‘I won’t try that again,’ was his only comment.
‘Jon,’ Shana abruptly said, ‘what if we get lost? All these corridors look the same!’
‘We can’t get lost,’ Jon replied, ‘we were lost before, remember, and that man in the glass panel told us where to go.’
Shana pointed to one just ahead of them. ‘Let’s try again.’
They activated the screen and wasted no time in stating their requirement, being careful to phrase their question in a way that would be accepted.
‘We need to know our location,’ Jon said to the image of the unblinking man.
Immediately a schematic appeared with two blinking figures shown in the centre. But this time there was lettering identifying other locations. They were gratified to see that there were several food-dispensing locations not too far away. But one location piqued Jon’s interest.
‘Look,’ he said, placing a forefinger on the icon, ‘“High Official Generation Room.” What can that be?’
Shana frowned. The phrase brought an unwelcome memory up from her subconscious. It was the phrase the two creatures had used when barring her way to the Forbidden Books: all she knew was that she “Was Not a High Official.”
However, all further thoughts were driven away when the familiar directionless voice suddenly boomed out: ‘Jon21! Shana12! Proceed directly to the Education Room!’
They looked at each other. Jon spoke first: ‘The education room? What do they want to educate us in?’
Shana shook her head to demonstrate her ignorance. Jon crossed to the information panel and asked for the whereabouts of the Education Room.
‘Not too far from the Generation Room,’ he said on his return, ‘I’d like to take a look at that first.’
Shana grasped his upper arm. ‘Jon, I’m worried – the last time I heard those words is when I met those repulsive creatures, you know, the ones who keep asking me to solve riddles.’
‘Well there are two of us now,’ he responded, ‘we may not have any swords but I can give them a puzzle of my own. How to avoid my fists.’
Shana looked unconvinced but fell in behind Jon as he strode off down the tunnel.
They hadn’t gone far when a tremendous shudder shook both the floor and walls, causing their features to momentarily melt together into an indistinguishable blurring. They were thrown together by the seismic shock and stood holding each other for a while. Finally Shana asked the inevitable question: ‘What was that?’
Jon shook his head. It didn’t seem possible that he could have looked more worried than he had previously but somehow he managed it.
‘I don’t know.’
They waited to see if it would recur but after an anxious period of immobility they decided it would not and resumed their quest.
It was not long before they came to a large door in the curving metal of the corridor with the words “High Official Generation Room” emblazoned thereon in large red letters.
They stood before it, looking first at the imposing lettering and then at each other.
‘One Generation Room,’ Jon remarked, ‘but how do we get in? And how do we generate a High Official once we are in?’
Shana looked both concerned and puzzled by that last remark but finally realised it had been an attempt at a joke.
Looking around, she noticed an information panel not far from the door and activated it.
‘We need access to the High Official Generation Room,’ she stated in the most authoritative voice she could muster. The unblinking man stared at her out of the display.
‘Password?’ he said flatly.
Jon and Shana looked at each other. This was a new development: they hadn’t needed such a thing before now. How could they guess a password out of the infinity of possibilities? Jon was already turning away when an idea came to Shana out of nowhere in a way she could not explain, then or ever.
She looked the figure in the viewer with a gaze as unblinking as his own and said in a voice of authority: ‘Fatal Scimitar.’
The door opened.
It revealed a short passageway that terminated in another door. This one, however, opened as they approached. They came out into a room so vast that they could not see the far wall and which contained an uncountable number of transparent cylinders, filled with an opaque milky liquid. The cylinders stretched away like the columns of some vast underground mausoleum but four of them were detached from the others and would be the first to be encountered if people entered the room, giving the suggestion that they were more important than the others.
Jon stopped to look at the passageway they had just passed through. ‘This wall appears to be solid lead and very thick solid lead. What were they trying to keep out?’
Shana had carried on into the room and was studying the transparent cylinders. The liquid within was in a constant, gentle motion, currents rising lazily to the top of the cylinder and then slowly down. There were illuminated display panels in front of each one showing a list of compounds with percentages next to them.
‘Iron, calcium, phosphate, adenine, guanine – Jon, do you know what these are?’
Jon crossed to her and looked down at the scrolling list. ‘No idea. Could be a recipe for a nice stew for all I know.’
Just then he felt something brush his thigh and turned around to see a squat metal object with multiple arms had come up to him without him noticing. It had basically a disc shaped body on segmented legs and from the disc a selection of appendages was protruding, some jointed and thick, some jointed and thin and two extremely flexible ones, like tentacles. It also had two red eyespots with which it was studying them.
‘You are too close to the Generation Tubes,’ it said in a high-pitched, emotionless voice, ‘you may not approach within two metres.’
Jon studied the various appendages which had now been raised to the level of his crotch and decided not to argue. ‘Of course,’ he said and moved away. It was then he saw that the entire room was filled with at least a dozen of these mechanical things.
‘What are they?’ Shana whispered as she joined him.
‘They seem to be a higher grade of arachnoid, which suggest they have a more important job to do.’ He turned back to look at the cylinders with their gently stirring contents. ‘Look there’s something written on them.’
Shana scanned them from left to right, reading out the words that she saw: ‘Rocha. Maroun. Gang Jianguo and … and …’ Her voice faltered.
‘And?’
Shana turned to Jon, her eyes wide and staring: ‘The last word Jon! It’s Korok! Korok!’
They were back out in the endless greyness of the endless corridors.
‘He’s here! Somewhere in this building!’ Shana said, feeling the first tendrils of hysteria beginning to invade her mind.
‘Stop it!,’ Jon snapped, ‘we don’t know that! All we saw was a name, just a name!’
She calmed herself and stared directly at him, blue-grey eyes holding Jon’s brown in a steady grasp.
‘In our previous existence – whatever that was – he was just a name, a curse, a figure of speech. But if this is reality and we are real beings in it – then so is Korok. And where else would he be but here?’
Jon grasped her shoulders in a grip of steel and looked deeply into her eyes. ‘Shana stop thinking of Korok as some kind of demon, some kind of god. If he’s a man he can bleed, if he can bleed he can die. And if he can die I will be the one who kills him.’
‘You promise?’ said Shana, feeling – to her amazement – the beginnings of tears at the back of her eyes.
Jon stared at Shana and had the sudden feeling that whatever it took he would save this woman from whatever threatened her, even if he had to rip up the universe to do it. But despite that sudden blast of emotion he was still absolutely unsure of what to do next and said so.