Chapter 40

An hour later.

The tired group descended to the landing and then walked across the corridor and took a long hard look at the next flight down. It looked absolutely the same as all the other flights, and they could see the beginning of the next horizontal corridor further below. “Take ten,” Madison called out in a dejected voice, and then more forcefully, “and maybe more if anybody needs it. Try to stretch and relax your muscles as much as you can. We have a hell of a climb ahead of us.”

They had just descended their 24^th flight of stairs. Madison calculated her expedition was close to 7500 steps and over 1.34 kilometers below ground level. Far above in the White Mall library, Jada sighed as she heard the defeatism in Madison’s voice, and Jada felt like kicking herself for letting the away-team go this deep.

For a while Jada was convinced that she should stop the expedition after twenty flights, but Madison had argued vigorously to try for one final set of four, and after polling everyone on the away-team and finding nobody wanted to quit, Jada had relented. And now the explorers would have to pay the price for Jada’s lack of discretion.

She spoke now into the library console, “This probably goes without saying, but there’s no need to carry up anything but yourselves, the guns and locks, and as much water as you think you’ll need. Have lunch if you want, and then just depot everything else in the corridor.” The team had a pair of white mushroom locks with them, taken from two bookstores near the terminal end of White Mall.

“Depot?” asked Emily with a tired laugh.

Jada sighed back, “Well, no, I guess not. Abandon is the right word. I can’t see us trying this again.”

Emily added as an afterthought. “And the servos might clean up anything we leave. We can’t count on any supplies being here if we return.”

Jada nodded to herself and took a moment to stretch at her console, turning to the window to admire the pleasant midday sunshine for a bit of cheer.

“Such a day,” she thought to herself. “Such good work in Blue and Yellow Malls, and Akiko and Lynn are so excited about the new Looking Glass project. I guess I was hoping for success here too. So far down, who could have imagined?” And then her thoughts turned to more personal matters. With her permission, Mark had earlier told Frida that Jada and Mark considered themselves engaged. He told Toshi too of course, but as Mark’s wife, Jada didn’t feel he needed any agreement from her to do that, and indeed Mark hadn’t even asked Jada for permission, correctly assuming Toshi had an absolute right to know.

But Jada had told no one yet on her side, and she suspected Mark’s group realized that and would keep quiet about her engagement until Jada told them otherwise. And just when should she announce the blessed event? Jada wasn’t sure. She felt a vague desire to tell Emily first, and she wanted to do that in person. Jada shook her head. This was not the time to daydream. She was directing an away-mission, and the people below were in a crazy situation. They deserved her full attention. Jada returned to listening, and caught the end of a conversation Mandy was having with Emily.

“But it has to end somewhere, right?” asked Mandy. “I mean, it couldn’t go down to the center of the planet, could it?”

Emily wasn’t sure if Mandy was being serious or not, but she decided to take the question at face value. “No, I don’t think so. Any opinions, Mark?”

From the other side of the Great Hexagon he replied, “If I had to guess, I would guess the builders of this place maybe have the technology to do such a thing, but no, I don’t think they did either. What would be the point of ten thousand kilometers of stairs?”

“Yes, I think I agree with you.” Emily sighed and stretched, and then in an effort to engage her mind with something more interesting than their failure, she asked Mark to describe again his group’s journey through the Black Mall diamond array. Mark and Toshi and Frida agreed, and they all told little tidbits of information as Maddy’s team rested and drank water and munched down a few energy bars.

“How did you decide to pick the bee park?” asked Mandy. “Did you try out any of the other environments?”

Frida answered. “No. We had a long discussion about that the first day we were trapped here. We first decided not to walk where we might be visible from the outside of the building, and that includes the walkways that lead directly to the perimeter. And then we talked about whether we should wander the corridors at all. If Uno’s team has managed to get past the ivy, it’s possible we would meet. Why take the risk?”

“Well,” said Mandy, “you could explore the other environments.”

“Yes, it’s tempting, I agree. And if time were against us, we would do that. But in our current situation, again, why take the risk? And the environment here was the only one labeled safe.”

Emily had been drifting, sitting close by Charles again on purpose and being rewarded with a nice massage of her tired knees. The group had developed an unspoken agreement that the guys would sit down first at break time, and if a woman wanted a knee massage, she would sit down close by.

But now Emily’s eyes popped open. “Huh? Labeled safe? Frida, what sort of label was that?”

Mark butted in and answered the question. “I saw it when you were taking your janitor training. You know, the symbol you pointed out to me, the italic looking omega with a sort of tilde on top.”

“What?!” Emily shouted in an excited voice. “That’s not the symbol for safe!”

“It’s not? Oh hell.” And then in a sheepish voice, “Well, what is it the symbol for?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think it means safe. I would see it briefly when I went from one lesson to the next, when I successfully completed a lesson. I guess I can see how you made the mistake, Mark. I remember pointing out the symbol to you, and maybe I wasn’t too careful with what I was saying or guessing about. The two concepts sort of go together. Passing a test means you’re safe from failure.”

Mark took a moment to think and then asked, “So it might be the symbol for success?”

Emily thought hard. “Well, maybe not exactly. In the following days, I did notice the symbol appeared after I completed a lesson and was waiting for the next one to start. But it did not appear on my last lesson before a break or the end of the day, even if I aced the test.”

“Ah, that’s interesting ... So, any guesses? What does it mean?”

“I’m guessing it’s the symbol for advancement. The system was telling me I was advancing to the next lesson. That’s how I finally decided to interpret it.”

Ten minutes later.

“Well, is everyone set to go?” Madison asked. Her people had unloaded most of their supplies and were just about to start the return journey. “Charles, are you sure you want to carry all that first aid gear back up?”

He gave her a kind smile. “It won’t be a problem. And it’ll be handy to have if we need it.”

Madison smiled back. “Yeah well, okay then. Thanks. All set everybody? We have a hell of a climb ahead of us. Let’s take this nice and easy. If anybody starts having trouble with a muscle, just sing out and we’ll all rest. Time isn’t an issue. Don’t push it. Remember we have 24 times 311 stairs to go before we reach ground level.”

“That plus one, actually,” Tom said with a grin as he made a minor adjustment on his lightened backpack.

Something odd clicked inside Emily’s mind. It felt as if she were about to have an epiphany. She turned tensely to Tom and hissed, “What did you just say?”

“Don’t you remember? The circular depression that starts the stairwell, that’s one extra 18 cm step, right?”

Emily blinked. Tom was right! To reach the stairwell from ground level, you had to take that extra step down. “My God,” she whispered as her mind worked some numbers in her head. “Jada! We have to keep on going down. We’re almost there!”

“What?!”

“Think of Mark’s sanctuary, seven hexagons that you reach with six to the fourth steps. We’re all betting the White Mall diamond is one big sanctuary, right? It’s about six times as big as Marks. And so the depth would be proportionally bigger! Six to the fifth power is 7776. Don’t you see Jada? 25 times 311 plus 1 equals 7776. We only have one more flight to go!”

There was a pause, and then Jada replied, “Emily, that’s pure conjecture. And remember you’re a couple of kilometers west of the diamond array now. Your point about scale doesn’t apply.”

Mark piped up, “It’s an intriguing conjecture though, and an elegant way for the prime number 311 to be tied to the hex theme of the builders. It would be a hell of a coincidence if it’s not true.”

Jada sighed. “Agreed, and I admit, one more flight ... Madison, are you up for this?”

Tom answered before Madison could reply. “Heck Jada, I could just hike down with one of the Leophones and tell you in a few minutes.”

Madison nodded. “Let’s both go. Jada, is that okay? Tom and I will descend another flight. The rest of my team will rest here. We won’t continue if there’s another stairwell.”

A few minutes later...

Madison’s excited voice, “Everybody, Emily was right!”

Jada half shouted back, “What do you see?”

“We’ve just walked down the last stairwell, just as Emily predicted. There’s a final twenty-five meter corridor, we’re walking it now. Of course Jada! Twenty-five meters for the corridors, twenty-five flights! The corridor length was a hint to the depth.” There was a pause, and then “WOW!”

Jada replied, “Wow what?”

“The end of the corridor, I think it’s an elevator entrance!”

Acting on an optimistic hunch, the rest of the team had been repacking their gear to continue the expedition. In less than ten minutes all five were assembled at the bottom landing discussing how to proceed. Emily was keeping a log, and noted that their position was almost three horizontal kilometers from the start of the stairwell and 1400 meters below ground level.

After confirming her intentions with Mark and Jada, Madison pushed the access button for the elevator. The result was somewhat disappointing. Their three-meter corridor led into the short end of a chamber that was a standard three-meter by four-meter elevator carriage. There was a familiar keyboard on the four-meter wall to the left of their entrance door. But the keyboard was without power. Their earlier optimism suddenly seemed premature. What next? Was the stairwell effectively a dead end?

Emily performed an innocent experiment. She left a spare water bottle in the carriage and let the door close. They pressed the access button again and the door reopened. The water bottle was still there, apparently unchanged.

What else was there to do? They tried a few combinations with other items, and the results were always the same. Their gear remained untouched. There seemed only one more experiment left to do before starting their return journey. With Jada’s permission, Madison left her Leophone in the elevator and everybody listened as the door closed. They heard nothing. Madison already had her backpack on for the return trip, and she pushed the access button and the walked into the carriage and picked up the Leophone.

Mandy was talking to Emily and Charles a few meters from the elevator. The door started to close with Madison still inside the elevator and Tom moved to hold it open for her. But on the spur of the moment, Madison waved her hand for him not to. He nodded his understanding. Just before the door closed, Emily glanced over and saw Madison disappearing behind the closing door, and then the door closed before she could react.