SHORT STORY - The Room and the Code

...684910 ... 492083 ... 213781 ... The inert silence greeting each entry perforates my resolve in degrees I am powerless to absolve. The digits revolve on their rotary discs, side by side, six in all, conversant in their own private mathematical discourse.

My thumb revolves the first disc to turn 9 into 0. Just once I would like 0 not to follow 9, I feel a transgression of this magnitude could trigger a reawakening of my degrading spirit and suppurating consciousness.

But as the dictates of this higher law demand, 9 must always return to its natural state of 0. Frequently, when I have grown tired of the fundamentals of the code, I tease the disc between between the notched teeth of the 9 and 0, ruminating on the possibilities of some grand vista of numerology lying concealed between the experiential reality of 9 into 0 and 0 into 9.

... 472967 ... 017296 ... 333816 ...

These philosophical deviations can swallow up untold stretches of time and always leave me reeling with mental exhaustion. For what is the meaning of this infinite return, this constant cycle of which there appears no escape? I remain convinced of there being, somewhere between 9 and 0, the opening to an alternate dimension in which all the artifice that comprises my existence dissolves into obsolescence.

492775 ...199099 ...358140 ...656213 ... Metaphysical thoughts aside though, here the code is master and I am it's humble servant. It commands and rules over my every action; before its simple but inexplicable logic I am a creature of irredeemable fault and fallibility. The code is master of my destiny and mediator of my every thought and action.

As much as I might at times become a vulgar leader of my own futile resistance, I am very soon reduced to relying on it once more both for meaning and for hope. The code is despotic and exists to watch over me, and however much I might occasionally waver, I always return to its unshakable order and sanity, indeed I cling to it like a shipwrecked sailor to a life raft.

In the room there is only myself and the code. The room is cuboid and empty, lit from above not by natural or artificial light but by some strange celestial composite of the two. It throws an opalescent haze down to hover on the walls and floor like an apparition. In any case, I have scarcely bothered to examine its source or origin, it is meaningless to me in the context of the code.

Although the room is compact I cannot say for sure whether I have traversed its boundaries, the antipodal wall is a murky frontierland of unexplored prospects. I feel certain that at some point I have circumnavigated the room but have no cognisance of such a venture whatsoever. The territory of the room holds nothing for me though, being as it takes me physically and mentally further from the code.

Why I am here and my precise purpose for being are mysteries that I have long since accepted I will not divine, perhaps not until the code has been successfully broken. If, when the numbed pads of my fingers have become raw from the continual turning of the numbers, I break away and stare at one of the pale walls for long enough, I begin to see scattered remnants of past events; vague mirages cast across some kind of mystical oasis. Whether these are conjured by my own memory or are summoned by a more ambiguous projection imposing from elsewhere is impossible to discern.

... 696841 ... 563629... Soon enough though they dissipate, leaving nothing but a contrail of awareness in my mind that before very long fades along with them. In much the same way do functionalities such as hunger, fatigue or thirst permeate through me before ebbing away like the dying echoes of some formerly natural state of being.

Whatever strange forms it may once have held, my natural state now is defined by the code. I perch on my knees, rotating and setting the numbered discs into their place one by one. The expansive range of possible permutations is exhausting to contemplate though I know not infinite. At times I drive myself into paroxysms of mild delirium as I recall the failed entry of one combination being attempted again and again by my aching fingers that seem to taunt me with their wilfully limited selection.

There are even occasions when the dimensions of time seem to melt into liquid form in which I can only flounder, until they again recede into ordered stasis. It is at these points that I stare at the code and could swear positive that once the number of discs only amounted to 5, and before that merely 4, as though they were vast epochs that time has blurred of all distinction. Like my fleeting glimpses of hunger or fatigue, my powers of deduction disperse like clouds from the clear sky of my consciousness, and I can do nothing but pursue the code without flinching in doubt.

My faith must remain undimmed, doubting yields scant reward and there can be negligible worth in throwing thoughts like pebbles into the waters of chance, hoping for resolution in ripples that always conform to the same pattern and formation. I cling fast to the belief that my being will transcend this current state at a time intricately coded with my own destiny.

... 097625 ... 996361 ... 643811 ... It may be, I often ruminate, that there is no single code at all and I am merely tasked to sift through the multiple combinations of limited numbers until a point that defies definition. At that point, 9 will cease its return to 0, bringing to an end the rigid laws of mathematics, and a whole new hinterland of experience will obliterate my existence at the very moment that I am transformed somehow from the room.

With that singular hope in mind I continue the turning of the numbers.