Do You Need To Know What’s Real?

“Y’know what they always say,” Daunce proudly said.

“Just follow the left wall,” he smiled, pointing his finger upward.

“That’s just a myth, D,” Rapta argued. Daunce blew his tongue raspberry.

“You look fatter than usual,” Rapta, said blowing raspberry back.

“Technically speaking, if you follow the left wall of a labyrinth, there is a much higher chance of eventually reaching the end, as opposed to wandering aimlessly,” Lenia explained. Daunce and Rapta shrugged their shoulders. A clinking sound coming from the various trinkets in their backpacks. The three were collectors. Small robots, metal sculptures, pop tabs, nuts, bolts, you name it, they carried anything metal.

“There’s gotta be some kind of door or something,” Rapta said, annoyed.

“Maybe we can use my special metal detector,” Daunce said excitedly. He grabbed the tool from his backpack and turned it on. Instantly, a light beeping began going off.

“We gotta go, uhhh, wait,” Daunce stuttered. Lenia grabbed the detector.

“We gotta turn back a bit and turn left,” she explained. The three followed the directions of the special metal detector until it led them to a darker hallway. At the very end of the room was a wooden trap door. Markings from the Royal Age laid upon a metal framing around the trapdoor.

“Yo no way, let’s go,” Rapta exclaimed as he walked over and reached for the handle. The door was heavy, almost like something had been pulling it back down, but Rapta managed to open it. A foggy green light emerged from inside the trapdoor, creating a vortex that sucked the three in.

“WWhaaattt the fisshhhflopssss,” Rapta and Lenia groaned. An obscure noise, one that neither Daunce, Rapta, nor Lenia had ever heard, boomed in and out of their heads. The green fog surrounding them cleared up, revealing a strange abstract world. They looked around confused. Merely seconds later, a waterfall of confusion wiped them down a large hill. They landed at the bottom, finding themselves in an even stranger amalgam of abstractions beyond comprehension. Floors came and went, colors changed and merged. Unknown objects became and vanished, and waves of light and darkness flickered at random. Lenia tried to speak, but no sound came out. It had been drowned out by the inaudible music playing in their heads. Daunce took a few steps forward, and the other two followed. They wandered through bolts of death and war, floods of judgement and despair, and jungles of dishonesty and ignorance. Lizard-like creatures floated by as the ground swirled in circles. The sky flipped, and the horizon bellowed. Monstrous beings squinted and scoured as the three traversed. Rapta started to get worried, as some were getting a bit close. He tapped Lenia on the shoulder. She turned around and saw Rapta whimpering, with his hands clasped together, praying. Lenia nodded and looked around. Thinking for what could’ve been one moment, or ten-thousand, she had a hypothesis. She inspected herself, as well as the other two. Spotting the metal detector, Lenia tapped Daunce’s shoulder. He turned and looked to where she was pointing. Daunce slowly handed Lenia the Metal detector, a string of drool leaking from his mouth. She turned it on and waited. A visible neon green bread crumb trail slowly appeared in front of them. As they followed it, Daunce snacked on the crumbs cheerfully. The three followed the pathway for a long while. Walking past many more patterns and shapes, they eventually made it a strange, almost-building like thing. The detectors led them to the upside-side-down floor, where they encountered a similar trapdoor as before. Rapta jumped in excitement as he went to open it. He pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. Rapta tried over and over with much struggle. Daunce walked over and attempted to push it, but his seemingly larger body crashed as he tripped onto the trapdoor, falling through and pushing it open. The other two were sucked through. A green fog surrounding them began to clear up, revealing a strange labyrinth-like maze.

“Y’know what they always say,” Daunce unassumingly said.

Three people end up in a labyrinth searching for a way out, but there is no exit, eventually they find a trap door that leads to an abstract world, the try looking for anything real, but, when they find a real door, it brings them back to the labyrinth at the start, but, they’ve lost their memory of the entire ordeal