The Maze of Madison: Chapter Three, Confounded by a Lock of Stone

Chapter One: So it Begins
Chapter Two: Into the Dark
Chapter Three: Confounded by a Lock of Stone

We had to admit. This was not something we had expected at all. A door, sure. A lock, if there was a door, definitely. A very complicated combination lock seemingly made of stone instead of metal was an utter surprise. Especially one with symbols on it that did not appear on anything our boosters had in their yottabyte archives.

The whole local made of the middle of the double door. It sat right smack in the middle. As it was, there was no way to push the doors open. The lock barred that possibility. We looked closely and didn’t see any seam in the lock either. If it had to be aligned and slip open, it didn’t give away how to do so.

The lock itself was made of three concentric rings. The rings could and would move freely. Within each ring there were five rings. Each of those would move freely. There were markings that were not like anything we had seen before. Next to the markings were slots that would move sideways and lock the smaller ring into place. We tried a few and, yes, they would lock. However, randomly locking them in place didn’t seem to do anything.

I pulled out more of the torches made from MadLife tree branches and we lit the ends of each. We needed more light to record what we were seeing: using our singular torches was not cutting it. Yes, we could build a model up and use our boosters to project that model onto the darkness we were confronted with, but we both felt we needed to be able really see what was there for the moment. There might be more clues as to what was going on that we might miss if we looked too close only: forest for the trees, so to speak.

The light grew bright, but with the torches arrayed as they were, we would not have a lot of time. They would rapidly burn out. For a world as cold as Madison, the fact fire played such an important role in its ecology was strange. The trees would drop all their branches at the end of every summer. Then, if the conditions were right, fires would sweep across vast, vast distances. Burning and searing so much of the continents. When it would do so. Not everywhere burned. Some years some areas did and others did not. However, it was enough everyone had to be careful. Some scientists thought the trees had evolved the fire techniques that would shame a eucalyptus tree to clear out both competitors and vermin. And people didn’t want to be vermin. The area around the settlement was cleared for over ten kilometers each direction of MadLife, native life of Madison. Besides, everyone remembered Escheria. No one could forget the horrors of Escheria.

The oil filled discarded tree branches would burn out soon, especially with all of them arrayed as they were. We poked and prodded, moved and arranged the circles within circles, but nothing happened. The door did not open. The circles freely moved, even glided. The slides freely slid into place and would lock a circle into place. The greater circles moved without effort, which was a feat in and of itself, since they felt and looked like stone, and that much stone was very, very heavy. The largest circle was a good three meters in diameter. The second was two meters, seventy-one centimeters. The inner most was one meter sixty-eight centimeters, but not exactly.
That seemed significant, but we didn’t see why.

This was going to need some serious thought. And we were out of time.

The torches burned down and even the ones we were holding were getting dangerously low. Soon they would be to the dirt handles we had rubbed onto them with the survey crew fieldcraft. We needed to leave before they were too low to allow us to see.

To be sure, our boosters could easily paint the picture of where we needed to go, augmenting the darkness with the images of the path and bridge. Most of the time that was great and worked fine. However, if something had changed since the last time the booster recorded the direction you were going, it could be disastrous. Like, say, if that bridge had suddenly disappeared into the water. It was right behind us, so we’d have heard it, but had it not been, and it had fallen in, our boosters would have told us the bridge was still there and we could have walked right into the raging underground stream.

Oops!

To be sure, it made sneaking out at night, far, far easier. Montpelier had all of its roads laid out and built, even the houses built, before people occupied them. It was an odd duck that way. The houses were all of a similar style and finished within days of each other. Everything was so new. It felt…strange…at times. So…artificial. Anyways, because we had all walked those streets, and knew our houses inside and out, the boosters could paint walking through the house with the lights off just fine. No need to turn on lights to sneak out.

However, even now, a century and change since interstellar flight became possible, Legos were still the most hazardous weapon for walking in the dark without a light. Second was a cat. Oh, that darn cat. And, oh my poor feet from those legos. Siblings, they simply ruin every sneaky, teenage plan.

So, we left while we still had burning torches. The longest part was the natural and large cave. The carved passages themselves were not very far, nor long nor as dangerous as the cave could have been. Unless the passages actually changed. They had not and there was no sign of any Madlife critters waiting.

When we emerged back into the windy air, we both sent each other messages, because the wind howled too strongly. Think of it as a bit of an artificial telepathy, but with text or perhaps an image. We agreed the lock was meant to be solved. We agreed it was something we were going to do. We agreed not to tell anyone. We agreed to comeback as soon as we could. We also agreed to come back far, far better prepared.

And with that, we walked down into the blinding light of the day. We needed to be home, each of our homes, before dinner. We had our day off. Tomorrow was back to normal: the grind of building a new world for people. Or at last carving our place into it.

We grinned at each other through the tears of the seemingly blinding light and wind whipped cold air.

We had something just for ourselves and very, very exciting.

We had a puzzle.