Chapter 6

They were coming down a staircase the following day, two hours into their morning exploration, when Robert called out, "Boy, this looks a bit familiar. Just like the original entrance spot..."

Rebecca studied their map and notes. "Yeah, very close. According to the map, we're on the bottom level now, and the next cube is directly east of the entrance cube. It's over a 1000 cube hike to actually get there though. These colors here are very close to the room adjacent to the entrance room too. The south wall here is a glowing blue, while the other room had a non-glowing blue south wall."

Robert, Rebecca, and Millie walked into the next room, a dead-end room their maps showed was positioned along the south bottom edge of the cubic maze. "Did you see that?" Robert asked. "This north wall went from non-glowing yellow to glowing yellow as we walked into the room. We've never seen that happen before. And all the other walls here are non-glowing blue, just like the entrance room..." They walked over to an oval and a closed pipe in the south wall. "Becky, this whole room is now identical to the entrance room! Could we have made a mistake?"

"No... But the setup does look identical. Does this pipe also open to the ocean of water? I don't want to die!"

"We could leave it for now. Complete the search of the maze. Perhaps there's another exit..."

"Wait... Let me think... No! I'm just guessing, but I think the wall turning on means the oval is active and will open the pipe. Oh no! I bet as soon as we leave this room, the light will turn off, never to turn on again. We'll spend the next week checking the last of the rooms, slowly realizing we make a fatal mistake. It made the exit look so much like the entrance room just to be cruel. We should push on the oval, and do it now."

"Okay. I think you're right." Robert reached up and pushed a random button on the oval. They both grimaced when the closing door began to slide up, but it revealed an empty pipe leading upward. About 5 seconds after opening, the glowing yellow wall behind them cycled back to non-glowing, leaving the room lit only by the light from the other room.

"Humph, a bit dark in here now Becky. I wonder why it turned off the lights"

"Oh my gosh Rob, I know why! I guessed wrong. The light was not waiting for us to backtrack before going out. It was on a timer. I think we came within 10 seconds of being trapped here forever, with suicide our only way out... Let's get out of here before the pipe closes."

"Okay if I go first?" Robert stuck his head in the pipe. "There might be a force pulling me upward, but no wind. Feels very strange..." Robert crawled in and began drifting upward. "Becky! This is incredible! There's no gravity in this pipe! Put Millie in next and follow me, okay?"

The three drifted up in the zero gravity pipe, occasionally paddling against the wall to maintain speed. The pipe gradually narrowed from a 5-foot diameter to a 4-foot diameter, and then ended by emptying into the floor of an empty room, also without gravity. The room was a cube, with all surfaces a dull dimly glowing gray color. Three additional surfaces had openings, simple 4-foot diameter circles cut in their centers. Rebecca realized at once what this was.

"Oh no! It's another stupid maze! This one with no color orientation, not even gravity orientation. It's the twisting, turning set of passages, all the same. What'll we do?"

"The same thing people did to solve this part of the maze in the Adventure game. Drop items in the rooms to identify them."

"Drop what Rob? If we had gravity, we could drop coded signals of your dried cherries, cranberries, and peanuts, but here they'd just drift around..."

"Yeah... Wait, I know! I've got a big tube of burn ointment in my first aid kit. We can paint tiny character codes on the walls. Here, let's pick THAT direction for up, and THAT direction for north. We'll always write the code on the center of the north wall near the ceiling..."

The three spent the next 14 hours beginning their exploration of the maze. It was slow going at first, especially for Millie, since it was awkward for her to launch to the next portal accurately, and she had no hands to catch herself from crashing. Eventually Rob and Becky took turns carrying her, for which the dog was very grateful.

At the end of the day, they decided to sleep in one of the dead-end rooms. Rebecca prepared the sleeping bag while Robert studied the new maps they were making. "Great idea, Becky, stowing our clothes in the backpack, and tying it to the sleeping bag with the rope. I'd hate to have a shoe just drift off..."

"Millie will have the hardest time of it. About all we can do is pet her a lot, and hope she stays a happy puppy. She really does have a very sunny personality... How are the maps coming?"