamphlet as a plea for help, asking whoever found it to look for the escalators…”

“Wasn’t a very polite way of doing it, Kathy… Very deceptive.”

“What exactly did the pamphlet say?”

“It didn’t say much of anything. I thought it was an evacuation pamphlet for all ages, lots of diagrams of where the escalators were. It showed a picture of something I thought looked like batteries, behind all these landing-pad doors… I liked the feel of the paper. I wanted to keep it as a sample to show an advertising client I have. But it was clearly labeled EMERGENCY HIGH-SPEED ESCALATORS, in big bold letters on the front, very deceptive.”

“From our perspective, yes. But we’re obviously dealing with a non-human intelligence. Perhaps deception is an unknown concept to the consciousness we’re dealing with. Oh, Matt! Maybe it was just a misunderstanding! Perhaps it used the word emergency for its emergency, not an emergency evacuation of the MCT. Perhaps it thought that the sign BOTTOM FLOOR EXIT ONLY was sufficient warning, that if we entered after reading the sign, we were agreeing to make the journey. I have a feeling what we’re dealing with is very advanced technologically, and… childlike. The pamphlet wasn’t written for children, it was written by a child… Or old. Old, ancient, incredibly ancient, unused to thinking in ages. Something with immense technical knowledge, so immense it seems like magic to us, but also something that doesn’t understand how to communicate very well.”

“And it needs our help? For what?”

“I have no idea. But I think we’ll find out once we reach the exit. I’m more optimistic now than I’ve been in days. I won’t think the originator of the distress call would be asking us to make an impossible journey… Matt, darling, let’s continue downward.”

And Day B continued…

“Twenty-five” Kathy called out.

“Twenty-five” Matt confirmed, and started down the well.

It was over twelve hours since their encounter with the black ink. Kathy and Matt were within a hundred flights of ending their last trek for the night, Day B was drawing to a close. Kathy was starting to assume that they would not find water before stopping, and was mentally preparing herself for Day C traveling, after their sleep period. Lying down with Matt again would be so nice…

“Twenty-six” she called out, as she rounded the landing-pad.

Matt did not respond, and kept staring down the next well. Kathy glanced first at the door frame on their current level, but the message was the normal BOTTOM FLOOR EXIT ONLY. Kathy joined Matt by his side, and they both just stared down the well for a moment…

“I don’t see any switchback for a next flight” said Matt softly.

“And the door is on the opposite wall, not the adjacent wall, of the landing-pad.”

“Yeah… Let me go down first” said Matt, and he hopped on the escalator, Kathy a few seconds behind him.

There were indeed no further switchbacks. The door before them had an inviting bar handle to open it, and the sign by the door said “BOTTOM FLOOR EXIT, DO NOT LOCK.” Kathy and Matt stood before the door in silence for several moments….

“Katherine, before we go through, I want to tell you that I love you, for now and forever. My heart will never change. I offer you my heart, as a hopeful husband offers his heart to his wife to be. I’m in utter amazement of what we might find beyond that door, but I’m so happy we’re finding it together…”

“Matthew, a great poet once described the future as the undiscovered country. That’s what lies beyond that door, our undiscovered countries. I accept your heart, and offer you my heart in return, as your wife, offering my heart to my husband. In all the joys and sorrows of my undiscovered country, my love for you will be there with me.”

Matt and Kathy kissed, and then each placed a hand on the door’s horizontal bar, pushed down together, and heard a resounding click!