“Kill yourself now.” Kill yourself in an easy way before such things happen to you. This version looked even more believable than the radiation one.
But how could “the easy way” disappear later? Why hadn’t this person tried simply, for example, to slash his wrists? Too slow? But he surely suffered even longer. Nevertheless he had hoped to survive? Or was it simply the pain absolutely depriving him of the ability to think sensibly?
Everything is useless, came to him (from behind of the wall?), an improbably depressingly-tired thought—a thought which seemed as ancient as time. Everything… is useless… there is no exit from here… even such one… And then came to him a rolling, accumulating dark wave—despair, despair, DESPAIR!!!
The man lashed himself on a cheek to come to his senses. He stuck his teeth into his lip, until he felt the salty taste of blood. Calm down, he ordered himself. It is necessary just to keep a head on one’s shoulders and to think logically. For some reason this logical idea caused a new spasm of icy horror in his stomach. But he forced himself to knock down irrational fear and continue: “I know now about at least one real danger — articulated parasites. Is it the only one? Quite probably, the man in the bath, and the woman in the corridor—or was it yet another man with long hair?—have died of the same cause. From where did these wretches come? All from the same a biological experiment? And we… We were unlikely its organizers, as all of us appeared here without clothing. But this doesn’t mean that our situations were identical. Perhaps, not all have lost their memory. This person, so deliberately walking somewhere with the ripped stomach… Most likely he knew all along where he was going, hoping to receive help there.”
Having bypassed the corpse, he continued to walk in the same direction and had soon reached, apparently, the ring center. Here the corridor branched, bending around the thick column which pierced the floor and the ceiling. Having approached more closely, the man saw in this column a closed door and two triangular buttons nearby. The lift? Very probable. But to use the lift when power supplies were semidead would be silly. Fortunately, by moving around the column by the left corridor the man found an exit to a staircase. The staircase was spiral; it wound around the huge cylinder which enclosed the lift column and the passes bending around it. This cylinder, obviously, was enclosed within an even bigger one, based upon the form of an external wall. Again, there were no windows here, and the illumination was made by the same light fixtures, here vertically located on the external wall. The corridor from which he had just come went into this wall, finding room between the staircase volutions. Now he could observe it from the outside. Strange architecture… Light fixtures here glowed dimly, too, but their light was not white, but reddish, making the picture ever gloomier.
Now where? The stairs completely blocked the space between the internal and external walls, giving him no chance to see how far upwards or downwards this spiral went. The common experience, which had been not affected by amnesia, prompted him to conclude that an exit from a building, however freakish it was, should be downwards, so the man already made some steady descending steps, but then stopped. What if this whole complex were underground? The absence of windows supported such idea—especially if the project were dangerous and confidential.
He turned in indecision. And saw on the first of the stairs, going from a platform upward, the next bloody inscription:
“DO NOT GO THERE!”
Now he was not so sure that these inscriptions were left by somebody hostile. Most likely it was the same victims of unknown experimenters or the accident which had overtaken them. However—he reminded himself logically—that still does not mean at all that he should trust them unconditionally. These people (whether any of them were still alive) could be mistaken, could be, after all, simply mad. Someone destroyed devices with frenzied fury, did he not? And, by the way, what had been written in the crushed laboratory—some obvious nonsense on the theme of darkness and light.
Nevertheless, he turned again and went downwards. He nearly ran, as the staircase was steep enough, but then he decided that it was necessary to do all with care here.
The staircase was also dirty and abandoned, like everything in this terrible place. Perhaps, it was even dirtier. Most likely in those days when all were working here, the personnel used the lift, and the staircase was intended only for emergencies. That’s why its illumination was so dim.
He passed some platforms with exits, each time stopping and listening before walking past the next door, but he decided to continue to the bottom. If there were a cellar, then he will ascend a level upward. At this point a foolish thought came to him that this downward course, going goodness knows where, by a dirty staircase illuminated by an ominous red twilight reminded him of the descent into hell. Yes, so he had remembered the concept of a hell—as well as the fact that he had never believed in it. “Nonsense,” he told himself again. “Everything is absolutely material here. Even those goddamned mutant creatures.” Yep, “goddamn.” However, the freak arthropods and even guts-settling articulated worms were rather small for the standard hellish demons.
At last he reached the bottom. The last platform abutted against half-open door leaves of the high sliding gate which led not into the cylinder but outside. Maybe the door mechanism had jammed in such a position, or the cause could be the deficiency of energy. The remaining gap, however, was wide enough to climb through. Behind the door it was absolutely dark.
And on the right half of the gate one more inscription had been made in the same way and manner: “DO NOT THINK.” What was it suggesting that he not think about remained a riddle as part of the door was hidden by a wall. The man tried to move the heavy leaf, but he might as likely pull on a cliff. All right then, as it is clearly known, appeals not to think about something simply result in just the opposite.
He stood for a while, listening, sniffing the air—nothing fresh, the same musty abomination of desolation as everywhere else here. At last, working up the courage and clasping his only weapon—the tablet with the acute angle—he pressed himself through the gate into the darkness.
The faint hope that any automatics would turn on the light remained futile. If ever such automatics existed here, they did not work now. Should he return and look for another way to the outside? But what suggested to him that such a way existed or that it would be more safe?
He stood a little longer, hearing in the darkness only the fast terrified beating of his own heart, and then, reaching forward with his left hand and groping the floor with his bare feet, he nevertheless moved forward.
After several—seconds? minutes?—he was not sure that he could calculate time correctly in such conditions, though he already understood that he was in a really large room, his fingers having touched a wall. The wall was dusty, but under the dust the smoothness of plastic or some similar material was evident. He moved to the right, sliding along the wall by his hand, came across some vertical metal bar, and bypassed it, before his hand again fell into emptiness. He went forward, until his hand rested against a next obstacle.
At first it seemed to him that he had been keeping the direction, but having looked back at a moment ago, he had not seen the doorway gap through which a light from the staircase should seep—neither there, where he expected to see it, nor anywhere. With growing trepidation he understood that he was wandering in a labyrinth and had already moved far from the entrance. And, maybe, the emergency illumination died out completely. What a damned place is this! Why would there need to be a labyrinth here?