Numberland

  Chapter 2: Week 21, Day 1, continued

  Wilson was starting to regret his mad dash away from the rabbit.

  As a lifelong city dweller he had no experience with animals aside from the occasional cat or dog. Running away had seemed like the sensible and humane thing to do. He hadn’t wanted to hurt the thing. He had never hurt an animal before, and he didn’t like the feeling of having done it.

  He hadn’t expected it to chase him so far. It was so much smaller than him, and so obviously not a predator, that it should have been more afraid of him than he was of it. Some herbivores would aggressively chase bigger animals away from their nest or territory, but the rabbit had kept going after him to the point of suicide. It was disturbing.

  The point of being aggressive like that was supposed to be to scare off predators and avoid a fight, not to go down to the bitter end. A dog would bark at a bear, and the bear would back off. Both the dog and the bear would know that the bear would win a real fight, but the dog might get a good bite in. Fearing a nasty injury that might take weeks to heal, the bear would think better of it and go somewhere else.

  This hadn’t been like that. The rabbit had been more like a bee. Once provoked, it was committed to deliver its sting and go down in the process. It was uncanny for a mammal to act like that.

  Knowing that now, he wished he had turned and killed the thing before falling down this absurdly huge water slide.

  The trouble was that he didn’t think he could get back up. The flow of water inside the slide was too strong to climb up, and the only other way would be to climb on top of it all the way up the spiral. Against its smooth, wet surface, he thought it was more likely he’d fall off and bash his head against one of the supporting beams.

  And the only clue he’d found was the note back in the plaza, the one giving directions to “the village.” Directions he wouldn’t be able to follow unless he could get back up there.

  “Nuts,” he said aloud.

  He had two options. He could either stay put and try to climb up, or he could walk along the wall and try to find an alternate route. He’d already pretty much ruled out the first option as too likely to get him killed, so he decided to explore. If he could find another way back to the plaza, he could follow the directions and reach “the village,” where (hopefully) he could get his bearings and start making his way home.

  Before going anywhere else he needed a system, and he needed to start keeping better track of where he was. He arbitrarily decided to refer to the direction he was facing as North, to his right as East, behind him as South, and to his left as West. That meant the plaza was more-or-less directly North from where he was, and to get there he had to go either East, then North, then West, or West, then North, then East.

  He had no idea if the direction he was facing was actually North or not, and odds were that it probably wasn’t, but he hoped that naming the directions would help him keep his bearings straight as he worked his way back. He was already lost, he didn’t want to get even more lost.

  That decided, Wilson set out East. He tried to follow the wall, but it wasn’t easy. The area - it was hard to call it a room given how unbelievably huge it was - was filled with a seemingly random jumble of pools, canals, and water slides that all connected to each other. There was no straight path anywhere, least of all along the wall. Water features went right up to the wall, and he was constantly presented with a choice to go around or through. He was already soaking wet, so he didn’t mind wading through knee-deep water since he was already soaked through, but the deep pools were different.

  Swimming burned a lot of energy. Crossing the Olympic-sized swimming pools was doable, but doing one after another would have exhausted him quickly. Going around was easier, if there was a bridge or a shallower section that could be waded across, but often that required a long detour. He found himself straying further and further afield, looking for shortcuts and crossing points that seemed to be more common the further he got from the wall.

  Fortunately, the wall was impossible to lose sight of. It seemed to be miles high, and no matter how far away he got he could always see it.

  After walking quite a way with no sign of another door, Wilson spotted something else that gave him pause. Quite a long way off, he saw an animal that looked a lot like a penguin. It was hopping along with apparent purpose, eyes fixed on something in front of it. It was mostly black and white, but had a crown of brilliant yellow feathers sprouting from its head. Thinking back to his encounter with the rabbit, he ducked behind a nearby slide and watched it from a distance.

  The penguin took no notice of him. Its eyes were locked on something in one of the pools. As it approached it ducked low and slid into the water. At first he wondered how it was going to get back out, but a few moments later it shot out of the water like a rocket and landed on its feet on the edge of the pool, clearing the surface of the water by half a metre in the process.

  The penguin had come up with a bright yellow rubber duck clutched in its beak. It was small enough to carry but clearly too big to swallow. The penguin seemed unbothered by this as it toddled off back the way it had come with its prize.

  Curiosity piqued, he followed after the creature from a safe distance. It seemed pretty slow on land, unable to move except by hopping along, and he felt confident that he could outrun it if he had to. It either didn’t notice him or wasn’t bothered by his presence as it made its way to the nearest of the towers.

  The towers were by far the tallest structures in the area. There were seven that he could see, spaced far apart from each other. Each one was easily twenty or thirty storeys tall. Each floor was made up of a single huge circular swimming pool, and the levels were connected by water slides that flowed from the higher pools to the lower ones. There didn’t seem to be any way to safely get up to the higher levels.

  He also couldn’t imagine what the towers must be made of to support so much weight. They were supported by metal beams, but it was still unbelievable that a structure made of more than twenty vertically-stacked swimming pools could stay standing. Unless the pools were empty - it was impossible to tell from below - they should have collapsed under the weight of the water.

  As the penguin got closer and he followed, Wilson saw that the tower’s ground floor was ringed by a row of strange machines. They were a bit like vending machines and a bit like slot machines, with a funnel sticking out of the front, a big lever on the side, and a clear plastic tube sticking out of its top that ran up the outside of the tower. Each machine was decorated with numbers and pictographs - a banana, a coin, a fish, and others.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The penguin walked along the row, glancing at the pictures as it went. Finally, it came to a machine with a picture of a rubber duck on the front, matching the one the penguin was holding. The penguin hopped up and deposited its duck in the funnel, then jumped up to grab hold of the lever with its beak. The duck reappeared inside the tube and was quickly sucked up into the higher levels of the tower. As Wilson watched with astonishment, the funnel spat out three coins one after the other. The penguin deftly caught each one out of the air, storing them somewhere he couldn’t see.

  “Unbelievable,” Wilson said under his breath. He felt a bit like he was filming a nature documentary.

  He turned around to slink off, then practically jumped out of his skin when he saw another penguin come around a blind corner.

  Now that he was up close he could make out a lot more details about the creature. It had a pouch on its front like a kangaroo or an opossum. Between its pouch and its way of moving on land by hopping, it was more like a half-penguin half-kangaroo than it was like a penguin as he’d originally thought. It was only about a metre tall, so Wilson liked his odds if it came to a fight. He was pretty sure he could kick it into the nearest pool like a football, if it came down to it.

  Not that he enjoyed hurting animals, but after the encounter with the rabbit he had to be realistic. The next critter that came after him was getting the boot.

  It froze when it saw him, watching him intently with inquisitive eyes. When Wilson didn’t move, the penguin - or kangaroo - or pengaroo - started to move again. Without taking its eyes off him, it slowly moved around him in a broad semicircle before returning to its original route. Unlike the rabbit, this creature seemed (appropriately) more afraid of him than he was of it.

  That was fine by him. He wouldn’t bother them if they didn’t bother him. A relationship based on mutual caution and sensibility.

  When it had gone, he approached the base of the tower.

  There were more pengaroos around him the closer he got, all either coming or going. They didn’t seem to stick around, but a steady trickle of two or three pengaroos would arrive each minute carrying something to deposit in one of the machines. Some carried rubber ducks, but others had towels, water wings, pool noodles, and other things. Everything was fed into the machines in exchange for coins.

  They quickly got used to his presence, not seeming to care as he stood watching them use the machines from a few metres away. A closer look revealed that they were storing the coins they collected in the pouches on their stomachs.

  When he had been watching for a few minutes, he saw a pengaroo arrive without anything in its beak. Curious, he watched as it approached one of the machines, one with a picture of a bright blue fish on it. Like the others, it had a funnel sticking out of the front. The pengaroo fished coins out of its pouch one at a time and dropped them down the funnel, having to handle them one at a time in its beak. After dropping the fifth coin, it hopped up and grabbed hold of the lever with its beak, pulling it down. A bright blue fish that looked just like the one in the picture on the machine shot out of the funnel. The pengaroo caught it out of mid-air and swallowed it whole.

  As he watched the bird eat, Wilson realized he was hungry. He couldn’t remember eating breakfast, and with all the walking he’d done he’d worked up an appetite. And with what he’d seen, he was pretty sure he could copy the pengaroos to get food out of one of these machines. Raw fish didn’t appeal, but he did see a machine with a picture of a banana on it.

  He didn’t know if he’d get another chance to find food in this bizarre place, so he decided to try it out.

  First he took a closer look at the machines. Each one had a funnel which seemed to serve as both an input and an output, a large lever on the side, an image of an object, and a number beside an image of a coin. The objects ranged from rubber ducks to water wings, although he couldn’t identify every one.

  Based on what he’d seen, it seemed that the image was either the item you got out of the machine when you put coins in, or the item you put into the machine to get coins out. Possibly it was both. The number beside the coin symbol was presumably the number of coins you paid or received. Of course, there was only one way to be sure. He had to test it.

  He went looking for a rubber duck. He’d seen them before, drifting down rivers or floating in pools, but had thought nothing of it. It quickly became apparent that there were none near the tower. It made sense that any that were close would have been picked clean by the pengaroos already.

  He decided to continue the way he had been going and set off back towards the wall at an angle. He found a rubber duck floating in a pool before he was halfway there. For the sake of efficiency he decided to bring it with him but keep on and continue searching for a door, as he had been before. Unlike the pengaroos, he had no trouble carrying more than one thing at a time, so he just picked them up as he went and turned around when they became too much to carry. He didn’t find a door, but he did find three more rubber ducks, a towel, and a pool noodle while walking along the wall. By the time he made it back to the tower, he was walking as slowly as a pengaroo as he precariously cradled a double armful of bric-a-brac.

  He had to set them down to feed them into the machines, but he kept a close eye to make sure that an ambitious pengaroo didn’t steal his haul. He came to a machine that offered three coins for a rubber duck - assuming his theory was right. He fed it one of his ducks and pulled the lever, and just as predicted three coins shot out of the machine. He had to chase after them to stop them from rolling away, but other than that it went exactly as planned.

  Now he was able to get a look at the coins for the first time. They were oddly large and thick, like some kind of novelty item, about the size of a quarter but more than twice as thick. They were made of some kind of shiny, heavy, gold-colored metal. He guessed it was probably brass. Each one had the number 1 embossed on its surface.

  He fed the rest of his ducks to the machine, then went along the line until he found one that would accept his pool noodle. It was the bulkiest thing he had, so he was eager to get rid of it. He found a machine promising 8 coins, but just as he was about to feed the noodle to it he spotted another one further along that offered 9. He fed the noodle to that one instead.

  “Huh. So the machines aren’t all equal. Some pay more for the same item.”

  Wilson was developing a new theory for where he was, albeit a wild one. Maybe he was in some kind of research facility studying these strange birds. This whole thing seemed like an experiment into animal intelligence - can the pengaroos understand money well enough to preferentially use the machines that offered more coins?

  That was just a wild guess, not helpful to his current situation.

  To get the best value for his work, he decided to do a circuit of all the machines. He found that all the prices only varied by about 1 or 2 coins for the same item, so a pool noodle was worth between 7 and 9 coins and a rubber duck was never worth more than 4. He exchanged the rest of his items for coins at the best values he could get.

  Now for the next step in the experiment: Getting something to eat.

  He found a machine with pictograms of a banana and a coin, then the number 5. If he was right about how this worked, that meant he just had to feed in 5 coins and pull the lever, and a banana would shoot out. He did just that and - the banana shot out and he failed to catch it. It sailed into a nearby pool.

  He had to go for a dip to get his prize back, but other than that it was a complete success.

  Out of curiosity, he fed the banana back into the machine and pulled the lever. There was no major difference between the banana machine and the rubber duck machine in their design, but one took coins and gave bananas and the other took ducks and gave coins. Did they work the other way?

  The machine shot the banana back out. Hypothesis disproved, they did not work both ways. He felt better for knowing, even if the information wasn’t useful.

  The banana was perfectly edible, so he ate it as he sat and thought about what to do next.

  “I should try to approach this more systematically. What I really need is...”