Jan 30, 2009
When Chris woke up, he realized he was stuck in a maze.
He was in a small chamber, with four exits, and in the dim light, he could see that corridors stretched off and made abrupt turns off into the distance.
He tried to remember how he had gotten here, but his hazy memory gave no answer. In fact, other than his name — Chris — he could remember little else. There were giant, gaping holes where his life should be. It was obvious that he had a past, that he was someone, but the specific details escaped him.
His head throbbed dully and his muscles ached, but after a time, he was able to pull himself up off the floor and to his feet. He walked unsteadily over to the nearby wall to get a closer look.
The wall was made of stone, with no joints or seams to betray its construction method. It was completely smooth and featureless. There was light coming from somewhere, but Chris could not locate any obvious source.
All of these words — wall, stone, light — came easily into Chris’ mind, but beyond that his memory was a complete void.
He decided to explore. He picked a corridor and set off. The hallway was fashioned out of the same featureless stone as the room he had woken up in, and he followed it a short distance before he was presented with a crossroads — another corridor intersected the one he was traveling down. Peering to the right and left revealed more of the same — more halls and more intersections. Chris decided to go for a while, always taking the right hand corridor.
Time went by. It could have been a few minutes, it could have been a few days — the sameness of the corridors and the consistency of the light gave no hint of the passage of time. Chris arrived in a small chamber. It appeared to be the same one he had left, but he had no way to know for sure. For the first time, Chris glanced down at himself. He was wearing a loose fitting white shirt, and a pair of baggy pants. Shirt. Pants. That’s what these things are called, Chris thought to himself. These are clothes, and I don’t know who or where I am. He sighed audibly.
He reached into the pockets of his pants and found a small, wadded up piece of cloth, which gave him an idea. He set the cloth in the center of the room, and set out once again, always taking the right-hand passageway. After another interval of time, he came upon a small chamber. In the center of the chamber was the piece of cloth.
He began other patterns – always take the left-hand passage, left-right-left, left-left-right – and the result was always the same. After some indeterminate period of time, he ended up back in the same chamber, with the same small piece of cloth sitting in the middle. Tired and exasperated, he picked up the cloth and shoved it back into his pants pocket. He lay back against the wall, his eyes heavy with sleep.
When Chris woke up, he realized he was stuck in a maze.