They started out in the direction of the spot. After a long while, it began to take on dimensions. It was a human form.
“Look… he’s waving. It’s a man and he’s waving to us. A police robot wouldn’t wave, would it?”
THX didn’t answer. Soon they were close enough to see that it was a black man, tall and muscular, with thick arms and a strong handsome face.
“Hello, hello…” he called to them. “I’m SRT 5555.”
“THX 1138,” THX answered, “and this is SEN 5241.”
They were close enough to grasp hands now. SEN hung back a little, though.
“Hey, where’d you come from?” SRT asked.
“Back there… someplace.”
“Prison? Doesn’t make any difference, I guess. Do you have any food? I’m starving.”
THX turned to SEN, who said nothing. He took a step toward SEN. “Give him some.”
SEN looked from THX’s face to SRT’s, then reached into a trouser pocket and pulled out a small piece of a food cube. SRT reached for it.
“Thanks. Thanks a lot. I haven’t had anything to eat for… well, it’s been a long time.”
As the black man gobbled at the brown cube, THX asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I was lost,” he said through the food, showing lots of teeth.
“You’re not lost now?”
“No, I…”
“You know the way out?” SEN asked, brightening.
Chewing, SRT nodded vigorously. “Um hmm.”
“Which way?” THX asked.
“It’s around here somewhere.”
“What is? What?” SEN demanded.
Swallowing the last of the cube, SRT said, “The entrance. I came through it a couple days ago… flashing lights around it.”
THX said, “Then you’re not a prisoner… a convict?”
“Me? Naw… I’m a hologram… an actor. You must’ve seen me on the Mannequin Hour — - most popular holoshow in the city, according to last month’s polls.”
“He’s lying,” SEN whispered to THX. “Or insane.”
SRT heard him and laughed. “No, I’m not either. My show was dropped. Canceled. Damned computer made an error and placed the Mannequin Hour last on the ratings instead of first. Moved all the other shows up a notch. So everybody on the show was told not to come in till they got the mess straightened out. I was just walking around the city when I stumbled in here.”
“Impossible!” SEN snapped.
Shaking his head, SRT said, “Well, there’s a doorway with flashing lights all around it somewhere around here. You can believe it or not, take your pick. But I’m looking for it. Thanks for the food.”
He started walking away.
“Wait,” THX called out. “Let’s go together. Maybe the three of us can find it together.”
SRT shrugged. “Okay.”
“But he’s going back the way we came,” SEN complained.
“Maybe you were traveling in circles. I’m pretty sure that’s the way to the door.”
SEN grabbed THX’s arm and stood tiptoe to whisper into his ear, “He’s a spy. From the police. He’s trying to lead us away from the barrier and back to the others. It’s a trap.”
THX kept his eyes on the black man. He looked friendly enough, although he seemed a little impatient to get going and slightly exasperated at SEN’s behavior.
“Look, if you don’t want to come with me, I’ll go by myself. It’s okay.”
“No,” THX said, more on instinct than anything else. “We’ll go with you.”
SEN mumbled to himself and glared at the two of them as they walked through the empty whiteness.
Within an hour, SRT stopped short and pointed. “There it is!” he shouted.
THX strained his eyes peering in the direction that the black man’s hand pointed. He saw nothing.
“There’s nothing there,” SEN said matter-of-factly. “He’s insane.”
But SRT was already loping ahead, as if he really saw something worth running toward. THX hesitated a moment.
“Come on, here it is!” SRT called out.
Though he tried as hard as he knew how, THX saw nothing. He wanted to see a door with flashing lights. But nothing was there.
“It’s a trap, I tell you,” SEN muttered.
“Maybe,” THX said. Then, with a shrug, he started toward SRT, off in the distance. If its a trap, that’s the end of it, he thought At least it will be over.
Chapter 17
Something funny was happening to his eyes. As THX approached the black man, saw him looming larger, grinning, hands on hips, the whiteness seemed to fray, to wrinkle and fade and turn gray.
The whole blank background of nothingness seemed to change as a camera changes focus, bringing objects that were blurred into invisibility suddenly into clear, sharp view.
There was a door, flanked on both sides by flashing varicolored lights! And it was set into a metal bulkhead, with steel ribs protruding from it and rivets in the ribs. THX put out a hand to feel its reality.
“What… what… how can it be?” He heard SEN breathless behind him.
“They must have done something to the way we see,” THX said uncertainly. “They did something to our eyes…”
“Or maybe the food cubes were drugged,” SEN suggested.
“Or hypnosis.”
SRT was grinning hugely. “I told you there was a door. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
He yanked the door open and an explosion of noise staggered THX. On the other side of the door was a main pedestrian thoroughfare, with torrents of people racing by on slideways or walking, scurrying like mice through an experimenter’s cage.
“Please move briskly. Do not stop or block the passageway.”
“Please hold the handrail and stand on the right; if you wish to pass, pass on the left.”
“Save time, save lives.”
“The level 6421 intermural stadium will have an open day on series 621TD.”
“Today only, hypo-credit may be transferred with a green optimal card.”
After the quiet and vastness of the prison, this pounding noise and rushing mass of faceless humanity was overpowering… frightening. SEN covered his face with his hands. THX hung on to the edge of the hatch, swaying weak-kneed, almost tempted to retreat back to the placidity of prison.
Where am I going, anyway? he asked himself. And the answer came back immediately. He knew. He was surprised that he had needed to ask.
“All right,” he shouted over the deafening roar of the masses, “let’s head for that door, across the corridor.”
He saw that SEN was standing rock-still, wide-eyed with terror. THX shook him. “Come on, we’re out of it.”
“No… we shouldn’t…”
Putting his mouth next to SEN’s ear, he shouted, “Do you want to stay in prison until the policemen come for you?”
SEN jerked once, involuntarily, then bolted through the hatchway with a keening, whimpering shriek in his throat. Immediately the crowd swallowed him up, bore him away like a scrap of paper in a flood tide.
THX jumped into the crowd after him, with SRT right behind.
“We’ve lost him!” THX yelled over his shoulder.
“What?”
A million voices were babbling, cackling, jabbering over theirs. The loudspeakers were droning their endless orders and instructions.
“Help reduce critical noise levels in this area. Be sure to report all decibel surges in excess of one point five.”
“Control twelve please.”
“Cybers call in; 6442 gate five, pick up on fourteen.”
“Agency for internal development moves forward two malthusian units. This is a new high for this series.”
The tide of humanity was sweeping THX and SRT along, pushing, elbowing, carrying them down the corridor. Like a mindless panicked stampede, the people who were so silent and obedient in tram cars, so docile and sedated on their jobs, so glazed and passive in their apartments, were snarling wild-eyed frenzied herd animals here in the high density pedestrian corridors of the shopping level. Shopping in the commercial plazas was their one true sport; stampeding through the corridors their only adventure.