Grazed the mazes

“Basement 4 to Gate 4! Basement 4 to Gate 4! One infiltrator got stuck in maze 42. Let me repeat. One infiltrator got stuck in maze 42!” the walkie-talkie of Arthur blared.

“Gate 4 here. Proceeding to maze 42. Over!” Arthur barked back into his walkie-talkie. Arthur then latched the device onto his pants and walked out of the door. 

Arthur is the head of security for Gate 4 and he had Connor and Elijah as his assistants. He had been guarding gate 4 as an assistant for eight years and he got promoted to head of security last year. 

“One infiltrator in maze 42. Let us go get him.” Arthur commanded his assistants and the three of them walked out of the security booth. They then walked to an elevator and Arthur pressed 42 in it. Within a few seconds, the elevator doors opened to show a huge door that appeared like that of the door of a bank vault. Arthur let the aperture on the door scan his retina and the door hissed open to show tall concrete structures extending way up to the roof which was at least fifty floors high.

“The infiltrator might have entered this maze via a hole created by the smugglers. We have to find the hole, and then Elijah would seal it, while I and Connor would proceed to trace steps taken by the infiltrator.” Arthur looked at both of his assistants and conveyed the entire plan of their operation. Arthur then tapped his watch and it showed the directions that they need to take inside the maze. 

The mazes were constructed as a joint venture of Horon and Previlge. Horon was the birth world of Arthur, while Connor and Elijah were from Previlge. Horon and Previlge shared ten gates between them and the brilliant planners of both the worlds colluded to create mazes on the borders behind those gates. Transport skipping the mazes was provided only to people with the proper documents from Horon, the documents provided by authorities from Previlge. But illegal migrants and smugglers pay the underworld to create passage within the maze. Skipping the gate meant they do not have to be dissected head to toe by the security, but most of the migrants and smugglers get caught in the maze. None of the brilliant criminals have found a way to skip the maze. Whatever way they warped the space-time, they could not go beyond the maze. And the maze was designed such that you might end up at its start even if you traverse through it very carefully. And now, Arthur was taking the assistance from the agents deployed to help the security guards. These agents are seated in front of screens and they help the security guards to navigate through the complicated labyrinth.

“Right. Now left. Take right and second left. Left.” the instructions that displayed on Arthur’s watch were dutifully followed by him and Connor followed him. Elijah had separated from Arthur at the entrance and he was guided by the Hole Identity Specialists from the headquarters to navigate through the maze and identify the hole used by the infiltrator to enter the maze. 

Before Elijah could spot the hole, Arthur was ten meters close to the infiltrator. The infiltrator kept on running in circles, reappearing at the same spot every fifteen minutes. Arthur was in the maze for more than an hour when he finally spotted the infiltrator. The infiltrator too spotted Arthur and Connor and disappeared into the maze. 

“Not him, her,” shouted Arthur and he quickened his steps. Connor too followed the suit. When they appeared at a wall, they heard footsteps behind them and they hid on either side of the wall. The infiltrator now appeared in front of them unaware of their presence and she was hit on the back of the head by Arthur. She twitched in pain and fainted. Arthur then cuffed her hands and waited for her to regain consciousness.

Meanwhile, Elijah had already spotted the hole. He plugged his portable handheld device on the nearby socket and started typing into it. After he typed a few commands, the maze closed the hole by pulling concrete from the ‘replenish’ source and filling the hole on its own. The entire maze was under the control of machines resting under its basement. The machine finds the location of the infiltrator and the hole made by them in the maze and relays it to the gate. The current infiltrator was caught by the machine in Basement 4 and the Gate 4 was alerted promptly. Only a handful of infiltrators had walked from Horon to Previlge or vice versa. The security heads at those gates had been fired for their incompetence in not attending the message from the machines at a rapid pace.

“Five months back, the head security of Gate 9 had been fired. He is now cleaning tables at a bar in downtown Balton of Horon. Thankfully, we are not going to be fired this time. Every time, we get an alert from the machine, my heart rate goes up.” Connor removed his cap and wiped the sweat off his forehead.

The infiltrator woke up. She tried to break free of the handcuffs but she couldn’t. Arthur came down on his knees to get close to the woman and asked her, “Your name?”

“Sarah from Horon,” came the reply.

“Are you young blood of Horon? So, you must be trying to sneak into Previlge to lead a life of luxury,” Connor laughed at her.

The inhabitants of Horon lived a life of simplicity. They had their own lands, tilled their farms, smithed their own tools, baked their own pieces of bread, and died not owning a single penny. They seldom knew of a world called Previlge. It was all fine before the Previlge started to expand their communication network to Horon. The young inhabitants of Horon were amazed by the lifestyle of Previlge. Previlge had been the lab of capitalism since its inception. They lived an urban lifestyle, skyscrapers pinching the sky, vehicles that flew in the air, medicines that extended longevity beyond two hundred years, and abundance of luxury and comfort to all its inhabitants.

The telecom czar of Previlge wanted to expand his empire beyond Previlge and being a twin world of Previlge, Horon was ripe enough to be cultivated. Hoardings were erected on the farms depicting the lifestyle of Previlge and how the mobile phones brought the revolution there. Soon, retail outlets selling the mobile phones of Previlge were cropping up in random areas of Horon. There was huge resistance from the old inhabitants of Horon, but nobody could stop the young ones to be attracted to the life inside Previlge. Soon, the greedy people of Previlge seeped into Horon and joined hands to form a smuggling network that would smuggle people from Horon to Previlge and land them in jobs there that could earn them more money in a month than they could see in their lifetime in Horon.

Underworld started appearing in Horon and they smuggled luxurious goods from Previlge to sell it cheaply in Horon. This pushed the bright minds of both the worlds to create a maze so that such illegal migration of people from Horon to Previlge is controlled. Horon had the plans and Previlge had the technology and that is how the mazes and gates came at the boundary of the intersecting parallel worlds. And that is how Arthur from Horon got employed as a security guard at one such gate in the boundary. Coming from a family which made tools, Arthur had powerful arms which made him the best choice for the job. 

Arthur pulled Sarah from the ground and held her tight while walking back to the entrance being guided by the agents through the maze. Elijah was already at the spot after sealing the hole. They pushed Sarah into the elevator and ascended to the gate. Kevin, the boss of Arthur was already at his cabin when Arthur and his assistant brought Sarah into the room. 

“This is the fifth penetration in this year. Why are the ones who sneaked them in not arrested yet? How do they elude our technological ops?” shouted Kevin.

“The border is still porous, Sir. We need to deploy guards in the weak spots of our borders and do not let the smugglers create warps between the borders and maze,” replied Arthur.

“That would mean deploying soldiers at the Horon side and that would look like the beginning of the colonization of Horon. We have just now occupied the young minds there,” Kevin chuckled at Sarah and continued, “and just for that, we saw so many protests from Horon. We cannot risk damaging the image of Previlge and the companies that are planning to expand into Horon. Take her to her home.”

Arthur made a salute to Kevin and his assistants led Sarah outside the room.

The car came to a stop outside Sarah’s dilapidated house. Elijah removed the handcuffs from Sarah’s hand and she rubbed her wrists after getting down from the car.

“Back to your real place”, Elijah guffawed at Sarah. She took a look at him, shook her head, and walked back into her home. Arthur heaved a sigh. His ancestral home was just three blocks away. He drew a final look at his house as the car sped past it, back to Gate 4.