The Thread (𐄊)

When I was a little boy, I didn’t think of the Facility as a prison. It was my home. And when I was transferred to the Maze, it became another, bigger home. I wasn’t intimidated by its size. I set to explore it and within weeks I knew the Maze as the back of my hand.

I was not a lonely child. Mother and Ari were with me. The teachers came to give me classes. I made friends with the cook and the cleaners. I loved the doctor’s visits because she always told jokes and brought me little presents. And when I was alone, I was not lonely either. There were so many things to do and to learn.

I think it was still my first year in the Maze when I received a visit from the High Priestess. She explained that a very important Celebration was coming to the capital, with many spectacular events planned. Unfortunately, due to my special status, I wouldn’t be able to attend any of them in person. Moreover, the Maze was designated as one of the venues and it was to be open to the public for two weeks. Not to the general public, but to a group of overseas guests without security clearance. During these two weeks, I was arranged to be moved to my old Facility to prevent inadvertent contact with the foreigners. All the usual security arrangements and calls of relatives remained in place, but for two weeks I wouldn’t have access to the modern amenities of the Maze.

“Sorry for the inconvenience”, she said.

I was not upset at all to spend two weeks in my old home. In fact, I enjoyed it. When I was back in the Maze, I noticed that they cleaned the floor and removed most of my scribblings on the walls, for the sake of foreign tourists I suppose.

This Celebration, whatever it was, was repeated in seven years’ time, complete with my two-week holiday at the Facility. The house seemed to be much smaller than I remembered it but all the cozier for that. Once again, Mother was coming daily, like in good old times.

One day, already in my teens, wandering about the Maze, I met an old man whom I’d never seen before but who appeared to know me. A man in his fifties, that was an old man to me.
“Greetings to you, Asterion”, he said.
“Greetings to you too, sir. And you are — ”
“I’m dead”, shrugged the man as if stating the obvious.
“With all respect, sir, you look alive and well to me.”
“It’s my name, young man. Dead. They call me Dead.”
What a conversation starter!
Dead said he was an architect, which was fair enough, and claimed that he built the Maze. This I couldn’t believe as he evidently had difficulties navigating his own creation. He said he entered the Maze for a routine inspection but left the map at home. I took him to the exit in no time. Dead was astounded.
“How do you do that?”
“I live here. I can find my way around here with my eyes closed.”
“And, if you don’t mind me asking… have you ever thought of escaping?”
“The exits are guarded. And what would I do outside? Where would I go?”
Dead assented gravely.
“Indeed. Oh well, I guess I’ll see you next time I’m here.”
Since then, we’ve met countless times. I reckon Dead was coming to the Maze more often than was necessary for inspection. I learned later that he had serious problems at home. For one of my birthdays, Dead presented me with a set of dice. He made me interested in probability theory so we spent many an hour playing dice trying to prove or disprove some of Dead’s more outlandish theorems.

Once Dead asked me:
“Can you show me where we are on the map?”
Ah. The famous map was produced.
“Sure I can,” I answered, perusing it. “Let me see, we are here. But what’s this?”
It turned out, I didn’t know the Maze that well after all. Criss-crossing the map, there were several paths that I had no recollection of whatsoever.
“Ah, them. These are tunnels.”
“Why have I never seen them?”
“Because the entrances are concealed.”
“And this?” I pointed at the pair of dashed lines that was disappearing beyond the edge of the map.
“Another tunnel that leads to the port. We were using it to bring the building materials for the Maze. Oh. Completely forgot. I was meant to carry out an inspection of the southern auxiliary tunnel.”
I bet he’d made it up.
“Can I join you?”
Dead gave it some consideration.
“Mmm... well... why not. Let’s go.”
As I followed him, I heard Dead muttering something like “see, I am not supposed to show that to anybody... especially to the boy... then again... what the underworld!” and so on.

That’s how I opened to myself a whole new dimension of the Maze. And not only that. For the first time, I was doing something forbidden. Although Dead never showed me the map or mentioned the tunnels again, with time I explored all of them. I located the entrance to the “port tunnel” but it was cluttered with construction waste and I wasn’t able to go very far. To my great joy, I hit on a number of tunnels that were not on Dead’s map. As a consequence, my mental image of the Maze, while increasing in complexity, shrunk in size. Using tunnels as shortcuts, I could get from any point to any other point in less than a quarter of an hour.
It was exciting, exhilarating even. Also dangerous. Maybe that’s why it was so exciting. I am trying to rationalise it now, but then I simply felt I had a secret that was not to be shared with anybody. Not even with Ari. Especially with Ari.

In parallel with the transformation of my Maze universe, my relationship with Ari also evolved. Other dimensions sprouted and the distance between us shortened. One dimension was temporal. When I was a child, I didn’t think much about time or the distant future. Now Ari and I were spending hours on end talking about what lies ahead for both of us. Ari always had her own life beyond the Maze and was looking forward to her, hopefully bright, future in the wide open world. My future had been decided by others, and there was little we could do about it.

“What do you think would happen if I ever get out of here?” I asked Ari once.
“You’ll see that the Island is another prison, only bigger,” she responded.
It dawned at me that I was on the brink of blabbing about the tunnels. Thanks to her response, I didn’t.
In any case, our conversations made both of us appreciate the moments where we still were together.

Another new dimension was also related to us growing up. Yes, you guessed right. I was not ashamed of me becoming physically attracted to Ari then as I am not ashamed of it now. Again, it was both exciting and frightening. It was new. Ari was a part of my life, well, forever. My sister, friend, confidante. We felt safe together and we felt safe when we parted because we knew that tomorrow we’d be together again. And now I was afraid. I thought if we crossed the line, I might lose her.

Dead used to say that nobody can see the future. What we can know is the chance of a certain event happening. One day, or rather evening — Ari got permission to stay overnight — I tried to express my confused thoughts in terms of probabilities whilst pacing to and fro about the room.

“If we, for example, multiply the predetermined probability of me staying in the Maze till the end of my life, which is one, by the uncertain probability of you...”
“Quit talking gibberish and come over here,” Ari proposed. “And stop fiddling with those dice.”

That night, we found ourselves on the other side of the line. And we were not afraid anymore.

To be continued...