From the Labyrinth: Daedalus

I did not know how long I had slept. I woke to see the footprints. Not human footprints, or not in total human. Were they animal? In the soft earth had been something like a hand, the long fingers deep in the soil. Something had watched me sleep, had lolloped around me, uprooting stalks.

I didn't care to meet this creature, for a creature this must have been. Was this what had been feeding and evacuating me? I had been given any tangible evidence of my persecutor, though I struggled to believe this ungainly stride belonged to them directly. Whatever this was could only have been a servant of this hidden master.

Did the maze want me to see this? If it didn't, I wouldn't have a morsel of evidence.

This should have frightened me, but it did not. Whatever guided me through this labyrinth did not want me to be scared, so it must have been a genuine threat. Fear would have allowed me the stress hormones to fight back. Placatory calmness would allow me only apathy when devoured.

But it had not harmed me when he was at my most vulnerable, and it would have been no effort to do so. I woke and slept at their command, silent and definite. If they wanted me harmed, I would never have woken. I could not assume any benevolence or even neutrality, either from my captors or this thing.

I fingered the marks, remembering how one could judge the weight of something by the depth of the print. I looked at my footprint and back to the hand and footprints. Three times my weight, but nimble. Not an obligate quadruped -- why did I know these words? -- but it showed a marked preference for a four-legged posture. Where it showed only the elongated footprints -- the big toe opposable as in chimps -- I guessed its fingers had been on me.

I followed the tracks until I came to an invisible wall. Not far after it, the prints veered into the field with no hurry.

It might have been foolish to assume there was a way out of this maze. By definition, there had to be an outside. Fuzzy as my memory was, I still knew about cities. Yet the labyrinth might endlessly loop. The paths, I had learned already, could shift when I was not paying attention, rendering it next to impossible to know for sure that where I had been before was still a path I could take. I was fed, my waste eliminated without my involvement. I had sustained no lasting injury...

Was that it? A final test? Perhaps I could not be injured. Whatever controlled me might not let this happen. As quick as I thought this, my head ached, more so when I attempted to contrive methods to do minor injuries, scratching or biting my hand. It would not let me harm myself, but injuries were a fact of life. It might still be possible if I did not think about harming myself.

How silly it must have seemed to walk through this field as normal -- as normal as it would get -- to convince what was in me that I did not intend to do myself harm.

There were no rocks among the earth. The stalks were likewise smooth, nothing that could be used for a scratch.

This had been planned. Other people in this maze -- I decided at once that this was not a hell designed for me, but a test put to others -- must have tried to either circumvent the control or put it to their own test. Dangerous means had been taken from them, anything that could do so much as to scrape them. I could not overcome the internal pain and pressure that kept me from harming myself. Even when I tried clenching my leg muscles to the point of cramping, my leg would relax to suppleness. I was as good as in a padded cell, yet I thought I had a fresh hypothesis from this. I was one of many, even more than Dorothy's existence had presented me. Having this be impersonal made it better and more surmountable. Whatever protocols they had would have to be general, not focused on me. They might not be able to expect all that I could do. I stopped at that moment granting this anonymous "they" so much power and insight.

All this consideration exhausted me. As sleep tried to conquer me, I ordered myself to remember all this. They had taken so much from me -- my safety and autonomy, my bodily privacy, Dorothy -- but they would not take my mind.

Was the approach of this creature meant as punishment for thinking seditious thoughts, a warning of the harm that could come if I cared to press the issue. Would they hurt me? Indeed, I had value enough to them, even as a test subject -- and this was a scientific test of some sort if they were going to these extremes -- to have a creature devour me.

I had no context for what could do this. Though I did not know why I did, I knew animals, but I could sense that this was not something that existed in the outside world. This, too, was a part of this testing structure, though its purpose was still unclear. There had to be a control in this experiment, something steady through the iterations. The creature was as much a part of the experiment as the plant stalks and my paralytic pain. Every inch of this was intentional. My task was not to trace a maze but discover, without myself being discovered, the endgame.

I stopped trying to count the days. They were as many or as few as they wanted them to be, so their accountancy lost importance. Trying to play the game that way would only frustrate me.

Still, the low-end estimate was a week more walking. I was no longer hurried, but neither was I resigned to take what happened without a fight.

When I woke -- not every time, but enough -- I would see the pawprints. I wanted to study them to better divine what this creature might be and its newfound relevance to me, but I was sure my anonymous antagonist might find that interesting and might encourage further interactions or punish me for my curiosity. Feigning slower waking, I observed what I could.

The creature, it seemed, had no worry I would wake to see it. Its labors were relaxed. The notion revolted me that this thing touched me while I slept -- I assumed gently, but I doubted I could wake before they wanted me to. I decided to put this out of my direct consciousness, allowing it to stew in the back of my mind. If I did not think on this too hard, I could not be punished for letting my clues piece themselves together.

I walked, giving little sign to my emotions. They wanted me in a frenzy or worried or desperate. I would not give them the satisfaction.

Walls closed in more. I took a path, and I would be unable when I tried to turn back. Had I frustrated them enough with my seeming indifference that they had decided to herd me where they wanted me? Fine then. I would not be bothered by this either. I wouldn't solve their maze if I could force it to solve itself.

In defiance, after going at a decent clip for close to an hour, I sat abruptly on the ground and did nothing as long as they would let me. Though I would suffer their wrath in the short term, it might provide more information I could use against them.

They let me sit so long that I began to feel ridiculous. I fell asleep and was processed. I could not know if I had been moved somewhere else when I woke, but it did not matter. I continued to sit in defiance of them. Absent my biological needs, assuming still I could come to no harm, I had no reason to do otherwise. I would not lose a battle of wills against people too cowardly to show their faces.

The wall grew closer to my back until my spine screamed, but I focused on resisting. The walls on either side of me grew closer still, by degrees, more slowly than the one at my back, more of a warning.

If boxed completely, I did not know my next move. I would either triumph or die. Death was no great sacrifice if my life was meant to be their subject.

I slept again.

I woke some distance from a low, metallic building. Still among the stalks, but the sight of this landmark, this difference in surroundings, was so beautiful I could barely breathe.

I made to stand. This could have been another trick, but I could not help myself.

I fell to the ground, the pain in my skull a thousand exploding migraine enveloped in numbness. When I touched my face, my skin did not register as though I had become nothing but the pain.

When I had some composure restored, with hesitation, I raised my fingers into the air. The static. The pain. There was a low ceiling above me. Crawling, I found myself trapped in an invisible tunnel, only a few yards long and one row thick. I could not reach the building, could not escape this without further agony. It was no longer about pain compliance. This was punishment for my transgressions. I had mistaken my importance, and I would suffer.

But I would not prostrate myself before them, no matter how they threw me into the position. I slammed my face into the ground once. I was incapable of doing it a second time without them stopping me from even thinking it, but the numb impact of the first attempt stayed with me. I could wound myself still if they thought I wouldn't.

There was little room now to build up momentum. My head was still numb, and I whispered a prayer to no god that I would be allowed to do this before my muscles turned to stone.

I galloped on my hands and knees toward the building. I hit the barrier. Everything in me exploded into shards of pain, then nothingness, unconscious.

I woke again where I fell, well into the night, but the lights of the building were an impossible torchlight staining my eyes.

My cage now was smaller still. I could sit but could not move from a seated position. They had to have set me this way in mockery of my attempt to subvert them with passivity. If I wanted to sit, they would see I could do nothing else when close to what I took for a goal.

I saw the seated figure on the path, the red hair. I saw Dorothy. I tried to move closer, but none of my muscles were under my control. I watched until, in the light, I saw the rise and fall of her chest. She was still alive, offering the tantalizing potential of reconnection.

Her brown eyes were wild, panicked, and trying to convey to me what no other part of her could. She was identically paralyzed, desperate to communicate a message I was still too distant and ill-equipped to receive.

For minutes, that's all there was. Two immobile, seated figured stared confusion and terror at one another, tears streaming down her cheeks despite her inability to release the sobs well overdue. The distance could have been cancelled in ten steps in normal circumstances but was insurmountable now.

Between the building and me loped something that might once have been human. I wanted to look away from it, but my head would not turn, and my eyes would not close. Whatever was in me that did this would not grant me a reprieve from this monstrosity. Its limbs were distended and had a metallic sheen. Its mouth drooped open as if in drugged idiocy. Its eyes were orbs reflecting the sodium light into a green glow, looking at me but no longer capable of seeing.

The creature stooped over Dorothy, the only other person in the world, vomiting up mercurial fluid. Dorothy's eyes screamed, then went blank. Her head caved in, then her shoulders, then her chest, the creature's flat tongue lapping her eroding her body until it was nothing. The process took the better part of an hour. I watched it all, rapt. No matter how I tried, my eyes would not close for more than a blink.

They had wanted me to witness this. I have never felt such primal hatred.

It was a true blessing to pass out after an eternity of this horror.

I revived in a sterile room, screaming until my throat closed and my body relaxed.

A man -- thin, with a stubby mustache and thick glasses -- sat on a chair ten feet from me, writing on a tablet. He must have heard the screaming, but he waited to finish writing.

"Are you ready?" he asked, the question patient and neutral.

I groaned, which he took for assent enough.

He looked down at the tablet, then set it aside, saying as though reciting a script. "You are part of an experiment you designed to solve an algorithmic puzzle on the optimization of machine learning with a human host. You are alive. You are not being punished. You often think you are. We are not your prison guards. You are not free to leave. You will return to the maze shortly once we finish downloading information. You do not have any choice. We are not to blame. You cannot hurt me, and trying will result in pain. You cannot convince me to let you go. I am incapable. Even if I were, I would not tell you." The man peeked down at the tablet. "You will have approximately seven minutes before you return to the maze. You may speak until you do, and I will answer what questions I am allowed."

There was too much in that litany to unpack, so I started at the most pressing. "I did this?"

He returned to his chair. "Strictly speaking, I am to inform you that the nanites did most of this. You helped engineer the nanites. They refined the process beyond us."

"It had to be evolutionary. Tracked," I said, my mind clarifying. "That's why you feed the subjects, take our waste. The control."

"All part of your protocol."

"Where are the others? My collaborators?" Asking the question made my stomach lurch. "Dorothy?"

"You all agreed to be subjects. Dr. Clark especially."

I understood what this meant. "How many are left? How many subjects?"

"Just you now, since Dr. Clark has... finished. The rest will be honored. Their bodies, of course, are destroyed so that we can harvest the nanites within them," he said. "You insisted upon that."

"So, I am done? You can take the nanites out now? That's how I designed it, surely?"

Her lips went into her mouth as though to hold back the truth. "That is not the protocol you've defined. The nanites won't let you stop and will not let us remove them, even if we could find a way, and we haven't been able."

"You've told me all this before."

"Every few days," he admitted, "for the last five years. You are solving the maze more quickly. Before that, the man who I took over from told you for another seven. You haven't aged in all that time. You are in excellent health." The man approached him again, touching him for the first time with tenderness. "We wrote all this out to hand to you, but that upset you too much. We -- you and I -- decided you needed to speak to another human being."

"Kill me," I said.

"We can't. My predecessor -- you met him in the field, or what he has become -- tried. That's why he doesn't work here anymore, because you convinced him. The nanites put you back together. You infected him, or they did for revenge, turning him into that. The Harvester, we call him. They won't let you go. Whenever you try, they excite all your nerves until you are insane," he said, so tired of this atrocity that he sounded bored. "You need to run the maze, or the nanites will torture you. We've done everything we can to try to rescue you."

"Until the Harvester kills me?"

He shook his head. "He only takes the ones you wish to die. We're almost certain that is the case."

I felt a pinch at the back of my neck.

"Your time is up. It was shorter than I expected," he said as my vision blurred. "I will see you in a few days, doctor."

I woke in a field. I was not in this field when I fell asleep. I was-- no, I can't recall.