Chapter 8. Traveling through the walls.
Megan took another strategy when the next day the Suspicious showed up to teach her the next lesson. When she realized that the Suspicious knew about her yesterday’s success, she pretended that she was eager to learn further and tried really hard, but anything she did would not work. It was comforting to Megan that the Suspicious appeared to not know about her escapade to listen in on the meeting the Unknowns had yesterday, where she found out about the consequences of passing the flying test. The Suspicious did not say a word about her escaping through the hole in the floor and the trouble she caused because of how long the Suspicious had to look for her. Finally, the Suspicious left her alone after suggesting that she kept trying and told her she would check on her later.
After the visit from the Suspicious, Megan started pacing back and forth in her room, thinking of a way out. She was alone, no one she knew in a room next to her to talk to and express her concerns. That made her think of everything herself. She tried to remember in detail what was happening yesterday and how she discovered the hole in the floor. Did it open because of something Megan did? Could she cause the hole to appear once again? Megan was so deep in her thoughts, pacing back and forth, that she was startled when she heard a voice right next to her, “Hi, who are you?”
Megan was surprised to see a girl of her age in front of her. At first she thought that the girl was one of the Unknowns and therefore should know who she was without asking these questions.
“Don’t you know?” Megan asked rudely.
“How can I know?” the girl pushed back. “I’ve been sitting in this room for days and because I still don’t believe in flying, I can’t get out. Can YOU fly?”
“BELIEVE in flying?..” Megan murmured, catching one curious word in the girl’s speech. This was something new, of which she had not thought of before. It was true that when she tried flying, she did not think anything of it, while her brother went very logically about it, seriously considering all the physical laws that would prevent one from doing so. And hence he could not fly. The way this girl put it was quite accurate.
Ignoring the girl’s question, Megan asked, “How long have you been here?”
“I am not sure, may be two weeks or so…” the girl replied, staring at Megan with a glance full of hope.
“What is she hoping for, what does she want from me?” Megan thought, troubled. “She looks at me as if I’m somewhat special…”
Out loud she said, “Keep doing what you’re doing. When you learn to fly, you will lose all hope of getting out of this country.”
Megan was afraid to talk too much on the topic with someone she did not know. The girl might not be telling the truth and was indeed send to her by the Unknowns to spy on her or was an Unknown herself. This was quite probable because the girl appeared in front of Megan out of nowhere, probably using some tricks of the Unknowns. Suddenly realizing this, Megan asked, interrupting her previous thought, “…By the way, how did you get into my room?”
The girl’s response was completely unexpected. “It was you who got into my room,” she replied. “That’s why I thought you were one of THEM. But because of what you just said, I know that you’re not.”
“I got into your room?..” Megan asked, stumbling. If that were the case, she did not notice how that happened. She simply paced back and forth from one wall to the other and was thinking about her situation. “Did you see how I got into your room?” she asked the girl to clarify.
“Of course I did,” the girl replied. “You just appeared out of the wall, the same way the Suspicious does it.”
“The Suspicious comes through the ceiling,” Megan objected. “How could I come through the wall?” she inquired.
Suddenly a wild guess came into her mind. Was it possible that if one didn’t give a weird phenomenon a thought, in this country it just happened? She was not thinking about flying, whether it was physically possible or not, just tried it; she likewise was not thinking anything about going through the walls. Apparently, when she ran into a wall in her deep thoughts, she went right through it.
This new ability was so useful for getting out of her room and, possibly, out of the building that Megan wanted to abandon the girl right away and start trying things out. She could go through walls to find the boys and teach them to do the same thing. Then they could all get to the meeting room of the Unknowns and find the tube, through which they came into this country, and try climbing out. Then they could fly back to the wooden structure where their journey started. But on the other hand, the girl Megan just met could share with her what she knew about the Unknowns and how many prisoners there were. Maybe Megan could teach her to go through the walls, too, and they could all escape together.
Megan asked, “So, tell me what you know about this place.”
“I don’t really know much at all,” said the girl. “I was put into this room from the very beginning and was kept here ever since. Once in a while the Suspicious shows up and starts convincing me that I should learn to fly.”
“How did you get here?” Megan asked.
And the girl told her the story, which was very similar to Megan’s. She and two of her friends gathered at her friend’s house and started playing in the back yard. Then one of her friends had an idea to go to the neighborhood playground in the park. The girl insisted they should tell their parents, but her friends said they were not going for a long time, so it would be Ok. When they got to the park, there was a weird wooden structure. It was all the way towards the back where the park bordered the community, which was separated from the park by a fence. The girls went there to check it out, then, of course, went in, and then the same thing happened to them as to Megan and the boys. There was one strange thing about it, though. When they were coming in, two other kids were coming out, and they told the girls that they did not see anything inside. The girls went in to double check, and as soon as all three entered, the door behind them disappeared, and they were ordered by a voice to open the bags. And then when they all got here, the Chief of the Unknowns assigned them all to so called ‘mentors’, and she was assigned to the Suspicious.
“Ok, so there are at least six of us here,” Megan concluded. “Do you know about anyone else?”
But the girl gave her a negative answer.
“Have you seen your friends since you came here?” Megan inquired.
“No, I have not. And it’s very sad. I miss them. And I feel really bad that we didn’t warn our parents and that now they consider all of us lost”.
“Cheer up, I have a plan,” Megan said, making a decision. “The only thing you have to do is to try to get through this wall.”
“Are you kidding? First flying, now going through walls… When will all this nonsense end?”
“When we get out of here. Meanwhile, we have to do it. And the way to do it is to not think about the impossibility of doing it. Watch.”
Megan turned to the wall, preparing to go through. For a moment, a thought of doubt came into her head: what if she could do it only once, because she did not know she was doing it? At this time, if she tried it consciously, it might not work. But Megan tried to shoo the thought away. She resolutely stepped through the wall to her room, then returned back to the girl’s.
“See, it works,” she announced with relief. “I have come here with my brother and his friend, so we need to get them out, too. Hopefully we can also find your friends. Then we can go back to the meeting room of the Unknowns, out through the tube and fly back home.”
“Sounds crazy, but I guess it’s the only way,” sighed the girl. “By the way, I’m Mary.”
Megan introduced herself. She did not want to sit around in the rooms any longer. She was ready for action, so she told Mary, “Maybe we can find others while we go through walls, but we have to be very careful because, I assume, the Unknowns can do the same. Let’s go.”
Mary tried several times, but she could not do it. While she was trying, Megan h
eard noises and realized that the ceiling opened and the Suspicious was coming down.
“There’s Suspicious, run!” she shouted at Mary.
To Megan’s relief, that did the trick. Mary panicked, rushed towards the wall and went right through it. Megan followed. By mistake, they ran the opposite directions from Megan’s room, so they found themselves in a different room with another person, but they did not have time. It was not a friend of Mary, so they kept going. Room after room they went, some of them were empty, in others they saw people, one at a time. Megan realized that there were very many people here, and she was wondering whether there was a way to get them all out. At some point she realized that the Suspicious was not following them anymore. Maybe she finally lost track of them, but maybe she went to get some help. Megan tried going through the floor to get out of this maze of rooms they were through, and it worked. Mary followed her. They found themselves in a long corridor similar to the one that Megan traveled in to go to the meeting room yesterday. They started walking in the corridor when suddenly they saw a bright red arrow saying “Exit”.
“Exit?” Megan was puzzled. “What kind of exit? I mean, where are we going to exit to if we take this route?”
“I don’t know,” Mary replied, her spirit up despite her lack of knowledge. “Let’s follow the arrow and find out.”
“But what about everyone else?” Megan objected, slowing down with intention to go back. “Shouldn’t we try finding them first?”
“We can first find the way out, then come back and find them. We’ll already know where to go, so it’ll be faster,” Mary suggested.
“Ok, good idea,” Megan agreed, changing her mind.
And the girls started walking along the corridor to see where it went and what kind of exit it led to.
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