The Fold

He picked his way inside as wide-eyed and hesitant as I’d ever seen them, so young that you could barely call the fuzz on his chin proper stubble. He was dressed in sturdy clothes, a harness buckled around his torso, loops of rope coiled around his waist, a lamp fastened to a protective helmet, a bewildered mouse in spelunking gear.

The others barely glanced his way. One or two shuffled a bit to make room for him on the benches and then went on with their discussions on hunting, gathering, sustaining, surviving. I caught his eye, the only person in the room standing up and looking his way as I minded the communal stewpot – my turn in the rotation; not anticipated the way Gary’s was, but edible at least. I grabbed a dented tin bowl from the stack, checked it for holes, and then ladled up a thin stream of pure nutrition.

He took the invitation for what it was, edging toward me with so many glances around the room you’d think he expected everyone to suddenly leap up and mug him.

“So, where’d you fall in?” I asked once the bowl was safely in his hands. He must have been wandering for a while, or else it had been a while since he ate back on the outside; he gulped the soup as fast as its heat allowed, and without so much as a grimace at the taste.

“Cave system,” he said between swallows, “Rockies. I didn’t fall down anything, though, I just…”

“Took a step and found yourself somewhere else,” I finished for him; most had trouble saying it outright. It sounded like something from a low-budget TV show, like you needed to go sit somewhere calm and have a good level talk about the nature of reality with a trained professional.

“I tried to go back.”

“Never works,” I said. “We’ve got a professor or two in here. It’s all theory, mind, but they say that space sometimes works like a fabric. It sags under weight, it bends, and it probably folds, too.”

“So we’re in another part of the world, like we stepped through a…portal, or wormhole?” he guessed. I could see the slight hope, the vague plans, settling into his eyes. He finished the soup and I took the bowl back, dumping it in a bucket of scummy water with the rest of the dirty dishware.

“More like another world altogether,” I corrected him. “The first ones here…well, they thought like you did. They figured they’d just somehow got jumped to, I don’t know, a random forest a state away, or maybe across the country, or another continent. They thought they could just pack up and hike until they found civilization again. And I tell you now, it’s been a solid three decades for some of just walking and living off the land and mapping as they go, and this place is nothing but a big circle. No boundaries, it just…loops. Things fall in sometimes – rocks, rain, animals, more people – but we’ve not seen anything or anyone get back out.”

He looked lost, utterly disbelieving, and I couldn’t help the sympathy I felt. I gave him a quick, rough pat on the shoulder.

“So, yeah, welcome to the Fold, kid. Don’t worry, we’ve made it pretty good here, and we’ve always got a place for someone else…”

“I can’t,” he said. He wasn’t looking at me so much as he was looking at the air somewhere in front of me. “I can’t, I have to…”

He stumbled back, staggered out the door. I caught Rolanda’s eye, signaled her; she pushed away from the rough table and followed the kid out, just to make sure he didn’t go and get himself killed or walk the Circle until his legs gave out. She knew the landmarks of this place, the waypoints we’d set up and the stockpiles we kept for long trips from home base. The kid didn’t.

I started cleaning the dishes; we all ignored the door. We knew how it would go. The new guy would wander around until he figured out what we already knew and had told him, or else until his exhausted body was carried back by his minder. He’d adjust to this place and what it meant to him slowly – maybe over weeks, maybe months, maybe years, but there would be an acceptance all the same. Eventually he’d talk less of searching, exploration, escape, and more of hunting, gathering, sustaining and surviving.

I didn’t hope that he’d be different, that he’d find a way. I couldn’t. We were the survivors, we were tough, we were practical. Hope, in the Fold?

We were too fragile for such a heavy weight.