Meeting Fuchsia Putty

For just a few minutes, the decision about what happened next was completely in my own hands, so I sat back against the chair and enjoyed that feeling. It was up to me. I could choose to do what was expected. Or I could do something that no one would guess and completely rattle the tightly woven universe of the Library.

As I got up to make my choice, there was a split second when I thought that it could all backfire, that I might send myself into some kind of eternal void and cause the dissolution of the universe. That quick thought didn’t matter. I just couldn’t do what was expected. I just couldn’t step into what felt so much like a trap, even if it was one of my own making, or at least some version of me out there somewhere in space and time. 

And if that other version of me was my future self and I was sending me a message, trying to guide my path, wouldn’t I know how I would react? And if so, was I still playing right into the hands of the Library? Ah. I’ve never been very good at chess.

The only thing I knew was that I couldn’t do what was expected, so I would do the unexpected. No fear, right? 

Ready to face the consequences, I left Anches’ room.

Three hallway junctures later, I was standing in front of the portal I had in mind. It was a panel of glass that caught my attention many times mainly because it didn’t seem to fit. There weren’t other glass panels around it telling a story of a place. It was by itself, featureless and plain, with ambiguous shapes as if still in the process of creating itself. Were there worlds like that? And what happened to you if you entered one?

As soon as I stepped into the glass panel, I felt different. Lighter. The surface of this world rolled up and down covered in a strange mesh of discordant colors. Orange and fuchsia and lime green and purple and tan. I couldn’t tell if the mesh was a kind of living growth or not. It looked unnatural, yet it was everywhere like grass would be. I was just bending to touch it when I saw a living being. I stood still, not wanting to take my eyes away in case it was hostile. As I watched, breathing in and out, I noticed that the smell was terrible. Like burnt rubber mixed with some kind of lighter fluid. How did they stand it?

It didn’t seem the being noticed me. It continued along, moving forward, but without what I would call legs. Or was it moving backward? It’s top part, which didn’t really look like a face, didn’t seem to have any eyes or ears or nose or anything facelike at all. That’s why I thought it might be going backwards. I didn’t want to scare it by moving, so I waited. 

It stopped and dropped something to the ground that made a sharp clanking sound like it’d struck metal. Was that mesh over the ground made of metal?

I couldn’t stand it anymore. Not moving my eyes from the bulbous shape, I bent to touch the discordant mesh. Ow! It was sharp and it seemed to bite onto me! I stood quickly. The being didn’t notice. Again, it dropped something. Clatter-clang! I moved slowly around the side of the being hoping to get to where I could see its face. As I continued around it, the grayish bulge remained featureless. 

Wow! This was something of a discovery! A world where things operated very differently than the worlds we’d been visiting. A world with beings who weren’t human. 

With another dropped Clatter-Clang!, the mesh began to grow up around my shoes, changing their color as if the cloth had been dyed. Unsettling, but wonderful at the same time.

Clatter-Clang!

“Hello!” I decided to call out before things got out of hand. “I won’t hurt you.” 

There was no reaction, no evidence that the being even heard what I said. Another dropped item, another Clatter-Clang! The mesh inched farther up my shoe. I tried to lift one foot and it didn’t move. The other pulled away, but just barely. I yanked the stuck foot with all my might and it came free. 

Clatter-Clang!

I was going to have to keep moving to stay ahead of the creeping mesh, so I walked toward the being, circling around it from a safe distance. 

Clatter-Clang!

There were no arms, no legs. There was no face, no hair. The shape was lumpy somehow with different shades of gray in little squares. It spread across rather than up. 

Clatter-Clang!

I wasn’t sure how it moved. The things that dropped from it did just that. Dropped. As if it was expelling parts of itself rather than holding items and letting them go. 

Clatter-Clang!

And the items? What were they? Did I dare get close enough to find out? They had the same square pattern all over them and seemed to be all sorts of jumbled colors. They were small. No definite shape. 

Clatter-Clang!

Was there a way off the mesh? It appeared to go on and on endlessly. I looked in the distance for houses or structures or trees or anything, but there was only the rolling mesh. 

Clatter-Clang!

And wait. Yes, there was something far, far in the distance. I’d have to walk a bit to get there. Was it smart to move so far from the portal? 

Clatter-Clang!

“Hello!” I called again. Maybe it was deaf?

Clatter-Clang!

“Hello!” I stepped right up next to the being.

Clatter-Clang! Clatter-Clang! Clatter-Clang!

Oh, no. I must have scared it. And now, I couldn’t move anymore. 

Clatter-Clang!

And the mesh was climbing up to my ankles.

Clatter-Clang!

The being was close enough that I could reach out my arm and touch it. Was that a good idea? I had to do something. Maybe I could communicate through touch. 

Clatter-Clang!

It was possible to give a tender, reassuring touch, so I tried. Nothing happened. It didn’t even flinch. It felt like it was made of webbing and those squares looked like pointy scales. 

Clatter-Clang!

Would it stick to me, too, like the mesh? No, it didn’t seem so. Clearly, it didn’t feel my touch. It didn’t see me, didn’t hear me, didn’t feel me, yet it knew I was here. How?

Clatter-Clang!

If the terrible smell was any indication, it didn’t smell either, and I didn’t even want to think about trying to communicate through taste. Wait. Was it possible that this world did not operate with the human five senses? 

Clatter-Clang!

The mesh was up to my knees now. I had no idea what it would do to my legs. Would it cut off my circulation? I had to do something to stop it.

Clatter-Clang!

What other senses were there? Was time a sense? That wouldn’t help anyway. Magnetic fields? Like I could generate one. Sense of balance? Sense of heat? Perceiving auras? None of this seemed helpful right now.

Clatter-Clang!

Desperation breeds ingenuity. I leaned forward and grabbed the part of the being where it seemed the clatter-clang items were coming from and held on. We were both still for quite some time. Nothing dropped to the mesh. 

Now, how do I communicate reassurance? Or maybe I can reverse the meshing?

Still holding onto the being, I pulled toward one of the clatter-clangs, picked it up, and put it back into the being. The mesh reduced! I couldn’t believe it was this easy!

I did it again and again until I could move my feet. The being was letting me do this. I wondered why.

When my feet were free, I tried walking with the being. It moved with me. It felt like it was in shock, but that may have been my imagination.

Around the other side of the hill, there were some boxy looking things of discordant colors spread haphazardly along the ground. Ah. Perhaps something to communicate with. Objects as symbols? Possible yes, but it would take a lifetime to create a vocabulary. 

I began associating objects with concepts. One lime green boxy thing was me. There was an item for go. Another item for stay. I wasn’t sure the being had any idea what I was trying to do. However, suddenly, it became animated and slid off. Glide was the word in my mind as I watched it move away. Its movement was a kind of roll sort of like a snail. 

I watched as it continued to move farther and farther into the distance. Would it return with a fleet of armed beings like itself? Had I frightened it away for good?

My stomach growled. I had no sense of time, but I would need food and, even more importantly, water. I doubted very much that there would be food and water in a place like this. It seemed too different from the human world to have the sort of things a human would need. I decided to go back through the portal.

I returned to where I’d entered and put my hands out to feel for the opening. I’d never gone back this way before. I’d always been in a place where it was possible to make a portal. This world was so ambiguous that it was difficult to tell where the view was that I saw through the portal, but I tried. Maybe my intuition would guide me. That was a sense, too, wasn’t it? Were we, the strange being and I, communicating through the sense of intuition, at least on some level?

I felt around for the portal, pressing myself forward again and again in an attempt to break through. I turned around to see what looked like the right perspective and far away the blobby gray squares of the being were sliding back toward me. Only it looked bigger. Was it a different being?

I tried to find the portal as the being approached and then it was right before me and it grabbed my leg and tried to move it and then found my arm and did move it and put something against my arm and I grabbed it with my hand. It was small and fuchsia and it felt like silly putty, malleable and firm. The being pulled the putty back to itself and then gave it back to me. The fuchsia putty represented this being, so that became its name. 

We walked back to the other boxy things and added the new item to our vocabulary. Fuchsia Putty added a number of new items to associate with things, actions, and ideas. It was not easy. What did we have in common to associate? First, we attached items to each of us as an entity. Then, our homes. That was harder, but we got there. Then, yes and no. No is much easier to communicate than yes. 

The blobby boxy thing had seemed so inanimate before, but Fuchsia Putty really came to life with the excitement of communication. Eventually, I deduced that it must have thought I was some form of garbage to be disposed of and was completely surprised and delighted that I was a sentient being. 

We began stacking things in certain arrangements that eventually developed into a kind of symbolic language. It was the biggest mental exercise of my life. I was able to say that I wanted to find my way home. There wasn’t a reference point yet for food or water, but I was really suffering. Did these beings exist without sustenance? It was difficult to conceive of beings who could exist without a kind of nourishment, but I supposed it wasn’t impossible. 

And then, at last, Fuchsia Putty put symbols together to indicate that it wanted to show me something. I said that I would need to come back to this place and it said that we would. So, we walked together over the rolling hills of discordant mesh until we reached a flat area hidden by the hills. There was no mesh. It looked like salt flats. And there were other beings there. They were all bending to the salt flats as if sucking it up like vacuums. Fuchsia Putty did the same. It pulled out the item that represented me and the item that represented doing an action. Fuchsia Putty wanted to me to do it, too. I bent down. This could poison me, I thought. Just a taste. I put my mouth to the white flat and stuck out my tongue. I stood back up and tasted it. Definitely not salt. More like a spicy powdered milk. I tried again. It tasted good. Fuchsia Putty led me to another area where there was silver liquid. Oh no, mercury, I thought. But I tried a small taste and it seemed okay. I felt a little better. 

Fuchsia Putty was eager to return to the starting point to assign objects to what I thought of as the powdered milk flats and the silver pool. We added objects for the verbs hungry and thirsty. I half expected that at any moment I would fall over poisoned by the very nutrients that sustained these beings, but I didn’t. 

Sure that more than one of my days had passed, I was just wondering if they recharged themselves the way we do with sleep when something was pulling me, and I sprawled backwards and felt heavier and fell hard to the floor. I was in the Library.

“What could you possibly have been thinking!”

It was Guardian. 

Next: The Man Behind the Curtain

This is the twenty-first part in a series of stories. Following are the previous installments starting with the first:
1.   The Library
2.   Listen, Move, Hide, Repeat
3.   A Necessary State of Alarm4.   Anches
5.   A Question in Colored Glass
6.   How a Lifetime Friendship Began
7.   In the World I Created
8.   To Make Things Right Again
9.   Escape from the Library
10. Pintor’s World
11. Vincente
12. What I Didn’t See Coming
13. First Person Binary
14. Closing the Loop
15. Finding Kali
16. Escape from Smort
17. Lux Earth Wars
18. Tenerife
19. Pintor’s News
20. Taking Control