The Magical Labyrinth

"Well, okay. Accepted. The alien option stays on the table for now. Hopefully it'll be a great source of amusement for me to tease you with later, when we find out this is all Earth related... That's about it for my thoughts so far. How about you Rob?"

"Well, one interesting question is how much time has elapsed between, I think about 2:45 pm Sunday at Gunpowder Falls, and the time we woke up..."

"Oh... I would guess at least a few hours..."

"Oh, at least. I'm wondering about an upper limit. A day, a week, more than a month?"

"Yuck. I see what you mean. It is possible to artificially induce a coma, isn't it? It's a horrible thing to consider. But you're right, I don't feel like I'm rested from sleep. I actually feel kind of tired and sleepy. I don't feel hungry or thirsty, but my stomach feels very flat. I also have no desire at all to urinate, or to have a bowel movement. My cramps just produced a clear oil from my... well, my anus. I have a horrible suspicion that my stomach and intestinal tract have been flushed completely clean by the oil. Maybe my bladder has been drained too... Could we have been in comas and not asleep?"

"I don't know. Maybe. My bladder and intestines feel the same, drained and empty..." Robert scratched the back of his neck again, deep in thought. "Becky, can I look at the back of your neck?"

"What? Sure, just remember to put your warm arms around me again when you're finished."

Becky felt Rob's gentle fingers on her neck for several moments, and then he lightly kissed her there at said, "Thanks Becky. Take a look at the back of my neck. Tell me what you see."

A few moments later... "Smooth skin, no hair, no sign of scarring, a bit pinkish in a large clearly defined rectangle. Interesting."

"Yeah. The back of your neck looks the same. My muscle tone feels fine, which would suggest it had no time to atrophy. Our hair lengths look the same, and I have no beard. On the other hand, I notice that your nail polish is gone..."

"What? Oh my gosh, you're right! I almost never wear it, so I didn't notice it was gone. My roommate Susan suggested I try some of hers for our date and... well, I wanted to look as attractive for you as I could..."

Robert gave Becky a quick kiss. Becky returned one of her own, and then several more.

"Dearest and sweetest Becky, I'm so happy I've found you... I think you're the most wonderful person in the world!"

"I'm feeling the same emotions. I've never had a serious dating relationship, too shy, but I want one with you. You've come underneath my shyness, into a wonderful sexy whirlwind of hope and anticipation. I've told my mom a bit about you, how wonderful you are. She suggested we take our time. She's right, but I also recognize that the bond growing between us is enduring. I'm going to try to do both, have us take our time, not rush things, and not hinder things either. I am sure enough about my feelings to tell you that I love you."

"I love you back Rebecca. You're right, commitment needs to grow at a gentle pace, but I'm thrilled at the hope of it. You're becoming a part of me, and a part of what I hope to become."

The two closed their eyes and rested their heads together, not saying anything for several minutes. Then Becky said, "I'm a bit tired, but I can't imagine trying to sleep on this hard cold floor without being exhausted, even with you wrapped around me. How about we try the oval?"

"Sure! Want to go first?" Becky eagerly accepted the offer. On examining the oval, Becky counted 19 buttons, all with distinct colors. She pressed one at random, and was surprised to see a different button light up briefly, along with a brief burst of a tone.

"Ha, my years of violin tuning have finally proven useful! What do you think, Rob? To me, that sounded 4 to 5 Hertz flat of a 440 A."

"Yes. I think you're just right."

Becky continued to experiment with the oval, with Rob quietly standing by her side observing. She quickly found there was no simple relationship between the button pushed and which button would light, or which tone would sound. Sometimes pushing a button would produce 2 or even 3 lights and a chord of tones. Often the oval would bleep a discord. When it did, there was always a 5 second delay where it would be unresponsive to anything, and then a flash of all the lights. After about 20 minutes, Becky began to grow tired of playing with it.

"This seems more like a toy Rob, than a control to open the door. Even after the bleep, which seems to be a reset, the same button will map to different lights and notes. The notes seem to be sliding around all over the place too, no scale at all, sort of like my first year with my violin when I was three years old! Could this be a combination lock? Who would ever make a door control so complicated? Maybe this isn't a door at all... I think I'm baffled, and my eyes are tired from the flashing lights. Would you mind if I sat down and closed my eyes to rest for awhile?"

Robert gave Becky a brief hug and kiss. "Sure, rest your eyes. If you like, listen to what I do. I've gotten some ideas watching you play. There are several things I'm thinking of trying..."

Becky was grateful for a chance to rest her eyes. For the next 10 minutes, she just listened with her sharp musical ear to what Rob was doing. She quickly realized Rob was playing the oval's tones much, much faster than she was, with much less repetition. He was also starting to make the reset bleep occur far less frequently than her play. She suddenly laughed at what Rob was doing.

"Ha, ha, Rob! I remember playing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on a phone keypad once. It sounds like what you're doing is sort of the same thing, but in a really drunken way. I must say, I admire you for being so playful when our situation seems so deadly to me. How can you just futz around while we're freezing to death?"

"Becky, I can take a break to warm you. But I do believe that I'm jamming with this machine. Damn if I'm not!"

"What!?" Becky opened her eyes and stood by Rob's left side, lightly resting her right hand affectionately on his right buttock.

"It's improvising with me Becky! This is so amazing, the oval and I are putting a song together. It sounds drunk because the notes are sliding all over the place, but it's chaos, not randomness. Think of the song as mathematical chaos, as an oscillation around a strange attractor... Can your musical ear pick out the three underlying melodies? Can you follow the phase shifts?"

"Why are you bothering to jam with the oval?"

"Well, what's my reward for completing a song it likes?"

"Oh! Robert, that's brilliant!"

The song suddenly did end. The oval gave a multi-tone whistle, and suddenly the lights dimmed to half power. Rob and Becky looked at each other in astonishment.

"You have to play a song to dim the lights? Rob, that's absurd!"

"Yeah... Bizarre... And not just play a song Becky, jam a song. For a while, it insisted on taking the lead, and then it insisted that I take the lead... And then it improvised on my ideas... All this to switch off the lights a little? It is absurd... Well, at least I didn't play it a song that meant to increase the lights by a factor of two. Lucky! That would have been near to blinding. I'm going to try to play the same song again, or at least a close variation. See what happens."

At the end of the second song, the oval whistled again and the lights dimmed by another factor of two. "Bravo Robert! You've given us the ability to start controlling our environment. I don't suppose you could play a request to bump up the heat a little, could you?"

"My gosh, that's a scary thought. What if it uses the Kelvin scale from absolute zero? Doubling the heat would push us up close to 600F."

"Shit! I didn't think of that... Oh, pardon my language. I usually don't talk like this. Must be the stress."

Rob hugged Becky for a moment, gently kissing her while returning the caress on her buttocks. "Awake enough for some more musical exploration? I can stop if you're tired."

"Oh, don't stop now! You're in the zone! Play me a lullaby!"

"Okay!" Becky couldn't believe what she heard next. It was sort of like a lullaby. After a few false starts, she heard the wildest, craziest lullaby she could ever imagine, and then the oval whistled wildly as the door indentation began to slide to the side.

"Yes!" shouted Rob.

"No!" screamed Becky, as a mountain of high-pressure water burst around her body and quickly began to flood the room. Slamming waves of cold water filled the room in seconds. The violent churns threw Becky hard against the back wall of the room. She just managed to protect her head, but the blow drove all the air from her lungs, and stunned her close to unconsciousness...

Becky felt a great urge to fall asleep, but a voice by her side kept telling her how much it loved her, and Becky's drifting mind found the concept of being loved so interesting that she decided to open her eyes.

"Oh, thank God, thank God! Becky! Fight to stay awake, fight with all your might!" Robert had Becky in a lifesaver's hold, treading water with the water level about two feet from the ceiling of the room.

"Okay! I think I'm okay! I think I saved my head from a concussion. Just had the wind knocked out of me. What the hell is going on!? I'm freezing to death!"

"I think the water is about 60F, a little colder than the air was. We have a little time, but you're right, we have to get out of this."

"There was water of the other side of the door?! This is insane!"

"No argument from me on that! Becky, we have to get out of here! Are your ears okay?"

"I felt them pop. I think they're okay. How do we get out?"

"There was about 4 feet of room above the door opening. The air above the top of the door opening was trapped. It's been compressed to two feet, one half the volume. I think we're in two atmospheres of pressure now."

"So?"

"So it tells us how high the water is on the other side of door. Let's see, one atmosphere is 14.7 pounds per square inch..." Rob looked thoughtful for a moment, remembering the density of water and doing the math in his head. "About 34 feet vertical, I think, from the water surface here. We have to swim down two feet to get under the top edge of the door, and then swim up 36 feet to break to the surface outside. Should be doable!"

"What about the bends, decompression sickness?"

"I think we'll be fine. We've only been here a few minutes, and pearl divers go snorkeling much deeper than this. Remember to adjust the pressure in your ears as we ascend."

"Robert, I'm pretty close to my last reserves of strength. I think I can punch through and do this, but I'm running close to exhaustion. I'm so cold! What if there's a grate, and we can't ascend all the way? Do we come back here?"

"A horrible thought. We'll probably die if there is. Becky, I'll never leave you. Never. If we die, I'll die holding you in my arms... You ascend first, I'll be right behind you. If you run out of energy, just try not to breathe until I can get you to the surface."

The water was crystal clear. The door location was easily visible, and Rob and Becky swam over to it and took a few deep breaths. They dived together, and wound up swimming side by side holding hands until they broke the surface of the water. Becky looked around and then screamed in anguish.

"This is impossible! Where the hell are we!?"

Rob and Becky were floating at the center of an enormous tank of water, about 200 meters in diameter. It was a 100-meter swim in any direction to the smooth vertical walls of the tank. White light shone down from high overhead.

"There!" shouted Rob. "This way. I think I see ladder rungs this way."

"I... I don't think I can swim it Rob... I'm exhausted and freezing... I'm so cold."

"Try to swim as much as you can. It'll keep you warmer. Let me carry you in a lifesaver hold when you have to rest. Save some energy to climb the rungs."

It took almost ten minutes for the two to swim the 100 meters to the ladder. The ladder was not particularly easy to climb, thin horizontal circular hoops extruding from the wall about every two vertical feet.

Rebecca's teeth were chattering uncontrollably. "Rob, my hands are so cold and stiff I can't bend my fingers around these hoops at all. I won't be able to climb... Go on without me."

"No fucking way! Here, place your hand next to the hoop. I'll bend your fingers around the pipe and climb with you, side by side. I'll hold your hand to the pipe. We can do this! Move! Move!"

The climb was a nightmare. Robert found that he had more strength than Becky, but less balance on the slippery pipes. He realized in horror that one fall from the pipes would probably be fatal for them both. They were running out of time. He almost slipped off twice, both times slipping with his feet on the narrow pipes and holding his full weight with one hand while the other hand desperately held Becky's grip to the pipes.

Becky reached into her last reserves of human endurance, and kept pace with Robert up the ladder. Together they climbed 20 rungs above the water, and then collapsed exhausted and freezing onto a ledge about 9 feet wide. The ledge circled the tank, with the tank itself extending upward an additional 40 feet to a brightly lit ceiling.

"Becky, I think I see an oval and a door about 200 meters clockwise along the ledge from here. And in the other direction... Yes! My backpack! Come on!"

Rob and Becky walked a third of the circumference of the tank along the ledge. There was no safety rail, but the 9 feet of width made it fairly easy to avoid falling off. Becky's teeth were chattering violently. Rob's body felt numb and he realized he was suffering from hypothermia too. Then Becky's teeth stopped chattering, her body had run out of energy to shiver. Robert guided and supported her as best he could as they continued to stagger around the ledge. "Please, please, dear God," Rob thought, "Let my gear still be in my backpack."

They finally came to the location where their clothes and backpack were lying along the wall on the ledge. Robert dove into his backpack, shouted "Yes!" and pulled out a huge white fluffy bath towel, which he immediately handed to Becky. Becky gave him a look of pure gratitude with her eyes and then wrapped herself in the towel, starting to dry herself as Rob unrolled a single sleeping bag and began to blow up an air mattress. He finished blowing up the mattress a few minutes later just as Becky finished toweling the bulk of the water out of her hair. Rob set the sleeping bag over the mattress.

"Climb in, Becky, I'll join you as soon as I use the towel." Rob joined the exhausted Becky right after padding down his body with the damp towel, his stiff fingers barely able to close the bag's main zipper. The two then cuddled naked against each other, both collapsing into sleep within minutes.

Chapter 3.

Drifting... Drifting in happiness... Drifting in peace... Drifting in love... Rebecca's mind felt totally relaxed and secure. Her body felt totally warm and safe. "More than safe," Rebecca thought sleepily, "my body is being petted... accepted... cherished... beloved... More than my body... Me! My hopes and fears... My strengths and weaknesses... My dreams... The essence of who I am... The innermost part of my spirit is being petted... accepted... cherished... and beloved..."

Rebecca slowly opened her eyes. She was lying flat on her back, wonderfully warm within the cocoon of the sleeping bag and floating over the air mattress. A large bulky sweater was beneath her head and neck, providing a delightful pillow. Robert was lying by her side, looking in joy into her eyes as his hand caressed her breasts. They held eye contact for a long moment, neither saying anything, and then Rebecca sighed deeply at the pleasure of the caresses and closed her eyes.

The pleasure was exquisite, both relaxing and arousing. Both of Rebecca's nipples were fully erect, and she could feel Robert's erect penis pushing into her thigh just below her hip. She was breathing slowly and deeply, gasping in pleasure as Robert gently pinched and released her nipples between his fingers. The playful probing of the underside of her breasts was arousing a deep need for sexual release within her. She opened her eyes and turned, reached over and held his penis for the first time.

"Do you want to suckle? I want to give you everything that I am, including all of my sex. I'll give you my virginity now if you want... You are my very first boyfriend. You'll have to teach me how to please you, and excite you... But you'll find me a very eager pupil..."

"Dearest, loveliest Rebecca... You are so beautiful! I do want to suckle you... And be inside you... I'm also filled with feelings of tenderness for you, of wanting to be as gentle as I can, of not wanting to rush you. Love is patient, and I love you dearly. I can be patient. What are your thoughts?"

Rebecca sighed and thought for a moment. "It's hard for me to hold back Rob. All my thoughts are to commit to you, and then to sexually express my commitment. There's one small part of my mind that agrees with you, a quiet voice telling me that patience is a virtue, and a rewarding one... I'll listen to that voice for a while longer, but not forever. I know my own heart. I know that what I feel now won't change. I'll want to offer you my heart soon, permanently offer it to you. After that, I'll wait only as long as you want me to wait. I don't want to rush you either... Oh, and one more thing. Thank you, for saving my life." Rebecca let go of his penis and hugged him with both arms. The silent embrace lasted several minutes.

They broke apart in a playful mood. "Robert, I'm thrilled that you think my body is sexy! I took a lot of teasing about it as a kid."

"What!? I think you're drop-dead gorgeous. Are you serious!?"

"Yes. When I was growing up, I loved school so much and did so well that a lot of the kids were resentful. Many viewed it as competition, and I didn't know how to hide my joy in learning new things. The teasing went way beyond calling me teacher's pet, my two most common names were The Brain, said with a sneer, and Eagle-beak."

"Eagle-beak?"

"My nose, Robert! It's a classic Jewish nose. Doesn't it look a little large to you?"

"Frankly, no! It fits your face beautifully. Here, I have a mathematical formula to prove this to you, let me demonstrate..." Robert spent the next several minutes kissing Rebecca's nose and rubbing his own nose alongside it, until Rebecca finally giggled when he started to lick it.

"Stop that! It tickles! I accept the validity of your mathematical proof! And what you're doing is driving my loins wild with desire! If you keep this up, I'm going to insist that you mount me and copulate!"

"Aha! Great! Something for me to remember then! Seriously though Becky, it's so sad that you were teased. Was there no one who was kind to you?"

"Not at the kid level. Well, a few of the girls were okay, casual friends, people who wrote best wishes into my high school yearbook. But the boys really resented me outdoing them in all the academics.... I remember as a young teen, when my breasts first developed, I remember wondering if seeing me as an attractive girl would make any difference to them. My mom let me try her nail polish, and I put on a feminine dress for school. Nothing provocative, just something that showed I had a front, and not my usual sweater and blue jeans."

"What happened?"

"It was awful. I heard comments in the hall like The Brain has tits, and The Brain thinks it's female. On my way home, a group of the meaner boys met up with me and made some really lewd gestures and obscene comments. They were all chanting for me to flash my tits when they finally let me run away. I got home and cried. It was the last time I tried nail polish, until I put it on for you..."