Two Doors

Part I

        The boy strode inside, feeling dangerously confident now, for finally no one had any clue just who he was and what he was going to do.  His options were open, there’d be nobody to say he had done the job the wrong way or that anything in his plan was lacking.  He was the boss now.  Nothing could ever stop him from reaching his goals at this point.

         Except for a second door.  He had gotten past that first door just fine, but in his complacency, his face smacked right against an immediate second door’s handle.  He fell backwards onto a hard, fake marble floor.  He just managed to stop his head from hitting it, saving his master plan from being completely uprooted.  He sat there for a moment, in-between two doors with transparent glass, allowing the world to mock him and his plans.  He felt each wrist in turn, noticing fair amounts of pain in both of them, having taken his fall just before his head.  Surely this was a minor setback.

         But he cursed the doors and all of the world that dared to watch him in his time of weakness, which amounted to about three men in neutrally colored suits, who apparently had nothing to do rather than hurt a poor boy’s feelings.  But this was no poor boy.  He had grand plans that would destroy all of these men’s worlds.  Had those ingenious architects not designed a building to have two doors in a row for entrance, this boy might have already ruined their careers.  Had they not put their handles at exactly four feet off the ground, (a bit higher than most, proving they were planning for this to happen all along.) then this boy would have made sure such an incident would never happen again.

         His mind fumed with anger, anger at those damned architects and their handles, their systems of entry, and choice of material to furnish those said systems of entry.  His plans were modified right then to destroy those specific people.  Why would they do this to him?  Why were they looking to ruin this specific boy’s plans?  Perhaps they knew the dangers he presented.  Those omniscient devils in gray suits.  He would have them.  He would rip off their spectacles, crush their heads, then-

         But he was prolonging things.  He had sat in that small area between the two doors so long that twice as many men had managed to witness his plight.  None of them decided to help such a lousy boy in such terribly colorful clothes.  The only thing that the boy wore in gray was his skin, for his diet wasn’t terribly colorful at all.  The main color he was ever able to squeeze in was pink for his meats, which wouldn’t have given him a healthy complexion, either.

         His mind continued to wander.  But it wandered so piercingly into his plans that the plans began to change over time.  His thoughts sliced his plans, rearranged them, then stitched them back together in a new arrangement in very forceful ways.  His mind went everywhere, never being suppressed, never limited, opening new revisions, asking for another thought to compute.  His mind was his best friend.

         The plans circulated over and over in the mind, which would never quit, but finally his body quit and he fell asleep.  This allowed nearly everyone in the building to see this boy’s embarrassment and pain, though not while he was feeling them.  His mind continued to go over the plans, easier now without the interruptions of the boy’s feelings and senses getting in the way.  The mind eventually came up with a final draft and awoke the boy to go over them.

         The boy awoke, still in-between two doors, halfway to his destined plan, which he found was quite different from what it had been.  His mind seemed rather satisfied with it, however, so he went along with it.  His mind had rarely crossed him before, as far as he knew.

         So far, everything was going according to plan, according to this new plan.  All that needed to be done was to go on up to that door, and then would come the fun part.  Then came revenge against those stupid architects who thought they could beat this terribly colorfully clothed little boy.  The boy was nearly standing up when a new thought came to him: That he had been asleep.  The world in between these two doors was very similar to what it had been, so he had not quite noticed until now.  The world outside of them was dark and lacked any real substance.  There were no more annoying old men in suits watching him anymore.  He was free to do whatever he liked with his plans.  Even freer than before.  Now no one could judge him on the way to his plans, let alone while he’s fulfilling them.  The architects had completely failed to ruin this boy’s schemes!

         This newfound fact was amusing to his mind.  His mind pondered over the plan again.  Perhaps it wasn’t final.  Maybe it still needed revision.  The boy was alerted to this.  The boy’s mind needed some more time to think, and so the boy could sleep again if he wanted to.  The boy thought over this for a second, only to have a sudden strike of enlightenment to the fact that sleeping would change the situation again.  Of course, it had done him good so far, but who could know if it would again?  He was unwilling to chance sleep again, despite his mind’s pleas for liberty from the boy’s senses.  The boy decided to just get up and go on to do the plan.  That would be much more sensible.

         He finally arose to challenge door no. 2 again.  This time, he pushed on the glass, ready to thwart those architects once and for all.  Nothing could ever stop him from reaching his goals at this point.

         Except for another pre-planned trap by the architects.  Now they had some sort of mechanism that prevented a normal push from infiltrating their door.  This was surely a minor setback.  But what other way could it be broken past?  By breaking it?  This was a bit far to go, he reasoned.  That architect glass was hard to break through as well.  Surely there was some contraption the men in suits had to get past such an obstacle.  Hopefully they did not carry it with them, or else the boy would have to go to sleep again.  Perhaps the door had the apparatus to open itself on itself.  His mind agreed.

         This would require great experimentation.  He pushed on different parts of the door to begin with.  This yielded no results.  He then used his shoulder instead of his wounded hands on all parts of the door he had already tried.  That damned architect’s glass wouldn’t give in to any assaults.  He soon tired himself out with his efforts.  The fortifications set up by the architects held strong.  Nothing gave any more than the slightest movement of that latter door.

         He had a thought.  Was the first door still able to open?  This could be the experiment to win the day.  He pushed on the first door, to have it fling open far too wide, for he had pushed it much harder than necessary.  He fell down in this new position outside the doors.  It got much less comfortable immediately.  Wind rushed at him.  The ground grew a new sharpness to it that skinned his knees.  He felt wet all over.  This was certainly not the place to be.

         The first door was slowly closing, an airy sound announcing this emergency.  The boy dove back into that building again, just barely preventing the door from closing him into that hellish atmosphere outside the doors.  He laid there, the door half closed on him, for just a second or two, cringing from the pain in his knees.  He managed to scramble on in though, the door finally sealing that air mostly outside. 
He found himself in front of the second door again.  The first door opened, but this one would not.  Why would fate do such a thing to him?  The first door opened, inviting the boy into a wet, cold, painful hell.  This second door, however, was shut as tight as the first door now was, to what seemed like the only perfectly happy place in the world to him now.  The men got there easily enough, and didn’t much seem to appreciate their advantage.  He had to get in there.  The plan barely mattered anymore. 

        Or so he thought.  His mind thought differently.  His mind scolded him, for he was getting out of line.  The plans were all that mattered.  No comfort should be advanced upon without the plan being taken into account.  Luckily for the boy, the plan was in line with his comfort.  His mind told him that he ought not to question his priorities like this, however.  The plan was the only goal.  There is no such thing as a priority, for all actions must work toward the plan.  Anything else was out of the question, that eternal question.  The boy began to inquire what the question was, but his mind laughed this ironic thought off of him.  Surely, that was not profitable to the plan.

        The boy realized his error, and that his surroundings were becoming slightly brighter.  He hadn’t even slept, and things were changing.  These two doors still troubled him.  He sat back down against the architect glass near the second door.  His mind went over things some more.  It decided that he needed to sleep some more.  The boy eventually relented and slept.

        The next thing he knew, the boy arose to find a darker world around him.  He saw only one door here.  There were other things, but it was dark, and they didn’t apparently matter.  He simply walked up to the door, and it opened for him.  He came at it with such confidence, he intimidated it into opening.  He walked halfway through the door, then--

        There was some extremely bright, nearly pulsating substance all over the walls of a basically cubic room.  He was afraid to enter.  It was too much for him.  There were horrible shapes all around the room, seemingly hanging in space. He was so scared of this room that he stumbled back, letting the door slam shut, nearly enclosing his foot.  His mind screamed at him.  That was the plan in that room.  It was nearly fulfilled, but this pitiful boy had ruined it.  It was all over, and his mind reminded him of this constantly.  The boy looked around, even more scared than before.  Without that door’s light, there were only ominous shadows of non-existent objects in his space.  He nearly tripped over himself reaching for the door.  He yanked and pulled on the door to no avail.  It was shut for good. 

        His mind wouldn’t let this go.  His mind made sure he knew that he had ruined the world.  The world could never exist, now that the plan was foiled once and for all.  The boy was screaming in pain from the mind’s punishment.  The mind had escaped the boy’s control, and was going to destroy the body and leave for someone else, someone else to fulfill the plan.  The boy clenched his head and screamed out for help from no one.  Now he was pulsating, flipping over and over on what was apparently the ground.  He felt nothing but the pain.  The pain was going to kill him.  He tried to escape the plan, to overtake it, but the mind told him this was pointless.  The plan was everything, so there was nothing to go above it.  The boy was convinced.  If the plan could end this pain, then he could finally think things over again.  He then tried to accept the plan, but the mind countered this as well, saying he had ruined the plan, and should never be released and allowed to serve the plan again. 

        This boy’s life was effectively over.  A hospital disagreed for a while, but the boy’s brain never escaped those two doors.  A man in a gray suit had finally picked him up while he slept, and his body had moved among many civil services before getting to the white bed he was now in.  The boy had no family.  No real link to the real world at all.  The mind had escaped, only to end up possessing that man in the gray suit.   

Part II

         The gray-suited man was very concerned about the boy he had sent to a shelter.  He went to the shelter about a week later, only to be pointed to another shelter.  That shelter pointed him to another.  That shelter pointed him to the hospital, with grim looks penetrating him.  The hospital pointed the man to a graveyard.  The unmarked tombstone pointed to heaven. 

         So the man found religion.  The man honestly had little else to do.  Office work wasn’t exactly a hobby.  Nonetheless, the man had always wanted to be a father.  His instincts told him to take care of this boy.  He found religion to be the way to make sure he rested in peace. 

         The man joined a church in the city, and was allowed to speak one night about his recent troubles.  The man stirred the churchgoers tremendously, telling (a somewhat fabricated) story about his new “son” and his neglect by the urban world.  All those who heard the sermon later signed a petition to improve life for the unfortunate in the city.  “Help the boy with no name!” became the call for picket lines outside the mayor’s house, though the mayor wasn’t especially against this petition.  The man had a following, protesting the city’s neglect of the poor.

         The city government was fairly dumbfounded.  The man’s following wouldn’t even listen when the politicians would try to make a deal.  They didn’t seem to want reform as much as they wanted to protest.  The city couldn’t do anything.  The newspapers constantly printed articles about the city’s stubborn anti-poor policy.  The picketing was so fierce that news teams couldn’t even get in to get a comment from the city’s politicians.  Any politician who could get through would just get called a dirty liar and would lose all credibility.  The man’s following had the city cornered.

         The news of this city’s irrational cruelty to poor people spread amazingly fast, putting the city’s prestige down to zero with most of the country.  The man had no problem with this defamation of the city, as he saw this as his justice for the child’s mistreatment.  He now referred to the child as his son without even noticing that the boy wasn’t.  It became natural, the child was his son, and he was now a father.  The church officially made him a father as well, a spiritual father and priest at the church.  The man could talk, and had the personality to stir the masses.  His zealous followers could take down a whole city in the eyes of the world.  Maybe the man could do even more.

         The man was starting to get a crazy plan in his mind.  If he just had a few more things, he could get his followers in anywhere and take control.  The man had power.  He quit his old job and was going to preach for a living.  Preach the will of the boy, his son.  Of course, he had no idea what the boy had wanted, but he guessed the boy would want justice.  Justice against the cruel cities that had made him the way he was.

         First, the man needed an image to tag his message on to.  He had no pictures of the child, but needed one.  There was unfortunately only one way to do this.  The grave had to be dug up.  The boy would understand.  It made perfect sense in his mind.  A picture of the boy was necessary, and the boy being dead would only heighten the emotion stirred.  Something didn’t really feel right about it.  Was he forgetting something?  His mind made perfect sense, though.  Best to let it go.

         The picture was taken, and it was stirring if nothing else.  He made sure every newspaper he could find had the picture available.  He even copied the picture enough times to have an airplane drop them on city hall.  They littered the streets around city hall for weeks to come.  Every newspaper would have plenty of time to get a copy if they weren’t sent one.  The picture was printed in the papers worldwide, protesting now big cities in general, showing the horrible things that happened in them, though the city people were all too “busy” to take notice.  All of them but that one man in a gray suit who happened to find the boy near death.  The other men who walked by had cared, but they had only seen the boy when he was a happy little child, grinning maliciously as he saw them walk by, knowing their fates.  They were all to be labeled “evil city people”, just as the boy would have wanted.

         Now the man made sure his past life story was kept secret, saying instead he was raised on a subsistence farm, and only came to the city because the farm was too polluted to function, another vice of cities.  The world was poised on revolution, about to send itself back to the stone age, correcting the evil that was the metropolis.  All the man had to do was blatantly call for the end of all cities, and let his followers work out how to follow the call of duty. 

         But the man hesitated.  He hesitated for weeks.  That little feeling he had first gotten when he was getting that photo hadn’t left.  It had grown inside him.  He felt endlessly uneasy.  It had grown to be an illness.  He doubted his plan.  His plan came out right in his mind, but hurt his brain and body.  The man had lost his ability to speak, to enthrall the masses, for he no longer felt right as he spoke of the plan.  His gut would burn, making all of his tones contort into something different than intended.  They either sounded overly evil or just uncertain.  He was beginning to lose his followers.

         There was a sense of decline, and he was hoping no one else would notice it.  He had to get the revolution started before the media would start to doubt him.  He had to speak every few days, just to keep everyone fairly calm, but the people were restless.  A few riots had already broken out in the poorer parts of the largest cities.  He just had to get the right feeling, then call his people to rise up as one.  That feeling just prevented him from finishing his plan.  He was so close.  It had seemed nothing could stop him.  Something was.

         His mind hit him with a flurry of logic.  It all sounded right, but none of it felt right.  Something was wrong with the tone of it.  His mind wasn’t a very good speaker.  But the father agreed reluctantly.  He opened the door to his apartment bedroom.  All he had to do was go through the door to his balcony and the media would be there, hanging on his word, ready to spread it at full speed.  It was very dark behind him, but the bedroom was slightly lighter at the very bright sun coming through the windows.  He shut the bedroom door behind him.  Just one more door.  What exactly was he waiting for?  He wasn’t too late.  Everyone would still listen, and his son would rest peacefully.  If only he could get to that balcony door.

         He sat down on his bed.  The light continued to beam insanely bright through the drapes onto his floor.  The light reached all the way to his feet.  Now further.  All the way to the other end of the bed now.  How long had he been here?  He looked up at the balcony door.  How far was it, two yards?  But he couldn’t make it.  A sharp jab of pain hit his head.  It made him leap up to his feet.  He was very confused.  Then he found himself in front of the door, holding the knob.  Turn, and…

         He cursed at the brightness of the sun.  It was pointing directly at him, now fairly low but fully focused.  Everything was white, his eyes burned.  His pupils couldn’t get small enough to tolerate it.  A floating feeling.  He heard trucks everywhere, but everything was still white.  Then shapes started to come out.  His hands, creases slowly appearing, but then other hands at his sides.  Even the first hands hadn’t been his.  They belonged to some still extremely white thing.  Another man.  Still all white.  He was inside a sort of truck, he found out as his head bounced continuously on a pillow.  Terrible road system, another vice of cities, he supposed.  He was in a truck, but in bed at the same time.  What sense did that make?  He cried surprisingly loudly “Who are you!?” at the white man.

         “Don’t worry sir, you’ll be all right, just relax.”  The road prevented him from truly relaxing.  The man’s shape began to come out, he was a doctor.  Or nurse, but that didn’t really matter.  Maybe he wasn’t either of those, but it became obvious the father was in an ambulance.  He tried to move.  No luck.  Fear crept in.  He began to tremble in a fairly frightening way, but a quick prick calmed him.  The father floated away again.

         A day later he found himself in bed again.  More white everywhere.  Was this his heaven?  He cursed to find it was a hospital.  He tried to move again, to get out of bed at last.  But things just weren’t going his way.  A doctor began to inform him of his recent history. 

         The father had stepped out on to the balcony in long johns, but the sun and his generally low state of consciousness guided him over the rail of the balcony.  He would be okay though, for the media knew he was hurt before either he or any hospital did.  They called 911 and first aid arrived just in time.  He was likely to be paralyzed from the neck down, but this wasn’t completely confirmed.  The hospital would take care of him for several months and made sure the media had no access to him, but would inform them on any developments.  The father had no access to the media to implement his plans.  He was powerless.  It was over.  He completely gave up.  The mind had moved on, but his brain remained and functioned as it had before the mind ever took over.  The man would stay in this world for a long time, with no further ambition and care for any sort of revolution.

         Revolts continued for a month or two, but no uprising can last without a leader.  The revolts split up between new leaders and went against one another, and all ideas of revolution against evil cities were more or less extinct by the time the man was out of the hospital.  The mind would move on to a number of other people, but all of them met their end at the hand of other revolutionaries.  The mind could not find another potential disciple to carry on the plan. 

Part III

         During all this, the man’s own father, long forgotten, had died.  The man had a funeral put together quickly, but paid little respect.  The man had had a revolution to put together, and at that time couldn’t waste even a day on his father’s death.  His father, now just a ghost, saw everything that happened after his death.  It didn’t exactly please him, but it was good to know that his son was finding some success and fame for a little while.  He was a content man.  There were no more choices for the ghost to make, no more pressure.  He became a permanent spectator, careless.  It was heaven for him.

         Other people were there, but mostly just as images, making conversation mostly without words, but slightly more often as ideas. Sometimes there was no purpose to the conversation at all, besides a slight alleviation of loneliness. Even the ghost’s images of those people came very blurred, two black holes above an opening-and-closing oval black hole, with varying specific features sometimes coming out clearer in those he had known.

        Looking downward, the ghost could see beyond his feet into another world. Busier people than he scurried around below, appearing to him from this distance only as black dots carrying apparently vital small green things around for apparently vital causes, with the vast worker majority leaving their little hole in the morning and returning in the evening, appearing to communicate somehow in the way they interacted. The ghost could remember existing in a world like that somehow, among all those little black dots rushing together towards their little goals, fearing both their red nemeses and great masses of heat from above. American Nuclear Technology seemed able to let them escape that fate, though.

         The ghost realized over time that everything around him except for the piercing white light everywhere was rather dull. Everyone, all of those strange blurry shapes making conversation, was so absolutely dull it was just as if they were dead. The black dots just past his feet were much more interesting, full of character, pursuing their pointless little goals with so much energy, while energy was impossible for the ghost’s kind, as it was just unnecessary. Everyone of his kind was just a horribly strange shape that seemed to sort of just hang in space. It was all just too dreadful. The ghost idolized those little black dots.

         This feeling grew stronger and stronger, and as it did, the ghost’s vision grew better and better. He found that he was in a sort of room that was mostly cubic, and edges began to grow on everything that didn’t have one before. Other ghosts’ faces began to grow eyes and mouths, though equally as lifeless as the black holes had been before them in a rather alarming way. The formerly dot-like things below his feet had grown appendages and put on hats at times, with them and their many dwellings becoming larger and clearer day by day.

         The people who had been so comforting before began to only scare and disturb the ghost, who found them horrible in their complete lifelessness and the way they floated about, looking downwards. The fear grew in proportion with the size of the objects below the ghost’s feet, as the cubic room descended into the world beneath the ghost’s feet. It was all happening so fast now, as a sense of time came back to the ghost. The room was falling, now. Faster and faster. The room went straight through a ceiling, down into a small space in the entrance area of that building. The ghost bailed out of the room, the door nearly slamming shut on his foot. The boy’s mind screamed at him. That was the plan in that room. It was nearly fulfilled, but this pitiful boy had ruined it. It was all over, and his mind reminded him of this constantly. The boy looked around, even more scared than before. Without that door’s light, there were only ominous shadows of non-existent objects in his space. He nearly tripped over himself reaching for the door. He yanked and pulled on the door to no avail. It was shut for good.