Span Trap

by Sidney Porcelain

When Mona Wilson committed suicide she thought she had good reasons. She had been working for the Forzia Silverplate Company seventeen years, ever since she had left grammar school; she lived in a drab roominghouse where the other roomers were not friendly; and she knew she could never make herself attractive enough to have a man want her for his wife. That she might have been able to change her life there is no doubt, but if that idea had ever occurred to Mona she had considered it too much trouble, as well as uncertain, and she was not one to trouble herself to make much of an effort.

At first, after working one year, she had been a little ambitious and had gone to night high school believing that she could advance herself enough to afford better clothes and in that way find a man to marry her. This endeavor was shortlived when she discovered that it was not changing matters any and that bettering herself, both in her employment and her appearance and personality was a long range task. The simple solution was suicide.

And so one day, after work, she had gone quietly up to her room, opened a bottle of sleeping tablets and downed every one of them as if they had been so much popcorn. And it worked. Mona Wilson died.

She knew she had succeeded the moment she opened her eyes and found herself in a small cubicle of a room, not unlike the room she had lately departed. Only, instead of a bed, she was lying on a soft-stone tablet. There were no curtains on the window, and the light that entered was a bluish-gray glow that had no suggestion of sunlight. She looked at herself and saw that she was wearing a robe of the same blue-gray color and she realized that this was her own room and that somehow the Mona Wilson of the Earth was somewhere else, and yet ... there was the strange impression that she had not left the Earth at all, but was in her roominghouse. This was further supported when she slid open a panel and found a hall and staircase in a similar position as the original hall and staircase she had traversed for seventeen years.

But she knew she was dead: she had committed suicide; there had been nothing to live for, and so far as she knew, she still had nothing to live for. She went down the stairs and on the bottom landing she thought she saw somebody come out of one of the other paneled doors, but in the blue-gray haze it was hard to tell.

“You’re up early this morning,” a voice said, not unkindly, and yet, not kindly either.

“Yes,” she said. Evidently this person, whoever she was, knew her, despite the fact that Mona knew she had never been dead before.

“Well, the early bird catches the worm, you know,” the voice said, and this time Mona saw that part of the haze had form, draped in a robe not unlike Mona’s, but more bulky.

I thought I would never hear that phrase again, Mona thought. She wanted to escape from it as quickly as possible, but she could not leave without some comment. “Why not say,” she said, “the early worm is caught by the bird.”

“Oh, ha, ha!” the voice laughed. “That’s a good one. You’re wasting your time. You should be on permeo!”

Permeo? There was a new word. Proof that she was in a different place, that she was dead, not just doped up with sleeping pills. What was a permeo?

But Mona didn’t want to encourage the woman by remaining longer, so she went out into the open and saw that the blue-gray haze came from a large globe suspended above, as though it hung from the sky, but of course it couldn’t have been or she would have been able to see the cable and the point from which it hung. Yet, all she did see was the globe, apparently defying the law of gravity. And it wasn’t a street below, in the strict sense of the word, it was rather a place, a plaza.

In spite of the light, much of the plaza was in shadow, a strange nebulous shadow that concealed without obscuring. She directed her feet leftward, and discovered that she was going in the direction where the Forzia Silverplate Company would have been had she been alive and had this place been Earth. But of course she would not reach the Forzia Silverplate Company. Still, it would be interesting to see what was standing in its place. So she went the length of the plaza in the way that she might have gone had she been alive; and when she considered herself approximately near the Forzia Silverplate Company, she discovered that here was a monument decorated with curious figures that wound around it in a way that seemed to portray a great journey or crusade. It was rather beautiful in a dull bluish-gray and suggested marching movement. It seemed that the figures were actually revolving around the pole or monument to its top which was well above her head, disappearing as they wound upward. She tried to concentrate her attention on one female figure to see whether she actually did move, but it was impossible to be sure for her glance was swept ever upward and around until her eyes were lost in the mystery of the out-of-sight.

At this moment a bell rang and reverberated and as the reverberations died, Mona was aware that the blue-gray color was fading and was being replaced by a rose-pink. Everything became suffused with this rose-pink color including her own robe. Suddenly bustling activity disturbed the area and Mona could discern many robed people passing in all directions as though the bell had been a signal. She raised her head and saw that the globe above had also changed to rose-pink.

“Hurry up, you’ll be late!” somebody called to her, and, uncertain that she was meant, Mona looked about for the source of the voice. Someone then grabbed her robe and pulled her along with the rose-pink river of people who were hurrying toward a satiny gate that did not open but shimmered so that they were able to pass through as though being engulfed in its folds.

Mona found herself next to a moving belt and somehow realized that she was supposed to examine the objects on the belt as they swept by in a regular but dizzying pace. This was her work, then. Much different from the Forzia Silverplate Company where she had only to add columns of figures. But these objects ... suddenly she found herself darting her hand forward to snatch one of them, and at the same time she knew she had detected a difference between it and its fellows. Now, holding it, she saw that the object was a machine-part, the shape of a large pear, with two spiraling ridges, and the defect lay in a jutting part that made its silhouette uneven, as though the pear had a stem.

She tossed this part on the floor where it smashed and melted into the floor, itself becoming part of its polished smoothness as though it had never existed as a separate entity.

After a few hours of this work, another bell sounded on a slightly higher tone and the rose-pink faded and everything gradually became a lemon-yellow. The moving belts slowed and stopped and Mona found herself going with the crowd in the general direction of a large patio where several hazy figures sat and reclined. In the center of the patio was a high lemon-yellow dome through which music and voices issued in such a way that it seemed to Mona the people around the dome had caused them. She sat down also, feeling slightly hungry. Then suddenly the noises and music ceased and Mona felt permeated with a strong sensation of passion, then anger, then fear, and then relief, and finally love. While she heard no words spoken and saw nothing, she knew she had just experienced a short drama of which she felt a part. Also, her hunger had been satisfied. She noticed that those around her had had the same or a similar experience. One voice said very distinctly to a companion: “The permeo had a good program today, didn’t it?”

So this was the permeo, Mona thought, and realized she had known that that was what it was all along, for hadn’t she been here all her life? Or had she? She couldn’t quite recall. She only knew that she was not completely satisfied, and was not even curious about her existence here.

Later, after the bell had ascended the scale and the colors had changed from lemon-yellow to pale-lilac, to leaf-green, to deep-mauve, to ocean-blue, Mona made her way back to the edifice she had left when the color was still blue-gray. The same woman greeted her with:

“Home late, aren’t you? Are you hungry?”

“A little bit,” Mona admitted.

“Well, you’re welcome to come in and share my permeo, though I must say I need a new restitutioner. I’ve been getting a little gaseous lately and I think it’s my reception.”

“No, thank you just the same,” Mona told her and fled up the stairs, thinking that somehow she would have to find a way to escape this horrible place. There must be some way. Surely she could not put up with the belt job any longer, and as for that woman downstairs....

If only she could meet someone she could feel friendly with. The only feeling of satisfaction with living had been in the patio when the permeo had been reflecting, but somehow even that had not been complete. She had shared in somebody else’s dramatized satisfaction, secondhand satisfaction. That was not enough.

Then she remembered what happened whenever she found an imperfect machine part. Perhaps if she threw herself on the floor, she too would melt into it and become nothing. It was worth trying.

So the next morning she was up early again and the woman met her with surprise in her voice: “Up early again!” she exclaimed. “You must really love your work. Or is it the overtime they pay? Isn’t it awful how much things cost these days? Last week I paid 1800 calories for a midnight snack. That’s a lot of energy to waste, but I must say I couldn’t sleep because of that imperfection in my permeo. You’re lucky you can use the one at the factorium.”

“Have you ever been in the factorium?” Mona asked suddenly.

“Why of course! I worked there myself until I got too old and was in danger of slipping on the floor.”

“What would happen if someone did slip?”

“Oh, don’t even mention it! I’ll never forget the time I saw somebody disappear without a trace!”

“Thanks!” Mona said and rushed out.

That is what she would do then. Before anybody else arrived, she would throw herself onto the floor and disappear forever. What was there to live for?

When she reached the factorium she slid through the satiny door and found the belt section and then, with a quick glance around, she leaped floorward with a crash that upset her considerably without any other effect than a shock and bruises. Several others came to her and helped her to her feet, and one of them said, explaining everything in his remark: “It’s a good thing the belts weren’t working.”

“I’m all right....” she told them.

“Come, I’ll help you into the permeo room. You must be careful when you.... Just sit here and the permeo will give you a restitutional overplay.”

He helped her to a soft-stone bench and soon she felt the bruises fading from her awareness. He was sitting next to her and said, she thought, shyly, “You need someone to take care of you.”

“I do,” she said. “I do?”

“Yes, you do.”

“Well, I....”

“I’ll tell the monitor to have a specific assigned to you.”

“A specific?”

“It will see that you don’t get into any more accidents.”

“Oh, no! I mean, I’m all right. I won’t need a ... specific.”

“Of course you do,” he said. “Anybody who falls as you did is definitely in need of a specific.”

“But what about you ... er ... couldn’t you be my specific instead?”

“Oh, ha, ha! That’s a good one! Do I look like a specific?”

She looked at him and it seemed that he was rather handsome in spite of the blue-gray caste. The bell sounded just then and he became a rose-pink with even better possibilities, and because of her feeling about him, the robe he was wearing gradually became transparent.

She wondered about herself. Was her robe transparent to him?

“Tell me,” she asked, “do you like this dress I’m wearing?”

Surprised, he looked at her and said, “It’s a robe, isn’t it?”

So that must mean he didn’t have the same feeling about her or he would have noticed. She sighed in spite of the permeo, for he was a really handsome young man.

“We’d better get to work now,” he said, standing. “Think you can make it?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

She stood up, too, and soon he had disappeared in the crowd; and as he left her his robe materialized, and she thought to herself that he had only been a passing fancy anyhow.

Even in this new life, she admitted to herself, she wasn’t attractive to young men, for why else would he be in a hurry to leave her?

She glanced about, taking her eyes warily off the machine parts on the moving belt, to see whether there was any sign of a specific. She saw none. Perhaps the young man had already forgotten to inform the monitor. But then, behind her, she felt the approach of something that made her shudder. She turned in time to catch a glimpse of a revolving robot shaped like a combination snowman and army tank. It emanated such a penetrating coldness that Mona decided now was the time to escape and she plunged to the floor, again a suicide as she felt herself dissolving into its surface.

She knew she had succeeded when she regained consciousness and found herself in a liquid darkness, and a liquid ooziness as well. For she was in some sort of stream and it was night, or it must be, with such blackness. The ooziness she felt was not deep enough to engulf her; she could even move within it without too much effort. She made her way instinctively toward a portion of the land where the ooze was shallower, and wriggled forward until she became aware of a current of air to the left. It was an opening in the blackness, and she thought she must be in a cave. She felt cheated to find herself here after twice committing suicide. Was there no escaping life after all?

She reached the opening at last, finding that she could do so only by creeping on her stomach since there was a structure above her that prevented her rising up. In the mouth of the cave she paused and could see that it overlooked a valley; but it was night, and only a flicker of pale light played over the fields so that she could not be certain it was a valley or that she was in a cave. Above, whatever sky there was was without stars or moon, and it was a rather inky blackness, not the midnight blue she was used to.

The best thing to do, Mona thought, was wait till morning so she could see where she was and determine what this new life was all about. She wasn’t too optimistic about it, for she already felt restricted and dissatisfied. Why, oh why, had she committed suicide in the first place? she wondered. Who would have thought that anything like this could happen to her? Well, of course, nobody knew, and so couldn’t have warned her, and there was no way of going back, none. No way at all. And she wanted to go back, very badly. If anybody had managed to get back they would have warned people. Life was interminable. She had her life and she had to live it, one way or another. That seemed inevitable. Only, must it always be so unpleasantly lived?

As a flashlight of purple color threw itself across the horizon, Mona wormed her way out of the cave and down an incline at the foot of which she was stopped by a sudden noise. She waited a moment, afraid, then noticed a movement not far from a slab of rock nearby. The noise continued in a jabbering way. At the same time, Mona was aware of an odor that reminded her strangely of her landlady back on Earth, a rather musty smell like the whole rooming house had possessed. From behind the rock appeared, not a woman, but a lizard!

Frightened, Mona tried to back up, but found herself entangled in her own extremities. The lizard continued to flick its tongue without making an effort to come closer, and Mona hurried past it, afraid that at any moment it would snatch at her.

She hastened over the grassy ground until she reached a glade where several beetles were scurrying in all directions. They were black, with tips of red and yellow on their heads. Mona was surprised how large they were for it seemed they came up almost to her eyes. Beyond the glade Mona saw the glisten of liquid and she felt unaccountably thirsty. She sped along the ground with no fear of the beetles who continued about their business, ignoring her.

When she reached the small lake or lagoon, Mona bent her head to drink up the water, and uttered a sudden cry, for in the water was a monster reaching its mouth up to her as if it would devour her in one gulp. Mona backed away quickly and sought a path for escaping. But the monster did not show signs of leaving the water, and in fact did not even break the surface. Perhaps it had swum away, scared by her as much as she had been frightened by it.

She cautiously put her face above the water again, a bit at a time, then screamed again, long and piteously.

For this time she recognized the reflection of herself.

THE END