Larry Lastman's etc. (shorter version)

He awoke in a dark space, and the space was moving, and thus he knew he was on a boat. Beams creaked distantly, high overhead and reverberating through the wooden bench upon which he'd found himself sleeping. How he got there he didn't know; is this what amnesia is? He had a memory of an office hallway, then everything went blank for an unknown time. But the dream or whatever it was had ended just a couple seconds ago. How had he fallen asleep in such a short time? Surely it was for only a second, or a part of a second. The boat felt large around him, and very old. It wasn't a modern ship at all like the ones the Cunards run. It was a wooden ship, a museum piece really.

He tossed away whatever was covering him--a blanket of some sort, and none too clean--and got to his feet. The ship was, in fact, moving, though he knew he shouldn't be able to tell, inertia being what it was. He had his memories--he knew what inertia was--and so he guessed his previous life was real.

Larry Lastman was real. Really real.

The cabin wasn't large. In fact, it was just the right size for him. He didn't have any things with him, it appeared, except for the clothes he was wearing, and he took that moment to actually notice what he was wearing. He was wearing his own clothes, and he'd worn them often before, perhaps not in the same match-making, but they were still his own clothes. He remembered, yes, he remembered more. He remembered wearing just that combination in his dream or whatever it had been. Then he remembered two women, two women he couldn't quite tell apart. What were their names? Were they simply dream phantoms, or were they demons of some sort? As he brought the two of them to mind, he realized that in the dream he had loved them both, together and individually. He decided it had all been a dream. Surely it must have been a dream. What else could it have been?

Then he was faced with a problem in that he still had some kind of amnesia. Where he had been, who he had been with, it was all quite a mystery.

But he was sure of his name. Larry Lastman.

He could barely remember getting up off the cot, for example. He looked at the cot then and tried to remember what it felt like to be laying atop it; but there was something in the way of experience, some cloud of doubt, and something gossamer and gauzy. The dream was going away too, and he was aware that his memory of it was even now being overwritten by new sensations. Something was happening to his past, and he felt like he had been born three minutes prior.

Another creak reached his ears, and the ship (which if not a ship was a pretty good impersonation of one) shifted and he had to take a brief step to the left to keep his balance. And he figured that even if it was merely a ship simulation, there should be something behind the door which he at that point noticed. The wooden door was framed in a metal that could have been iron; frankly, he didn't know how he could possibly know. He'd seen movies and photographs, and once he'd even stepped aboard the USS Constitution, but he didn't remember much about the USS Constitution.

This is Larry Lastman.

The wooden walls, slatted horizontally and vertically with timbers that presumably ran up to the deck and down to the keel, were expressionless and anonymous. He could have been anywhere, anywhere in space, save that the motions of the room shewed he was on a floating thing. That was the sensation: buoyancy. It was the buoyancy of the thing that proved it was a boat or an exceptionally clever simulation of one. The room was an oblong rectangle, with a low ceiling. All six sides were wooden. The bottom and the top were of heavier and darker wood, while the sides were of lighter and lighter wood; just what you'd expect anywhere else.

At one of the shorter ends was a door. Nothing was remarkable about the door. It had a latch rather than a doorknob, and it appeared designed to swing inward, into the room. A simple mechanism suitable to a simple watercraft, that seemed certain. How would it feel to the touch?

Larry was for a moment astonished that he remembered all the details of an architecture yet nothing else. All he knew for certain was his name. Everything else was fuzzy and obscure, save language.

Save language, and his name, you understand. He took a step towards the door. Hie was looking at the latch. He wondered if it was going to suddenly jingle and jostle. (It was leaning a little, clockwise, so he knew it had the ability to jingle and jostle.) However, it didn't move a bit. He still hadn't heard any signs of life. Was he alone on the ship? No, he knew immediately after thinking a moment: the boat was definitely being steered. It would have moved differently if it was adrift in abandon. Still: nothing stirred. Maybe he was the only passenger.

But what kind of economic sense would that make? A whole ship for just one person? Maybe he was rich, and a misanthrope, and he could afford an entire ship, just for himself. How many people were on King Mark's ship? Two? There must have been three for the drama to work. But who were they? And what story was that? Was it from the Mabinogion? He thought maybe it was. He wasn't sure. He had no way, then and there, of knowing. The room was entirely bare except for a white pillow and a blanket.

He found himself at the door. He must have made some steps towards it, but he didn't quite recall making them. And his hand was hovering at the leaning latch, ready to touch it to lift it (for it was obvious that lifting the latch, or perhaps pushing down the latch, would open the door). It must have been a good latch, he figured. A strong latch, because you can't have doors swinging all over the place in a storm or rough seas. He tried to figure out how old the latch might have been, and how many other people had been in his situation, i.e. about to lift a latch.

He believed in the world. He wasn't psychotic. He knew there was a whole world, a vast space, on the other side of the door, and he wanted to know about it. All he'd have to do would be to lift the latch and swing open the door. (He'd already noted the door swung into the room. He could see the peggy bits of the hinges.) When he opened the door, new sounds and new sights were awaiting him. And maybe there'd be something to eat too.

The latch was very cold to the touch (he knew since he touched the latch, which made him think or realize or cogitate that the other side of the door lay in a region much colder than the room's. Since they were at sea somewhere in the world, or possibly even upon another world, he knew the air would be colder. How much colder he did not know, but saints' alive, it was colder than the room.

He tussled the key from one side to the other, and felt a cold breeze of air upon his fingers. Suspicions confirmed. Now, would the latch prefer to go up or would the latch prefer to go down? He pushed on it downwardly, and met the resistance of the wood on the door and also, presumably, some barrier (above the latch) on the other side. It seemed that the latch's release would involve pulling the latch up.

Larry lifted the latch, and a click showed it was the right thing to do. The door shuddered in its hinges and moved slightly inward. The only object preventing the door from opening was Larry. He'd now have to pull to open the door.

Before he did so, and, quite unexpectedly, two names popped into his head, and the names were Jean and Joan. Who were they? He felt he had known them. He felt a stirring in his loins. Were they my wives? Something told him he was a little off, but not by much. It seemed a part of the dream he'd been having. Ah, but dreams fade like mist in the morning, gradually they fade away, until there's little to remember but the idea of the memory, some linguistic residue, and in his case the residue consisted of the two names Jean and Joan. He felt somewhat confident he would remember no more of the dream, though he knew, from 'experience', that other objects and other ideas yet to come could bring back other parts of the dream, if in fact a dream it had been.

He slowly opened the door, which swung inward (as I believe we have established), and the door creaked, upon un-oiled hinges, with such a creak Larry was certain it could have been heard from all over the ship, assuming there were ears to hear. Would he find the pilot tied to the wheel?

Where'd he get that idea? Something about a ship, coming into harbour, and everyone was dead on board, and the captain was tied to the wheel and dead. He must have heard the story or read the story somewhere at some time, but under what circumstances? Or: was it another part of the weird dream with the two women in it? Were they the lovers of the captain? They were both in it somewhere, though they had different names. The names appeared: Lucy and Mina. What did they have to do with it? Boy, he sure wished he could remember what story he was trying to remember. Someone was in the hold of that ship, though. It must have been himself. Yes, I dreamed of myself, but everything was a quarter-note off. Syncopation. Syncopation? Yes, Syncopation.

Beyond the door was another door set into a wall. It looked to reflect the door he had just opened. Larry poked his head out and looked to the left and to the right. It was a corridor or hallway, with doors evenly spaced on both sides. To his left, at the end, there was another door. It was a bigger door.

Larry had all the time in the world to get to that bigger door. He was on a ship, and it was heading somewhere, and nothing would take place until the destination, whatever it was, was reached. It was like a train journey, after all. (Larry couldn't remember ever being on a ship, but he did remember something about a train journey.) One can sleep, one can read, one can eat.... He supposed that if he ventured up to the top of the ship, what's it called, the deck, he could watch whatever scenery passed his way. It was entirely possible the ship was faster than a train. It wasn't entirely impossible, now was it?

He looked at the four doors perpendicular to the bigger door, and then he looked at the four doors, evenly spaced, in the other direction. Maybe there were people like himself in those nine other cabin rooms. It was entirely possible, but Larry wasn't in the mood to meet any strangers, no, not really. He felt like he could meet them any time. It wasn't like they were getting off. It wasn't a subway train. Had he already thought about a subway train?

How difficult can it be to traverse a corridor? As we shall see, it can be terribly difficult. First: Larry had to move, foot by foot and step by step, down the corridor, in order to get to the larger door which appeared to be promising an egress or an exit to the unknown. (More nothingness? Some ultimate nothingness? Or something much more mundane, like the rest of a ship?)

His feet were still. Still feet. They had no inclination to move. However, Larry's feet were inclined to move. He could feel it in his ankles. They wanted to move. So, what was the problem? Could he not simply will his feet to move?

He did the willing. He forced his feet to move, and they moved. They changed positions. He made them go three steps, some six feet, towards the larger door to his left. There was nothing to stop him now. He was, in a word, ambulatory. The door was directly ahead of him, and by damn he would reach it. The motion was clear, that it would happen. He would get to the door, and perhaps he would open it. What's on the other side?

It was time to move. He had to get to that bigger door once and for all. Time was wasting away! He felt like saying that. "Time is wasting away!" However, he realized he didn't really have to hurry. As he'd earlier recognized, the ship was doing all the work and he only had to sit back and enjoy the ride.

He sighed, and loudly. He'd made it that far. The door was only about eight feet from him. Soon, he would have some information. He would be on his way to a complete knowledge of the situation he was in. The ship moved in an unexpected way, and he knew, once again, that he was no alone on the ship.

He looked to the left and to the right. The doors (for there were doors there) showed no signs of wear. Perhaps the ship was kept in good condition always? How does one clean a ship? Larry didn't know. He couldn't conceive such a thing.

The ship was in ship-shape. He tried to recall the source of that idiom, but nothing good came to mind. Why shouldn't a ship be ship-shaped? What other shape could it be?

It's about time for something dramatic to happen. The tension is incredible. Something has to happen, or otherwise I'm wasting our times. This narrative has been going on for such a long time, just to have a character whose past is not entirely known go out of something of a room and into something of a corridor, and contemplate going further.

The ship rocked suddenly. They must have hit a shoal. Who's driving this boat? They'd run aground! Larry felt the keel, which he believed to be the name for the bottom of a boat, rip. The forces involved were incredible. The ship weighed, let's say, twenty tons, and the inertia was also significant though I can't do the math for it right now. (I think it would be measured in pounds per square inch.) Larry could hear the water below rushing in past oak beams, ripping them in the process, as the rock or shoal continued to be immobile. Larry knew he was done for. The ship was going down, and there was nothing to stop it from happening.

Unfortunately, nothing like that took place. Larry is still standing where he was standing, perhaps about to move.

Where was I? Ah, yes: Larry Lastman was getting closer to the door. The door, he noticed, had a doorknob on it, to the left side, which meant that on the other side of the door the doorknob was on the right side. The hinges were either hidden hinges or the hinges' bolts were on the other side of the door. Some math told him therefore there was a 25% chance the door swung inward, to his present-then position, and that there was a 75% change the door swung outward, away from his present-then position. However, he didn't know what that could possibly mean, seeing as he'd never before been on an old ship, and he hadn't noticed the hinge situation on the replica he'd been on, in Boston Harbour. He'd only been a tourist, after all, and a bit holiday-drunk additionally.

He noticed he could hear the water against the sides of the ship, which were called the starboard and the port. One was to the left, and the other was to the right. No time to figure out which was which!

Wrong!

He had time.

Port is to the left, surely. Starboard to the right.

The doorknob looked brass, and new. Now why would a new doorknob be on a door in the lower deck in a ship in the sea? He wondered about corrosion. He smelled the air, and yes he smelled salt water. It was funny to him he hadn't noticed it earlier.

He put his hand on the doorknob and jiggled it slightly. (He didn't want to make a sound.) He turned it a little clockwise. (Carefully, quietly.) It didn't seem to give, so he tried counter-clockwise. (Quietly, carefully.) The business was better counter-clockwise. It kept turning, until there was a little click: a tiny and precise click. He was making progress, and things seemed to be happening quickly. He pulled the door, but it wouldn't give. So he pushed it, and it quietly swung open, and here's where we have to use more description. A lot more, maybe only a little more, no-one knew yet.

He found himself facing another door, a door much like the door he had opened. Oh, more than that: they have obviously been installed at the same time from the same materials. The door had a sign on it: It read: NL - NU.

It read: NL - NU.

Both doors opened out. (He could see the hinge on the other door.) In just such a way, both doors could be opened at the same time, and they would not make contact with one another. Larry surmised that the door he was about to pass through also had a sign on it of some sort or another, and he was intensely curious to know what it said. So he bravely stepped out into this second hallway, rounded his door to see what was written on the other side. However, perhaps accidentally, he let loose of the door, and it swung shut, and seemed to lock. He had no way to get back into his little womb of a room.

Alas! He knew he was making progress, and the past was the past, and he wasn't going home again, room again, womb again. He made the best of it, though: He looked at the sign on the door through which he had just egressed, and read there: NV - OF. That seemed odd, or even, to him, since that equalled eleven rooms, or cabins, and he only knew of ten. Whence the discrepancy?

Larry wished he could get back into his birth canal of a corridor to see if he was right; perhaps there had been a door at the other end which he'd failed to observe. Then he thought contrariwise that perhaps a particular letter did not exist on this ship. Aren't V and W redundant in some way? One of them was a late addition to the modern Latinate alphabet? Or perhaps there was no Z, which would make a twenty-five-letter alphabet. Perhaps, he thought, I'll find something else out, and soon, which will provide the solution.

Still, when he thought about it, it meant there were a goodly number of cabins on the ship. If they went all the way up to OF, that would mean ... 15 times 25 (or 26) cabins. 5 times 25 is 125, and 3 times 125 is 375. That's a lot of cabins! (Note that Larry couldn't multiple 15 times 26.) And would it be possible for all these cabins to be unoccupied? Surely it was unlikely.

Finally, after all this finger-countin', he looked to his left and to his right. Five alike doors were on his side, five on the other.

To his left, there was nothing. It was the end of the corridor. Across was NL - NU, as has already been noted, and Larry had just come out of NV - OF. He turned to the right and proceeded, intensely curious about the eight other doors.

The first door on his left was labelled OG - OO, which made sense to him. However, the door to his right, which was beside the door leading to his own cabin, if we can say it was his own cabin, was labelled OP - OZ, which meant eleven rooms, or perhaps ten. In either case, it meant Z existed in the current alphabet. (He still bet it was either V or W that was missing.)

Next: on his left: PA - PJ.

On his right: PK - PT.

Next pair: on his left: PU - QE. Yes, there was that missing letter again. And on his right: QF - QO.

Next: Left: QP - QZ; Right: RA - RJ.

Final pair, before the end of the corridor: L: RK - RT; R: RU - SE.

Still, a missing letter. No reason to delegitimize the hypothesis of missing V or W.

He was at the end of the corridor, facing a door larger than any he had otherwise seen on the ship, but not by much. However, it had a steel frame with wooden panels as barriers; in fact, it wasn't especially interesting, even though he'd never seen suck a construction before. The door handle was a horizontal bar, and presumably one either lifted it up or pushed it down to make the operation operate. From somewhere in his experience, he knew it would likely go down rather than up. He had muscle memory that said it was so.

He held his breath and listened for a while. The sounds of the sea, or a very accurate imitation of the sounds of the sea, were coming from beyond the door. He said to himself: Is this where I get to see it? Behind this door, will I be on a deck, looking out upon the open sea? Or, rather, would I find myself still in the interior of the ship, deep below deck, if that's how the wording works. I am already on a deck, but it's not the deck-deck, you know, the one with the sky and water.

He touched the handle, which was a nice handle, and good handle, and the newest and sweetest handle he'd handled all day (which had consisted of oh say ten minutes or so). It was extremely smooth and brass cold. He slowly pushed it down, and it moved smoothly, without defect or dissapointmentationalism. Some resistance indicated metal motion within its mechanism. It was not just a nice mechanism and a good mechanism; it was also a happy mechanism. The signs everywhere were good signs. Larry was about to be in another space which would inevitably lead him on his journey to wherever he was journeying to. He kept up the force, and the handle refused to go any further. It had reached some kind of a metal stop. Larry wasn't perturbed. Somehow he had been expecting it to happen. He began to slowly pull the door, but the door wouldn't move. Was it locked from the other side? Could that be the problem? Was he a prisoner? In desperation, he pushed at the door, and it swung away from him.

Of course it would. It's by design. Doors open towards exits. I think it may be a legal matter.

The door swung open, to a more exterior zone surely. First thing Larry saw was a wall as grey as all the walls he'd already seen and beside it a door that (by experience) was quite as like the door whose handle he was holding. Was it all happening again, for the third time? The door was a sprung door, made so it would shut on its own, a design feature of ship who did not want their doors banging all over the place in high weather. ("Mr. Engineer Sir, can you make it so my doors don't bang and bang and bang all night long when I'm going through a storm? Thanx!") Larry released the handle and moved his hand upwards, still against the door. Having been fooled by self-locking doors twice already, he stepped out into the corridor (for he was in another, larger, corridor) and grabbed the door handle on the outside so as to not let the door close. He turned up and down then up then down then up again then down again the exterior handle, watching the metal pointy rectangular thing that was like a lock. It moved in and moved out.

"That's not going to lock on me," said Larry to no-one in particular. "This isn't one of those.... One of those.... One of those things." He didn't know what he was talking about. Whatever the idea was, it was in an atrophied part of his brain. He could see the edges of the idea, but he couldn't know its essence not its name. All he knew was that it involved all sorts of doors.

Is that what it is? Is that the symbolism here? Is it going to be all about locked doors? Is he simply never going to get out? Was the ship patterned after a lung? One way in, and one way out?

Larry didn't know. In fact, he didn't know what we are talking about.

Feeling confident that he would not be shut out from the deeper interiors of his existence, he took his foot away from the bottom of the door--for he'd placed it there as a kind of a safeguard, or literally as a safeguard--and let the door swing down shut on its own.

Click!

Something was written on the door. Yes, it looked like more letters. Was it Greek? ΩΦθΣΠ.

Larry knew it was Greek, but how precisely did Larry know it was Greek was unknown to Larry, nor did Larry know how he knew he didn't know how he knew it was Greek. Allow me to speak in my authoritative narrative voice to declare that regardless of how Larry knew it was Greek, that it was indeed Greek. Greek capital letters which did not make a word, for ΩΦθΣΠ would translate to OFTHSP, which is clearly not a word, I think.

Larry looked down the corridor. He saw six doors, three on the left and three on the right, and an empty wall at the end. He turned around and there were two doors one to the left and one to the right and a bigger door, the biggest he'd seen so far (which he planned to examine when he neared it, if he in fact did so) at the end.

He turned around again and walked to the end of the corridor. He was looking at the blank wall. He wondered: How can it be that all these room have only one way out? Do I know that for a fact? Could other exits be somewhere?

He looked at the two doors, to left and right, and they were, as usual, uniform. Greek letters, useless to record here yet with similar patterns to ΩΦθΣΠ, if you get my meaning, undoubtedly in some kind of a pattern, like the patterns that had preceded it in other corridors, were upon all ten doors. He turned around and pointlessly checked the doors, which were all locked, including the door he thought would not lock (since it was the one he had so carefully closed a couple chapters ago).

It was getting tedious, but he figured there had to be an end to it soon. Something mathematical, something geometrical, was bound to get in the way. He meant: These branches can't go on forever and ever. Eventually there will be an end to it. Eventually the spaces occupied by one part would have to impossibly overlap the spaces of another part.

Yes, reader, that's what he was betting on. That there would have to be a limit to the labyrinth he was in. That it couldn't go on forever and ever. To him, that was impossible. An end has to come some time.

To which we reply: HA.

There it was before him, another door larger in width and height than any door he had encountered hithertofore. It could mean an ultimate egress, or maybe another hall or passageway or whatever the Cunards say it is.

It was a bigger door. The handle of the door was brass, with a figurine of Neptune himself blasting out the breezes. He was there, on the brass handle, looking like Aphrodite creating the world from his or her own breath. The mythology was so disjointed by this time that Larry didn't know up from down. Nonetheless the handle was more interestingly made than any handle he had seen in his life so far, if you consider his life to be, as far as narratology goes, about twenty minutes long.

I know you want a look at the door. The door had upper and lower halves. The top half was actually more than a half. It was more like five of eight.

Larry didn't know what to expect. What would the door lead to? According to experience, it would be another corridor, with the same ten doors and another door at one or another end. And yet he had hope!

How could he not remember where he had been? I barely remember it myself, even though I'm supposed to know everything. Before he woke up, in some dozen or so chapters ago, he was puzzled by his existence. I know, for example, that he was in some other story, not told by me, about him being in a city and that all the men were vanishing. I can't tell if it was a true story or not, or even if it was all happening to this Larry Lastman who is the subject of this here story.

How do we know, sentence by sentence, if the subject is the same? It seems likely that the subject in one sentence is not, fundamentally, the same as the subject in the next sentence. After all, the second sentence comes some time after the first sentence. Things could have changed. The atoms could have re-arranged themselves. No doubt they did. But on the larger scale, could things be different? Larry at this moment is not what he was at the last moment. He is still trying to get somewhere, but does he know where? Excuse me while I piss.

To continue:

Before the door, Larry paused to look back at the ten doors behind him. Us. Whatever. He turned to look at the ten doors and he thought: It's odd that they all look alike. Don't you think I should have come to something other than a door? Aren't there little kitchens or even rooms of brooms and such? Did everyone have to come this far to find anything other than room, rooms, rooms? Do you expect me to believe there's no rooms of supplies in them?

He was, yes, expected to believe it, and so he had no choice but to believe it.

In any case, he had surprised himself by his consternation. Somehow, he had known about the set-up of places like this. It came to him: he had once stayed in a hotel that had long halls with doors on either side. He'd slept in one of said rooms. That was all quite a long time ago, though. It could even be an implanted memory. How did he know anything about implanted memories? Should they be so obvious? "Hey, look at my implanted memory." Surely they would have covered their tracks, so efficient they.

Larry examined the handle of the door. It was made of brass, and it had a design on it like swirling waves that stretched out away from the main working component. He was reminded of meringue, the way it rippled. No keyhole was to be seen. He thought there might have been one in this door, since they were getting more elaborate. Perhaps the next door....

There can't be another set of doors past this one! Surely, this is the final door. The geometry wouldn't allow another corridor running perpendicular. No ship is that big! he argued. How many feet wide could a ship be? There was a limit to everything, unless it was more like a raft than a ship.

However, he could hear the water hitting the edge of the ship, which meant he was near the outer limits. All considerations had to make one conclude there was no way he couldn't be getting to the edge of the ship. Perhaps he would open this door and find himself outside--though he doubted it. Some other sensation would be necessary, like an ocean breeze or a salty smell. Neither of those met him. But maybe so?

Larry had some questions, and some statements to make.

First: about the cabin.

Why no window? How deep within the ship had he been?

Are rooms the shape they are because it saves space for other rooms?

When you walk into a room, should you remove your hat? What if it's a room within a room? Should you have arrived wearing two hats?

Second: about the corridors.

Can they be any shape and still retain the ontological status of corridor? At what dimensions does a corridor become a room?

If there are no excess doors, does that mean it's a passageway?

Couldn't the ceilings be a bit lower? Are the ceilings a bit lower?

We made them up. They are invented. Would you call a mole hole a corridor or a passageway? Unfortunately, we don't have much experience of moles.

Third: about the doors.

Corridor, door. He wondered if there was a connection.

A door is just another way to say hello.

A door is precisely a window without glass.

Two doors: connecting rooms: it's that motel again. You open the door, and there's another door.

An open door. Does that turn two rooms into one?

Outdoor doors?

Those questions and answers took no time at all to pass through Larry's head. There was, and will be, a million more questions and answers before we are through with Larry, but I doubt the exegesis will get any more complicated than that. Larry, who wasn't entirely sure who he was or how he had gotten onto either this ship or this simulation of a ship, wasn't, as he knew, an especially clever person. (How did he know that, if not from experience?)

Anyway! The brass door handle had waves on it, with the peaks of the waves sticking out from both top and bottom. He reached out and took it in hand. It was cool as brass. He shallowly put it up and down. It had a silky-smooth mechanism. What could be its lubricant? Silicone? He guessed silicone.

Up and down, up and down. Nothing was preventing him from opening the door (which we've already established would open away from his current position). He pushed the handle down. He pushed the handle away from himself. The door moved. Air rushed in, and the air was cooler air. He was going to get out, proceeding to the deck.

The door swung out. The suspense was terrible. Ahead of him he saw, of all things, another wall which was a lighter shade than all the shades he had seen so far.

Oh, right, I forgot to tell you about the colours! Well, in his initial cell or stateroom or tomb or womb, the walls were flat medium grey. A colour almost without colour, you could say. (Is grey a colour? That's a debate I'm not going to get into.) The corridor beyond that room was also grey, but it was a lighter grey: a light-medium grey. The next corridor, the one with the letters on the doors, was very much a light grey. (You can see the pattern, right?) And the next corridor, the one with the Greek letters, was a lighter light grey. In fact, that's the corridor he was about to leave; and the next--gasp! surprise!--corridor was lighter still. The one beyond the door was more-or-less an eggshell white.

I've accidentally given away the secret!

We'll move along.

The door swung open into another corridor. A door was opposite his opening door. A painting was on the other door. Three fat red cherries.

Three fat red cherries were looking at him, innocently. They didn't mean any harm. They weren't even cherries. They were made of a collection of pigments arranged to greet the eye as meaning: "Three red cherries." Ochre paint represented a stem from which all three cherries descended. Three tiny black dots represented the bottoms of the cherries. Fruits develop, if my memory serves right, as seeds around which useful carbohydrates encased in a thicker skin develop. It's really quite extraordinary when you think about it. The skins naturally have an end point, down below the seed. There has to be an endpoint, and, as far as cherries are concerned, the endpoint can be represented in human painting culture as a black dot.

Larry couldn't hear much aside from the incessant sound of the water hitting the sides of the ship or the fake sounds of water hitting the sides of the ship. Yet, the air was cooler, and as he had no choice but to proceed, since he was getting a mite peckish, he stepped into the corridor, and he let the door close behind him. He knew it would lock automatically. And so it did. Lock automatically.

He was in another corridor, a larger corridor than the one he had just now left, with the routine five doors on one side and five doors on the other side and a larger door (to the right this time) and a blank at the other end. He had eleven doors to examine, and though he was hungry he thought it would be wise to enumerate the doors before proceeding, since that knowledge could come in handy in the next twenty or thirty minutes.

He went to the left, to the four doors to his left, and upon those doors he saw:

A bomb blowing up.

A copse of trees.

A Halloween ghost.

A empty roadway.

Nothing was making sense at all. He checked out the door from which he had emerged. Upon it was a picture of a clown.

Which may or may not have been significant.

The other four doors pictured:

A cherry-red convertible.

A bottle of whiskey.

A half-smoked cigarette.

A empty cooking pot.

They must have an obscure taxonomy, thought Larry, without having the faintest idea of what he was talking about, or where he'd come up with a word like taxonomy. Who knew?

However, as usual, at one end of the corridor, to the right, was another door. (The other end was, as usual, a blank wall with nothing at all interesting about it.) He checked out the door closely. It opened on the left, as indicated by the position of the door handle. (I will be talking more about the door handle later. In due time, madam, in due time.) This door, the one he was facing, was certainly a door larger than the other doors in the corridor. The door filled the entire space, from floor to ceiling. This one was separated into six panes, with the two horizontal slats made up of a finer wood than the panels. He didn't know what these wooden parts were made from, apart from wood. He couldn't tell one tree from another; he knew the names of some trees from which wood was made. (Aren't all trees made from wood? -Ed.) They might have been pine and spruce, or elm and cedar, or mahogany and birch, or maple and elm, or hickory and balsa, or oak and lemon. He barely knew one tree from another, as has been said some time ago.

In any case, the thin slats were darker than the panels, which had a pleasing effect overall. Larry estimated the six panels weren't quite the same size area-wise, but he didn't have any measuring instruments with him to know the truth of the matter. Objectivity is a good thing. It's as good as a microscope, in fact. In fact, the two are more alike than one might think.

As has been said, the door went up to the ceiling. Larry turned around to look at the ten doors behind him, and he noted they were all slightly shorter than that. They didn't quite reach the ceiling. They were a finger or so shorter. If only he'd noted a matter such as this in the other corridors, he could have said definitively if he was moving into taller and taller corridors each time he went through a door, however many he'd been through. He was a little foggy on that score. Would the next corridor be taller? Would it be wider? He could say that yes this corridor was wider than his previous corridors. He knew that because he had a solider and better sense of width than height.

Now, to follow form, which as you know is the thing that makes content, we proceed to his examination of the door-opening device.

This device had a plate behind it which appeared to be made of iron. It was black like iron, and though it may have been wood painted to look like iron, a coldness was coming from it which indicated its innate temperature was slightly cooler than the surrounding atmosphere. The plate measured a span tall by perhaps three-quarters of a span wide. Its right edge was not flush with the jamb but rather inset by some quarter inch.

From this plate protruded the metal beam that connected this inside with that outside. (This assumption has to be made, although there was no visible evidence. After all, the door has not been opened, and the entire mechanism could very well turn out to be ersatz, like a stage construction. There was really no reason for Larry to believe it wouldn't snap off in his hand.) Attached to this (assumed) beam was the door handle proper, which was spherical though flattened, with a round ivory panel inlaid in the centre of itself (though probably only imitation pearl).

(Of course it was imitation pearl. No pearl exists from which one could cut such an inlay. My God it would have to be three or four inches across! I suppose the material must be that manufactured stuff, the stuff the call pearline. [I could be wrong about that.] Also there was nothing about the boat to indicate there would be the money to buy the mostest expensivest material for just a door. One door among many, for God's sake.)

Larry then looked at the plate that looked much like an iron plate. He was searching for a keyhole or anything which would indicate the door was a door that locked. (He thought the whole experience was tedious too!) However, he could see no sign of such a device internal to be extant. On the other hand, why would it matter? He was in a corridor of locked doors, after all.

Or

Was

He

?

He turned to his right and checked to see if he could open any of the doors. Proceeding from each to the next, he went down the corridor (including the door from which he had emerged). All five doors were truly welly locked.

He turned around, 180°, and proceeded to check the other five doors. None could be opened, and thus he returned to the slightly-larger door which was indeed his only means of egress. He touched the almost-certainly-fake-ivory-inlaid handle, and it was cool to the touch. Who knew how long it had been since anyone had touched it?

Larry stopped there, as I'm sure you would too, if you'd realized like he did that he hadn't even tried knocking at a single door! Why hadn't he tried to locate anyone? Perhaps others were behind the twenty-nine-odd doors he'd passed? (Or was it thirty-eight-odd? I've lost track too.) It could not stand. He should have started much earlier, but discretion and a general bashfulness had prevented him from doing so.

Again he circuited the corridor, one door after the next, upon which he rapped his knuckles three times three times. He would pause, listening. Nothing could be heard from behind any one of them, nothing louder than the somnolent and sibilant hissing of water outside the craft, sloshing, crashing, causing beams to tremble and compress, always the strain of keeping body and soul together, trying to keep afloat, and with the....

How did that metaphysical poet get in here? As if!

He knocked, three thrice three, upon all ten doors, and the response at all of them was--precisely--nothing. Could he therefore conclude that if he'd started knocking at doors in the other corridors he would have heard nothing? That would be too much to surmise. Perhaps somewhere in the interior space was another person--a beautiful woman perhaps--who could be in his dilemma, the only difference being the possessive pronoun. Perhaps at this very moment she was approaching, perhaps in another part of this labyrinth, and he would be meeting her in due time. Something Czech went through his head: Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti. Larry wasn't Czechoslovakian, at least as far as he knew, so he didn't understand what he was thinking about. In any case, he had a brief though turgid fantasy. You can fill in the rest.

Naturally, and inevitably, he returned to the door at the end of the corridor. What else could he do? I mean: What else could he do? (How's that for rhetoric!) He would go through the door. It might lock behind him. It truly was the case: no option!

He put his hand on the door handle. It was still cool to the touch. He turned it, and the door set forth, away from him. The event was so inevitable he felt the door was pulling him. The door had to open. Nothing in the universe could have prevented Larry from opening the door or being the singular agent involved in the opening of the door (depending on your point of view). The door was desirous of being opened, and Larry was desirous of opening the door. Everything was right with the world.

Cool air hit him from the gap. Surely he was on the right track. Surely he would soon be in a place different from another corridor. He pushed the door out. He saw a wall through the gap, and then he saw a door opposite. A door which looked like it could be the same size as the door which he was opening. Its doorknob was inlaid with fake ivory. Larry didn't have to offer book concerning whether or not the door was like the one he was then opening. A word was painted on the door opposite. Of course there was! Word: SIN.

Which was a shocking thing to read on an innocent door! What was behind that particular door? Larry stepped into the corridor and let the door silently close behind him. He was still looking at the SIN door. Then he turned around to see what was written on the door through which he had just passed. The word there was HORSES.

He couldn't see the connection. He was at the very end of the corridor's dead end, with the dead end to his right. He looked down the corridor, which was wider and taller than the previous corridor. He saw the regularly-spaced doors--eight, of course--with a bigger door at the other end. He walked down the corridor.

SMALL.

ROMAN.

TASK.

MOMA.

CRITERION.

NET.

OTHER.

and

MAIL.

He didn't see the connection, and I don't see the connection, and I bet you can't see the connection. He was on a boat with an entirely different grammar and language, or the boat was controlled by clearly insane people. Those were the only two options, really.

Since he was then at the door that led out, he knew it was time to go through his routine, one by one.

He went clockwise once again, as he had learned to do in the last corridor. This time around, he did it more efficiently; rather than try each door, then knock at each door, he did both actions pairfully, that is, he'd try each door, then knock. In all nine cases (he skipped HORSES), the door did not open, and knocking was quite useless. No-one emerged to greet him; all was still and quiet save for the gentle rocking of the ship (he was by then certain it was a ship) and the sounds of water outside. (He noted he hadn't heard any birds, but he had no idea where the ship was so he had no idea what birds he should be listening for or even if birds could get out to the deep depths the ship might have been in.)

And so, he returned to the largest door of the eleven, which actually had a word on it, and the word was PUSH. It wasn't actually on the door, but instead it was on a metal bar that crossed the door horizontally. This contraption Larry seemed to have seen before in the office building he knew experientially.

It was a horizontal steel bar on top of another steel bar. The second steel bar was flush to the door, and perpendicular to it, running the length of the entire door from floor to ceiling and flush with the left edge of the door, was a thinner metal panel. It looked like a--what are they called?--a fire door. When it's closed, very little oxygen can get in or out of the corridor, thus incapable of providing fuel to the fire on the other side of the door.

This is not to say that Larry believed there was a fire on the other side of the door; rather, that it had been put there to protect each side from the other, in case there was a fire. All he would have to do would be to touch the door, which he now realized was made out of steel too, though this steel was painted red, to see if it was hot or not. Maybe there was a fire on the other side. Anything could be on the other side, fire included! But if there was a fire on the other side, he was undoubtedly forever trapped.

But Larry felt lucky. After all, he vaguely recalled going through doors much like this one without a fear in the world. In the office, I'd get from one floor to another using staircases that were protected by just such doors, and I never once feared there was a fire on the other side. This little insight, about an office, and about stairs, came as something of a shock to him. He felt he could perhaps re-create his persona by imagining going through just such a door, and witnessing what was on the other side. I was once in an office, and that office had stairs. He made a mental note to create such an imaginary recreation at some later date.

But now was not the time to go around imagining things. Who could even say they were true or not? He seemed to know something about fictional worlds and how they were created. Many images when concentrated upon could become as legitimate as fact. He recalled popular press articles about the subject. Implanting false memories. Gaslighting. Deceptions concerning carrots. The list went on and on.

So, he remembered certain ideas from his past, and they increasingly came.

Unfortunately, we don't have full access to Larry's thoughts. He must have been remembering things, but we can only see glimpses, disconnected glimpses, of his experiences. He was quite the cypher! I myself sitting here narrating can barely recall what the were: it's all shadows of shadows of shadows. How can anyone make it out? Jean. Joan. Company. Accident: car or boat. Another person. A colleague, sick. Buildings, jumping out of. More illnesses. An apartment, an empty apartment. Then: vanishing. How to fit it all together? I have no idea. If you have an idea what it all means, send me a note and explain it to me, because I can't make head nor tail out of it all.

He had the door to think about. He could think about all the other matters later. Maybe it would all piece together. Maybe his history will not exist until he can put all the bits together. All the bits were inside him--where else could they be?--and it was just a matter of putting fact A before fact B, fact B before fact C, and so on. Getting to the end of the alphabet wouldn't take too long.

I apologize: Larry is still looking at the red safety door with the metal thingamabobs on it. I got distracted, which sometimes happens when you're a narrator. Look at it this way: some people are good public speakers, and other people are not. The same thing happens with narrators. Someone who's a good narrator is the fictional voice of Georges Simenon. You can read it as there, and he rarely meanders off on some peccadillo about the structure and nature of history. Other narrators are eventually tiresome, like Lovecraft, who never saw an adverb he didn't like. In between, there's most of the rest of us narrators, struggling along to amuse others (by amusing ourselves) with anything he or she can find to say that is curious or amusing or comical or tragical or just plain weird. Fact is, us narrators are victims of circumstance. I got this guy, Larry Whatever, standing at a red safety door, and what options do I have? I know some things about him that he doesn't know. (Cf 'omniscient'). But I have to hold back, because I really don't know what's going to happen when he opens the door. I really don't.

He put his hand on the horizontal steel bar that he somehow from experience knew would, once it was pushed away from himself, open the door, and that it would open outwards. The steel was cold as a witch's tit. His palm was against the bar, and his fingers were pointing down. (He was using his right hand here, since the door opened on the right.) He knew he would be able to tell if, upon the closing of the door, if he could return, for the little bouncy things in doors were either bevelled on the inside or on the outside, bolt locks excluded. He put his left hand against the door, above the bar, as if that could possibly make a difference. All he had to do was push. He knew that he definitely would be further to the outside of the ship. After all, how big can doors be? Did he expect to wind up in an echo-able cavern the size of St. Peter's, with gigantic oak doors on the other side and on the side he was coming from? There are limits to nature and to all things, including the size of interior spaces.

Now, I don't want all sorts of people writing to me, saying stuff like: "But, Narrator, there's plenty of really large interiors that have been built over time. Have to ever seen an Amazon warehouse? They're incredibly vast. And what about Grand Central Station in New York City? Its atrium is huge, and beautiful besides. And I hear there's a mall in Edmonton, the West Edmonton Mall, that's suppose to be gigantic. Don't those places count? Don't you get out much? Or in, as the case may be?"

Now, I'm not discounting concerns such as these. It's not impossible that Larry could go on and on, into larger and larger corridors, for a long time. Perhaps there are ten more corridors he'll have to pass through! (The end of the story, if there is an end to the story, lies in the future, and it's just as unwritten.) However, an interior space by necessity cannot reach the size of the cosmos itself, for that would entirely negate the meanings of the words inside and outside. If everything is inside, then the concepts are meaningless. This is my argument, and I'm sticking to it. There's only so much room.

Larry's right hand was on the horizontal bar, and his left hand was up above the bar. (Perhaps he'd changed positions.) He pushed on the bar, he heard the triangular thing inside make some movement--inward movement, into the door--and he pushed the door away from himself.

Here comes the climax. You have to put these in somewhere. The situation has to radically change, such that everyone sees what has gone before in an entirely new perspective. Co-incidentally enough, these climaxes are often imagined as something akin to opening a door. So, this is entirely to the point. Larry pushes open the door, and as he pushed open the door, he's opening everyone involved into a re-evaluation of what has gone before. It can't be stressed enough. Once he has gone through the door, all will have changed. All the corridors will suddenly become meaningful, in a fresh new way. He's had a long journey, even though it's taken less than a half hour. I could say he wants some knowledge of his true identity. I could say that a very meaningful revelation was upon him. I could say there's an explosion coming soon. But I won't.

I won't hold off on this, though: the continuation of the story. I have some recollection of it, but not too much. Fortunately, it's happening as I speak.

Larry did not see another door with some strange signage upon it facing him. He didn't see a wall opposite. Rather, he saw three different shades of blue. He saw, firstly, the blue of a metal railing and barrier; secondly, the blue of some ocean or other; and thirdly, the blue of a clear sky. He was now on the outside of the ship. Yes, he was pretty much outside. All it too was for him to step forward two feet, and he would be definitely and uncontroversially outside. So, he took the plunge. He stepped outside.

Wind was blowing at him from his left. Did that mean he was on the right side of the ship? It was a pretty good hypothesis. He still had his hand on the nervous door. Now, he released it, and it fell closed with the click of its inner workings.

He leaned over the rail a little to see that the waters were, yes, travelling from left to right. They were heading somewhere.

He walked up the side of the ship, if by 'up' you can mean 'forward' on a ship, along the metal walkway which was patterned with diagonal lumps, made that way to ensure extra rigidity. He could see the 'helm' of the ship: a narrow pointy bit that stuck out the front. Some aspects seemed so familiar that he knew, maybe from 'movies', how the ship was laid out. (However, it didn't seem large enough for interior space. As if the inside was larger than the outside....) The ocean was a gentle ocean, and he could walk like a normal person. The breeze was being caused by the motion of the ship and by nothing else. He looked to his right, out to the waters. The waters were calm. Somehow, he didn't expect this. He expected waves and sharks. For some reason, a bird high overhead was following the ship. Expecting scraps, we supposed.

And what he thought was the case turned out to be the case. A person was at the 'helm', looking in the direction the ship was travelling. Who was this stranger? Or, in another way, who was this person whom the stranger was approaching?

She was like a figurehead dressed in a tight shiny black vest and tight shiny trousers. She had on a tricorn hat, with two hair-braids hanging down from underneath. (He's seeing her from the back here, of course.) She was looking out at the vast ocean or sea or whatever it was. (It was undoubtedly one or the other.) She was standing there, looking forward. She looked strong and in command. She looked like the captain of the vessel.

Larry cleared his throat, and she moved but didn't turn around.

He said: "Ma'am? Captain?"

He heard her say: "You've woken up."

"Yes, I'm awake. I think."

"You are awake. You didn't have to wake up quite yet."

"I woke up. I made it here. I don't know where we are."

"You're on my ship."

She turned around. She was quite beautiful, with high cheekbones and green eyes. She was wearing a red scarf tucked into her black vest. Her hands weren't dainty, but they had finely tapered fingers. She looked at him as if to say: "You have no business here." Larry had to look away for an embarrassed moment. He had to gather what thoughts he had.

He looked away to the ocean. (Let's call it an ocean from now on.) He muttered: "So much water!"

She repeated an old vaudeville joke: "Yeah, and that's just the top of it!"

Larry didn't know it was an old gag, and he laughed. He turned to her again. He said: "I don't know where I am, who I am, or how I got to be here."

"No, you don't know, it's true. Take some solace in the idea that you know you don't know these things. Then you can say you know things."

Larry puzzled, then asked: "Will I ever come to know these things? These, uh, first-order things?"

She thrust her thumbs into the hips of her trousers. "I guarantee it. Someone may ever write it all down."

He stepped a bit closer, close enough to feel her warmth. (Meanwhile, she turned to look again at the ocean.) He asked: "Are you the captain?"

"I'm captain and crew. It's just us here."

"But there's so many empty cabins."

"We've never set out with only one passenger before. The weather's strange."

"Wherever we're going, when will we get there?"

"We'll be there in four days," she said.