***** Vol.1 Chap.41 Surprise welcome *****

When Kristin came to, she was lying on a soft ledge off the wall in a cubical room. A dull luminance around the room allowed her to look around though she saw no obvious lights anywhere.

She was lying on a ‘bed’ extended from the wall. She sat up on the ledge confused and dazed. The last thing she remembered was her last breath in the atmospheric suit deep inside the undersea cavern.

Am I in heaven or hell? She wondered.

Her past flashed past her causing to assert that she had died and gone to hell. This must be her cell for eternity for all her mistakes committed in her former life. But there was no hell fire burning; the temperature in the room was almost perfect like her apartment, although it was slightly on the cool side.

Then again, perhaps this was what heaven would look like. She could not be sure. The room is bright and painted white. If this was heaven, then it would be quite lonely by yourself in a cell for eternity. Most people would call such isolation a hell hole.

This must be a temporary holding place till the gods could decide what to do with her. So in the meantime, she just had to wait for whatever would come next.

Bored, she tried to remember what happened.

The last thing she remembered was that she was running out of oxygen in a diving suit sitting in an underwater cavern. She vaguely remembered seeing some bubbles and a small whirlpool of water around her.

How she arrived at this room was a total mystery to her. She looked around and found none of her diving gear or oxygen bottles. The room was as sterile as one could be.

How did I come here? How long had I been here? Why was I brought here? …

She was full of questions.

She sat up and leaned against the wall. As she spread her hands over the soft ledge, suddenly she retracted her hands. Her outline in the soft ledge was disappearing slowly right before her eyes! Shocked, she began to tap on the ledge, drumming it like a drum and made quite an impression on the ledge. But no sooner when she stopped, the impression disappeared as the ledge returned to its normal, nondescript flatness. She grew tired of the game.

She stood up. The floor felt firm enough to walk on. She walked around the room and noticed the dimensions, eight by eight by eight, a perfect cube. She tried to locate a light source, but found none. She tried to notice any distinctive features anywhere in the room. But everywhere she turned, every direction she looked, the walls were the same and the floor and the ceiling were the same.

She walked from one end of the room feeling the wall. Turning the corner, she walked to the other end of the room. As she turned the corner to walk back, she froze. The ledge had disappeared completely. The wall, where the ledge was, was now as flat as any other walls.

“Oh great, now I have lost my seat and my bed.” She said to herself loudly.

She ran to the wall where the ledge was and felt around. It did not take long for her to realize that there was nothing there.

Suddenly, she jerked her head back. “If I could get in, there got to be a way to get out!”

There must be a door somewhere that opened so that she could be brought in. If so, the same door could also be opened for her to leave and escape. Perhaps the door was well camouflaged. Armed with an urge to find the door, she re-examined every inch of the wall again. Like a mad woman, she was knocking, thumping, hitting, banging on the wall.

Nothing.

No detectable openings anywhere in the walls. In fact, she could not even remember which wall the ledge was attached to at the beginning.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Undaunted, she examined the seam where two walls joined together. She ran her fingers down the seam and tried forcing her fingers through. Other than a few broken nails on her fingers, the walls and the seams remained the same and unscathed.

Perhaps this was a box and the opening was the ceiling. There was nothing in the room she could use to push on the ceiling. She tried climbing the wall, but the wall surface would not support her weight. She tried jumping. But after jumping a few times and was able to barely touch the top of the ceiling, she gave up.

She remembered the ledge on the wall that she slept on. The ledge mysteriously disappeared. This must be a living wall! That was not a comforting thought.

She sat down on the floor again. May be Jonas had captured her and this was the decompression chamber. No. A decompression chamber has doors. This box had no doors.

The only logical conclusion was that this box she was in was her eternal prison. She had been sentenced to be starved to death. But then she thought she was already dead.

No. This was an isolation test. She was a guinea pig in a sensory deprivation chamber. She was being evaluated for space travel when she had to spend years alone by herself.

No. This was not an isolation test. This was the real thing. She was in a space capsule destined for the stars.

Her imaginations were now running wild.

No. This could be a sarcophagus. Whoever brought her here was sending her to outer space.

No. The technology was much more advanced than anything she had known on earth. She was captured by aliens and brought into an alien zoo.

She grew tired of her imaginations. Then she remembered that she had nothing to eat for quite a while.

“Okay, I want some fresh fruits and a nice glass of freshly squeezed orange juice!” She said aloud just to amuse herself.

Part of the wall in front of her became fuzzy. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. This time, her heart leaped into her mouth. Right in front of her on the wall was another ledge. She blinked to be sure that she was not seeing an illusion. Sure enough, there was a ledge there. She sprang up and saw that on top of the ledge, there was a basket of fresh fruits, a glass, and a jug of freshly squeezed orange juice. On the wall was inscribed the following words in English:

“Dr. Kristinar Sobrinowski. Please enjoy the provisions.”

Hallucination was the immediate reaction within her.

She went forward and touched the provisions. The fruits looked very real to his sight, to his touch, and to his smell.

This must be a trick. She will be poisoned. Where did the food come from?

Don’t touch it, Kristin, she told herself.

Notwithstanding, she was feeling hungry and so without a second thought, she picked up an apple and chomped down on it. She then poured herself a big glass of orange juice. It was so fresh and tasted so good. It was as if the juice was just freshly squeezed from ripe oranges freshly picked off the tree moments ago. After downing the glass, she felt energized and empowered. She gobbled down a pear and a star fruit. Now that her hunger has been satiated, she was ready to return to her escape plans.

While the utensils for the provisions were not very useful for her escape plans, the ledge appears to be a valuable place to stand on. She figured that if the provisions were here, the ledge would not disappear. She moved the basket to one side intending to stand on top of the ledge. She figured that if she could stand on top of the ledge, she should be able to reach the ceiling and perhaps pushed the top open.

She cleared the utensils to one side and pushed hard on the ledge to hoist herself up, but fell flat on her face. When she looked at the ledge, the ledge had shortened. The length of the ledge was just enough to hold the utensils.

Undaunted, she moved the fruit basket to the edge of the ledge so that it was half way hanging out. Right in front of her eyes, the ledge lengthened at the part where the basket was hanging out. She moved the basket in a little bit, the ledge shortened. It seemed that the ledge was always just long enough to hold the contents.

She stared at it for a while and formulated a plan. She would move the basket to one side and the jug to the other side. She figured that this arrangement would give her some room in the middle to stand on.

She proceeded to move the basket further out. Dutifully, the ledge was extended. She moved the basket out a little more, and the ledge was extended a little more. OK, the plan was working. She moved the basket out even further and the ledge also was extended further, but to her dismay, the ledge was now broken in the middle and became two short ledges: one holding the basket and the other the jug and the glass.

Well, so much for the plan. She gave up. She felt like a laboratory animal being tested for intelligence.

She slowly backed up to the other end of the wall. Suddenly, she jumped when she felt something poked at her back. She swung around and came face to face with a door. A protruded doorknob was poking at her back.

Her jaws dropped when a door suddenly appeared in her cubicle. All this time she was trying in vain to find a way to leave the cubicle. And here is the door. She could not believe her eyes but she knew instantly that the answer to all her questions was on the other side of the door.

“Dr. Sobrinowski?”

She jumped at the voice.

“Dr. Sobrinowski?”

Not knowing what to expect, she reached out and opened the door.