The Door (4)
Tick, tock, tick, tock...
It felt as though a clock was ticking right beside my ear.
Double speed.
That was probably the price for the comfort and ease promised by the 4 in 4T0 — a tax collected in doubled time.
A space where time flows twice as fast doesn't simply mean a space that halves your lifespan. It also means twice the time being wasted.
I could hold out here until I died, sure. But spending my life that way — shortening it with every passing second while doing absolutely nothing?
"No way. Absolutely not."
Leaving behind all the unknowns waiting beyond every door, just to rot away in this one room, circling between the refrigerator, the bed, and the bathroom?
"Never. Not happening."
The drawback of doubled time only applies while I stay here. Put simply, the message is: don't stop moving.
I will escape, and to do that, I have to move.
There would surely be difficulties and obstacles in the places I hadn't seen yet. There would surely be dangers that could kill me.
"But I'm not the kind of person who gives up, am I?"
After all, even Gigigogagak had apparently given up after spending a few hundred years searching for a way out.
I never got to hear what species could even talk about hundreds of years like that.
Resting here occasionally, grabbing a bite to eat — that's fine. But settling in here? That's what sticks in my throat.
The gist of it: don't bury my bones here and rot away.
And besides, even the time I was spending agonizing over this was being wasted at double speed.
I hadn't been here long, but now that I knew the penalty, I couldn't afford to linger.
What's more, it's double right now — but who's to say the multiplier won't climb higher?
No. In this place, I should always assume the worst.
I'd operate on the assumption that the time acceleration only gets faster, and from now on, every time I came here, I'd set a timer and keep checking the clock.
"Let's get out of here, fast."
I'd only come back when I was hungry. 4T0 was best used as a dining hall, nothing more.
I dragged a chair out with me, opened the door, and stepped into the corridor.
The door in the ceiling would need a foothold to reach, after all.
Right. Exploration. That's all I am, isn't it?
Dragging the chair along, I walked about ten steps down the left-hand corridor.
The doors lining the walls on every side each flaunted their own shapes, pulling my gaze this way and that.
Looking up, there was a single yellow iron door set into the ceiling.
The yellow almost looked like gold, but... 0R5.
Rooms with a 0 at the front seemed best avoided at all costs, so this one was a pass for now. And with a 5 in the back — wasn't that more dangerous than the beam-avoidance room from that old color-blindness special agent thing?
Of course, the 0 at the front was the bigger reason to avoid it, more than any danger the 5 might pose.
Another wasted trip, and a struggle to climb back down? Hard pass.
On the right wall, a door set in at a slant, on the diagonal.
1W2.
Through a small glass window set in the middle of the door, blue water filled the space beyond to the brim.
W — Water, obviously.
At least it's considerate enough to show me what's inside.
Careful of a spill, I gripped the handle and pulled the door open.
"...It doesn't spill..."
So things inside a room just can't leave it?
I was never bound to a room in the first place — that's why I can move around freely...?
But the dark water stretched endlessly behind the door.
Unlike the pond in 3I2, where I could choose whether to enter the water once inside, here the entry itself would begin underwater...
Pass, for now. I don't have an oxygen tank. If I'd thought to carry one around — strapped to my back or hugged like a body pillow — maybe one would have materialized here too.
A little further on, a round door sat in the floor on the left, settled in place like a manhole cover.
2C7.
The door was made of what looked like layers upon layers of leather — one solid slab of hide.
No, who makes a door like this? It's not even a tent flap.
And yet it had a handle, of all things.
When I turned the handle, something fastened at the end seemed to come loose, and the door rolled open, curling up on itself.
The scenery inside was...
Sky.
Just a vast, boundless sky.
And considering this was a door in the floor — a view from above, looking down?
"There's no ground here either..."
C — what could that be? Not S for Sky.
Celestial, maybe?
But the trailing digit was 7.
By everything in my short experience so far, that meant the extremely dangerous category.
Shff—
Then, beside the open door, something slowly revealed itself.
"..!"
...An eye.
One enormous eye, filling the door frame entirely.
A single colossal eye was staring straight at me, unblinking.
Thankfully — or perhaps because things that belong inside a room simply can't leave it — it did nothing but watch.
"O...kay. I'll pass on this one too."
There's a guest in residence. How could I rudely barge right in?
I slowly pulled the door shut, smoothing the curled portion back out, and rose to my feet.
"Still, the fact that I could carry the chair out of 4T0 means furniture and tools — things like that — might be able to leave their rooms."
Or maybe it only left because I was the one who took it out.
And right next to it.
"Hm... so there was a door here too?"
A glass door stood in the right wall — one I felt like I hadn't noticed at all before examining the floor door.
Crash!
"Gah!"
But barely moments after I laid eyes on it, the glass door shattered all on its own.
Behind the broken glass door was...
Just a wall.
An ordinary wall, the same as the corridor's.
In other words, the glass door itself was less a door leading to another room than a spare, simply propped up and left there.
The number beside it read 3A, 7...4...8...5...1...2...9...
"What the... why does it keep changing?"
The trailing digits flipped almost every second.
And then,
Screech—
From the far end of the corridor came a sound like some ancient machine groaning to life.
Screeeech—
Flicker. Flicker.
The fluorescent lights at the corridor's corners began to strobe, the whole passage plunging dark and bright in ragged rhythm.
A sense of dread, rising until it filled me to the crown of my head.
I knew it instantly.
Danger.
I had thought the corridor was safe.
It was only a passageway connecting the rooms with their gimmicks, after all.
"But... it wasn't?"
Screeeech—
The sound was drawing closer.
Yet nothing unusual showed itself at the far end of the corridor.
"...So it's invisible, then."
Whether it was something I couldn't see, or something concealing itself, I couldn't tell — but something unseen was approaching.
Screech—! Screech—!
Thud! Thud!
Accompanied by what sounded like rusted iron joints, something came bounding toward me, the pounding growing nearer by the second.
I had to get away.
But where to?
The corridor was dangerous right now.
Whether it was only for now or would stay that way, I didn't know.
But was there any guarantee that ducking into another room would stop it from following?
"But I can't just stand here and die either...!"
I spun around and ran, checking the doors I'd passed on the way.
2C7. Sky behind a leather door. And an eye.
That would be like dodging a wolf only to leap into a tiger's mouth. Skip it.
1W2. Enter, and I drown. Skip that too.
0R5. The yellow metal door. Worth a look, maybe — though the 5 worried me...
"I should at least have opened it and looked...!"
I'd dismissed it over the leading 0 without even seeing what was inside. I'd dragged the chair all the way out here — I should have climbed up and at least taken a peek.
Screech—
Thud! Thud!
The sound kept closing in.
"No choice, then..!"
I left the chair on the floor and climbed up.
Sky and sea. Unless it was one of those places where the environment itself barred entry, anything was better than this.
Bang!
Turning the handle, the yellow door swung downward like an attic hatch.
What showed itself inside was...
"A factory?"
Enormous machines towering high on either side.
A ceiling of rusted iron and steel girders.
Thud! Thud! Screeeech—
"Getting in, now!"
With a small hop, I wedged myself halfway through the ceiling door and hauled myself up, bracing my arms against the floor of the space beyond.
An old factory, worn down by the years.
All manner of machines lay scattered about, their purposes unknowable, while steel plates, pipes, and gears had been dumped carelessly in a corner.
Whirr— Vmmm, vmmm—
They seemed to have endured long ages, but they were still running — faint vibrations pulsing out of them even now.
The conveyor belt on the floor ran empty, repeating its meaningless, endless circuit.
Nearly all the metal had oxidized and crusted over with rust, though I could only guess its original color had been yellow.
I reached down to close the floor door behind me,
"Damn it, I can't reach..!"
Of course — the handle hung on the downward-swinging side, too far away to grab.
Screeeech— Thud! Thud-thud!
The sound was right in front of me now.
Giving up on the door, I dove behind a heap of machinery deep inside the factory.
Screech— screech—
The sound echoed through the factory as well.
It had come inside.
Thud—
A footstep — it had fully climbed up.
I peered through the gaps toward the source of the sound, but still saw nothing...?
No.
I could see it.
Its footsteps were visible — prints pressing down into the pale gray dust settled across the floor.
My own footprints were there too, of course, but it didn't seem to think of following my trail; its steps carried it in a different direction.
Good. If it keeps going that way, I'll slip out the door unnoticed.
But then,
Screech— screech—
Thud! Thud! Thud!
It had realized my footprints were there — and now its steps came stamping furiously, straight toward me.
Damn it... so it wasn't an idiot..!
Trapped in this factory with nothing to do but play a deadly game of tag.
I tried running this way and that again,
Thud! CRASH!
Screech—
But it was simply smashing straight through every obstacle in its path, coming in a dead line — it was obvious I'd be caught.
So it hadn't spotted my footprints after all.
"It has some other way of tracking me — body heat, or something else entirely..!"
If it had been following my prints, I could have left as few traces as possible on the machines and materials, thrown off the trail with misdirection.
Had its earlier wandering been a mistake — confused by the warmth of the other machines?
And if it had already locked onto me with perfect precision from the start, then moving quietly meant nothing at all.
The thing kept coming, dead straight.
Thud! Th-thud!
Screech...
The sound of things being crushed, closer and closer.
And then...
I stopped running.
Ahead of me, directly in the thing's straight-line path, stood one enormous drop press.
And beside me, a single lever.
Clunk!